13. Piano Jazz: Chicago Style!
May 15, 2000
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TV Shows
This film preserves a slice of Americana which is in danger of extinction. It tells the story about a style of jazz piano rarely heard today, a form of music which played a major role in the development of jazz in the 1920s and '30s. Ray Skjelbred, the film's narrator and performer, has devoted his life to playing piano music originally developed in the backrooms, bars, and speakeasies of prohibition-era Chicago. It is a style rooted both in the blues tradition of pianists like Jimmy Yancey and Pinetop Smith and in the jazz piano music originated by such masters as Earl Hines, Joe Sullivan, Jess Stacy, and Art Hodes. Although Skjelbred was born in Chicago, it was not until he moved to Seattle as a teenager with his family that he discovered jazz. Taking up piano at the age of 19, he began a lifelong quest to absorb the piano music of his native city, a music defined by a hard-nosed, no-nonsense, working-class attitude which has long been a hallmark of Chicago's citizenry. Calling upon his study of the music and his experiences with the musicians whose work he reveres, Skjelbred shares personal anecdotes of his meetings with them, musical demonstrations of their technique, and his own interpretations of their compositions. In doing so, as the foremost practitioner of a mostly lost art, he preserves an endangered music which otherwise seems fated to survive only on old recordings and in the fading memories of old-time jazz enthusiasts and record collectors.
