Soho Bites 40: All Night Long (1962)

It's Jazz, man. Also, it's Shakespeare.

All Night Long (1962) is a re-telling of Shakespeare's Othello in which Othello is Rex, the famous leader of a jazz band, Desdemona is a singer called Delia and Iago is the band's drummer, Johnny.

The film was directed by Basil Dearden and stars Patrick Mcgoohan and Richard Attenborough plus several major jazz stars of the day, including Tubby Hayes, Charles Mingus, Johnny Dankworth and Dave Brubeck.

Film & theatre composer, Gary Yershon, returns to Soho Bites to talk about the film.

Watch a trailer for All Night Long

And look at these (badly colourised) lobby cards

Our other guest is a two time finalist in the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition, Saxophonist, Tom Smith. Tom has an intriguing connection to the late Ronnie Scott and we recorded both interviews at Ronnie's famous club.

On the same day we recorded the interviews, Tom as performing at Ronnie Scott's that night with the band, Resolution 88.

Here's some more of the Tom's music on Soundcloud and you can find more details about him on his website and of course, follow him on Twitter.

During lockdown, Tom and his big band did that remote recording thing.

Watch one of Tom's performances on BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year.

We were first introduced to Tom through the late, legendary Barry Fantoni in an interview he did with our sister podcast, Mural Morsels, about Ronnie Scott.

Gary isn't on social media but he does have a website and you can find all of his previous visits to our three podcasts on the links below.

Soho Bites episode 22: A Touch of Class

Mural Morsels episode 9: George Melly

Kino Quickies episode 5: Say it With flowers

Kino quickies episode 12: Scrooge

And recently Gary did a series of on-stage Q&As with Mike Leigh at the Garden Cinema which you can find HERE.

Follow Ronnie Scott's on Twitter and see what shows are coming up on their website.

A few years after the release of All Night Long, John Dankworth (who appears in the film and his wife, Cleo Laine (who doesn't) must have caught the jazz Shakespeare bug because they released this album.

If you want to keep up to date the efforts to bring the Kino Cinema back from the dead, follow Kino Quickies.

The originator of Soho Bites, Dr Jingan Young, has a new book out all about.... guess what? Films set in Soho! Get your copy at Foyles.

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