Cast
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Art Blakey
John Coltrane
Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins
Cassandra Wilson
Joachim Ernst Berendt
Program notes
Go back to the 1950s and '60s to meet the unsung heroes of the great Jazz Age: Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff, founders of the Blue Note recording label. In his multi-award-winning documentary, German filmmaker Julian Benedikt tells the story of the two Jewish German immigrants to whom we owe the recorded memory of Jazz's greatest legends.
New York City, 1939: two Jewish German childhood friends from Berlin join forces to found their own record label. Speaking little English and strapped for resources, their mutual passion for modern jazz leads them to record a new generation of musicians, bringing these artists' work into the mainstream and transporting them to stardom. But who really were these men? With concert recordings, rare archival footage, and interviews of their friends and colleagues—who now read like a Who's Who of the international jazz scene—Julian Benedikt tells Lion and Wolff's story in a film that received the 1997 Grammy Nomination for Best Long Form Music Video, and earned a Peabody Award (1998), a Vision Award (1998), and a Rocky Award Nomination.
Photo: Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, founders of Blue Note Records, with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1962 © Blue Note Records and Rudy Van Gelder