- [Host] Live from your public media studios, WVIA Presents Keystone Edition Arts, a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone Edition Arts.

And now Erica Funke.

- Welcome to Keystone Edition Arts, where we'll meet remarkable musicians.

Discover them through the medium of film.

Sara Scinto gives us a wide angle view.

- [Sara] Music has played a fundamental role in the movie industry since the early days of film, when musicians played live alongside silent movies.

The earliest feature length movie with jazz music is the appropriately named the Jazz Singer released in 1927.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s musicals were a popular movie genre.

They featured musicians who performed under their own names and benefited from a new format.

During this era of musicals, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, who got their start in the Scranton Sirens, Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman were some of the musicians who took part.

They were also the subjects of biopics that told their personal stories with varying degrees of accuracy.

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey starred in The Fabulous Dorsey's based on their lives.

The Glenn Miller Story featured Miller's Arrangements performed by the Studio Orchestra, and the Benny Goodman story includes Goodman on the soundtrack.

Documentaries often include music and musicians as both soundtrack and subject.

The PBS favorite Jazz from Ken Burns focuses on jazz from the 1890s to 2001.

The Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman are included, providing another look at their lives and legacies.

For Keystone Edition Arts, I'm Sarah Scinto WBIA News.

- [Erica] We're told Thelonious Monk almost missed the photo op for Esquire because he wanted to show off, Sartorially speaking.

He settled on a yellow jacket for the black and white shot Art Kane took, that's known as Harlem 1958.

It's that famous image of nearly 60 jazz musicians assembled on the brownstone stoop at 17 East, 126th Street.

A who's who of performers active in that time and place.

Surely some didn't make it that day.

Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Miles Coltrane and Duke Ellington were said to be out of town, as John McDonough told us in Downbeat.

And certainly this is not in any way an image defining the jazz cannon, but it and the documentary film of that special day do make us wonder about, who may not even have been on the minds of many jazz lovers then, and even now.

WVIA public media has given one important answer to that question in a new documentary film titled "Wham Reebok Boom Bam, the Swing Jazz of Eddie Durham" that's scheduled to be screened by over 250 public television stations across the country in the days ahead.

But that's not all.

In 2012, the station produced the award-winning documentary, "Remembering the Scranton Sirens" about one of the most prominent territory bands of its time.

To talk about this with us about discovering, remembering, and celebrating some remarkable musicians through documentary filmmaking are Chris Hendrickson, Award-winning filmmaker, longtime member of the WVIA production and creative team who's the director and editor of "Wham Reebok Boom Bam", George Graham Award-winning broadcaster, producer and jazz host at WVIA and Director of Artistry and Repertoire for Kiara Kuro Records, WVIA's Jazz Label.

And the esteemed jazz historian, musician, author, one of his books is the NBR Curious Listeners Guide to Jazz, and Educator, Loren Schuberg, who is producer and music director of the Durham Documentary.

Welcome to each one of you.

And Loren thanks so much for being with us.

You know the broad, deep history of jazz in the 20th and 21st centuries, and you can give us a formal answer about Eddie Durham, who he is, and why we should know about him, but you actually knew him, played with him, he put your family's mind at ease when you were headed off to play on the road at a tender age.

Tell us, introduce us to Eddie Durham and why this film needed to be made.

- Sure.

I'm happy to, and first of all, I just wanna say it's great to see you again and great to see my friends from the staff there at WVIA who work so closely with and in the creation of this thing.

Eddie Durham is a guy, I'll put it this way, if you were to remove him from the jazz story, a whole bunch of things would collapse, I'll put it that way.

He was the kind of guy who was known to be an agent of change.

In other words, when a band had a problem or when they needed personnel solved, they needed new music, they needed inspiration, they sent to Eddie Durham, but Eddie was the kind of guy who would then disappear.

He didn't wanna be in the limelight.

Tommy Dorsey relied on him.

Glenn Miller relied on him.

Lester Young, Count Basie, Benny Moten, Jimmy Lunsford.

So many people relied on him.

But the moment that he got in there and did his thing and got them going and off in another direction, he disappeared.

So that's who he is.

In terms of functionally what he did.

He played the trombone, he played the electric guitar, one of the very first to play the electric guitar in jazz.

And whether or not he was literally the first, or whether somebody else was fooling around with the guitar at the same time, really is besides the point, because it's what he played.

And the fact that he made these records with Lester Young and Count Basie and folks back in the early days and taught Charlie Christian how to play the guitar.

No one else did that.

But really his major contribution was taking the music that happened out in, oh, in Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas City, Missouri, and somehow being able to write it down.

And when he wrote it down, he didn't lose any of the spontaneity, and that's kind of who he was.

