Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
A ferocious, bullying music teacher teaches a dedicated student.
Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor are rival trumpeters with the Perennials, a college band, and both men are still attending college by failing their exams seven years in a row. In the midst of a performance, Danny spies Ellen Miller who ends up being made band manager. Both men compete for her affections while trying to get the other one fired.
An account of the life of the brilliant jazz musician John Coltrane (1926-67), a gifted saxophonist, an extraordinarily talented thinker whose original, avant-garde work has impacted and influenced people all over the world. A story about music's ability to entertain, inspire and transform.
In a dance hall, two members of the orchestra and a tipsy dancer fight over the hat check girl.
John Pettibone (Droopy), a dog whose love of Dixieland music is not appreciated by those around him, has a lucky meeting with Pee-Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland band at the circus.
In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.
Louis Jordan's Orchestra perform Jordan Jive. Setting is a canteen, with the orchestra and audience in US military uniform. The Swing Maniacs go through some extremely strenuous acrobatic dancing.
Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.
In 1985, four middle-aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their beautiful compatriot. They called her Esther, for Esther Williams, she was the coxswain for their four-man rowing team, and they each loved her. They'd last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to join her exiled father in Italy. In flashbacks we learn the story of their youthful baptism into sex, smoking, rock and roll (Hey Ba-ba-re-bop), Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their rivalry with Ristic, the Communist Party youth leader for whom they had instant antipathy.
Duke Ellington and Orchestra perform 'C Jam Blues'.
A promising young jazz vibraphonist named Sparni prepares for a culminating concert and a career on stage – all while grappling with the repercussions of mental illness.
A teenaged shoeshine boy urgently tries to raise the remaining amount of money he needs to purchase a secondhand bugle before 6p.m.
Members of a Jazz Band come under suspicion when a beautiful nightclub singer is murdered.
This jazz musical short has a comedy plot about marital infidelity. Bandleader Cab Calloway plays a ladies man who dates the wife (Fredi Washington) of a train porter who is frequently absent from home. Calloway and his Orchestra perform "Zaz-zuh-zaz" and "The Lady with the Fan" at the Cotton Club in Harlem.
A group of prisoners are encouraged to form a jazz band and vow to go straight when they are released to tour the country. However, the trumpets and clarinets are just a cover for a series of robberies. Musical comedy, starring British jazz star Acker Bilk as himself, alongside Jimmy Thompson and Jennifer Jayne.
Jazz Icons: Art Blakey boasts an exceptional one-hour concert by Art Blakey from Paris in 1965. This performance showcases one of the few undocumented Blakey bands, the New Jazzmen, featuring the incomparable Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, as well as Jaki Byard on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, Nathan Davis on sax and, of course, Art Blakey on drums—truly a powerhouse quintet! Freddie Hubbard’s incendiary playing on “Blue Moon” and the blistering 24-minute version of his own “Crisis,” serves as a cogent reminder that he was one of the most innovative trumpeters in jazz history. Setlist: The Hub / Blue Moon / Crisis / NY Theme
Two apartment house dwellers, although unrelated, share the same name. One is an older man with an appreciation for and love of classical music, while the other is a younger man addicted to swing music. The niece of the older man arrives for a visit and gets into the wrong apartment. Complications arise.