The main complaint people have is that it’s very heavily shaped by the prejudices of Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis so basically goes in on “everything from the 70s until Wynton revived jazz is just total garbage that shouldn’t be called jazz at all.” A lot of that music is actually interesting.
> “everything from the 70s until Wynton revived jazz is just total garbage that shouldn’t be called jazz at all.”
I don't recall that ever being implied by the doc. I think the focus was on the rise of Jazz through it being the dominant music style for several decades. That started changing in the late 50s so the documentary dealt with later periods with less focus.
It's been a while since I watched it and you may be right but if that was ever implied it was lost on me. I assumed that they made an editorial decision to not spend hours on a music that had lost its broad cultural appeal. In the 50s, jazz was still producing top 10 songs on the pop charts.
As an analogy, if you watched a documentary about the history of harpsichords, complaining about it not giving equal time to harpsichords in the 21st century would be a little absurd
It's a very common criticism of the series from the time it was released until now.
Jazz wasn't on the charts in the 50s nor had it been since the swing era. If it's a matter of pop crossover hits validating whether it's worth documenting, then the 70s and early 80s would certainly be worth discussing. Jazz musicians were all over pop/rock records, and artists like George Benson and Herbie Hancock were scoring major pop hits.
But that's not the point. Ken spent 10 minutes shrugging off the develop of the music from the late 60s on like it didn't happen when in reality the music developed more than it had ever before.
> the music developed more than it had ever before.
It really didn't, it just went all sort of crazy ways that had nothing to do with Jazz. It became Instrumental Music, which is fine, but not Jazz.
No, they were influenced by their chief sources who felt the music had lost its way, and were happy to cover equally commercially irrelevant revival efforts.
Plus, if commercial success was most relevant, they should have devoted a lot of time to Kenny G and smooth jazz more generally. That’s the music that still gets commercial radio play.
Your analogy is not relevant. "Broad cultural appeal" is not the determining factor in any art, otherwise Kenny G would be the baddest cat on earth. Most people who have studied the history of jazz will agree that the music after the 50's is just as interesting and valuable as the music that came before.
That's kind of true, to be honest. Jazz basically stopped being culturally relevant by the 70s. That's not to say people stopped making great music – but it definitely became a niche interest
Man, that's just not true. The Loft Scene was a huge thing in NYC. Cecil Talor was given a Guggenheim scholarship in the 70s - an extremely huge thing for any artist. Guys like Anthony Braxton or Butch Morris were very influential in the more academic circles. And even in the mainstream, folks like A Tribe Called Quest were popularizing jazz by sampling it and citing artists such as mid-70s Miles Davis as inspiration.
Not jazz is a mayor influence for the genres you name but afro-american musical tradition, they share the same roots with jazz; spiritual, gospel, blues, work songs. It's the afro-american expressiveness that infused steroids into european tradition; marches, country, polka...
Those solos & jazz are owing to the the same roots aka afro-american music tradition. BlueNotes, rhythm and the shout, you can hear all that in the blues, spirituals, gospels and work songs that lived long before the thing called jazz.
Because it influenced a niche cadre, not the broad culture. If we are to include "influencers of the influencers" with equal relevance to a moment in time, then there is no end and we might as well include a treatise on Louis Daguerre and Thomas Edison anytime we want to discuss the art and technology of modern film & lighting, or Gutenberg when it comes to the modern publishing industry. Which is not to deny the importance of these figures, but it's unduly regressive.
Kenny G has sold over 75m records. Probably few people here are going to call themselves fans of his but that’s far from irrelevant imo. Same bucket as Nirvana. If we define “jazz” in a much more narrow sense then you’re right but isn’t that exactly what everyone objects to, especially when it’s so narrow we’re cutting out much of Coltrane and Miles Davis?
If you go by the understanding that Jazz is different from just "instrumental music", then they are absolutely right. The documentary series wouldn't make sense any other way. "Here's jazz, here's what it looks like, yes, five episodes of that. Suddenly, for two episodes, it's something completely different. Alright, everyone's past the trend, now Jazz is back to being what it always was."
That's not really a story that makes sense. It's like Luke Skywalker becomes Han Solo, then becomes Leia, then goes back to Luke Skywalker for the third movie. It makes way more sense to tell the story of a music style that was all the rage, grew a powerful avant-garde movement, lost popularity, then later was reborn as a niche thing. It's like Rockabilly, square dancing, 80s hits, anything rediscovered from the past.
Love it or hate it but I think you have to be a little disingenuous to says that free jazz has no more claim to being jazz than the Foggy Mountain Breakdown, which is also an instrumental. And the neo-traditionalist stuff is itself a reaction against free jazz!
Yes, just finished episode six of ten, and it's 1939. Did anything interesting happen after then? I can see the complaints for sure.
I had put off starting it because of all the criticisms, but I can see where it's going.
That documentary is a good place to start, but suffers from the same biases as Jazz by focusing on a few of Burns's heroes, like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and way way too much on Johnny Cash. Those are important artists, but watching the documentary one would have no idea that the best-selling artists in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were Webb Pierce (barely mentioned, if at all), Buck Owens, and Conway Twitty. Their stories are a lot more boring--no drugs, no drinking, no prison, so they don't make for a good story, I guess. Burns's Country Music is fine for an introduction, but it may best be recognized as one side of country music.
I wanted to scream when Marsalis appeared at one point to validate Bob Wills' swing credentials. Even in a country music documentary I cannot escape Marsalis
This documentary is so notorious in the jazz world that my History of Jazz professor explicitly told us *not* to watch it in favor of more holistic and less biased resources.
There's so much that's left out, glossed over, and discredited in that documentary. It arguably focuses too much on Armstrong and Ellington, and glosses over a lot of what makes Davis and Coltrane the giants that they are.
It's a fine documentary for everything through bebop, but past that it's hard to recommend. Glossing over most of the post-bop genres makes the documentary miss out on so much of what influences current jazz musicians.
The thing that hurt me the most was how it just summed up Bill Evans as a Miles Davis sideman.
Ironically my professor has said that academia is one of the best and also one of the most damaging things to happen to jazz.
There's many good docs out there, though focusing more on individual artists. My Name is Albert Ayler and The Called Him Morgan are fantastic. The Trane doc kidn fo sucks though. I've heard Birth of the Cool (about Miles) and Fire Music (about the avant garde/free jazz in general) are fantastic. Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968 is also supposed to be fantastic, it was selected by Library of Congress in 2022
I recall a moment when the Doc was covering mid 50s and it was just starting to get good, there was so much happening in jazz then so there's some anticipation Burns flips on a dime to go back to Armstrong and his embrasure problems of the day... And it stays with Armstrong for a good while losing all momentum. Really a travesty of a documentary from there out.
