[Dixieland] Dancing Flower

F.2022-09-0328b

circa 1957

An excerpt from an episode of John Nash Ott's weekly television program How Does Your Garden Grow?, featuring a performance by Ott's neighbor Jim Cunningham and his seven-piece traditional jazz band. How Does Your Garden Grow? first aired in 1951 on the Chicago television station WNBQ (channel 5), and became part of NBC network programming where it continued to air until 1956.

The film begins in host John Ott's tool shed and studio in Winnetka, Illinois, where he greets the audience and prepares to introduce the day's topic, but is quickly distracted by the sound of an offscreen musical instrument. His neighbor Jim Cunningham enters the tool shed clutching a trumpet and questions if Ott has been playing "the right type of music" for his flowers. When Ott asks him if he can help with that endeavor, Cunningham promptly summons the rest of his seven-piece band into the shed who immediately begin rearranging the furnishings to make room for their piano, guitar, trombone, clarinet, drums and upright bass, much to Ott's consternation and amusement. In the remainder of the excerpt, they play several traditional jazz songs, including "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Tiger Rag." The band's music synchronizes with a time-lapse photography sequence of flowers blooming which include a chrysanthemum, as well as several orchids and tiger lilies.

In Ott's book, My Ivory Cellar: The Story of Time-Lapse Photography, he recounts that two of his sons encouraged his further experimentation with a plant's time-lapse photography synchronized with music, as he had initiated with the primroses featured in Dancing Flowers. His sons emphasized, "they thought I would do much better to keep more abreast of the time," by exploring more topical musical genres. Ott obliged and elected to record songs played by his neighbor's jazz band on magnetic tape, and then re-record them on an optical film track. Ott recounts asking Cunningham and his bandmates to specifically play "Tiger Rag," because the tiger lilies would possibly be more inclined to dance. "They all looked at each other with a peculiar expression but then started in to play, and things really warmed up out in the old tool shed."

Ott elaborates on his synchronization method: "A sound track can be pulled through a sound reader so that the sounds of different instruments can be heard by ear and marked on the film. However, after studying the sound track for a while, it is not too difficult to visually read the characteristic vibrations and pick up the beat of the rhythm as well as the different instruments. My procedure was to number each individual frame on the picture part of the film and then sketch the position the flowers had to be in at that particular point. Next the length of time necessary for the plants and flowers to reach that stage of development had to be estimated. Then the number of frames along the sound track between the various points of growth development were counted. A little simple arithmetic, and the automatic timers were set. All that remained to be done was to grow the plants so the flower buds would reach the predetermined stage of development on schedule. In theory it is quite simple, but in practice a little experience is quite helpful."

Featured band members include Mel Grant on piano, Bob "Cuz" Cousins on drums, Sid Dawson on trombone, France Chace on clarinet, and Marty Grosz on guitar, nearly all of whom played alongside Cunningham at the Red Arrow Lounge at 6929 Pershing Rd in Stickney, Illinois. One evening in July 1956, Cunningham was fatally involved in an automobile accident while he headed home from the Red Arrow on the Edens Expressway near Wilmette, and Ott's synchronization between flower locomotion and the band's music was likely completed posthumously.

16mm

150 feet

Color

Optical

1/1

Print

House/garden
Music

Television series

Jazz
Musicians
Music
Time
Plants
Flowers