Cool Cats

The Jazz legends Dexter Gordon and Ben Webster on adventures in 1960s Copenhagen. Women, drugs and jazz music in full swing in a story from a bygone (jazz) era. There was both a geographic and cultural ocean between New York's swinging cosmopolitan atmosphere and Copenhagen's introverted cosiness with crocuses in the garden and beer on the table in the 1960s. It is all the more strange that two of the jazz world's greatest saxophonists washed up on the Danish coast in the early 60s and over the next several years made Copenhagen their adopted home town. 'Cool Cats' is the story of how Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon found a human haven from the racial discrimination and drug problems of their home country. At the same time, the two saxophone magicians started a musical avalanche, which turned Copenhagen, and above all the legendary jazz club Montmartre, into a European capital of jazz. Through skilfully orchestrated archive material, which also includes Ben Webster's own home footage from his time in Copenhagen, the film shows how our own little city changed and was changed by two of Jazz's greatest icons, with all that goes with it in terms of female acquaintances, friendships, drinking, drugs and of course plenty of cool jazz.