I’m a very secular and nonobservant Jew, so there’ll be a news laden post up a bit later. However, I’m not so devoutly unobservant and secular that I completely ignore the day — even if I only figured out a couple of hours ago that Jewish New Year, aka Rosh Hashanah, began tonight.
Anyhow, I was moved to post my favorite scene from, of all films, Clint Eastwood’s “Bird,” written by Joel Oliansky. In this scene, Jewish trumpeter Red Rodney (Michael Zelniker), after traveling with the band through segregated Jim Crow states as “Albino Red,” arranges a much needed paying New York area gig for jazz innovator Charlie Parker (Forest Whitaker) and crew.
If I remember the rest of the scene correctly, afterwards, the rabbi says something like, “Most of you boys aren’t Jewish, but you’re good.” I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve always found this scene both a little bit funny and extremely moving. (I briefly reviewed “Bird” as part of a series of “The Eastwood Jazz Collection” a couple of years back.)
By the way, the real Red Rodney, born Robert Roland Chudnick, like his friend, Bird, and so many other jazz musicians of his era, struggled with hard drugs for most of his life before reviving his career in the late seventies and eighties. He died in 1994 at age 66.
