SwingDJs

Last night somebody asked me to play something by Emmet Ray, "a great guitarist from the 1930's". I never heard the name before. So today I did some search on the web and found out he was just a fictional character in a 1999 Woody Allen's film.

Lorenzo

The music for the film was arranged and conducted by Dick Hyman. All of the guitar solos are played by guitarist Howard Alden. Alden also coached Sean Penn on playing the guitar for his role in the film.

I guess next time just play him some howard alden.

The soundtrack is really quite good.

Gong-Oh wrote:Last night somebody asked me to play something by Emmet Ray, "a great guitarist from the 1930's".

The question is... were they trying to be funny... or did they think they were making a real request?

Mr Awesomer wrote: The question is... were they trying to be funny... or did they think they were making a real request?

The guy seemed really serious. He even tried to look up the name on the electronic Juke-box nearby, once I was done DJing.

Lorenzo

Apparently in the film Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, so that would have been the stuff to go for I guess ...

I played Eddie Lang and Oscar Aleman.

The film is called "Sweet and Lowdown" and it is fantastic. Everyone with an interest in jazz, Django, or just good movies should check it out.

Gong-Oh wrote: I did some search on the web and found out he was just a fictional character in a 1999 Woody Allen's film.

Lorenzo

Next time, just play some fictional music.

I am wondering if there are any other fictional characters of early Jazz / Swing musicians, beside Emmet Ray, and eventually what their names are. This way, I can handle future requests for imaginary musicians.

Lorenzo

Young Man With a Horn is a cautionary tale about jazz trumpet player Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas)

In another Woody Allen movie "Broadway Danny Rose" he plays a talent agent with a bunch of terrible acts. One of his acts is a crooner named Lou Canova.

Here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftpWi4R70cw

Eyeball wrote: Next time, just play some fictional music.

Haha! Good one! Sounds like a Stephen Wright comment.

Loved Sweet & Lowdown, one of Woody Allen's better films of recent years and one of Sean Penn's better performances period, and of course the music is excellent. No critics seemed to notice that the plot was a complete ripoff of (or let's be generous and call it an homage to) Fellini's La Strada, though.

I have a couple of tracks from movies that are labeled in my collection as the "film artist", since that is how the actual soundtrack labeled them,

A Time To Blow - Del Paxton (from That Thing You Do)
and
Night Train - Marvin Berry & The Starlighters -- (from Back To The Future)

In the case of Del Paxton, it is sold as an MP3 under the fake movie name. If somebody asked me who the real performer was, I would have no idea unless I read the CD liner notes or do internet research.