Complete unedited jam session, with all-star jazz band leaders, from "A Song is Born" (1948)

A jam session featuring Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton in the film "A Song is Born" is presented here complete with outtakes from the audio recording made for the soundtrack in July or August of 1947. Each of the musicians named above played a full 32-bar solo chorus for the soundtrack. (The other musicians are Mel Powell on piano, Louie Bellson on drums, Harry Babasin on bass and Al Hendrickson on guitar.) However, large portions of their work were cut from the final film. Somehow, a complete recording of the song fell into the hands of jazz record collectors who shared it among themselves via tape transfers. I got my copy on an audio cassette from a collector in New Jersey circa 1980. In addition to large portions of the musicians' solos, a section, where six of the musicians played two-bar breaks, did not make it into the film; because, some of the musicians broke into laughter after Charlie Barnet seemed unsure that he was supposed to start the exchange. As a result, that complete 12-bar segment was replaced by a drum solo by Louie Bellson. For the passages that had not been cut, I synchronized full-motion video from the film to my collector's recording. To cover the missing video, I inserted freeze frames with the subtitle "outtake" in the lower left corner of the image. There is another take of this tune which was issued on a Capitol 78-rpm record; and, it included the broken-down two-bar breaks the way they were supposed to be played. The order was Barnet, Powell, Dorsey, Hampton, Goodman & Bellson. During Dorsey's turn it began to fall apart. Post script: The day after I posted this, thinking that I had just rescued a lost recording from obscurity, I learned that a CD issued in 2019 contains the complete take that I used. It also had been posted on YouTube in 2022. However, in comparing it to both my tape and the film, it runs faster and is off pitch,