The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are presenting the screening as part of Black History Month.

The Wiz is an African-American version of The Wizard of Oz. The original Broadway production won seven Tony Awards (including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Director). The best known songs from the musical are “Home” and “Ease on Down the Road.”

The film version wasn’t quite so lauded. A much too-old Diana Ross was cast as Dorothy, the little girl who wanders far from home. Michael Jackson played Scarecrow. Nipsey Russell was Tinman and Ted Ross was Lion. Richard Pryor played The Wiz. Sidney Lumet (Network, Dog Day Afternoon) directed the film.

In 2015, The Wiz Live was NBC’s live Broadway musical. It garnered much better reviews than the film.

I frankly have no idea how this film holds up today. Will it be just as much a disaster as it was when it first opened in 1978? Or will we look at it more nostalgically since Jackson, Ross, Pryor, Russell and Lumet have all passed away?

Whether it holds up or not, this is an opportunity to see how Hollywood once tackled the film musical. Perhaps this is a prism through which we can understand why it took so long to recover and make new musicals.

The Wiz has a running time of 2 hours and 13 minutes.

For tickets go here.

Photo: Ted Ross, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Nipsey Russell in “The Wiz”

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If you don’t already know Bridgewater, she is a three-time Grammy Award winner, a Tony Award winner (for her role in The Wiz), an NEA Jazz Master and a UN Goodwill Ambassador. She’s recorded numerous albums including three that celebrate Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.

When we caught up with her, Bridgewater had moved to New Orleans, but was working with students in Detroit. Her spirits were high and she was in the mood to talk!

How has your performing Memphis…Yes I’m Ready evolved since the release of the album in 2017?

Oooh…Ah ha!  Well I’d say we’ve changed up some of the arrangements. We’ve added more backing vocals as the singers are there. They have come up with backing vocals for songs that didn’t have them. We throw in a little theatrics once in a while. Very interestingly, these Memphis musicians, having worked in R&B and soul and blues, are more inclined to be involved in the performance – more so than jazz musicians. It’s been an absolute blast for me. A such needed kind of departure from doing my straight ahead jazz or different projects I’ve done. And it’s been a wonderful healing process.

Has the music become a celebration of your mother and also your participation in the last ten years of her life?

It’s definitely been a celebration of my mother. I would say more in the first year I was doing it. We’re now in our second year of performing the material. There’s still… [there’s a pregnant pause before she continues…] I just went through the second anniversary of my mother’s passing. She died March 1, 2017. And then her birthday was February 6th. But it’s a joy every time I get together with these musicians to perform. It’s music I can dance to and I can lose myself in and kind of create this other persona other than Dee Dee Bridgewater that jazz singer.

As we get older it seems that more and more of our friends, colleagues and influences pass away. What’s the key for you to staying positive and energized as you get older?

Oooooh! How true that is! Music is healing. The older I get the more I feel that I am very fortunate to have chosen music as my profession. It has kept me buoyed through the years and lot of those traumatic situations.

Would it be fair to say that music chose you?

Okay…yeah we could look at it that way as well. I was very blessed to have been born with the voice that I have and have never had to take any kind of music courses to learn how to sing or anything like that. I don’t know anymore and does it matter? It’s close to 50 years that I’ve been singing professionally. I just told a group of high school music students today that professional means being paid to do the thing I love. All of this is making me just look at my life and be extremely grateful that I still have some kind of relevance. [It should be noted that at the end of that sentence she let out the biggest and most glorious laugh.]

I first saw you perform at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in the 90s. Now that you’ve moved there, what has it done for you?

I remember that tent. I remember what I wore. A long red dress trimmed in silver and it had 1996 on it. I absolutely love New Orleans. I love that you see France wherever you go. The connection to France, to Africa. The love of music that’s there. That we have Louis Armstrong Airport and Mahalia Jackson Park and Theatre. The food. Having been born in Memphis, I have always felt a kind of relief when I’m anywhere in the South. My shoulders relax. Having bought a house there, I will be there for a few years. It makes sense for me.

Let’s go way back. Back to the beginning. On Stanley Clarke’s first solo album (1973’s Children of Forever) the very first notes we here are sung by you and Andy Bey. When you think back to that project today what perspective does that give you on the musical journey you’ve had so far?

Oh my goodness. Well that’s out of the blue. My musical journey has been all over the place. But that’s kind of indicative of my personality which can be all over the place. It’s interesting that you would say that because I was thinking about Stanley. That was a wonderful beginning. That throws me back to that period when I was in New York City and how vibrant the music scene was then and just how blessed I was at the beginning of my career to have been in touch with so many different kinds of musicians. Maybe the was the set-up for what I was going to do. It kind of lead me down the path I’ve gone down.