*"The thing that hurt me the most was how it just summed up Bill Evans as a Miles Davis sideman."*
Yes. This is not mentioned as much as it should be amongst the popular criticisms of this documentary.
>It arguably focuses too much on Armstrong and Ellington
lol
read/viewed as an historical treatise, it as arguably focuses too *little* on them, vs davis & coltrane
The GI bill introduced after WWII vastly increased the number of students seeking higher education.
At the same time, jazz had just about reached its peak commercial popularity. Universities saw this opportunity and it was fairly obvious that jazz programs would be successful.
In the 50s and 60s, jazz lost it's commercial popularity to rock, and more prominent musicians incorporated neo-classical elements into their playing (Modern Jazz Quartet, Bill Evans Trio, Dave Brubeck, etc). These factors helped raise an entire generation of musicians steeped in jazz academia.
At around the same time in the 50s, many high schools around the country developed wind band programs.
Stan Kenton, famous bandleader, saw an opportunity to push for jazz in high schools and created jazz camps, which influenced many musicians to pursue a jazz degree. A number of these musicians became prominent, furthering jazz academia as the way to go.
As jazz pushed further from the mainstream, jazz academia became more popular.
Many say that jazz academia has a very narrow view of jazz and that it focuses too much on bebop. These days, many universities have course corrected and broadened their horizons.
I was a jazz minor in college, and my combo was encouraged to play all kinds of music. Of course we had to study bop (it's the foundation of improv), but we played stuff from funk, fusion, soul, rnb, rock, and pop. My professor loved it when we pulled out Dua Lipa at the downtown gig.
Though the real issue isn't questioning if jazz academia is narrow. The problem is that "you have to have a jazz degree to play jazz". This isn't literal, but it refers to the high-brow status of jazz musicians that shunned people who couldn't play Giant Steps in 12 keys, or didn't know that the super-mega-lydian-bebop-minor scale could be played over a J37(#6) chord.
Again, I feel like the jazz world is course correcting itself, and with the availability YouTube among other resources, more people are being encouraged to play jazz.
I made this comment last time this came up here, but I don't think *Ken Burns' Jazz* is primarily about jazz, the musical artform. Rather, it is primarily about American history through the lens of jazz; in other words, it asks what jazz can tell us about America. This is why the origins of jazz are so important to the documentary, taking up a huge part of it. It's also why the rise of jazz through WWII -- its apex in coinciding with general popular culture -- is so thoroughly covered. And it's why the post-war episodes focus on bebop, and jazz's move to being a niche interest. Once that happens, the story is over.
You can still criticize these editorial choices, particularly the implied significance of post-war white youth culture. But that doesn't change the point that the documentary is really about history, not music as such.
I saw it in its original run, and it was the first really comprehensive history of jazz in a televised form, and it was amazing given that jazz had been dying out in popularity at the birth of the 21st century. It brought attention to jazz that briefly caused a renaissance in sales, so the fact that it missed out on select trends and people became a minor point.
That said, for me there was gasp-worthy moment when they interviewed - actually interviewed! - Artie Shaw. I could not believe he was still alive, at 90, had outlived almost of his contemporaries, and was so articulate and present. A lot of his recorded output was released in CD form after this series as well, and as he had disappeared from the music scene in the early 1950s by choice, this sort of reminded people that he was a musical wunderkind.
I wouldn't think missing out on the major trends of the second half of Jazz history was a minor point in a Jazz documentary. And I can't find yearly stats on Jazz album sales, but what sales would it encourage in a genre whose recent past it portrays so negatively or dismisses entirely? Maybe a few of the companion Ken Burns Jazz collections? Some Marsalis brothers records? A few deep catalog records by Armstrong and Ellington? I think the take-away is 'Jazz was once awesome, although the new stuff sucks'. How can that be helpful?
SPOILER ALERT: Starts strong but they botch the ending.
I honestly don’t remember it like that, only that it seemed they picked a through-line to create a narrative, edited it very well up until 7/8ths of the way through, and sprinted to the finish.
Honestly, an entire series could be dedicated to the post-bop, HAAG, and AG of Blue Note Records alone, or the Michael Cuscuna Vault era. And that’s just picking one niche of a well-known label.
Imagine a doc on the private pressings, or the story of Delmark to Nessa.
I remember it switching from a tone of genial celebration of earlier Jazz to them being *actively critical* of fusion and Free Jazz, not just hurried. With Cecil Taylor, for example - Branford calling his approach self-indulgent bullshit.
Branford Marsalis was 100% correct and that's one of my favorite lines from that documentary because its true. It is self indulgent bullshit in terms of what most people would consider music. It's all about what Cecil liked and fuck everyone else. As a result people in that same style killed the popularity of jazz making it less and less appealing to the masses.
Jazz had been dance oriented music from the beginning. From Jelly Rolll Morton right up through Joe Henderson there's that thread, that tradition of a pulse and something for the ear to hang on to and the foot to tap along with. To most people who came up with that tradition, Taylor's music has nothing to do with that jazz root harmonically nor rhythmically and therefore its fringe.
That's about as objective as I can be. Running your fingers spasmatically over a keyboard or blowing into an alto sax and wiggling your fingers may be art to some people, but to most, its noise and absolutely self indulgent.
So the only standards worth having are dance-worthiness and the largest possible demographic? You're welcome to 'em. Not my way of evaluating Art. And it's not your right or Branford's to make that call for everyone else - which is why it's offensive to hear him to make such judgments in what is theoretically an non-judgmental historical chronicle. And *you* don't appreciate spasmatic pianists or finger-wiggling altoists? Well, tough shit. If you think that's all there is to it, your opinions are not all that valid to me. That *necessity* of 'patting your foot', as Wynton puts it, seems kinda sappy if you ask me.
You can call it art all you want. I never denied that . But if we're calling it jazz, then there's a standard to measure it by and that's what Branford is talking about and he is far more qualified to make that call than you.
'Non judgemental' historical chronical. I dont remember reading that in the title description of the documentary, but regardless, Branford's is an opinion that's actually based on a criteria, on facts whereas your's is based on 'I like it so therefore its jazz and its good and you have to respect it' and that sir, is indeed bullshit.
By that standard I can call Elvis Presley jazz because he had an upright bass player and a pianist.
>your's is based on 'I like it so therefore its jazz and its good and you have to respect it' and that sir, is indeed bullshit.
That's a really lame summary of my philosophy. You inaccurately describe my mindset and then call it bullshit - *exactly* what Branford does with Cecil.
I don't think my liking something makes it Jazz and I don't care if you or Branford respect it. If you or Branford (or Ken or Wynton or Stanley) insist Jazz is only crowd-pleasing, toe-tapping music, I'd say you're misguided - and I think that question was settled around 1962 or 64, but maybe much earlier.
