STEVEN R. BERRY

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Director’s Statement

This movie came about as a result of several conversations that I had with the late WRTI Jazz host , Harrison Ridley, Jr. He was a radio DJ and musical historian at Temple uni-versity for over 25 years. His show provided in-depth musical history on jazz greats, both widely known and not so widely known, to his listening audience. Our conversations were reactions to the Ken Burns’s PBS documentary series, entitled, JAZZ . Both Harrison and I had agreed that some part of Philadelphia’s overall jazz history should have been incorporated in the documentary. As a result of this, we both agreed that a film should be done on  Philadelphia’s rich history of Jazz music.