A Summer Interlude in the Middle of Fall

With most of the leaves now on the ground and the temperature steadily dropping throughout New England, a swift glance back into the warmer, more welcoming months of summer is in order.

So we turn to two things that will eternally be associated with the storied New England summer -jazz and Newport. Both are wrapped up in one of our favorite documentaries ever - the 1958 flick Jazz On A Summer's Day.

The Trad and A Continuous Lean, two of our favorite blogs, have both covered the flick, but we are just so entranced by it that we think it deserves some more attention in the blogosphere.

The film's Interlude:

Jazz On A Summer's Day is a documentation of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which featured notable performances from Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Dinah Washington, just to name a few.

But beside the music, the film captures a lost world - one of casual elegance, innocent summer joyousness, and a sophisticated frivolity that is so far removed from the way we live today, all playing out during an utterly perfect July weekend in Newport, Rhode Island.

Created by legendary photographer Bert Stern, it's a tribute to a wholly American way of living well. Couples dance in the crowds and on roofs, twenty somethings flirt and mingle amidst jazz by the sea, and children embrace the simple beauties of being young and free.