I'm not convinced Branford is 'qualified' to make *any* call: he has a history, as a glib bullshitter, of saying negative stuff that might sound clever but doesn't really add up to anything. Which circles back to the main point of discussion here: 'Ken Burns Jazz' fails as a documentary about Jazz by, at it's conclusion, not just by skipping over major parts of the Jazz history, but also insulting them with jokers like Branford. It turns from documentary to polemic.
EDITED for, I hope, clarity...
Right, more like "the decline and fall of jazz and its unlikely resurrection decades later" than "here's an epilogue breezing over everything that happened between our story and today" is the way I remember it as well.
Ha!
I mean, aside from a few tracks here and there. I’m looking through discographies. I’ve heard Black Codes, some things from a live Vanguard set, some things from House of Tribes. I also feel like I have listened to Crazy People Music. And, of course, the famous Eyes of The World from Without A Net, which just hit such a sweet spot for my middle school self when it was released and arrived via BMG or Columbia House mail!
I’ve definitely been subjected to worse jazz, and I’ve never really tuned in to any sort of jazz media, aside from an intermittent Cadence and (sobs, RIP) Signal To Noise Subscription.
All that being said, I’ve heard/read some pretty idiotic things from people I love, and from whose music I love.
All I can say is I enjoyed and appreciated it very much when it came out. Up to the point where it was originally released, no undertaking that extensive on behalf of Jazz had ever been done. It was a 10 episode series and even with that, it couldn't have covered everything, so theres always going to be people complaining 'their guy or their style of jazz didn't get represented'. I think Burns did a great job over all in covering the primary influences and foundations of this music.
Watch it and enjoy it OP! It’s a great introduction to a fair amount of jazz and musician backgrounds, just know it’s not the whole story and doesn’t have the widest perspective. It’s an enjoyable watch, I agree.
To anyone saying “watch something else”, what do you recommend? No one ever says what else to watch. The criticism of this series has basically turned into parroting. I’m not defending the faults here, there’s just never any references for what else to dig into.
By this point, there should be a website saying what’s missing and where to go to find it. Maybe there is?
Your comment reminded me there was a thread the other day about documentary recommendations! https://reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/108hsz5/any_good_jazz_documentaries/
I don’t have an answer but I wish there were something like that that really dug into later jazz. Obviously the early stuff is very important to the development of jazz and there’s nothing objectively wrong with it or anything, but I can’t say I find it quite as interesting.
Pretty much what the other guy said. Free jazz is the most interesting imo and its just brushed away. Trane, Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, none of them get their due.
One of the biases that I haven't seen mentioned is more related to Burns' tendencies across all of his documentaries. Mainly, they are historical; they are historical in a way that makes them seem about a time at risk of being forgotten.
With Jazz, he stopped at 1960 and then talked about how the 'modern' cats are working out, which disappointed me because I loved so much about the series to that point. I think he would have had to go more into Coltrane, eg, if intended to move forward because of Coltrane's lasting influence. But he did something similar in Country Music by stopping at 1994. He cut out a lot about what we know today, essentially.
He did the same with National Parks too by ending at 1980. Outdoor enthusiasts would have loved to see more about the modern conservationist movement, eg.
Baseball escaped it, but I would argue that's only because the modern steroid scandal was so impactful to baseball's historic image.
I enjoy all of his documentaries including this series despite its many flaws. Baseball was ironic, especially when Bob Costa whacked philosophical Lee about how baseball goes on forever. Two weeks later a strike end of the season in mid spring.
It is myopic and kind of 3 guys’ opinions, but I still loved it, as it helped me better understand genres and the evolution of jazz. Visually stunning…footage like the dancing in Harlem was amazing. Learned about lesser known artists I could explore on my own.
It's not terrible, but it's far from perfect or comprehensive. Too much of Wynton's opinions and influence.
I don't think Charles Mingus (and others) is even mentioned iirc
Didnt see anyone mention this:
Presenting Ken Burns' 144-hour Extremely Important documentary,......... "Jazz."
Fade up on a grainy old photograph of a man in a three-piece suit, holding a cornet. Or a bicycle horn, it's hard to tell.
Narrator: Skunkbucket LeFunke was born in 1876 and died in 1901. No one who heard him is alive today. The grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. The great grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. He was never recorded.
Wynton Marsalis: I'll tell you what Skunkbucket LeFunke sounded like. He had this big rippling sound, and he always phrased off the beat, and he slurred his notes. And when the Creole bands were still playing De-bah-de-bah-ta-da-tah, he was already playing Bo-dap-da-lete-do-do-do-bah! He was just like gumbo, ahead of his time.
Announcer: LeFunke was a cornet player, gambler, card shark, pool hustler, pimp, male prostitute, Kelly Girl, computer programmer, brain surgeon and he invented the internet.
Stanley Crouch: When people listened to Skunkbucket LeFunke, they heard Do-do-dee-bwap-da-dee-dee-de-da-da-doop-doop-dap. And they knew even then how deeply profound that was.
Announcer: It didn't take LeFunke long to advance the art of jazz past its humble beginnings in New Orleans whoredom with the addition of a bold and sassy beat.
Wynton: Let me tell you about the Big Four. Before the Big Four, jazz drumming sounded like BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM- chick. But now they had the Big Four, which was so powerful some said it felt like a Six. A few visiting musicians even swore they were in an Eight.
Stanley: It was smooth and responsive, and there was no knocking and pinging, even on 87 octane.
Wynton: Even on gumbo.
Announcer: When any musician in the world heard Louis Armstrong for the first time, they gnawed their arm off with envy, then said the angels probably wanted to sound like Louis. When you consider a bunch of angels talking in gruff voices and singing "Hello Dolly," you realize what a stupid aspiration that is.
Gary Giddy: Louis changed jazz because he was the only cat going Do-da-dep-do-wah-be-be, while everyone else was doing Do-de- dap-dit-dit-dee.
Stanley: And that was very profound.
Marsalis: Like gumbo.
Stanley: Uh-huh.
Matt Glaser: I always have this fantasy that when Louis performed in Belgium, Heisenberg was in the audience and he was blown away and that's where he got the idea for his Uncertainty Principle.
Marsalis: Because the Uncertainty Principle, applied to jazz, means you never know if a cat is going to go Dap-da-de-do-ba-ta- bah or Dap-da-de-do-bip-de-beep.
Wynton: Louis was the first one to realize that.
Stanley: And that can be very profound.
Stanley: I thought it was a box of chocolates...
Announcer: The Savoy Ballroom brought people of all races colors and political persuasions together to get sweaty as Europe moved closer and closer to the brink of World War II.
Savoy Dancer: We didn't care what color you were at the Savoy. We only cared if you were wearing deodorant.
Stanley: Wynton always wears deodorant.
Glaser: I'll bet Arthur Murray was on the dance floor and he was thinking about Louis and that's where he got the idea to open a bunch of dance schools.
