Duke Ellington receives a telegram reminding him of his forthcoming concert in two weeks’ time—not a terribly long notice for finishing an extended composition that seemingly hasn’t been touched before, but most probably accurate, since Ellington was one of the greatest procrastinators in jazz, often writing right up until the curtain rose.
Symphony in Black is significant for the first appearance of Billie Holiday on film (she had previously been an extra in Paul Robeson’s The Emperor Jones). Here she repeats a situation from St. Louis Blues (Dudley Murphy, 1929)—one of the first jazz films featuring Bessie Smith, her only cinema appearance—in which Bessie is knocked to the ground by a violent boyfriend and then bursts into song. Billie sings a few bars of Saddest Tale, composed a year earlier by Ellington.
Fred Waller is best remembered today for inventing Cinerama, a prototype of IMAX, for which he received an Academy Award. He also produced and directed numerous short films on music, particularly jazz, for both cinema and television.
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