Jazz on a Summer's Day

Bert Stern, when trying to retrieve his archives from Spain, offered the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library, all the footage of the film, along with the outtakes, in return for their paying the outstanding $50,000 storage bill and shipping them back to New York.

In Hilton Als' 2008 New Yorker review of the documentary Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2007), Als reports that Anita O'Day was high on heroin during her performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, and she was unaware that her performance was filmed until later. O'Day spoke frankly about her struggles with heroin addiction in her 1981 autobiography.

Despite its reputation as a classic, the film has over the years been criticized by jazz aficionados who note that the cameras seem to be on everything but the musicians--the audience, yachts, townspeople, buildings, etc.--and even when the performers are onscreen, it's usually in close-ups that give no sense of the bands as a whole. They consider it less a concert film than a travelogue with a great soundtrack.

The picture utilized magnetic sound recording.

Features one of the rare film appearances of two of the greatest jazz artists of all times: New Orleans-born trumpeter Louis Armstrong and Texas-born trombonist Jack Teagarden. When Armstrong formed his six-piece All Stars in 1946, Jack, who was white, was asked to join. The obvious affection these two great performers felt for each other's singing, clowning, and playing is particularly evident in their classic performance of "Old Rocking Chair." After Armstrong was invited to return his home town after many years away, he insisted Teagarden join him on the stage. The city refused to let a white man and a Negro play together. Armstrong eventually returned to his native New Orleans and performed at the very first New Orleans Jazz Festival - coincidentally, along with Mahalia Jackson, his co-star in this film.