Making Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

It's undeniable that the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the definitive recording of the social upheaval during the '60s. Behind the scenes, there are many things that make this collection of songs even more remarkable. In Manhattan, Atlantic Records had been recording on an eight-track machine for years, as chronicled in Tom Dowd: the Language of Music. Yet at Abbey Road Studios, parent company EMI made their cash cow limp along with wholly anachronistic technology—the four track recorder.

This forced the Beatles' producer, Sir George Martin, and recording engineer, Geoff Emerick, to combine—or "bounce" —several individual tracks into one on a second tape machine in order to create a blank track on the first machine for some other instrument, vocal, or sound effect. Repeated several times, with each bounce the sound quality dropped a notch. More critical was the fact that, each time multiple tracks were bounced, there was no going back in the analog tape world. (Archivists are having to use a plethora of tricks to separate tracks and remaster these old tapes!)

In addition to Emerick's excellent account of recording many of the Beatles' canon, the story of this seminal LP—and its significance in the context of the times—is also told in a very interesting way in The Making of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. You may watch the entire video here ▼:

Anita O'Day: Jazz On a Summer's Day

As a hardcore jazz concert film, this fails. But wait! If you view all of the commentary stuff *first*, then watch the actual film, it's a surrealistic journey back in time.Jazz On A Summer's Day* is cross-cultural, interracial—even abstract at times.

When you consider Newport, Rhode Island, in 1958 as the backdrop, then this film is an absolute cultural gem and a must-see for anyone interested in sociology of pre-60's America. In fact, Woodstock (the movie) would not have been what it was had not this film predated it by 10+ years.

Wikipedia cites that in "1999, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.'"

Anita O'Day in Jazz On a Summer's Day

Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing, and even Chuck Berry all appear, but it was the inimitable Anita O'Day who absolutely stole the show! Alan Kurtz provides a more thorough review of the event, the film, and related audio recordings over at jazz.com.

P.S.—Of note is that, at 1:33 in the embedded video clip, Atlantic Records' founder, Ahmet Ertegun, is seen in lower right portion of the video. Atlantic, of course, was the label for a veritable who's who in the music world, including Ray Charles (before jumping ship to ABC Dunhill).

*Using Amazon's Video On Demand, instantly watch this film on your PC by clicking the DVD cover image or the adjacent film title text link above.