The Girl In the Red Sweater
What jazz will do to you.
She’s annoyed. The camera relentlessly zeros in on her like she’s some sort of interesting prey. She chews gums, squirms, pulls her sweater about her, the definition of impatience. Why her, exactly? Why does the camera keep coming back to her? For the red sweater and her fine straw hat with a cherry red ribbon that compliments the deeper red color of her sweater? A pretty nifty get-up and obliviously carefully chosen for this remarkable day.
There’s a part of you that thinks, as much as the damn camera is annoying her, what’s really getting on her nerves is the people around her. They’re so laid back they could be at a lecture. And so dressed up, far beyond her own stylishness. Actual heirloom pearls big as marbles and long spotless white gloves for God’s sake! Sports jacket, a tie here and there, fabulously cool sunglasses all around. Where’s the ruckus feared by the old money deities of Newport, and right during the annual Independence Day yacht race, no less? The girl in the red sweater keeps snapping her gum and squirming so much that you almost hear her internal Oh come on already! scream. She has just about had it.
Then, suddenly, Thealonous Monk sits down at the piano and he carries her heart and soul so completely away that it’s just him and her and nobody else. Just the way she expected she would feel on this summer day.
This is not a movie review. Take for granted you will watch Jazz on a Summer’s Day again and again at least ten times over ten, and listen at least ten times over ten to hear every note these great musicians and singers send out into the world.
This is in praise of being inflamed as only your youthful self could be. All the sanding down the world has done to you have made you forget that you are still capable of it.
She reminds you and takes you diving into the wild party pruning away the afternoon hours. Go grab yourself a beer that suds up just like those Rheingolds spraying over the six bottles on the waiter’s little tray before he shimmies out into the delirious crowd, so possessed of unparrell skills that he doesn’t drop a single bottle. You ramp up the volume to match the party’s ever-increasing tempo which so unbridles everyone in the house that the idea of straddling the sill of a high window and passionately kissing doesn’t seem dangerous at all. It’d be awfully nice to be caught in the arms of this one and that one and be swung and spun so vigorous your bodies collide and your head almost snaps off.
You swill your beer and snag another just as the poor waiter douses himself opening six more bottles. The party goes on and on and there is the girl in the red sweater, part of a jaunty chorus line strutting back and forth on the slanting porch roof.
And then Nathan Gershman begins to slow walk the party into the gloaming with a Bach suite and the girl in the red sweater sways alone across the lawn to find herself later in the night falling into Mahalia Jackson’s prayerful arms.
Watch a preview of Jazz on a Summer’s Day. . . .
Or the whole documentary on this grainy German language print.