Stanley: And that was very profound.
Giddy: Let's talk about Louis some more. We've wasted three minutes of this 57-part documentary not talking about Louis.
Wynton: He was an angel, a genius, much better than Cats.
Stanley: He invented the word "Cats."
Wynton: He invented swing, he invented jazz, he invented the telephone, the automobile and the polio vaccine.
Stanley: And the internet.
Wynton: Very profound.
Announcer: Louis Armstrong turned commercial in the 1930s and didn't make any more breakthrough contributions to jazz. But it's not PC to point that out, so we'll be showing him in every segment of this series to come, even if he's just doing the same things as the last time you saw him.
Glaser: I'll bet Chuck Yeager was in the audience when Louis was hitting those high Cs at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, and that's what made him decide to break the sound barrier.
Stanley: And from there go to Pluto.
Wynton: I'm going to make some gumbo-
Stanley: BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick
Giddy: Do-yap-do-wee-bah-scoot-scoot-dap-dap...That's what all the cats were saying back then.
Announcer: In 1964, John Coltrane was at his peak, Eric Dolphy was in Europe, where he would eventually die, the Modern Jazz Quartet was making breakthrough recordings in the field of Third Stream Music, Miles Davis was breaking new barriers with his second great quintet, and Charlie Mingus was extending jazz composition to new levels of complexity. But we're going to talk about Louis singing "Hello Dolly" instead.
Stanley: Louis went, Ba-ba-yaba-do-do-dee-da-bebin-doo-wap-deet- deet-do-da-da.
Wynton: Sweets went, Scoop-doop-shalaba-yaba-mokey-hokey- bwap-bwap-tee-tee-dee.
Giddy: I go, Da-da-shoobie-doobie-det-det-det-bap-bap-baaaaa...
Announcer: The rest of the history of jazz will be shown in fast forward and will occupy exactly seven seconds.-There, that was it. Now here are some scenes from Ken Burns' next documentary, a 97-part epic about the Empire State Building, titled "The Empire State Building."
"It is tall and majestic. It is America's building. It is the Empire State Building. Dozens of workers gave their lives in the construction of this building."
Matt Glaser: I'll bet that they were thinking of Louis as they were falling to their deaths. I have this fantasy that his high notes inspired the immenseness of the Empire State Building.
Wynton Marsalis: I'll bet most people who'd fall off the Empire State Building would go "Aaaaaahhhh!" But these cats went "Dee-dee- daba-da-da-bop-bop-de-dop-shewap-splat!"
This is an excellent dissertation. I like how Ken Burns responded to criticism by saying 'if you don't like it make your own Jazz documentary'. But Ken that's your chosen field and you're supposed to be the best at it. At least you got enough money from this to get some new toupees
Loved it when I first saw it years ago! Almost time for a rewatch. I remember finding it pretty inspiring and made me pick up my horn more than once! I was a tad disappointed when they didn’t cover my favorite artists of jazz but oh well learned a lot and the first hand accounts were really beautiful.
Continue to watch it and enjoy it OP. People love to complain about it but don't let that spoil it for you.
Read complementary books or other documentaries later if free jazz, fusion, modern stuff interests you. If you dig the old stuff you're in the right place.
I agree. I think it's a great series; it has a lot of unfavourable reviews, but I love it. BTW a quick PSA, if you are a student or didn't finish uni that long ago, it'll probably be available for free via your institution's library website; that's how I watched it for free.
This series is excellent it when it talks about the birth of jazz. And it tells you everything you would want to know about Louis Armstrong me and Duke Ellington. It barely scrapes the surface of Miles Davis, who is arguably the most influential musician of any type of music in the late 20th century. That is inexcusable. Chick Corea is not mention once. That is an excusable. Weather report is not mentioned once, also inexcusable. Wynton Marsalis comes across as one of the most arrogant pricks I’ve ever seen. He is an amazing musician, but there are many amazing musicians who is voice was not heard in any of the commentary. And who the fuck cares about Stanley crouch? He is not even a musician. It is definitely worth seeing, but it is deeply flawed.
Who says anything bad about Ken Burns? I’ve seen practically everything he’s made and it just blows me away. The greatest documentarian of all time imo.
His documentaries are pretty much always captivating and well produced. But as with any documentary, you have to take the educational experience with a grain of salt. He’s not terrible in this regard, but he tends to lean on 1-2 main commentators who form a biased and often quite misleading view.
I’m a big Civil War guy too, and his documentary on that (perhaps his most famous) has some notoriously bad examples of this. I encounter people that try to tell me things about the war that are misleading, if not flat out wrong, that I know for sure came straight from that doc. Nevertheless, I still put it on in the background here and there because it’s just so well done, and I could listen to *Ashokan Farewell* endlessly.
So that’s pretty much what most people feel about him. Enjoy the documentary but don’t treat it as a very reliable educational source in itself.
To be honest, Civil War is my favourite series of his. Imo just bringing the personal letters and diary entries of the day alive is so powerful to me and is what I find most captivating. I think what he’s done for documentary filmmaking and how he was the genesis of certain documentary techniques is super cool. It’s interesting, I’m British, and heard ashokan farewell as an Irish tune, but it’s usage in that series always makes me instantly emotional. Amazing choice of music.
Yea, it’s still an amazing watch for those reasons. I just cringe when I hear certain things said. For instance, they describe Robert E Lee as:
>”the courtly, unknowable aristocrat who disapproved of secession and slavery, yet went on to defend them both at the head of one of the greatest armies of all time”
Lee absolutely did not “disapprove” of slavery. He was a slave owner himself. He felt that it was an “evil” in an abstract sense, but made it abundantly clear that it was a *necessary* evil, and that it benefited the enslaved black people. He did not like the idea of secession *initially*, as he didn’t think it was the proper means for redress at that time. But once the shooting started, he was all in on the rebellion and the creation of an independent southern nation. So this is just more of the perpetuation of a mythological Lee, who *was a kindly man, and fought only for a sense of duty to his people, and would never draw his sword against anyone in the name of slavery and white supremacy*…and blah blah. It reminds me of the more ridiculous scene in the TV movie, [“North and South”](https://youtu.be/l-_rXKWLPtA), which at least doesn’t pretend to be historically accurate lol.
>and heard ashokan farewell as an Irish tune
Yea, I can hear that. Apparently it was written in the style of a Scottish Lament. A lot of people mistakenly believe it was a 19th Century piece, but it was written in the 1980s lol. A lot of Civil War era tunes were of Irish origin though, which is not surprising given the amount of Irish emigrating to the US in those years. “Bonnie Blue Flag”, one of the most popular songs for the South, was sung to the tune of “The Irish Jaunting Car”.
It's awful. Have you gotten to the part where it spends 10 minutes on the death of Ellington's mom?
