Jazz On The Screen

Jazz On The Screen' is a US Fontana compilation pairing the ten-track score Miles Davis improvised in Paris for Louis Malle's 1958 thriller 'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud' (Elevator to the Gallows) with three cues Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, featuring Benny Golson's arrangements, recorded for the French film 'Les Femmes Disparaissent' (The Women Disappear). Davis cut his side of the music in a single overnight session on December 4-5, 1957, with a quartet of French and expatriate musicians - Barney Wilen, René Urtreger, Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke - largely improvising to the projected film, an approach later celebrated as one of the earliest and most successful marriages of modal jazz and cinema. The Blakey/Golson material, cut later in Paris with the classic Golson-era Jazz Messengers lineup of Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt, showcases the harder-driving, hard-bop side of the group in contrast to Davis's spare, atmospheric mood pieces. The Davis soundtrack came at a pivotal turning point in his career, just before he assembled the sextet that would record 'Milestones' and 'Kind of Blue,' and it is now regarded as a foundational work of modal jazz and film-scoring craft. Critics of the day, including Martin Williams and Ralph Gleason, praised the Davis score for elevating film music beyond mere mood-setting into fully realized, self-sufficient jazz, while the Blakey/Golson cuts are valued for their concentrated bop firepower. Decades on, 'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud' is cited as a landmark that legitimized jazz composed specifically for cinema, and this compilation remains a compact, historically important document of that moment for both bandleaders.