[Nick Zwar]

“Real” jazz — by that I mean mostly or to a larger degree spontaneous and improvised music — only rarely belongs in film scoring. Because when the director breathes down your neck and asks you to bring that oboe in earlier, you can’t. Improvisation — the soul of jazz — is for obvious reason the enemy of picture-locked precision. A trumpet that plays what it “feels” will always be a threat to a scene that needs what it means. In jazz, you let go, in film, you hit your mark.

Jazz is “free style”, which is often at odds with the needs of film, so why not fake it? But of course, that’s a generalization. There IS room for improvised music in film, and there are some “real” jazz scores. However, some scores that may “feel” like “real” jazz actually aren’t. Why should they? The audience neither cares nor notices if the sax solo is improvised, it’s just whether the music “lands”.

So when some film music feels like it has a “jazz score,” what it often means is that someone composed something that sounds like jazz. That’s certainly true of Alex North’s A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, which “feels” jazzy, but is composed and written out like a classical symphony. It’s all in the score. It walks like jazz, it talks like jazz, but under the hood, it’s not a duck… I mean it ain’t actual jazz.

Also, while the first “talkie” was famously called “The Jazz Singer” and there has been a lot of jazz music on and in film, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the “sound of jazz” started to weave its way in the motion picture scores. For that reason, I don’t know how to list 10 Jazz scores that cover most of film history.

But I try to go for 10 Jazz Milestone Film scores. (I actually break the rules and name 11, but one is a “two for one” entry. 😉 )

Alex North: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
As I said, it’s not “real” jazz, it’s composed like any other film score. But nevertheless, it is groundbreaking. One of the first major Hollywood scores to incorporate “the sound” of modern jazz. And it’s just a darn great score.

Elmer Bernstein: The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)
I haven’t seen the score for this one, but I suppose it’s composed through similar to Streetcar? Still, this is even jazzier, with diegetic and non-diegetic music sometimes blending, and with actual top jazz players perform.

Miles Davis: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958
Perhaps the first “real” jazz score? Not sure. I think Miles Davis really improvised the entire score, so yep, this may be the first actual “jazz” score. The soundtrack sure plays like a smoky jazz album.

Duke Ellington: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Another probably “real” jazz film score, composed by jazz legend Duke Ellington. Great album, feels like pure jazz, and works in the movie.

Henry Mancini: The Pink Panther (1963) / Touch of Evil (1958)
I temporarily break rule here an name two Henry Mancini scores, because they are so very different.
All of the above were “dramas”… but isn’t jazz also fun and freestyle? In comes Henry Mancini. It’s perhaps more easy listening than actual jazz, but it’s got a jazzy vibe, and the theme is iconic… so I just had to mention it.
TOUCH OF EVIL I mention because it was quite ingenious to have ALL the film music play as diegetic music from some source. Nice “touch”.

Quincey Jones: In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Bluesy, jazzy… not sure how this was composed, but it’s definitely a film score that has a “jazz” feeling to it. And it’s one of Quincey Jones most famous film scores, so I just had to mention it.

Lalo Schifrin: Bullitt (1968)
Schifrin was classically trained but always loved Jazz. BULLITT just feels like a very jazzy score, and provided the template for the urban-gritty-jazzy sound many cop dramas and TV shows would have in the 1970s.

John Barry: Body Heat (1981)
Hard to write a jazz film score list without mentioning at least John Barry, much of whose film score output of the 1960s was very jazz influenced. But I pick BODY HEAT… not necessarily “real” jazz, but certainly “smoky”, “bluesy”, with a sultry, haunting “jazz sex… I mean sax” part.

Pat Metheny: The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
Jazz fusion, perfectly suited for that movie. Of course, the song “This is not America” became quite famous, but the score is definitely worth hearing. In record stores (when there were such things), it as often in the “Jazz Section” (under Pat Metheny) rather than the soundtrack section, so I include it here. It sure has the sound vibes of the “Pet Metheny Group”, a “real” Jazz band.

Jerry Goldsmith: The Russia House (1990)
Goldsmith’s jazziest score, with Michael Lang at the piano, and real jazz music legends Branford Marsalis on saxophone and John Patitucci on bass, so it’s about as much “real” jazz as you can get into a nevertheless meticulously planned and recorded score.