Who became the prototype of the protagonist of the cult musical film "We are from Jazz"

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the early 1980s, when the Mosfilm studio decided to shoot a film about the first jazz bands in the USSR, everyone assumed that the film would be about Utyosov, because it was his musical band that played a kind of "song jazz" for many decades - this is how this style. However, when Karen Shakhnazarov called the great singer and asked him to share his memories, he snapped: “Yes, we didn’t have any jazz then, so there’s nothing to film about.” However, the director of the future tape turned out to be persistent and nevertheless found in the archives information about a man who stood at the origins of the very jazz that was not in the USSR in the 1930s.

Perhaps Leonid Osipovich was a little cunning, because even his stage image he partially copied from the talented American showman Ted Lewis. Having attended concerts of his famous orchestra in Paris, the young Russian singer decided to create something similar in his homeland. True, the jazz style in his music has always been mixed with the traditions of the Russian stage and the "Soviet" topicality corresponding to the spirit of the times.

Leonid Utyosov simply could not have been unaware of his colleague Alexander Vladimirovich Varlamov. In the 1930s, this talented composer and singer headed one of the best Soviet jazz orchestras and became a true legend of his time. Almost a century later, evaluating his contribution to the arts, the famous jazz historian wrote:

It is this musician that can be considered the prototype of the Komsomol member Kostya Ivanov, who, according to the plot of the film "We are from jazz", was expelled from the technical school for his passion for "bourgeois music." However, in the life of a real Soviet jazzman, there were much more serious trials.

Alexander Vladimirovich Varlamov was born in 1904 in Simbirsk and after graduating from the male gymnasium went to Moscow to enter GITIS. The young provincial managed to get on the course, but did not stay there, but transferred to the Gnessin School. Just like the hero of the film, the young student became interested in overseas art and tried to "assimilate" it on Soviet soil. It also took Varlamov a lot of time to overcome difficulties and misunderstandings. It helped, perhaps, that classical music in the early 1930s also experienced a period of "mistrust". The young state saw the traces and beginnings of counterrevolution in everything. However, Alexander managed to prove that jazz has a right to exist in the Soviet environment, and in 1934 he became the leader of a small orchestra.

Jazz band "Seven" consisted only of musicians-improvisers. The Seven Virtuosos quickly proved that new and incomprehensible overseas music quickly finds its way to the hearts of Soviet workers, although this did not always work out easily. A lot of the twists and turns of the heroes of the film are really "written off" from life. There was also a famous black singer in the history of this jazz band, her name was Celestine Cool. For some time she was very popular in the USSR, performed with Varlamov's orchestra, and then together with Utyosov, and even recorded a solo gramophone record in the Soviet Union.

In the fall of 1938, the government recognized the merits of Alexander Varlamov and opened the green light to a new type of art. The conductor in the shortest possible time managed to assemble the jazz orchestra of the All-Union Radio Committee and took part in the first national radio broadcast, and then even became the chief conductor of the State Jazz Orchestra of the USSR. The triumphant march of new music across the expanses of the Soviet Union was interrupted by the war. In the very first months, the State Jazz was transformed into an Exemplary Jazz Orchestra of the People's Commissariat of Defense and immediately sent to the front with concerts.

Alexander Varlamov experienced a terrible shock when he, who remained in Moscow, received the terrible news: almost the entire orchestra's collective died under the bombing. However, the musician was not given time to grieve - he had to work, because in difficult years the song was supposed to help not only "build and live", but also fight.

In 1943, Varlamov was preparing a program for a performance in front of American sailors in the northern ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, but he did not manage to go to the Arctic. On a false slander, the artist was arrested and sent to camps in the Northern Urals for eight years. True, even there he "worked in his specialty" - he led the propaganda team, still went on stage and even managed to put together a jazz orchestra once again. After his release, in 1951, Varlamov did not immediately succeed in returning to Moscow, and he worked as a teacher in Karaganda. Only five years later, the famous musician received full rehabilitation and was able, at least partially, to restore his ruined life.

In subsequent years, Varlamov wrote a lot. His music sounds in films: "Stepan Razin", "Guy from the Taiga", "Doctor Aibolit" in the cartoons "Quartet", "The Canterville Ghost", "First Violin", "Wild Swans", "Puss in Boots", "Cockroach "," Washer! Washer!”,“Capricious Princess”,“Wonder Woman”and many others.

In 1982, when We Are from Jazz was filmed, the 78-year-old musician helped the film crew a lot. He consulted the filmmakers and then evaluated the picture released on screens. The success of the tape among the audience was in full measure his success. Alexander Vladimirovich Varlamov died in 1990. Unfortunately, today the name of this artist and author of more than 400 pieces of music is rarely remembered.

The daughter of a famous father, who remained his faithful assistant all his life, is also little known: Edith Utesova is a forgotten princess of the Soviet stage