New documentary spotlights Columbus jazz drummer Wally Mitchell's legacy

Wally Mitchell spent decades behind the kit as one of Columbus jazz’s quiet anchors, and a new documentary is finally putting his name front and center. Wally! opened to a sold-out screening at Studio 35 on April 15, and a public showing is scheduled for May 11 at Natalie’s Grandview, where the night will also include a live Wally Mitchell Jazztet set.

The Grandview Heights event is set up as a full evening for the local jazz crowd: doors open at 6:00 p.m., the film starts at 7:00 p.m., and the Jazztet takes the stage at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are listed at $15. The film is described as a GCAC-funded project, and it frames Mitchell through the nickname that has followed him for years, The East Side Kid, a label that speaks to how closely his identity has been tied to the city’s East Side and its music circles.

Mitchell is 85 and has quietly shaped the Columbus jazz community for more than four decades. That kind of career rarely makes a headline on flash alone. It is built in the places where working drummers actually matter most: the steady gig, the right feel, the ability to lift a band without overpowering it, and the willingness to mentor younger players while keeping the whole room together. Wally! treats that kind of service as the story, not the footnote.

The documentary also reaches beyond performance clips and into lived experience. A summer 2025 interview with Mitchell became part of the film, and one scene centers on a car accident after he left Capital and drove back to Heath, Ohio. That detail gives the project more than nostalgia. It turns Mitchell into a full figure in the Columbus story, a musician whose life has carried both the ordinary strain and the hard-earned resilience that often shape local legends.

That matters in a city where jazz history is tied to specific rooms, relationships and institutions, from Dick’s Den to the Columbus Jazz Society and the Jazz Arts Group. It also lands in a broader Columbus conversation about covert racism, arts access and mentoring the next generation. GCAC, which supported $18,137,301 in total grants and 1,317 artists in 2025, is part of that larger ecosystem too. Wally! makes the case that some of the most important drummers in any scene are the ones who never chase celebrity, yet spend a lifetime making the scene possible.