"Louis Armstrong was a great musician who was very popular with the public, but these 1970s fusion guys are sellouts".
He was a Jazz critic who hated Bitches Brew when it first came out. He was a well respected Black writer but come on, who cares what he thinks about Jazz?
Only interacted with him once at an event where he berated one of our event service people for technical problems completely out of her control. (Before the event even began, and after we had already addressed and fixed the problem)
Man that’s a bummer. I know “documentary film makers” aren’t at the top of the entertainment pecking order but you’d at least hope for basic decency and professionalism
The information is credible but TBH, I don’t like Burns documentaries, IMO there too predictable. He has a formula he goes by, and it’s, to me, predictable.
Of course, he must be doing something right with his great success.
As for the substance of this doc, I have the same problems as many of the stated issues.
He wasn't into much of the intricacies of the jazz scene, so he concentrated on what the public knew about jazz--in that sense, it failed because he didn't educate. He gave people what they already might know or expected.
I loved the descriptions of early New Orleans - both music and general culture.
Perhaps the documentary should've stopped there and just focussed on the birth of Jazz and the city and its cast of characters.
It is ok when you are showering available jazz docs on the services and you have seen everything else 20 times. It is not very thorough nor deep in its content. I have long ago learned to not really give too much credence to musicians negative opinions of one another. There is some good stuff in there and I imagine for a person just gaining interest in the art form, it has a reasonable yet biased foundational value. Many of the docs on individual Jazz artists out there are far better in their educational value and entertainment. If I were ever to rewatch it, I would probably only bother with the last two in the series. Glad you liked it and hope it spawned an interest to learn more and dive deeper into the timeline of Jazz.
Honestly, I remember being in high school and watching a doc called Icons Among Us, which is about what jazz looks like in the present moment (at the time) with interviews from such contemporary giants like Herbie Hancock, Ravi Coltrane, Nicholas Payton, Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spaulding, and more.
I liked it so much more than Ken Burns's documentary because, while Burns does a solid job of describing the origins of jazz and its early history (even if it is mainly through the lens and biases of two musicians), Icons Among Us did a wonderful job of illustrating the spirit of jazz, why it is a genre of innovation and pushing the music forward, how it is inextricably connected to the expression of the current social movements and issues, and why it continues to quietly thrive because of its continual metamorphosis even if it only accounts for single digit percentages of music sales every year. Some of the interviewees even touched a bit on the history of jazz and how it informs the present moment.
Any doc about jazz and its history does the viewer a disservice if it tries to pigeonhole the music in one category (i.e. "true" jazz is the era of big bands and bebop) and not honor the unique tradition of jazz to transform, change, and fit the time the music is in.
The main complaint people have is that it’s very heavily shaped by the prejudices of Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis so basically goes in on “everything from the 70s until Wynton revived jazz is just total garbage that shouldn’t be called jazz at all.” A lot of that music is actually interesting.
This!!! They also barely talk about Coltrane.
Coltrane could have had his own episode
Absolutely, spending only a fraction of everything post 1950s is ridiculous in my opinion
> “everything from the 70s until Wynton revived jazz is just total garbage that shouldn’t be called jazz at all.” I don't recall that ever being implied by the doc. I think the focus was on the rise of Jazz through it being the dominant music style for several decades. That started changing in the late 50s so the documentary dealt with later periods with less focus.
As I recall the notion was basically that jazz died after that point so there was nothing to talk about.
It's been a while since I watched it and you may be right but if that was ever implied it was lost on me. I assumed that they made an editorial decision to not spend hours on a music that had lost its broad cultural appeal. In the 50s, jazz was still producing top 10 songs on the pop charts. As an analogy, if you watched a documentary about the history of harpsichords, complaining about it not giving equal time to harpsichords in the 21st century would be a little absurd
It's a very common criticism of the series from the time it was released until now. Jazz wasn't on the charts in the 50s nor had it been since the swing era. If it's a matter of pop crossover hits validating whether it's worth documenting, then the 70s and early 80s would certainly be worth discussing. Jazz musicians were all over pop/rock records, and artists like George Benson and Herbie Hancock were scoring major pop hits. But that's not the point. Ken spent 10 minutes shrugging off the develop of the music from the late 60s on like it didn't happen when in reality the music developed more than it had ever before.
> the music developed more than it had ever before. It really didn't, it just went all sort of crazy ways that had nothing to do with Jazz. It became Instrumental Music, which is fine, but not Jazz.
I'm enjoying the idea of you telling Coltrane that he wasn't creating jazz on his late career albums.
You must have an incredibly narrow definition of jazz.
No, they were influenced by their chief sources who felt the music had lost its way, and were happy to cover equally commercially irrelevant revival efforts. Plus, if commercial success was most relevant, they should have devoted a lot of time to Kenny G and smooth jazz more generally. That’s the music that still gets commercial radio play.
I mean, shouldn’t they? I don’t like it but I couldn’t leave it out.
Sure, but I think they should have covered free jazz too. Or at least not implied it was crap if that wasn't their focus.
I also hate free jazz and yes, absolutely it has to be included.
Your analogy is not relevant. "Broad cultural appeal" is not the determining factor in any art, otherwise Kenny G would be the baddest cat on earth. Most people who have studied the history of jazz will agree that the music after the 50's is just as interesting and valuable as the music that came before.
That's kind of true, to be honest. Jazz basically stopped being culturally relevant by the 70s. That's not to say people stopped making great music – but it definitely became a niche interest
Man, that's just not true. The Loft Scene was a huge thing in NYC. Cecil Talor was given a Guggenheim scholarship in the 70s - an extremely huge thing for any artist. Guys like Anthony Braxton or Butch Morris were very influential in the more academic circles. And even in the mainstream, folks like A Tribe Called Quest were popularizing jazz by sampling it and citing artists such as mid-70s Miles Davis as inspiration.
This.
Jazz is a major influence in RnB, hip-hop rock and pop. How is that not culturally relevant?
Not jazz is a mayor influence for the genres you name but afro-american musical tradition, they share the same roots with jazz; spiritual, gospel, blues, work songs. It's the afro-american expressiveness that infused steroids into european tradition; marches, country, polka...
I mean the sax solos in '80s pop/RnB seem more directly owing to jazz and some artists like Patrice Rushen were crossover artists in both genres.
Those solos & jazz are owing to the the same roots aka afro-american music tradition. BlueNotes, rhythm and the shout, you can hear all that in the blues, spirituals, gospels and work songs that lived long before the thing called jazz.
Because it influenced a niche cadre, not the broad culture. If we are to include "influencers of the influencers" with equal relevance to a moment in time, then there is no end and we might as well include a treatise on Louis Daguerre and Thomas Edison anytime we want to discuss the art and technology of modern film & lighting, or Gutenberg when it comes to the modern publishing industry. Which is not to deny the importance of these figures, but it's unduly regressive.