He's so important and yet wanted to be in the background.

So that's kind of a picture of who he is.

And it was kind of a bucket list thing for me now when I turned 65, was that I wanted to make sure that somehow there was a documentary film made about him.

And through the good offices of all the folks, WVIA, pardon me, and an anonymous sponsor, the thing happened and I'm just thrilled to death.

Last, last point, just real quick before we turn it over to our friends here, you know, you're lucky to have at the station a scholar like George.

And also in terms of the idea about this documentary, the way I look at it is like, I had an idea and I put some things on a table, and so like, here are some ideas and here's this thing and here's who he is.

I'd love to have something to do with it.

And then Chris Hendrickson was the one who assembled it into what it became, and it wouldn't exist without his input.

So that's the story.

- Well, that's a great story to be continued though, Loren.

Chris, we know you had the opportunity to do this documentary presented by Loren, but you as a filmmaker have to decide how to tell that story, and there were a number of different ways to do it.

What were some of the thoughts you had about making a story about Eddie Durham?

- Well, what I thought for the first few moments was this was gonna be a great idea because Eddie Durham is a American original, and he's a wonderful story to tell, and Loren is a great pitch man too.

So once we got the story from Loren, there was no way we're not gonna do this.

But my impressions though, were that as a documentary maker, you think visually, mostly television is visual.

So you're thinking, what are we showing people?

And music was always kind of a supporting player in what you did.

Music was what the visuals rested on, and the visuals were raised by the music.

They were carried along by the music, and they took people places through the music and it helped you with your pace and it helped you with your mood.

But it was all in service to the visuals.

And now, when I started working with the Eddie Durham documentary, "Wham", all of a sudden I realized that the music was the thing.

This is why we were doing it.

This is what the whole point of the show was.

So now I had to kind of take things and look at them sort of in reverse.

Now it was, how do I use visuals to tell this, present this story of this kind of music that Eddie Durham and his contemporaries were able to give to people?

How do we present this to people?

So it was important to me when this was all said and done to be able to say that if you listened to "Wham", the documentary, not the song, but, and the song is cool too, but if you listened to the documentary, "Wham", you would be just as moved and just as impressed with the music as if you watched the documentary.

And I hope that people are, because the music really is sensational.

- Well, George, we always turn to you for questions about music, but before we get to the questions about music, and "Wham", I wanted to ask you, now that it's finished and we have it among us and to share with others, what do you think makes it a successful documentary about this remarkable figure, Eddie Durham?

- Well, I think it's the fusion of the visual and the audio, the music, because, well, first of all, one of the things about the music of that period is that there wasn't any television and people didn't have the opportunities for documentaries or, you know, easily covered shows or the variety shows that used to be on TV where bands would play that wasn't there.

And so the visuals, I know Chris did a whole lot of searching for visual material.

Now, there was a fair amount of audio, a fair amount of music that was available, but a question of trying to meld the two.

And I think that's why it was so successful, because it told the story and it melded well, the sound recordings and the material that Chris was able to, well shoot live.

And also to find historically.

- Loren, you were with us for a preview screening and the audience was, I think, maybe they didn't gasp, but it was quite a surprise when people learned the story about Glenn Miller and that iconic tune, to use the word that Eddie Durham was the guy.

Tell us that a little bit about we won't hear now in a mood ever the same way.

- Well, you know, it's just one of those things, you know, why in the mood, it's one of the great questions of the 20th century, a lot of pieces of music that were, you know, why that piece.

But it was just, you know, the zeitgeist of that time and all this.

And basically the story is that, you know, in the mood is based on the most simple, almost trite.

(harmonizing) anybody ever played an instrument at some point, practice those three notes.

And someone had an idea about writing an arrangement and building it around that with some other things too.

His name was Joe Garland, played with Louis Armstrong, played with a whole bunch of great bands, and he wrote this arrangement and it went around from band to band.

Arty Shaw had it, other bands had it.

And finally it got around to Glenn Miller.

And Glenn Miller tried it.

And like all the other people, he said, you know, it's an interesting idea, but it needs some work, something some is missing.

And Eddie Durham was doing some writing for Glenn Miller, and Glenn said, what can you do with it?

And Eddie rejiggered the pieces, that's all I can say.

Like, just imagine, you know, you've got something to, and he moved the pieces around and added a little here and a little there, and it was the magic dust that the piece needed.

And next thing you knew, you know, and the funny thing is, you know, to this day, you know, I mean, I'm a musician.

As is Chris, you know, we came up playing gigs and weddings and parties and, you know, back 50 years ago and 40 years ago, there were still a lot of people around who were around when in the wound came out.

