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Ken Burns' Jazz

stratovani

stratovani

Nov 18, 2007
3,653
1,131
Spencer, MA, USA
#1
I finished watching all ten episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz last night. It took me several weeks to get through it, since I was borrowing them one at a time from our local library system. In my opinion this series should be required viewing for anyone interested in jazz music. It will give you a good grounding in the history of jazz, which I think is just as important as learning how to play the music. Some of the things I learned:

- The two greatest figures in jazz are Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Armstrong invented jazz, and Parker reinvented jazz. You listen to jazz today, and you can't help but to hear their influence, especially Parker. Strictly my opinion, but I think Parker was the greatest jazz musician of them all. He pretty much invented modern jazz.

- Just below them stand Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. Ellington was jazz's greatest composer and arranger, and Davis was as adventuresome a musician as there ever was.

- Jazz was and is full of colorful and attractive characters, such as Sidney Bechet, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, Monk, Mingus, Jaco, the list goes on and on.

- Today's jazz has a little something for everyone, from dixieland to fusion, from swing to modal. Personally, I like cool jazz and bossa nova.

- It should be required viewing in high school music classes. I think young musicians would be very inspired by it.

I think I'll look into buying the series soon. :D
 
#2
I'm not a huge jazz head but, I watched a lot of it in a history of jazz course at college. I enjoyed it but, some of the bigger Jazz fans found the series biased. I don't think he even once mentions Stan Getz (if not Getz, then it was someone else big).
 
#3
father of fires said:
I'm not a huge jazz head but, I watched a lot of it in a history of jazz course at college. I enjoyed it but, some of the bigger Jazz fans found the series biased. I don't think he even once mentions Stan Getz (if not Getz, then it was someone else big).
Click to expand...

That's true. Getz was mentioned when they covered bossa nova, but no mention of Jaco Pastorius, and if I could fault it for anything it would be that guitarists and bassists got very little mention. And drummers, too, for that matter.
 
#5
It was good as far as it went, and it was one of the few times that jazz got so much extensive attention on a mainstream media outlet.

But it didn't go far enough, really, giving short shrift to quite a few notables and too much attention to a few, and suggesting, by omission, that nothing much interesting or worthwhile in jazz happened after about 1960 (part and parcel of the Wynton-centrism that phatbass mentioned).

Still, as a tool for jazz education that's entertaining and informative, I think it's pretty valuable.
 
#6
Well, not to defend Wynton Marsalis, but for someone like me, who didn't know diddley about jazz before watching this, having someone with his stature and knowledge guide me along was kind of nice. But I can see that for someone who really knows the history of jazz he can get a bit tiresome.
 
#7
Tampabass said:
But it didn't go far enough, really, giving short shrift to quite a few notables and too much attention to a few, and suggesting, by omission, that nothing much interesting or worthwhile in jazz happened after about 1960 (part and parcel of the Wynton-centrism that phatbass mentioned).
Click to expand...
Yup. To be fair, it may not have just been Marsalis who is to blame here. This is a problem with Ken Burns documentaries in general. He seems to have a difficult time documenting the recent past. His "Baseball" series covers about a decade per episode, until the last episode which covers about 3 decades.

I greatly enjoy both "Jazz" and "Baseball" despite recognizing (and being frustrated by) their shortcomings.
 
#8
phatbass said:
I enjoyed it, but it's a tad Marsalis-centric IMO (hardly surprising; he's a co-producer) and I find him dogmatic enough to be annoying at times.
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Yep.

stratovani said:
Well, not to defend Wynton Marsalis, but for someone like me, who didn't know diddley about jazz before watching this, having someone with his stature and knowledge guide me along was kind of nice. But I can see that for someone who really knows the history of jazz he can get a bit tiresome.
Click to expand...

Well, suppose Burns did a "Rock" documentary...had the obligatory expert on Rock...and the expert absolutely did not like some specific sub-genre of Rock...so much that he dissed the performers of that sub-genre?
IIRC, Cecil Taylor was the only artist dissed in Burns Jazz...pathetic.
The '60s Free Jazz/New Thing guys were blown off. Ornette? '70s Fusion & Miles' electric bands were barely mentioned.
Hmmmm?
 
#9
All in all regardless of Wynton's opinions...it is informative for folks who never been exposed to jazz history. Its pretty cool through Coltrane...then it seems a bit rushed, and like JimK says there were some pretty big omissions. The early jazz period info was done quite well though.....Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton,
Bix Beiderbecke etc......good stuff.
 
#10
JimK said:
Well, suppose Burns did a "Rock" documentary...had the obligatory expert on Rock...and the expert absolutely did not like some specific sub-genre of Rock...so much that he dissed the performers of that sub-genre?
IIRC, Cecil Taylor was the only artist dissed in Burns Jazz...pathetic.
The '60s Free Jazz/New Thing guys were blown off. Ornette? '70s Fusion & Miles' electric bands were barely mentioned.
Hmmmm?
Click to expand...

I understand what you're saying, and since I know the history of Rock I would be pissed off as well. But since I don't know jazz that well I thought he did a good job of conveying its history. I wish he had mentioned Weather Report or Return to Forever or some of the other fusion bands. He did cover some of the most recent new jazz stars, as of the year 2000.
 
#14
IMO the Ken Burns jazz documentary had a lot of holes & barely skimmed over some very important musicians. Even not even mentionning some.

I know you can't satisfy everyone but I think it takes a "Marsalis " take on jazz way to much.
 
#17
There was a much longer thread that I guess is buried somewhere in the Archives, maybe someone could dig it out and post a link. Not that we can't keep flogging, but there were some interesting points of view raised...
 
#18
Ken_Burns_Effect.jpg









Up Next:Ken Burns' "History of Hair and Beard Dyes".
 
#19
I typed in "Ken Burns" in the Search feature, and I got back 116 hits of various lengths. I don't have the time to slog my way through that many threads, so sometimes it's easier to start a new thread even though it's been covered before. Thank God I didn't type in "Jazz", no telling how many threads I would have come up with!

Thanks for finding that thread, Ed. I'm checking it out right now, and it's very interesting to say the least. I wasn't a member at the time - I didn't even play bass or listen to jazz in 2004! - so this is a good opportunity for some enlightenment on the subject.
 

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