Jazz Police - Marian McPartland and Piano Jazz: “In Good Time” (2011, Films by Huey)

For my 40th birthday, my parents treated me to a new home sound system—and my first CD player. My first purchase of this “new” media, recommended by my father, was Marian McPartland’s Willow Creek and Other Ballads, and it remains one of my favorites of a large collection of her music. My dad, primarily a classical music buff, became acquainted with Marian’s music at the Carlyle in New York, where he sought out some jazz on a business trip. He was pulled in by her swing, her lyricism. And who wouldn’t be? The native Brit who became the sweetheart of American piano jazz is the humble subject of a comprehensive documentary from Maine-based film-maker “Huey,” named recently by Downbeat as the “must-have jazz DVD of 2011.” Certainly, In Good Time is a “must-see, must hear” experience for any fan of jazz and, particularly, jazz piano.

In Good Time was filmed over a four-year period, a clever amalgam of interviews, commentary, performance videos, still photos and, of course, excerpts (video as well as audio) from NPR’s Piano Jazz broadcasts. It’s all held together through the ongoing dialogue between Marian and Rene Rosness at the 90th birthday tribute to Marian at Tanglewood in 2008, serving as the starting and ending point as well as segues in-between, while clips from the presentation of the Order of the British Empire to Marian (IN) provide some of the introductory and concluding narrative. Along the way, through music and interviews, we learn about Marian’s (nee Margaret Turner) life from her first tinkerings on a piano at age 3 to her years with twice-husband Jimmy McPartland to the beginnings of Piano Jazz (prompted by Alec Wilder) to her most recent broadcasts as the show’s nonagenarian host, a role she turned over to recent guest host Jon Weber for the 2012 season. And we also learn about Marian’s views of her art, particularly her thoughts on the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated music, her commitment to jazz education (“can jazz be taught?”), her concern for the environment (leading to her portrait of Rachel Carson), her approach to composition (“I hear a few notes in my head and write it down…. A tune just comes to me.”), her definition of a jazz musician (“swinging, improvising, a sense of humor, ability to play in any key”).

There are many ways a good story can be told, and here Huey seems to have melded the historical narrative of good documentary with the art of jazz itself, each commentary and musical moment spinning into a new story, moving in a new direction, yet always coming back to the core message, picking up that solidifying thread so that we are never lost, and never bored. In the film, Elvis Costello refers to Marian’s interviews with her Piano Jazz guests and her talent “to communicate, investigate, interrogate… and get some revelations about their processes and love of music without a formal journalistic profile.” Much the same describes film-maker Huey regarding In Good Time.