Wham Re-Bop-Boom-Bam: The Swing Jazz of Eddie Durham premiered February 1st on many public television stations nationwide. The 60-minute documentary has been receiving considerable praise from the jazz community for its helping to unearth the legendary accomplishments of an often-unheralded pioneer of jazz.
Hailed as a “delight” in a recent review on Michael Steinman’s Jazz Lives: “It’s compact and focused; it offers new information, new sounds, and new stories … I left the screening feeling as if we knew the man. And liked him, which means a great deal.”
Durham was a brilliant arranger, a pioneering guitarist, and a fine trombonist. Working as a sideman for Bennie Moten and Jimmie Lunceford, Eddie would become a leading architect of the Kansas City swing jazz sound in the 1920s and ’30s. He helped to author the signature sounds of not only Moten and Lunceford but Count Basie and Glenn Miller, and was among the first jazz guitarists to perform on amplified and electric instruments.
The documentary is produced by Loren Schoenberg, senior scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and author of The NPR Guide to Jazz, and directed by Kris Hendrickson, who was editor and cinematographer of Remembering the Sirens, a 2014 film about the legendary regional jazz band the Scranton Sirens. Consulting Producer is Andrew J. Sordoni III and Executive Producer is Ben Payavis II. Wham is produced by WVIA and distributed nationwide through American Public Television; check your local listings for broadcast dates. Stream the documentary anytime at whamrebopboombam.carrd.co.
