Jazz Noire: Darktown Sleaze from the Mean Streets of 1940s L.A. London: Future Noise, 2011 (2 CD)
Jazz Noire is your soundtrack to the mean streets of Los Angeles in the post-war 1940s. Bookended by classic film noir themes of the period, this selection presents studio recordings by the era’s most famous musicians, many of whom were based in, or were habitués of the bars and theatres of The City Of Angels. Jazz Noire conjures up the jazz clubs and blues joints of Little Harlem in South Central Avenue, the turf of many a gangster or petty hood…and the private eyes or LAPD officers on their trail.
Jazz Noire will appeal to fans of the recently-launched video game L.A. Noire. Set in Los Angeles in 1947, and evoking the classic film noir style of the period, the game requires the player to assume the role of a LAPD officer to investigate crimes. Jazz Noire’s cocktail of Jazz and R&B provides the perfect soundtrack to this world…or the coolest way to chill out in the wee small hours after a lengthy session of crime-fighting on your TV!For music-lovers, Jazz Noire constitutes a fascinating survey of the evolving jazz scene in a period when big band swing was losing ground to smaller jazz combos and the bebop style was developing. It was also the time when what is now known as rhythm & blues was in its infancy.
Many of the finest performers of the era are showcased here on studio recordings chosen both for their quality and their ability to evoke the dramatic mood of classic film noir.The cover and booklet text of Jazz Noire have been carefully designed to pay homage to the hard-boiled, lurid detective fiction of the period, the perfect packaging for a compilation which will appeal both to L.A. Noire devotees and also to those looking for an atmospheric survey of the immediate post-war jazz and R&B scene.
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