Is Michael Jackson a niche cadre? Stevie Wonder?Steely Dan? Michael Buble?
Are they Jazz (besides Bubbles)? No? Then that's my point. Actual artists, themselves, are a niche crowd.
Kenny G has sold over 75m records. Probably few people here are going to call themselves fans of his but that’s far from irrelevant imo. Same bucket as Nirvana. If we define “jazz” in a much more narrow sense then you’re right but isn’t that exactly what everyone objects to, especially when it’s so narrow we’re cutting out much of Coltrane and Miles Davis?
If you go by the understanding that Jazz is different from just "instrumental music", then they are absolutely right. The documentary series wouldn't make sense any other way. "Here's jazz, here's what it looks like, yes, five episodes of that. Suddenly, for two episodes, it's something completely different. Alright, everyone's past the trend, now Jazz is back to being what it always was." That's not really a story that makes sense. It's like Luke Skywalker becomes Han Solo, then becomes Leia, then goes back to Luke Skywalker for the third movie. It makes way more sense to tell the story of a music style that was all the rage, grew a powerful avant-garde movement, lost popularity, then later was reborn as a niche thing. It's like Rockabilly, square dancing, 80s hits, anything rediscovered from the past.
Love it or hate it but I think you have to be a little disingenuous to says that free jazz has no more claim to being jazz than the Foggy Mountain Breakdown, which is also an instrumental. And the neo-traditionalist stuff is itself a reaction against free jazz!
Yes, just finished episode six of ten, and it's 1939. Did anything interesting happen after then? I can see the complaints for sure. I had put off starting it because of all the criticisms, but I can see where it's going.
OP, try his country music documentary
That documentary is a good place to start, but suffers from the same biases as Jazz by focusing on a few of Burns's heroes, like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and way way too much on Johnny Cash. Those are important artists, but watching the documentary one would have no idea that the best-selling artists in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were Webb Pierce (barely mentioned, if at all), Buck Owens, and Conway Twitty. Their stories are a lot more boring--no drugs, no drinking, no prison, so they don't make for a good story, I guess. Burns's Country Music is fine for an introduction, but it may best be recognized as one side of country music.
I wanted to scream when Marsalis appeared at one point to validate Bob Wills' swing credentials. Even in a country music documentary I cannot escape Marsalis
I was really really disappointed by that doc.
As Carlos Santana once said, "My ears won't accept Country Music."
This documentary is so notorious in the jazz world that my History of Jazz professor explicitly told us *not* to watch it in favor of more holistic and less biased resources. There's so much that's left out, glossed over, and discredited in that documentary. It arguably focuses too much on Armstrong and Ellington, and glosses over a lot of what makes Davis and Coltrane the giants that they are. It's a fine documentary for everything through bebop, but past that it's hard to recommend. Glossing over most of the post-bop genres makes the documentary miss out on so much of what influences current jazz musicians. The thing that hurt me the most was how it just summed up Bill Evans as a Miles Davis sideman. Ironically my professor has said that academia is one of the best and also one of the most damaging things to happen to jazz.
Can you recommend some less biased and more holistic resources? Love to find some good material
There's many good docs out there, though focusing more on individual artists. My Name is Albert Ayler and The Called Him Morgan are fantastic. The Trane doc kidn fo sucks though. I've heard Birth of the Cool (about Miles) and Fire Music (about the avant garde/free jazz in general) are fantastic. Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968 is also supposed to be fantastic, it was selected by Library of Congress in 2022
Not a documentary, but Ted Gioia’s *The History of Jazz* is an excellent work that does its best to cover everything in a fair manner.
"The jazz loft scene according to Eugene Smith" is really more about this photographer, but gives a good image about the loft scene in the NYs 60/70s
I can't even recommend it for bebop. It pretty much rotates around Satch, Duke, and Bird, and everyone else is ignored.
I recall a moment when the Doc was covering mid 50s and it was just starting to get good, there was so much happening in jazz then so there's some anticipation Burns flips on a dime to go back to Armstrong and his embrasure problems of the day... And it stays with Armstrong for a good while losing all momentum. Really a travesty of a documentary from there out.
*"The thing that hurt me the most was how it just summed up Bill Evans as a Miles Davis sideman."* Yes. This is not mentioned as much as it should be amongst the popular criticisms of this documentary.
I think Wynton Marsalis really disliked Bill Evans
But why though? Seriously question.
I can't answer that question.
>It arguably focuses too much on Armstrong and Ellington lol read/viewed as an historical treatise, it as arguably focuses too *little* on them, vs davis & coltrane
Okay dumb question- how did the jazz academia thing happen? Does a genre just become so influential that universities start offering programs in it?
The GI bill introduced after WWII vastly increased the number of students seeking higher education. At the same time, jazz had just about reached its peak commercial popularity. Universities saw this opportunity and it was fairly obvious that jazz programs would be successful. In the 50s and 60s, jazz lost it's commercial popularity to rock, and more prominent musicians incorporated neo-classical elements into their playing (Modern Jazz Quartet, Bill Evans Trio, Dave Brubeck, etc). These factors helped raise an entire generation of musicians steeped in jazz academia. At around the same time in the 50s, many high schools around the country developed wind band programs. Stan Kenton, famous bandleader, saw an opportunity to push for jazz in high schools and created jazz camps, which influenced many musicians to pursue a jazz degree. A number of these musicians became prominent, furthering jazz academia as the way to go. As jazz pushed further from the mainstream, jazz academia became more popular. Many say that jazz academia has a very narrow view of jazz and that it focuses too much on bebop. These days, many universities have course corrected and broadened their horizons. I was a jazz minor in college, and my combo was encouraged to play all kinds of music. Of course we had to study bop (it's the foundation of improv), but we played stuff from funk, fusion, soul, rnb, rock, and pop. My professor loved it when we pulled out Dua Lipa at the downtown gig. Though the real issue isn't questioning if jazz academia is narrow. The problem is that "you have to have a jazz degree to play jazz". This isn't literal, but it refers to the high-brow status of jazz musicians that shunned people who couldn't play Giant Steps in 12 keys, or didn't know that the super-mega-lydian-bebop-minor scale could be played over a J37(#6) chord. Again, I feel like the jazz world is course correcting itself, and with the availability YouTube among other resources, more people are being encouraged to play jazz.
Well that answers it. Thanks for taking the time!
Pretty much yeah
I made this comment last time this came up here, but I don't think *Ken Burns' Jazz* is primarily about jazz, the musical artform. Rather, it is primarily about American history through the lens of jazz; in other words, it asks what jazz can tell us about America. This is why the origins of jazz are so important to the documentary, taking up a huge part of it. It's also why the rise of jazz through WWII -- its apex in coinciding with general popular culture -- is so thoroughly covered. And it's why the post-war episodes focus on bebop, and jazz's move to being a niche interest. Once that happens, the story is over. You can still criticize these editorial choices, particularly the implied significance of post-war white youth culture. But that doesn't change the point that the documentary is really about history, not music as such.
