Please feel free to contribute. Characters associated with radio, film, television, and literature are all allowed. Both major and minor characters are OK. Fictionalized representations of actual musicians are also appropriate. I would like to see this grow into a sort of annotated matrix which would allow us to catalog and analyze the salient features -- musical, behavioral, psychological, demographic -- of these "created" individuals.
I love these generic names:
Jimmy Doyle, New York, New York
Steve Dallas, Sweet Smell of Success
Fred Madison, Lost Highway
Vladimir Ivanoff from Moscow on the Hudson
Roy Johnson from Save the Last Dance
how can you forget dale turner ('round midnight), played by dexter gordon of course.
Posted by: c at May 20, 2004 11:04 AMYeah, Dex’s Dale Turner wins the crown in my book.
McClintic Sphere (Thomas Pynchon’s V)
Ram Bowen & Eddie Cook (Martin Ritt’s PARIS BLUES)
Dixie Dwyer (Francis Ford Coppola’s THE COTTON CLUB)
Not jazz, but memorable nonetheless:
Lonesome Rhodes (Elia Kazan’s A FACE IN THE CROWD)
They might not be fully drawn characters on their own, but the fantasy jazzers/pop balladeers in seemingly every Dennis Potter adaptation are pretty ripe for analysis. But I can think of one notably oily jazz guy, played by Christoper Walken in a Potter movie called Cream in My Coffee, who was memorable for seducing the newlywed main character on her honeymoon.
Posted by: William Lawless at May 20, 2004 11:38 AMThere's also Lisa Simpson and that bassist Carrie from Sex and the City dated for a couple of episodes... Ray?
E. Dankworth
Posted by: mwanji at May 20, 2004 5:37 PMNot jazz, but you've got to love Peter Sellars as Henry Orient.
Posted by: walto at May 20, 2004 7:53 PMSid Caesar's Progress Hornsby
Interviewer: "Isn't it true that jazz originated in New Orleans before World War I?"
Hornsby: "There was a war?"
Interviewer: "Oh, yes."
Hornsby: "How did we come out?"
Interviewer: "We won."
Hornsby: "Solid."
Posted by: Joe at May 21, 2004 6:32 AMBilly Cross - Dingo (played by Miles Davis)
Posted by: phil at May 21, 2004 10:23 AManother good one...the pianist sonny in james baldwin's short story "sonny's blues."
Posted by: hairold at May 22, 2004 8:45 AMMy sister reminded me the other day that I had a fictitious alter ego who was a slick crooner, and that I wanted to call me (him) Buddy Palomino.
Buddy Palomino: The Early Years
Posted by: Dennis Gonzalez at May 24, 2004 6:58 PMJohnny Carter, the "Bird like" caracter from the novel "L'Homme à l'affût" ("Man on the Watch", in english?) by Julio Cortazar.
Posted by: LeMo at May 26, 2004 4:16 PMBuddy Love in the original Nutty Professor movie (1963).
Posted by: Ross at May 26, 2004 11:59 PMThere's Paul Westerberg's alter ego, Grandpaboy, on the Fat Possum label.
Posted by: Paul Reiners at June 3, 2004 1:29 PMHallo friends! Really nice place here. I found a lot of interesting stuff all around. Just what I was looking for. Great joy!
Posted by: Buddy Love at September 6, 2004 2:28 AMIf you ever watch BEAU-PERE
by Bertrand Blier
the main charcater Patrick Deware
was made around BILL EVANS
( he plays piano in a restaurant but is a jazz musician in real and the teenage daugther of
his ex girlfriend make him LOLITA )
frightening real ....
i ve heard this story from UK tour organizer widow who had Bill Evans at home on each tours for years and he loved her apple pie
so that found had a deal ...HE D PLAY for her while she d make him one in the mid 60s .....lovely
n
There's an entertaining if condescending caricature of wartime all-girls bands in Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. The band includes a vigorous harpist & a fat, dowdy, overenthusiastic trombonist.
Posted by: ND at September 6, 2004 3:44 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................