Magnificent Red-Hot Jazzing Seven, The: Concept and Synopsis for Screen-Play-Jack Vance screen-play synopsis

Magnificent Red-Hot Jazzing Seven, The: Concept and Synopsis for Screen-Play-Jack Vance screen-play synopsis

"The Magnificent Red-Hot Jazzing Seven: Concept and synopsis for screen-play" was first published in 2005 in the Vance Integral Edition.  Vance was an avid jazz fan and even played the coronet, ukulele, kazoo, and harmonica.  He often included in his novels characters who were musicians.  In his mystery novels especially there are often reference to jazz music and musicians.  This 12 page synopsis seems like a tribute by Vance to one of his favorite passions.

This story is set in 1927 in the Midwest, and Vance states that it is intended as part of a sequence to The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.  The former is a great, classic Kurosawa film and the latter is a movie based on a similar theme but featuring cowboys instead of samurai.  Vance here replaces samurai or cowboys with jazz musicians.

Our story begins with a former cornet jazz musician, Joe Bush, who can no longer play his horn because a former fiancée knocked out some of his teeth by hitting him over the head with a bottle of Old Smiley.  He now works as a night clerk in a cheap hotel in Des Moines.  Joe is approached by two of his old friends who own a roadhouse called Blue Goose in a town in southern Indiana.  The Blue Goose is having to compete with The Riverview Hotel where only the best bootleg is served and a fancy orchestra plays regularly.  The Blue Goose is unable to compete so the owners want Joe to assemble his old jazz group and play for free until the roadhouse makes a profit.  They even advance Joe $120 to purchase some dentures so he can play his cornet.

Joe begins by recruiting his old tuba player who is now with The Salvation Army Band in South Chicago.  Next he recruits his former piano player while tricking a gambler out of his Packard automobile.  He then drives to Davenport to talk with his former trombonist who joins them by physically running away from his domineering wife to jump in the back of the Packard.  Joe then visits the jail from where his old clarinetist is being released.  One of the more difficult recruits is his former banjo player who is in a hospital in a catatonic coma.  They decide to use his old banjo to try to cure him.  Recruitment of the seventh musician is completed when he engages his former drummer who has been playing his drums in a circus disguised as a trained bear.  Joe's new group, the Red-hot Jazzing Seven, then replace the Catfish Spasm Band at the Blue Goose and the competition is on as they compete with The Riverview Inn and their jazz musicians.  Both establishments will go to great lengths to bring in customers.

The piece is still sketchy in many places but will probably be interesting and enjoyable for Vance fans to read.  I read it twice and rated it a 3 or "Liked it.”

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Wild Thyme and violets, Other Unpublished Works (2012)