A country at war. Men on the march. Doodlebugs. Air raids and ration books. Spivs and saboteurs. Boy buglers and village cenotaphs. City cinemas and the Tuppenny rush. Ronald Colman, Errol Flynn. Tommy Handley. Colonel Chinstrap. Mister Luvejoy at the 'appidrome. Yanks and Blonde Bombshells and Chewing Gum and Good Time Girls... Against this backdrop a G.I takes flight. Back in the States mess boy Ben's a Harlem Hotshot: the Black Bix. Now he runs, shoeless, through the woods. The hounds of hell, urged on by General Blood 'n Guts, are at his heels. Albert Pierrepoint, hooded, waits by a secret scaffold. A girl - naked, white, posh - sheds bogus tears by a moonlit lake.... JAZZ MESSIAH. Hard. Bold. Cinematic. A wartime tale of sex and schooldays, bigotry and brotherhood and, finally, the seductive power of that haunting, mesmeric music they call the blues....