Hollywood and the Hit Parade have walked side by side since 1927 when Jack Robin stopped the audience at Coffee Dan's mid-applause, and uttered the historic words: "Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet!". This was of course The Jazz Singer - the first full-length feature to include spoken dialogue and recorded music. It so happened that this groundbreaking movie had a musical storyline, with popular singer Al Jolson (in his movie debut) playing Jack Robin, the son of a cantor, who became a successful singer - the first version of the much-overworked "a star is born" theme. For the rest of the pre-rock era, it was the big musicals of Busby Berkeley and his contemporaries that ruled the roost as far as song and dance in Hollywood was concerned. They made stars out of the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and made fortunes for the big studios. Of alternative interest, however, were the films based on the true-life stories of various jazz musicians of the time. David Meeker's Jazz In The Movies lists over 4,000 jazz and blues films, although this includes a number of three-minute shorts made for coin-operated viewing machines in the 30s. The more memorable "biopics" (biographical pictures) of the era included The Fabulous Dorseys (1947), The Glenn Miller Story (1953), The Benny Goodman Story (1955), The Five Pennies (Red Nichols, 1959) and St. Louis Blues (1956), which featured a 10-year-old Billy Preston as the young W.C. Handy and Nat "King" Cole as the "Father Of The Blues'. Other notable jazz films of a more general nature were Birth Of The Blues (1941), Girl Crazy and Stormy Weather (both 1943). After rock 'n' roll emerged there were fewer films with jazz-orientated storylines but the concert film Jazz On A Summer's Day (1960), Louis Armstrong's Chicago Style (1975) and Lady Sings The Blues (1972) were all impressive. The latter told the story of Billie Holiday, with Diana Ross playing the tragic blues singer. The 80s later produced the Lester Young biopic "Round Midnight (1986) and Bird (1988), Clint Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker.

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