From our Late to the Party bureau:

A week or so ago the Wall Street Journal ran a review of the new six-DVD set, “Warner Bros. Big Band, Jazz & Swing Short Subject Collection.”

Headline:

What Swing-Era Audiences Saw and Heard

An essential DVD package of 64 music one-reelers from 1930 to 1947

Will Friedwald’s lede:

Some people cry at the end of “Gone With the Wind.” Others lose it when Bambi’s mother buys the farm. Me, I’m always moved to tears by the first two minutes of “Jammin’ the Blues.” This remarkable 10-minute film from 1944 is quite easily the most amazing visual representation of the jazz aesthetic that I’ve ever seen—whether through painting, dance, film or whatever.

Even the main titles of “Jammin’ the Blues” (a collaboration between producer and concert impresario Norman Granz and director-photographer Gjon Mili) capture the spirit of jazz: We see what looks like the abstract image of two concentric circles, which tilt upward and are revealed to be the top of the porkpie hat worn by tenor-saxophone pioneer Lester Young. That’s one of the things jazz is all about right there—turning the abstract into the concrete and then back again. Young then puts the horn to his lips and plays a single chorus of the most exquisite blues you ever heard: so cool, so effortless, his fingers barely move across the pads. He even continues to hold a lit cigarette (I hope it’s tobacco) in his left hand. His solo is incredibly restrained but so full of passion and feeling, the whole of the human condition in a mere 12 bars, that I find my cheeks are wet long before the director cuts to trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison for the next solo.

The video (which the hardworking staff finally got around to watching):

Really, click on it.

A total knockout.

(Special bonus: Marie Bryant’s visually and vocally captivating rendition of “On the Sunny Side of the Street.”)