So you would play (harmonizing) and people just run out to the dance floor.

Well, today, if there is a party and if they have a band, and the people there are 10 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old, even though they don't know what it is, there's something about that introduction and something about that too, the way that Eddie helped put it together that makes people run out and start to dance.

It's just, it's just one of those, it's just one of those things, as Cole Porter said, - Thank you.

That's wonderful.

And Chris, you were involved in another documentary that preceded the Durham documentary and it was called Remembering the Scranton Sirens.

Tell us a little bit about that project.

- Well, what I remembered when we started doing the Scranton Sirens, which was directed by Greg McKowski, WVIA, an Emmy winning effort, by the way, just one thing people know, but the thing that we found out about the sirens is that even though that was populated by musicians who would eventually become very well known and very famous in their day, the Dorsey brothers and Bill Challis, the arranger, people like that, at the time they were in the sirens.

There were just these kids who were just grinding around in this territory, abandoned Scranton.

Nobody was famous.

And it was the 1920s, so nobody was marketing themselves like we do today.

So when we started, there were probably six pictures of this band that existed, six, and then maybe four recordings, 78, you know, RPM record recordings of the sirens.

And that was about it, you know, six pictures, four recordings, and an hour's worth to tell, and what do we do with this documentary?

And that's when we started to get a little bit broader with our story.

And we started talking about the depression and about prohibition and about the coal mining region that so many of these kids came from.

Those all became part of the story of the Scranton Sirens.

And not only that, but because there wasn't really any performance video to speak of, no performance film to speak of, we created our own, essentially, we dressed up the WVIA studios to look like the Hotel Casey, the ballroom, the Hotel Casey circa 1920s, many of that.

There you go.

Many of that.

The work of a man named Chris Fry, who was directing this show right now as we speak.

So shout out to Chris Fry, but we made the studio look like the period, and we brought in a group of student musicians from the region, and they essentially became the Scranton Sirens, because that's the age group we were looking for these, this what the Scranton Sirens worthy were these young men, teenagers, some of them, and with the, you know, the suits and the slicked back hair, and they were acting serious because they didn't wanna like look younger than they were.

And that's what the Sirens were.

And so that's what we recreated.

So it was a chance for us to kind of capture this era.

And they essentially just lip synced to modern recordings of these Sirens' tunes that we had rerecorded by professional musicians.

And it was a terrific stylistic choice, but it was really kind of out of necessity.

And I know that, and the music itself really comes through really well.

Those 78 RPM recordings were tough to listen to, and we were able to get a group of professional musicians who were really into this, and George, you can talk about this, who were able to capture this music and really bring it alive.

- For, yeah, George, right?

- It was the members of Vince Jordano and the Nighthawk, essentially, Vince was part of that.

He's well known as probably Woody Allen's favorite band leader.

And they, we brought in the professional musicians and the students basically lip synced.

And fortunately we brought in students who had some degree of knowledge of music so that they convincingly lip synced to the music.

But for me, it was a real treat working with the Nighthawks because they was such a terrific band, just really, really tight.

And they came, they, I guess Vince Jordano actually transcribed the arrangements off those 78ths.

I don't know whether there were printed arrangements that existed from that time.

So that was quite the feat.

And we recorded several pieces plus one or two that I think he might have found that weren't available otherwise.

So... - [Loren] Vince was able to sit in with the group, if you see the tuba player in the back, that's Vince there.

So the one guy that doesn't look like a teenager is Vince Giardano.

- And Loren we know there are students in the Eddie Durham doc, but the effect and the use of those students is different.

And why was it important to feature your Julliard talents in this carrying out of the story of Eddie Durham?

- Well, we discovered that in the Glenn Miller archives, that there were some arrangements that Eddie wrote for Glenn Miller that were unrecorded.

And so got hold of the scores and made the parts, as they say, wrote it out for the band to play.

And I started rehearsing them with the Julliard Jazz Orchestra.

And it was really exciting because, you know, many times when you do this and in jazz repertory orchestras for professionals too, you know, you're playing something, there's a famous record, Count Basie record, Benny Goodman record or whatever, and you know, you know, how the record sounds and you're trying to rekindle something that was already done.

The things that we did, you're seeing on the screen right now had never been recorded.

So these musicians were the first ones to record, these Eddie Derm arrangements from 1939 and 1940.

So in a sense, it's theirs.

There was no one to copy doing it, and they really played the heck out of it.

I'm so proud of all of them.

You're going to hear about a lot of them.

They're already becoming, well-known in the field.

And so we say they're students, the truth is they play better than I do, and they play better than a lot of older professionals, but they're still students.

But that's the story.

- And they had a wonderful response to the music.

