Deltachord

Dear Readers,

A reader had commented asking questions about the 1999 film by Woody Allen entitled Sweet and Lowdown. I hadn’t seen the flick, so I watched it.

I liked it and particularly the performance of Samantha Morton as Hattie who is mute. Through facial expressions and body language she portrays her character’s emotions perfectly. Emmet Ray played by Sean Penn is an egocentric jazz guitarist, though fictional. He treats Hattie and all women he is involved with badly to say the least.

Allen creates a realistic portrait of a 1930’s jazz musician in that some of them, such as Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton were known to be “managers” that is pimps, as Ray is in the film according to Ira Gitler in the article Sweet and Lowdown: A Jazz History Perspective. Also, during that time period jazz artists traveled the U.S. basically introducing people to jazz music because there were fewer means of communication then.

Howard Alden and Bucky Pizzarelli beautifully play the guitar parts. Also, old recordingas are used. Several classic jazz songs are represented. Penn skillfully draws a picture of the anti-hero, talented musician, that leads a quirky life.

For More Information:

http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/sweetandlowdown/perspective.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_and_Lowdown
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2D9113FF936A35751C1A96F958260

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Blues/Funk/Jazz/Swing, Guitarists/Guitar Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.