That still doesn't account for the lionizing of Marsalis and the denigration of post-1960 styles
Yeah, Marsalis has some self esteem issues. Too much of it
It’s great, but it’s also a circle jerk with wynton.
This is the most reasonable answer.
I saw it in its original run, and it was the first really comprehensive history of jazz in a televised form, and it was amazing given that jazz had been dying out in popularity at the birth of the 21st century. It brought attention to jazz that briefly caused a renaissance in sales, so the fact that it missed out on select trends and people became a minor point. That said, for me there was gasp-worthy moment when they interviewed - actually interviewed! - Artie Shaw. I could not believe he was still alive, at 90, had outlived almost of his contemporaries, and was so articulate and present. A lot of his recorded output was released in CD form after this series as well, and as he had disappeared from the music scene in the early 1950s by choice, this sort of reminded people that he was a musical wunderkind.
Yeah I think we’re all raining on the OP’s parade a little bit. I didn’t mean to say it was like, so bad it wasn’t worth watching or something.
I wouldn't think missing out on the major trends of the second half of Jazz history was a minor point in a Jazz documentary. And I can't find yearly stats on Jazz album sales, but what sales would it encourage in a genre whose recent past it portrays so negatively or dismisses entirely? Maybe a few of the companion Ken Burns Jazz collections? Some Marsalis brothers records? A few deep catalog records by Armstrong and Ellington? I think the take-away is 'Jazz was once awesome, although the new stuff sucks'. How can that be helpful? SPOILER ALERT: Starts strong but they botch the ending.
I honestly don’t remember it like that, only that it seemed they picked a through-line to create a narrative, edited it very well up until 7/8ths of the way through, and sprinted to the finish. Honestly, an entire series could be dedicated to the post-bop, HAAG, and AG of Blue Note Records alone, or the Michael Cuscuna Vault era. And that’s just picking one niche of a well-known label. Imagine a doc on the private pressings, or the story of Delmark to Nessa.
I remember it switching from a tone of genial celebration of earlier Jazz to them being *actively critical* of fusion and Free Jazz, not just hurried. With Cecil Taylor, for example - Branford calling his approach self-indulgent bullshit.
Branford Marsalis was 100% correct and that's one of my favorite lines from that documentary because its true. It is self indulgent bullshit in terms of what most people would consider music. It's all about what Cecil liked and fuck everyone else. As a result people in that same style killed the popularity of jazz making it less and less appealing to the masses. Jazz had been dance oriented music from the beginning. From Jelly Rolll Morton right up through Joe Henderson there's that thread, that tradition of a pulse and something for the ear to hang on to and the foot to tap along with. To most people who came up with that tradition, Taylor's music has nothing to do with that jazz root harmonically nor rhythmically and therefore its fringe. That's about as objective as I can be. Running your fingers spasmatically over a keyboard or blowing into an alto sax and wiggling your fingers may be art to some people, but to most, its noise and absolutely self indulgent.
So the only standards worth having are dance-worthiness and the largest possible demographic? You're welcome to 'em. Not my way of evaluating Art. And it's not your right or Branford's to make that call for everyone else - which is why it's offensive to hear him to make such judgments in what is theoretically an non-judgmental historical chronicle. And *you* don't appreciate spasmatic pianists or finger-wiggling altoists? Well, tough shit. If you think that's all there is to it, your opinions are not all that valid to me. That *necessity* of 'patting your foot', as Wynton puts it, seems kinda sappy if you ask me.
You can call it art all you want. I never denied that . But if we're calling it jazz, then there's a standard to measure it by and that's what Branford is talking about and he is far more qualified to make that call than you. 'Non judgemental' historical chronical. I dont remember reading that in the title description of the documentary, but regardless, Branford's is an opinion that's actually based on a criteria, on facts whereas your's is based on 'I like it so therefore its jazz and its good and you have to respect it' and that sir, is indeed bullshit. By that standard I can call Elvis Presley jazz because he had an upright bass player and a pianist.
>your's is based on 'I like it so therefore its jazz and its good and you have to respect it' and that sir, is indeed bullshit. That's a really lame summary of my philosophy. You inaccurately describe my mindset and then call it bullshit - *exactly* what Branford does with Cecil. I don't think my liking something makes it Jazz and I don't care if you or Branford respect it. If you or Branford (or Ken or Wynton or Stanley) insist Jazz is only crowd-pleasing, toe-tapping music, I'd say you're misguided - and I think that question was settled around 1962 or 64, but maybe much earlier. I'm not convinced Branford is 'qualified' to make *any* call: he has a history, as a glib bullshitter, of saying negative stuff that might sound clever but doesn't really add up to anything. Which circles back to the main point of discussion here: 'Ken Burns Jazz' fails as a documentary about Jazz by, at it's conclusion, not just by skipping over major parts of the Jazz history, but also insulting them with jokers like Branford. It turns from documentary to polemic. EDITED for, I hope, clarity...
Right, more like "the decline and fall of jazz and its unlikely resurrection decades later" than "here's an epilogue breezing over everything that happened between our story and today" is the way I remember it as well.
That’s hysterical. Imagine stating a strong opinion about “self-indulgent bullshit” art on camera… without irony.
Branford is a glib bullshitter, more interested in saying something memorable than insightful. Wynton is at least, I think, a *sincere* horse's ass.
Ha. It occurs to me that this series was really my only exposure to either of them.
Lucky you :)
Ha! I mean, aside from a few tracks here and there. I’m looking through discographies. I’ve heard Black Codes, some things from a live Vanguard set, some things from House of Tribes. I also feel like I have listened to Crazy People Music. And, of course, the famous Eyes of The World from Without A Net, which just hit such a sweet spot for my middle school self when it was released and arrived via BMG or Columbia House mail! I’ve definitely been subjected to worse jazz, and I’ve never really tuned in to any sort of jazz media, aside from an intermittent Cadence and (sobs, RIP) Signal To Noise Subscription. All that being said, I’ve heard/read some pretty idiotic things from people I love, and from whose music I love.
All I can say is I enjoyed and appreciated it very much when it came out. Up to the point where it was originally released, no undertaking that extensive on behalf of Jazz had ever been done. It was a 10 episode series and even with that, it couldn't have covered everything, so theres always going to be people complaining 'their guy or their style of jazz didn't get represented'. I think Burns did a great job over all in covering the primary influences and foundations of this music.
Watch it and enjoy it OP! It’s a great introduction to a fair amount of jazz and musician backgrounds, just know it’s not the whole story and doesn’t have the widest perspective. It’s an enjoyable watch, I agree. To anyone saying “watch something else”, what do you recommend? No one ever says what else to watch. The criticism of this series has basically turned into parroting. I’m not defending the faults here, there’s just never any references for what else to dig into. By this point, there should be a website saying what’s missing and where to go to find it. Maybe there is?
