The Jazz Singer (Original Songs From The Motion Picture) [CD]

Great songs from the movie The Jazz Singer.If you like Neil Diamond it is great!!!

When I was a child, one of my favorite things to do was to pop in a cassette tape and just soak in the music, letting my imagination come up with scenarios to fit the music. (Does that date me or what?) While many of these tapes were children's songs, I was also able to get my hands on a lot of my parents' music, and so developed an appreciation for many kinds of music. One of my favorite tapes was the soundtrack to Neil Diamond's "The Jazz Singer," and while I hadn't seen the movie it comes from, I fell in love with the songs and listened to them so many times that I committed many of them to memory... and ended up breaking the tape. Sorry, Mom...Now, as an adult, I've seen the movie, and have to admit that the best part of it is the songs... but they're great songs, and it'll be wonderful to have them in a CD format, where they'll hopefully last longer.By far the three most popular songs from this album seem to be "America," "Hello Again," and "Love On the Rocks." Each has proven to be a big hit outside of the film that originated them, and I must admit that they're three of my favorite songs from the album. "America" is an enthusiastic and patriotic number, "Hello Again" an easy-going and uplifting song about missing a loved one and hoping to be reunited with them, and "Love On the Rocks" is a melancholy but beautiful ballad.There are other great songs on this album aside from those three, however, and all are worth a listen. "Robert E. Lee" is a playful, folksy tune, and "Songs of Life" is a slow but lovely ballad, while "Amazed and Confused," "Hey Louise," and "Jerusalem" are upbeat and energetic numbers. "You Baby" is another upbeat number, but it ends on a chaotic note, seeing as the song ends with a raging barfight in the film itself. The other pop numbers -- "Summerlove," "Acapulco," and the reprise of "America" -- are okay but forgettable, and the traditional Jewish numbers -- "Adon Olom" and "Kol Nidre/My Name is Yussel" -- make more sense when heard in the context of the film but sound rather jarring amid the rest of the pop numbers.All in all, though, this is a great album, especially if you're a Diamond fan, and arguably the best part of the movie.

Recently, I purchased a new copy of The Jazz Singer 1980 motion picture soundtrack. The music on this CD has been in my ears since my year of birth (the same year as the film). Being less than a year old when it came out, it was one of the first records my parents exposed me to, likely the first one by Neil Diamond.My memory goes back to age three if not earlier, and the music from The Jazz Singer and Neil's solo follow-up, On the Way to the Sky were already engrained pretty firmly into my conscience. (Subsequently, I was exposed to Heartlight, the Love at the Greek concert album, I'm Glad You're Here with Me Tonight, and His 12 Greatest Hits I & II. What initially slipped by me for a few years was that The Jazz Singer was actually a soundtrack album. Sometime when I was probably four years old, my parents tuned into Home Box Office, and we watched part of the film. I remember going into a saloon in Lake George, NY with my family that summer and fearing that a fight would break out like the one in the nightclub scene.It wasn't until I was ten or eleven years of age when my father rented the film for me on VHS. I watched it obsessively, which is a habit I haven't managed to break to this day. I got a real kick out of Neil's contrastic performance of "Love on the Rocks" against the Keith Lennox character. The most moving parts were the hitch-hiking montage ("Songs of Life"), the reunion scene between Jess Rabinovich and Molly Bell ("Hello Again") and the magnificent reconciliation moment between Jess and his father ("My Name is Yussel"). Being born into a Jewish family and considering many choices I've made in life, the conflicts of interest between Jess and his father hit truly close to home. (Even before I came of age, I fostered a silent fear that my own father would one day disown me the way Cantor Rabinovich disowned Jess.) And, from what I've learned about Neil's life, the Jess character could only have been better portrayed by someone like Michael Landon. His acting is hardly wooden; he barely needed to act.As a college-educated adult, I eventually came to re-embrace Neil's music with more of an analytical mind. Aside from learning to recognize the Guild guitars he played in the film (and the Ovation guitars he used during the 70's), I also made an effort to study the keyboard rigs used by Alan Lindgren and Tom Hensley. (I've long been interested to know which instruments they used during Love at the Greek; sounds like a Steinway piano, Fender Rhodes, two organs, Mellatron and an Oberheim synthesizer to me.)Aside from their prowess as keyboard players, I was also quick to identify Alan and Tom's prowess as orchestral arrangers, especially Alan. The orchestration for "America" falls easily in line with Leonard Bernstein's renditions of Aaron Copeland compositions like "Hoedown" and "Fanfare for the Common Man." And, his composition with Neil, "Hello Again" establishes Alan as a composer/arranger on par with contemporaries like James Newton-Howard. As much as I'd love to meet Neil Damond himself, I'd also like to meet Alan Lindgren, Tom Hensley and guitarists Richard Bennett & Doug Rhone.Okay, I'll bite. As much as I love the film and its music, I've got one point of hindsight criticism. When The Jazz Singer was filmed, Neil Diamond was thirty-nine years of age. As far as I could tell, no effort was made to make the Jess Rabinovich character seem younger. In the real world of showbiz, a thirty-nine-year-old Jess Rabinovich would probably have been crucified for trying to become a star that late in life.

Great entertainment! Received in a timely manner.

I remember seeing this movie in the cinema years ago so was pleased to find the CD. Neil Diamond after all these years! Good music without all the screeching. We found the movie on Amazon Prime so the kids could see where the CD came from. They loved it. Makes me feel young again!

Very happy with my cd! Neil Diamond is great. The movie is also very good. He is one of a kind you can't go wrong with this cd!!! Very good seller! Thanks

Having seen the original Jolson version, then Diamond's you must learn to appreciate both. If you choose, you can look at them from the aspect of different time periods. Diamond's is a much more modernized portrayal of The Jazz Singer, especially with the music, hehe. The story is different to a sense, and it involves the likes of a rock star over Jolson's Broadway character. We must also remember that "The Jazz Singer" was the first film of all-time... being silent, per se it would be incomparable to this. If you have seen the Diamond film this album might be heavily valuable to you... if you haven't then it is only good music.

i saw this movie more than 40 years ago and the music still stands up… great to remember this movie and music