State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 10025 Krin Gabbard Associate Professor Comparative Literature 212 749-1631 17-May-1994 11:01pm EDT FROM: KGABBARD TO: Remote Addressee ( [log in to unmask] ) Subject: Extradiegetic jazz I call upon my colleagues in the ether for help with my research on jazz in the movies: I'm trying to locate the earliest American films with jazz-inflected background scores. There is, of course, a problem in defining "jazz" here. For example, can Ray Heindorf's quasi-bluesy score with trumpet solos by Harry James in _Young Man With a Horn_ (1950) be called "jazz"? I would probably say that Elmer Bernstein's score for _The Man With the Golden Arm_ (1955) is jazz in spite of the fact that Bernstein paid no dues as a jazz musician (but he did use many West Coast jazz players). David Meeker's _Jazz in the Movies_ is not as helpful here as I would like it to be. Does anyone know any earlier films that use jazz extradiegetically? Or does anyone have observations on the methodological problems in such a study? All comments welcome. Krin Gabbard SUNY Stony Brook