A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

Heaven for hep cats was that day in 1958 when young Esquire magazine shutterbug Art Kane put out the word that he wanted all the great jazz performers in Manhattan for a morning group portrait outside the West 125th Street NY Central Railroad Station. And no one was more surprised than Kane when they acutally came. Dizzy, Mingus, Maxine, Krupa, the Count, Thelonius, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Art Blakey, Roy Eldridge, sonny Rollins-59 giants of American music convened for a never-before-and-never-again gathering that turned into an impromptu block party. Musician Milt Hinton recognized the significance of the event, and he snapped his own stills while his wife used an 8mm home movie camera. That precious color footage, long unseen, is interwoven with interviews, outtakes and background anecodotes into a splendid documentary that recreates and celebrates the Golden Age of Jazz through a single photo, the picture that was worth a thousand words and a lotta music.