This afternoon I had the 1952 movie, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, on sort of as background music when, somewhat to my surprise, I heard a gorgeous alto sax solo in a barroom scene. Sure enough, it was jazz great Benny Carter in an uncredited role.
You hear this all the time in movies about jazz or jazz musicians. So, for example, Harry James dubbed Kirk Douglas’s trumpet solos in Young Man With a Horn and Danny Kaye’s trumpet playing in Five Pennies, a fictionalized biography of Red Nichols, was provided by Red Nichols himself. Louis Armstrong appeared (and played) in a dozen movies and Duke Ellington appeared in a half dozen (including an uncredited role in Anatomy of a Murder).
However, I wonder how many small, often uncredited performances by jazz greats there are in movies that aren’t about jazz or jazz musicians. I should probably start keeping a list.
Dunno if this counts at all, at all, but….Tom Waites plays and sings in the background in a piano bar in Wolfen. I don’t recall him being credited.
Hoagy Carmichael in lotsa films.