’Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris

Fifteen years ago, jazz fan Raymond De Felitta heard a record that blew him away. It was the voice: rich, soulful, close to perfection. The voice belonged to Jackie Paris, a jazz singer that even a guy like De Felitta had never heard of. But it haunted him, and when he finally tracked down some information about Paris – born in New Jersey in 1924, died alone in the mid-’70s – De Felitta was intrigued enough to find out more.

That search for Jackie Paris became this intriguing and incisive documentary that begins with one stunning revelation – Paris is alive and well in New York – and continues to head into unpredictable territory. It’s both an intimate story of a singular life, one lived not entirely without regret, but also a painful study of the ephemeral nature of fame and success.

Jackie Paris was the ‘singers’ singer’; ‘the skinny white guy with the hip black guys’ at the centre of New York’s be-bop explosion in the early 1950s. Cooler than Sinatra, more versatile than Sammy Davis Jr, he played with Dizzy, Bird and all the rest. Jackie Paris was the jazz lifestyle. As one admirer remembers, “He had the most knockout chicks you ever saw, like Mattress Annie!”

But Jackie Paris never made it – as one of his lyrics bitterly puts it, “Just when I think I’m in, I end up with a big fat nothin’”, and De Felitta’s central quest is to find out why. He explores some intriguing avenues that take him into Paris’ family history by way of explaining his ferocious temperament, broken marriages, bad breaks and even Mob politics. For all that De Felitta is unwilling (or unable) to offer a concrete answer, narratively, this ‘search’ is a deft structural device, bolstered by the director’s keen sense of dramatic timing.

Paris himself is an engaging interviewee – more often than not poignantly self-aware, except when dealing with certain episodes of his life, at which point De Felitta chooses not to push him too far. That betrays one of the film’s key strengths, but also perhaps one of its weaknesses: De Felitta first approaches Paris as a fan and a friend rather than a journalist, and if that adds an affecting tenderness to this portrait, it also occasionally allows Paris to slither off the hook. That said, De Felitta’s film is unusually honest in its intentions – he openly discusses using the soundtrack to get Paris a new record deal.

In the end, The Search For Jackie Paris becomes something of a race against time, and a great sadness settles over the film’s final act, even as some non-jazz fans might find their attention beginning to waver. The music is excellent throughout, although the balance of the sound mix sometimes distracts from the talking head interviews. That’s a minor quibble in a film about a man who may well have been the last authentic link with an important moment in music history.

Be warned though: this documentary has ‘television’ written all over it. If you waited for it to hit the Storyville or True Stories strands on TV, you wouldn’t be sacrificing a unique cinematic experience.

Matt Bochenski

Anticipation:

The search for who?

Enjoyment:

A rewarding personal and social history.

In Retrospect:

You might want to wait for the TV screening.