Music Lesson

After two movies today, the only way to get me out for a third was with music.

"Stormy Weather" had plenty - 20 musical numbers - plus some major jazz figures I'd never seen perform before.

When I arrived at the Grace Street Theater, the usher offered me a program and I declined, saying it was my fourth festival film so they didn't need to waste a program on me.

"Good for you!" she said. At least she didn't pat me on the head.

Inside, I found a much more diverse audience than for the first three offerings of the Southern Film Festival, no doubt because of the all-black cast of the movie.

And such a cast! Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Richmond's own Bill Bojangles Robinson.

Based loosely on Robinson's life, Hollywood added in Lena Horne as a love interest he hadn't had.

I believe they call that "creative license."

When he meets (and falls for) Lena, she's surprised that he isn't a dancer, given his mad dance skills, asking him if he isn't ambitious.

"I've never been ambitious except to get three square meals a day."

Men can be such simple creatures.

When he starts dancing for some minstrels, one exclaims, "Boy, he's got educated feet!"

The minstrels advise him to get a job on Beale Street and he does, at Ada's Cafe, where the sign outside reads, "Here every night! Fats Waller."

And sure enough, inside Fats played a mean piano to accompany Ada, making humorous asides as she sang.

He went on to sing the classic, "Ain't Misbehavin'," after donning a dapper jacket for some important guests.

Later, Cab Calloway showed up, resplendent in a zoot suit and scat singing like nobody's business.

Between his jive talking, smooth moves and sheer musicality, he was a delight to watch, especially since I'd never seen him perform.

The gaping holes in my cultural literacy are appalling, I know.

As I sat there watching a movie full of non-stop music, incredible dancing, scores of big bands and pages from the great American songbook, I heard others in the audience reacting out loud what I was only thinking.

We were all knocked out by the sheer talent in this 1943 film.

In one big band scene, the trumpet players were using their hats for mutes and then replacing them on their heads.

A big part of what I loved about this movie was the Nicholas Brothers, whom, sadly, I'd never seen before either.

The scene where they dance on tabletops in a club and across the band's piano included a series of splits and jumps that boggled the mind.

So much so that the crowd around broke into spontaneous applause after their number.

For the big finale, "Jumpin' Jive," the brothers did a series of splits down a massive pair of stairs, coming up out of them without using their hands to do the next one.

Then there was Lena Horne, looking beautiful and sounding exquisite, with her rendition of the title song sung by a window.

Through the window was a killer dance sequence by the Katherine Dunham troupe, a fluid precursor to modern dance that must have been a wonder in 1943.

When the film ended, the applause was long and hard, making me wonder if maybe I hadn't been the only one seeing it for the first time.

Daphne Maxwell Reid led the discussion afterwards, immediately noting of the Nicholas Brothers, "Usher owes them!"

Hell, Michael and Janet Jackson owe them more.

A girl near me raised her hand to say how surprised she'd been at how many of the songs were familiar, although she hadn't known they'd been in "Stormy Weather."

Songs like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love."

Maxwell Reid said that the performers in the movie had played on the chittlin' circuit and I happen to know that the Hippodrome, right here in beautiful downtown Jackson Ward, was on that circuit.

Which put a nice period at the end of the Southern Film Festival and my madcap four-movies-in-26-hour bender.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it played havoc with my three square meals.