You’ve long stated that Betty Carter was a big inspiration for you on many levels. She told the Washington Post in 1997 that “No matter what you do – whether you’re a singer, a writer or a painter, you’re supposed to keep getting better and better and it’s going to take time to fulfill your potential.” Do you feel like you’ve reached your potential yet?

No. I’m still going for it. [She lets out another uproarious laugh.] I think as an artist we should always be pushing ourselves to do something even better than the last thing or something more challenging than that last thing. I’m dipping my toes into all these different areas I’ve been in in the past. And creating something new. I think it’s a precursor to me making a decision about what I want to do next. What can I say…I’m a Gemini. 

And with another huge laugh it was clear that after a long decade, Dee Dee Bridgewater is more than ready and enjoying every minute of it.

For tickets at the Wallis, please go here.

Photo by Mark Higashino/Courtesy of The Wallis

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Common
The Love Jones soundtrack really captured the era of the ’90s, and still, the music is timeless. It gave us a myriad of artists—poetry, jazz, soul, and hip hop—that somehow all blended well for an album. It provided some amazing classics like Fugees’ Sweetest Thing, Dionne Farris’s Hopeless and Maxwell’s Sumthin Sumthin. I still play those songs.

Babyface
My two favorite black movie soundtracks are Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly and Claudine because they both spoke for the time. Both were culturally significant, and the music described what was going on in our country at the time.

Gladys Knight
Claudine is one of my favorite love stories. Curtis Mayfield was exceptional to work with on the soundtrack. He truly had a God-given gift.

Charlie Wilson
Shaft. Isaac Hayes created a sound that depicted the lifestyle of the New York hustler. He had a signature voice that you knew from the first note to the end of the song. A classic! And then Purple Rain. Prince was different—like no one we had ever seen before. [It] was written with passion and helped compliment the story which was obviously personal to him.

Lalah Hathaway
I’m partial to Come Back, Charleston Blue because my father, along with Quincy Jones, did the soundtrack for that movie. I love Claudine! I always loved Bill Lee’s orchestral scoring for Do the Right Thing. I really loved Girl 6and Purple Rain. I love The Wiz. There’s so many. This is why I never have favorites—I couldn’t possibly choose one.

Marcus Miller
Shaft is my all-time favorite. It’s just epic. You instantly get the entire vibe of the ’70s when you hear those instruments. Isaac Hayes once told me he was asked to shorten the track. He stuck to his guns, which absolutely contributes to the epic feeling of this tune.

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According to Bridgewater the album was never meant to be a commercial endeavor, but rather a more personal project. “The idea was born out of a collaboration I’d had with Irvin and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and Irvin and his small groups,” she says. “We had done groundbreaking for the construction of the Jazz Market. That evening during dinner I said, ‘We need to do a record. I think it would be a great product we could sell at the market.’ That was on February 26, 2014. About four days later he calls and he’s got a list of songs. Then he called me three weeks later and we did it.” As for her goal with the album? “We’re trying to convey the love and the joy and the fun of the city,” she says. “I think we got it. The magic was there.”

Bridgewater, who grew up in Flint, Michigan, has loved New Orleans since her very first visit, a two-week jaunt performing in Broadway’s Sophisticated Ladies. “I love the whole idea of the French and the Creole and the architecture,” she says. “The people of the city know about the history. And I love the history of the families that keep families in homes there for generations and generations. The food I love. The joie de vivre. Their buoyancy I love. How the city has beat all the odds and come back after the devastation of Katrina.” Sophisticated Ladies is not the only Broadway show on her resume. She won a Tony Award for playing Glinda in the original production of The Wiz.

The singer particularly enjoyed recording “St. James Infirmary” for the album, a song steeped in NOLA tradition. “When Irvin played it for me, he explained the tradition of changing the song up, putting their own personal stamp on it,” she says. “That’s what we got to do. So he came up with those lyrics. What a talented man and entrepreneur. He can write lyrics on a dime.” She is also fond of the song “Hold Steady.” In the album’s making-of video, she reveals that the song makes her think of a post-Katrina New Orleans. So how does Bridgewater personally hold steady? “I think I hold steady through the power of prayer and conviction and trying to find the optimism in every situation,” she says. “I’ve been wounded and I’ve been in battles. I’m still here. I’m a survivor. I’m a fighter and I will get back up. Now that I’ve turned 65, not that the fight has gone out of me, but I pick and choose my battles. I’ve given life my best shot. I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’m comfortable in my own skin. I can look anyone in the face without any fear or any guilt. That’s why I feel so free on stage. I love what I’m doing. And God willing, I can do this until my last breath.”

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