DocTalk: "Trying to Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon"

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Jack Sheldon who's the subject of our documentary it's such a shame more people don't know about this jazz giant only people in the you know small jazz world know about him and he's got so many interesting things about himself he's done so much acting singing someone ought to make a movie it was really motivated out of the fact that Jack is a great great artist and but because he's multifaceted he's this wonderful vocalist that a lot of people know from Schoolhouse Rock actually doing I'm just a bill in conjunction junction I'm just a bill yes I'm only a bill and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill but I know I'll be our law someday least I hope and pray that I will but you Jay I am still just a bill he's this wonderful jazz vocalist and he's also enormous Lee and dangerously funny having opened for Lenny Bruce for six years so after the show she came up to my room she's about 85 years old but she come all the way up there having had his own sitcom and he was sort of like like a soft Steve McQueen you know he was kind of cool it was funny and a little bit of Marty Miller and I'm being Merv Griffin's sort of comic sidekick on the Merv Griffin Show for 18 years [Music] the comedy actually robbed some of the credibility in the jazz world which was unfortunate because as a musician he's really without peer some of the folks in the movie are some of the greatest artists in the world so it was such an honor as a non musician to meet these people who as far as I'm concerned alike Alchemist Jake approaches music his own way he approaches with Trump at his own way police seems that way to me I'm not a brass player but I've never heard anyone get a sound like that it's it's full of drama and it's full of this beautiful kind of a cloudy kind of a fuzzy the cloudy sound that he gets that nobody else gets and it's a real mood that he can set with that he plays probably the most romantic line on trumpet any I've ever heard he's like Jimmy McPartland or Billy Butterfield he's like those guys I have a mini favorite - jack storage but you can't tell any of them unfortunately and this is this going to be some sort of porno show that's going to be shown in Hong Kong or something he's irreplaceable he's a living link to the lighthouse all-stars in 1950 and he really connects the West Coast sound the Chet Baker's and the Stan levees and the and the Shelly Mane's and all of those early pioneers of the West Coast sound he's really the last bud shank just passed away there's there's really jack and then there's Jack I wanted to make my own sound I wanted to have the better sound than anybody else the trumpet is the lead so you it really is the boss of the whole thing you have the melody and you have those the loudest part you know and the highest and then what I think is the most important jazz became in my opinion very pretentious where it was a lot of people playing with their backs to the audience both literally or metaphorically and Jack remembers that it's supposed to be fun and while he'll bring a lot of fun to the party he never compromises the music but he makes it fun for the audience and I wish that we had you know five dozen more like him it would keep this great American art form more relevant he's the icon of somebody who speaks sings in place from the heart the thing that will get me out of my house to go anywhere is a virtual zone I'm a virtual zone or attic so when I find somebody who's great at what they do better than anybody else that's what attracts me nobody is like him you

Channel: Barry Rubinow

Views: 10,203

Rating: 4.9347825 out of 5

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Id: AYW_pEx-_yk

Length: 5min 20sec (320 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019