This “wildly ambitious jazz chronicle” (New York Times) out of 1942 Hollywood has been lovingly restored by the Cohen Film Collection. Daring for its time and brimming with music, it follows the migration of jazz north along the Mississippi River through the fortunes of New Orleans musicians, both black and white. It begins with a black schoolboy, Reggie, who masters the cornet and joins the King Jeffers’ Basin Street Band. The boy’s mother works for a white architect whose daughter, Kit, lives and breathes jazz. The family moves to Chicago, and Kit, now a pianist, along with her love interest, Johnny (played by Jackie Cooper), Reggie, and other New Orleans transplants, take their exuberant Dixieland heritage to the city where a new form of jazz, called swing, is taking hold. Featuring a jam session finale by an all-star band selected by readers of the Saturday Evening Post—Benny Goodman, Harry James, Joe Venuti, Jack Jenney, and Charlie Barnet.

Screens with short films A Bundle of Blues (1933) with Duke Ellington and Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1935) with Billie Holiday.

Total runtime is approx. 108 m.