With that first “talkie” came the first movie-assisted jazz standard, the Irving Berlin-penned “Blue Skies.” Jazz and musicals have been tied since the very first feature-length “talkie,” The Jazz Singer (1927), which starred then-megastar Al Jolson as a Jewish immigrant trying to make it as a jazz singer (both in the film and outside of it, Jolson performed in blackface - the film was loosely autobiographical). The perverse thing, though, is that those same problematic musicals are actually an essential part of jazz history. 2 on Billboard 200 Chart, Weeknd Spends Third Week at No.
