Sweet and Lowdown: Music from the Motion Picture

Sweet and Lowdown: Music from the Motion Picture

Although Woody Allen has been using jazz from the '20s and '30s on his soundtracks since <i>Sleeper</i>, <i>Sweet and Lowdown</i> is his first movie featuring the musicians of the period. The story is about Emmett Ray, who is a brilliant guitarist but is always being unfavorably compared to Django Reinhardt. Allen hired the guitarist Howard Alden and the Dick Hyman Group to play the music of Ray and his band, and they have done an excellent job of recreating the small band swing of the '30s. Alden has assimilated the music of such guitarists as Eddie Lang, Karl Kress, and Django to create a guitar style that is unique yet also sounds thoroughly authentic. He is the Zelig of guitar players. This music has all of the excitement of '30s jazz with none of the stodginess that sometimes plagues other jazz revivalists. <i>--Michael Simmons</i>