Last month one of Terry Teachout’s Saturday Wall Street Journal pieces was about one of my favorite Jim Hall albums, Concierto. And around the same time, Mr. Rifftides complimented Jim mightily in a post about Christian Scott:
…a musician of Hall’s commitment, integrity and talent is unlikely to be able to sell out even if he makes the effort, simply because of his inability to tune into frequencies lower than those of his artistry.
And today I stumbled upon FretsOnly.com, a commercial website that looks to be in the UK (their prices are shown in pounds) selling the Jim Hall documentary – they like it a lot (thank you very much):
A Life In Progress presents a very unique inside look into Jim’s life past and present. Written by Devra Hall and produced by Jane Hall and Jon Snyder it is a truly personal experience and a must for any Jim Hall fan.
I get a kick out of the “written by” credit because there really was no written script and no narrator. I conducted the interviews, but you never hear me, and the only time you see me is a family shot of us walking down by the lake with our dog, Django. When it comes to video bios of living persons, I want to hear from the source, and that’s what we presented. You’ll see and hear dad in the studio recording tracks for his Textures album, and many of the interviews with him and with Pat Metheny, Greg Osby, Joe Lovano and others were done during the breaks. We did some additional interviews with Chico Hamilton, Nat Hentoff and John Lewis in my parents’ New York co-op and the rest was shot at their hideaway in the country.
Of course you can buy the DVD stateside, too. Here‘s one of many places that carry it.