Year of Birmingham Jazz

FILM BIRMINGHAM JAZZ EDUCATION PROGRAMS

At the core of this year’s work is programming that underscores film’s role in documenting and preserving Birmingham’s cultural heritage, as well as its value as a tool for historical and cultural education. Through a curated series of film screenings at venues across the city, we will highlight documentary films focused on Birmingham jazz, using cinema to inspire the next generation of local filmmakers and deepen public understanding of the city’s history and global influence.

UAB DIGITAL JAZZ HERITAGE TRAIL
+ FILM SERIES

Alongside our public film education initiatives, we are partnering with UAB to develop a digital Birmingham Jazz Heritage Trail Map that highlights key sites central to the city’s jazz history. The project will engage students in historical preservation while integrating documentary filmmaking into the curriculum, with the goal of translating this work into a physical jazz heritage trail map in the near future.

JAZZ CLIP OF THE WEEK

This month’s clip features legendary Birmingham jazz bassist Cleve Eaton performing the jazz standard “Honeysuckle Rose” alongside Count Basie and the Queen of Jazz herself, Ella Fitzgerald, in Chicago in 1979.

TUXEDO JUNCTION DOCUMENTARY
NOW STREAMING

In the 1920s and 30s, industrial Ensley, Alabama was home to Tuxedo Junction, a trolley interchange that became a cultural epicenter for the Black community. Dressed in gowns and tuxedos, people gathered to dance, dine, and hear an all-Black jazz band featuring local legend Erskine Hawkins. His song “Tuxedo Junction,” written between sets, became one of the most recognized jazz standards of its era after being covered by Glenn Miller.

The area produced hundreds of Black musicians, many mentored by John “Fess” Whatley, a printing teacher who taught music as a trade at Alabama’s only Black high school at the time.

In the 1950s, Ensley natives Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks grew up singing near the Nixon Building before becoming founding members of The Temptations and helping shape the Motown sound.

Today, the site is largely forgotten. The building stands in disrepair, the historical marker is gone, and much of the community remains unaware of the profound role this neighborhood played in American music history.

BIRMINGHAM PRODUCED SUN RA DOCUMENTARY DEBUTS AT BIG EARS FESTIVAL IN TENNESSEE

Through a documentary portrait of the city over time, lovingly crafted in collaboration with its community, The Magic City – Birmingham

According to Sun Ra illuminates the mythical origins of an artist cloaked in mystery. Before the world (and the cosmos) came to know him as the Afrofuturist pioneer of “space jazz”, Sun Ra arrived on Earth as Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, deep in the heart of Alabama.

The Belgian documentary The Magic City – Birmingham According to Sun Ra sheds light on how this often-overlooked yet magical music city helped shape the enigmatic visionary in his formative years.

Filmmakers Guillaume Maupin and Pablo Guarise, based in Brussels, closely involved the city and its residents in telling not just Sun Ra’s story, but that of their community. Inevitably, that story is marked by a legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism. Yet Sun Ra’s gaze remained fixed on a more harmonious future. As he says at the start of the film: “My story is not part of history. Because history repeats itself, but my story is endless.