They were connecting on a level that, oh, this isn't a museum piece.

You help them to really connect on that real level where they could say, oh, this is great stuff.

- Well, yes, that's true, but that was no great accomplishment of mine.

You know, the program at Julliard was founded by Wynton Marsalis.

And so clearly the people in that program, just by definition, are ones who have a respect for the past.

Plus, frankly, I think that maybe they felt that they were part of a tradition, because I played with Eddie for many years, and I was kind of, I was their age when I was with Eddie Durham.

You know, I was 18 and 19 and all that.

So, you know, it was kind of like a very natural kind of thing.

- Well, Chris, you went down to Texas too, and you captured some playing there.

And you have a whole range of musicians who help us understand, as Loren does in the film, the importance of Eddie Durham.

How did you, it wasn't chronological, you know, the film isn't arranged chronologically in terms of Eddie was born, Eddie, although you give us the background.

What's the rhythm, if you'll use that musical term of the way we encounter the story as you tell it?

- Well, Eddie Durham is a son of Texas, and Loren will be the first one to tell you that there is an element to his musical style.

It's not just southern, it's Texas music.

And he's deeply rooted there.

And the people in a San Marcos, where Texas State is, are very supportive of their favorite son.

The people at Texas State, the people at the Calaboose African American Museum in San Marcos, all of them are very dedicated to keeping alive this idea that Eddie Durham was a pioneer in this musical field and created some of the things that we sort of take for granted today.

But it came, everything comes from somewhere.

Another thing that one of the Julliard students says in the documentary, everything comes from somewhere.

And this came from a young man who came out of San Marcos, Texas and traveled his way up through the southwest, through Oklahoma and back east, and brought with him an arranging style that brought out everybody's strengths and everything one was able to synthesize into something even more special once he left.

So that's what Eddie Durham does, that's what Eddie Durham did, and that's who he is, still is today.

- And yet we get to see Eddie Durham, a family person, because there were contributions from the Durham family, children.

- Yes, he had that, his two sons and his daughter appear in the film and are a very candid about life with dad.

And Eddie Durham was an older guy when he settled down to raise a family.

He had done all of his traveling, he'd done all of his touring, and he said, I'm gonna settle down.

I'm gonna have some, have a family.

I'm gonna relax.

And he did.

He had lots of kids.

He had a terrific family and then found himself coming back.

And so that he started performing again.

He got together with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Orchestra and traveled the world, traveled to Germany, traveled to Europe, to Sweden, all sorts of places that were really into this kind of musical jazz.

Al Vollmer, the one who founded the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band said that they got more impressive crowds in Germany than they ever did in Harlem.

And Harlem is in the name of the group, but that's just the way it is with this music.

Some people really take to it and they really want to see it done by the people who know how to do it.

- Loren do we know, you helped us understand it at the beginning, that Eddie did what he had to do and then he disappeared.

Do you have a sense having, you were sitting next to him on the bandstand for a very long time in those, your young years and his older years.

Do you have a sense of what that was about?

Do we worry in these days?

You know, I think maybe we could be quick to say, well, there were racial problems in those days and he was eliminated.

I mean, what is at heart?

It was a personality thing that, that Eddie just was self-effacing?

- I think so.

I don't think any more than, you know, race was and remains the headline of the Story of America.

But no, I think if Eddie had been of any extraction, he would've been the same.

And I think that he might have been the kind of person who saw what fame or notoriety or money or big money or just becoming a media figure did to people.

And something tells me that he, boy, that's the one thing he didn't want.

And that he was able to, you know, live a nice middle class lifestyle.

Should he have gotten more?

Of course he should have gotten more, but I'll tell you something about Eddie.

He was not, how can I put it?

He was at peace with himself and he was happy with where he was much more than the great majority of people who in show business are in the commercial world, have been, who are always striving for more and jealous.

And why didn't I get this?

And he was, you know, he was at peace with himself and I think that's what he wanted.

I also just wanted, also just to add Eddie's daughter, Marsha really is the pioneer historian who has published books about her father.

And I know that I leaned heavily on them, as did Chris, as does anybody who's interested.

So Marsha Durham, his daughter, really deserves main credit for being the first one to really document his story and self-publish books that you can get on Amazon.

And so that's it.

- We thank you Loren, Chris, George, and we thank you for watching.

For more information, as Loren just said, you can go to links for our guests and resources at Keystone Edition Arts.

And remember, you can watch this episode or any previous episode on demand anytime.

Will we ever hear Glenn Millers "In the Mood" the same way again, now that we know what Eddie Durham was up to with tunes like that?

And how about this infectious tune, the theme song of the Durham documentary, Wham (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam).

(record playing)