Some of the best reasons to not forget the Motor City can be found in the illuminating music documentary The Best Of The Best: Jazz From Detroit, directed by Daniel Loewenthal and written by Mark Stryker. It all started at the turn of the last century in Black Bottom, a black neighborhood outside of downtown Detroit. The city was experiencing an enormous influx of blacks fleeing poverty and violence from the South, as Ford offered an unheard-of $5 an hour to work in his factories. During the teens, Detroit’s black population increased by 600% and they were all forced to move to Black Bottom.
Adjacent to the neighborhood was the black community’s nightclub district in Paradise Valley, home to many legendary jazz clubs as well as the Gotham Hotel, where many famous black entertainers from across the country stayed. This teeming garden of invention led to the birth of some of the most famous jazz talents in history. Charlie “Bird” Parker was from Detroit. Famous jazz pianist Barry Harris mentored generations of jazz musicians, with Marcus Belgrave and Rodney Whitaker carrying the tradition for the subsequent generations.
Marsha Music, writer and cultural historian, featured in The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit.
“This teeming garden of invention led to the birth of some of the most famous jazz talents in history.”
Then there’s bassist Ron Carter, who was later a core member of the Miles Davis Quartet and the most recorded bassist in music history, with thousands of sessions on warehouses of wax. Motown’s famous sound was made up by a lot of jazz musicians, especially local heroes The Funk Brothers. The movie goes into how the city turned on its own creation, yet the sound of Bird still keeps blowing to this day.
From The Best Of The Best: Jazz From Detroit to several other titles, Detroit keeps coming back, if only in my mind. It is the city that Film Threat magazine sprang out of, as well as the city adjacent to Toledo, which is where Film Threat gave me the big idea to go to film school. I used to hang out at Rusty’s Jazz Cafe there in the 90s, watching jazz musicians from Detroit. Not because I enjoyed jazz, but because the group had scored some X-rated cat people movies I was hip to.
"…you don't need to give a fig about jazz to totally love this movie."
