Singer Chris Clark Wins Award at New York Jazz Film Festival

SAN FRANCISCO - Nov. 15, 2016 - PRLog -- The music video for the original song "The Ghosts of San Francisco," inspired by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, was chosen as a winner at the New York Jazz Film Festival in Harlem, on November 13, 2016. Legendary Motown singer Chris Clark, was present and accepted the award for "Mixed Genre Jazz Film Award," which she shared with filmmaker R. Christian Anderson. In 2015, Clark, was asked to record an original song for the motion picture "When the World Came to San Francisco." The result was a tender and haunting jazz ballad composed by John Thomas Bullock with lyrics by R. Christian Anderson. The song is heard during a sequence which recalls the courage, heroism, and sacrifice of the survivors of the great 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. The song was intentionally written in a style reminiscent of the 1960s, since the scene in the film is told in retrospect from the year 1965. Accompanying Clark is the great John R. Burr on keyboards with Kendrick Freeman on drums. Jan Martinelli performs on bass and served as the arranger with producer Annie Stocking. Kenny Evans was the session engineer. Appropriately, it was recorded at the Mesa Recording Studio, just north of San Francisco in Sebastopol.

Chris Clark is an American jazz and blues singer who lives in the Bay Area. During the late 1960s, she most famously became part of the "golden age" of soul music at Motown Records. She also made history as being among the first white artists to record for the predominantly black label. Her biggest hit was "Love's Gone Bad" in 1966, written by legendary songwriters Holland, Dozier. and Holland. A year later, Chris released her first album called "Soul Sounds" for the label. Clark evolved with Motown, cut a second album, then co-wrote the screenplay for "Lady Sings the Blues," a 1972 biopic of the great jazz singer, Billie Holiday, which starred Diana Ross. For her efforts, Chris was nominated for an Academy Award. She later became an executive at Motown Productions in Los Angeles. In 1982 she married the late Academy Award-winning screenwriter and novelist Ernest Tidyman, who won his Oscar for The French Connection in 1971. He is also remembered as the man who created the "Shaft" novels and screenplays. Over the years, Clark has developed a second career as an award winning photographer and artist.  Her work most recently touring with the road show of "Motown: The Musical" and, in early 2015, gracing the walls at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of Harlem.

The director of the motion picture "When the World Came to San Francisco," R. Christian Anderson, quipped "I left my heart in San Francisco when I moved away from the city after 23 years. I've long been fascinated with its history and made 'When the World Came to San Francisco' to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and as a tribute to a city I love. I have been a fan of Chris Clark since high school and I was blessed to have met her 8 years ago. We've since became great friends. As writer and director of the film, I knew immediately I wanted Chris to sing an original song for it. For quite a while, I've known Chris resonated with jazz, especially with her connections to Billie Holiday's story and her Motown roots, and she didn't disappoint. Her performance exceeded my expectations and it moves me every time I hear it. Sometimes dreams come true and this has been among the most remarkable for me. I'm also thrilled the response to the song has been so auspicious and enthusiastic." The feature was produced by Grover James Taylor for Telegraph Landing Productions.

The music video, along with the motion picture had their world premiere at the de Young Museum of Fine Art in San Francisco on October 30th, 2015. By popular demand, the program was repeated a month later. The IMDb page for the music video is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6028938