Jazz on a Summer's Day features some legendary jazz musicians playing in the famed Newport Jazz Fest 1958. Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Jack Teargarden, Dinah Washington and Chuck Berry (Chuck Berry?) are among the impressive list but sloppy editing does more to infuriate and while some snippets are gems director Bert Stern decides to clumsily cut in key moments in favor of some banal audience reaction and sailboats on the bay. There's some staged partying off festival grounds that also detracts and wastes time when it should be recording more of the performances by Armstrong and the other giants. The co-starring "City by the Sea" Newport, a city I cycle a couple of dozen times a year also gets short shift utilizing a Dixieland band as tour guide horsing around in a Stutz Bearcat when it could showcase one of the more remarkable cities in the US.
Jazz does offer some sublime moments such as a Buck Clayton and Gerry Mulligan duet along a swinging classy Anita O'Day simply stealing the film in hat and gloves, disguising her habit on stage with incredible command. But with Stern's emphasis on audience this interesting time piece runs poorly and annoys with superfluous shots of well scrubbed hipsters acting out when the sight of Berry playing with the legendary jazz drummer Jo Jones instead of a local pick-up band as he was want to do while touring should have been given far more attention.
Jazz does offer some sublime moments such as a Buck Clayton and Gerry Mulligan duet along a swinging classy Anita O'Day simply stealing the film in hat and gloves, disguising her habit on stage with incredible command. But with Stern's emphasis on audience this interesting time piece runs poorly and annoys with superfluous shots of well scrubbed hipsters acting out when the sight of Berry playing with the legendary jazz drummer Jo Jones instead of a local pick-up band as he was want to do while touring should have been given far more attention.