Product Details

• Actors: Buddy Anderson, Count Basie, Eddie Durham, Jimmy Forrest, Curtis Foster
• Directors: Bruce Ricker
• Writers: John Arnoldy
• Format: Color, Compilation, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Rhapsody Films
• DVD Release Date: August 14, 2001
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005M2CK
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,609 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #4 in	Movies & TV > Music Video & Concerts > Jazz > Documentary
  #5 in	Movies & TV > Music Video & Concerts > Artists > Basie, Count
  #8 in	Movies & TV > Music Video & Concerts > Artists > Gillespie, Dizzy

• For more information about "The Last of the Blue Devils - The Kansas City Jazz Story" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Kansas City in the 1930s was a wild, wide-open place. Under political boss Tom Pendergast, the booze flowed freely, prostitution and gambling flourished, and the Depression pretty much passed the city by, making it an ideal spawning ground for some great music. Pianist-bandleader Count Basie, saxophone immortals Lester Young and Charlie Parker, and blues belters Big Joe Turner and Jimmy Rushing were all working there, along with a host of lesser- known but equally formidable musicians, and they all played the blues, Kansas City style.

Director Bruce Ricker's 90-minute The Last of the Blue Devils chronicles the 1979 reunion of many of these legendary players, combining interviews, vintage film footage, photos, and some inimitably swinging performances by Basie, Turner, pianist Jay McShann, and many others to create an intimate, good- natured portrait of what one old-timer calls the "cool, relaxed sound" of the city. The camaraderie among these men, all of whom are colorful raconteurs (drummer Ernie Williams's harangues to some bemused local kids are especially entertaining), is palpable. But it's the music, unsurprisingly, that's the main attraction; performances include some familiar tunes, like Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll" and a Basie big band version of "Night Train" (featuring tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, the tune's composer) that's as greasy as the local barbecue. The Last of the Blue Devils is an absolute delight. --Sam Graham

Product Description
Documenting a 1974 reunion of count basie joy mcshann big joe turner and others ricker creates a sense of period by adding rare performance and interview footage. Studio: Kino International Release Date: 08/14/2001 Run time: 90 minutes Director: Bruce Ricker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profoundly enjoyable, profoundly important work, May 14, 2004

By	Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

If the people pictured in this movie were just local performers in Kansas City with no historical importance, this would still be a wonderful film. However, it isn't. We have some of the most important figures in Jazz and African American music in general, getting together, socializing and reunioning after many years. Even though most were in their seventies or older when this was done in the mid 1970s, there is incredibly lively music and social interaction. The DVD is essential because those of you who do not know who the various participants are by name, can learn a little more, although not enough.

Take one performer, Eddie Durham. Durham plays one great solo on trombone on a blues number. Later he is seen discussing the change of the name of the One Oclock Jump from Blue Balls with Buster Smith. Durham played with the Bennie Moten Orchestra, the great Jimmie Lunsford band, and then with Count Basie. Durham was also the first known electric guitar player (not with Moten as the director wrongly thinks, there were no electric guitars while Moten recorded, with Moton, Basie, and Lunsford Durham used a national steel guitar and a standard acoustic guitar. His electric recordings came on the Commodore Kansas City 5 and 6 recordings.) and it was Durham who convinced Charlie Chrisitian to take up the guitar, and then the electric guitar. But more than that, Durham as one of the greatest arrangers in the history of popular music. Moten Swing played throughout the film by Basie, a Jay McShann Group, and Moten himself was arranged by Durham, as were One Oclock Jump and Jumpin at the Woodside played by McShann and Basie, as was for Dancers Only and a host of other hits for Lunsford. The one swing tune that everyone on the planet knows, In the Mood by Glenn Miller was arranged by Eddie Durham!!!

This is just one guy.

What I liked best on this film was the interplay between the Great Big Joe Turner and Jay McShann on a series of blues Tunes.

McShann was the last of the great black Kansas City Band leaders. He persisted as a solo and trio star in the blues business introducing singers like Lowell Fulsom and Jimmy Witherspoon, and emerged as a solo performer and leader of all star groups byu the 1980s (after going back to school and getting a conservatory degree in music along the way). Today in his 90s he is still a great performing entertainer on the piano, doing clubs, albums, concerts and cruises.

You can just here Jay swelling with pride with happiness with the arrival of all of the great old stars of the KC Jazz including Count Basie himself and how the great blues moaning and playing of Joe Turner inspires him. After the 1940s, most people rarely heard Turner recording with swing players. He was usually recorded with R & B or Rock players (many see his Shake Rattle and Roll as the first big rock hit, but I go with Lawdy miss Clawdy and Rocket 88). Here he is pared with McShann and other contemporaries from the Kansas City of the 1930s and 1940s and he b3ecomes so much more mellow, so much more powerful and is having so much fun as McShann pours the music out.

The other thing is that this video presents the musicians in their real context. They are not performing for white well heeled festival goers or club goers, but in the Black musicians union hall where many of them played in the weekly "Spooks Breakfast" dances Basie and other held there in the 1930s to benefit the union and down and out musicians (was there much of any other kind back in the Depression?). People are dressed fine, drinking a sweet taste of scotch or whatever, and their ladies are in attendance dressed fine too. This home.

There is so much fun on this DVD that I played it three times before I got up, even though it made me late for a music gig I had that night.

Listen to it, play it like a record, then get the music these fine musicians made and really have a blast!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the supertop of Kansas City music, September 18, 2004

By	Charley Brown "Car" (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

I have seen this on film and video about 5 times and never got bored.
If you like the Kansas City Blues and Big bands of the 30ties and 40ties this is the DVD for you.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Joe Turner and friends - Kansas City Reunion, January 10, 2007

By	Dr. J. G. Macdonald (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an account of the history of Kansas City jazz "The Last of the Blue Devils" is a bit thin on detail. However this nostalgic record of a gathering of aged musicians is very interesting and at times highly entertaining. For those who are seriously interested in tracing the history and influences of Kansas City Jazz there are plenty of other sources to be explored but Big Joe Turner and friends enjoying themselves is something well worth experiencing - and a bit of the Kansas City jazz story creeps in too.