UA Filmmaker Creates ‘Jazzumentary’ to Air on APTV

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Jazz is often traced to the Big Easy; but defining its shape is anything but easy. So when University of Alabama producer/director Dwight Cammeron set out to chronicle chart-topping, record-breaking jazz guitarist Eric Essix, he ignored the occasional boxy documentary format and instead let Essix loose with his red Gibson hollow-body.

Cammeron visited both the studio and the stage as the Birmingham-native Essix produced “Abide with Me.” The album suggests a specific kind of jazz fusion, an infusion of a spiritual element, a gospel resonance that reflects Essix’s childhood, when Sundays meant church choirs singing “Amazing Grace” followed by car radios playing Jimi Hendrix and The Jackson Five. Cammeron’s film honors the aesthetics required of such mixings and, in the process, becomes something of a hybrid itself.

“It is part documentary, part jazz performance,” Cammeron says. “Because Eric is playing in front of us, it’s like improv. We get to watch what happens, we get to watch the story unfold.”

But that is only part of the story. The other part, “‘the heart’ for Eric really is home,” Cammeron said.

After graduating from Boston’s prestigious Berklee School of Music, Essix ignored the lure of the big city studios and instead set up shop in downtown Birmingham, not far from where his grandfather bought him his first guitar.

“There’s really no reason for me to live in L.A. or New York,” Essix says. “We have an airport here; we have fax machines, and now we do everything via computer – create music, transfer music. So there’s really no reason for me to be anywhere else.”

Essix is listed among Birmingham’s top 100 things to see and is also the youngest person to be inducted in Alabama’s Jazz Hall of Fame. Watch the “jazzumentary” at 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10 and 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14 on Alabama Public Television.

For more information, visit www.alabamatv.org, www.aptv.org or www.ericessix.com.