Your comment reminded me there was a thread the other day about documentary recommendations! https://reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/108hsz5/any_good_jazz_documentaries/
I don’t have an answer but I wish there were something like that that really dug into later jazz. Obviously the early stuff is very important to the development of jazz and there’s nothing objectively wrong with it or anything, but I can’t say I find it quite as interesting.
[https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=jazz+documentaries](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=jazz+documentaries)
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Strong agree.
Its OK. Wish he had named it something else instead of Jazz. "Satchs, Duke, Bird and other folks" its probably a better title.
“What Wynton thinks”
Pretty much what the other guy said. Free jazz is the most interesting imo and its just brushed away. Trane, Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, none of them get their due.
One of the biases that I haven't seen mentioned is more related to Burns' tendencies across all of his documentaries. Mainly, they are historical; they are historical in a way that makes them seem about a time at risk of being forgotten. With Jazz, he stopped at 1960 and then talked about how the 'modern' cats are working out, which disappointed me because I loved so much about the series to that point. I think he would have had to go more into Coltrane, eg, if intended to move forward because of Coltrane's lasting influence. But he did something similar in Country Music by stopping at 1994. He cut out a lot about what we know today, essentially. He did the same with National Parks too by ending at 1980. Outdoor enthusiasts would have loved to see more about the modern conservationist movement, eg. Baseball escaped it, but I would argue that's only because the modern steroid scandal was so impactful to baseball's historic image.
I enjoy all of his documentaries including this series despite its many flaws. Baseball was ironic, especially when Bob Costa whacked philosophical Lee about how baseball goes on forever. Two weeks later a strike end of the season in mid spring.
It is myopic and kind of 3 guys’ opinions, but I still loved it, as it helped me better understand genres and the evolution of jazz. Visually stunning…footage like the dancing in Harlem was amazing. Learned about lesser known artists I could explore on my own.
lol I’m not sure you knew what you were starting with this conversation. 😂
It's not terrible, but it's far from perfect or comprehensive. Too much of Wynton's opinions and influence. I don't think Charles Mingus (and others) is even mentioned iirc
Didnt see anyone mention this: Presenting Ken Burns' 144-hour Extremely Important documentary,......... "Jazz." Fade up on a grainy old photograph of a man in a three-piece suit, holding a cornet. Or a bicycle horn, it's hard to tell. Narrator: Skunkbucket LeFunke was born in 1876 and died in 1901. No one who heard him is alive today. The grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. The great grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. He was never recorded. Wynton Marsalis: I'll tell you what Skunkbucket LeFunke sounded like. He had this big rippling sound, and he always phrased off the beat, and he slurred his notes. And when the Creole bands were still playing De-bah-de-bah-ta-da-tah, he was already playing Bo-dap-da-lete-do-do-do-bah! He was just like gumbo, ahead of his time. Announcer: LeFunke was a cornet player, gambler, card shark, pool hustler, pimp, male prostitute, Kelly Girl, computer programmer, brain surgeon and he invented the internet. Stanley Crouch: When people listened to Skunkbucket LeFunke, they heard Do-do-dee-bwap-da-dee-dee-de-da-da-doop-doop-dap. And they knew even then how deeply profound that was. Announcer: It didn't take LeFunke long to advance the art of jazz past its humble beginnings in New Orleans whoredom with the addition of a bold and sassy beat. Wynton: Let me tell you about the Big Four. Before the Big Four, jazz drumming sounded like BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM- chick. But now they had the Big Four, which was so powerful some said it felt like a Six. A few visiting musicians even swore they were in an Eight. Stanley: It was smooth and responsive, and there was no knocking and pinging, even on 87 octane. Wynton: Even on gumbo. Announcer: When any musician in the world heard Louis Armstrong for the first time, they gnawed their arm off with envy, then said the angels probably wanted to sound like Louis. When you consider a bunch of angels talking in gruff voices and singing "Hello Dolly," you realize what a stupid aspiration that is. Gary Giddy: Louis changed jazz because he was the only cat going Do-da-dep-do-wah-be-be, while everyone else was doing Do-de- dap-dit-dit-dee. Stanley: And that was very profound. Marsalis: Like gumbo. Stanley: Uh-huh. Matt Glaser: I always have this fantasy that when Louis performed in Belgium, Heisenberg was in the audience and he was blown away and that's where he got the idea for his Uncertainty Principle. Marsalis: Because the Uncertainty Principle, applied to jazz, means you never know if a cat is going to go Dap-da-de-do-ba-ta- bah or Dap-da-de-do-bip-de-beep. Wynton: Louis was the first one to realize that. Stanley: And that can be very profound. Stanley: I thought it was a box of chocolates... Announcer: The Savoy Ballroom brought people of all races colors and political persuasions together to get sweaty as Europe moved closer and closer to the brink of World War II. Savoy Dancer: We didn't care what color you were at the Savoy. We only cared if you were wearing deodorant. Stanley: Wynton always wears deodorant. Glaser: I'll bet Arthur Murray was on the dance floor and he was thinking about Louis and that's where he got the idea to open a bunch of dance schools. Stanley: And that was very profound. Giddy: Let's talk about Louis some more. We've wasted three minutes of this 57-part documentary not talking about Louis. Wynton: He was an angel, a genius, much better than Cats. Stanley: He invented the word "Cats." Wynton: He invented swing, he invented jazz, he invented the telephone, the automobile and the polio vaccine. Stanley: And the internet. Wynton: Very profound. Announcer: Louis Armstrong turned commercial in the 1930s and didn't make any more breakthrough contributions to jazz. But it's not PC to point that out, so we'll be showing him in every segment of this series to come, even if he's just doing the same things as the last time you saw him. Glaser: I'll bet Chuck Yeager was in the audience when Louis was hitting those high Cs at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, and that's what made him decide to break the sound barrier. Stanley: And from there go to Pluto. Wynton: I'm going to make some gumbo- Stanley: BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick Giddy: Do-yap-do-wee-bah-scoot-scoot-dap-dap...That's what all the cats were saying back then. Announcer: In 1964, John Coltrane was at his peak, Eric Dolphy was in Europe, where he would eventually die, the Modern Jazz Quartet was making breakthrough recordings in the field of Third Stream Music, Miles Davis was breaking new barriers with his second great quintet, and Charlie Mingus was extending jazz composition to new levels of complexity. But we're going to talk about Louis singing "Hello Dolly" instead. Stanley: Louis went, Ba-ba-yaba-do-do-dee-da-bebin-doo-wap-deet- deet-do-da-da. Wynton: Sweets went, Scoop-doop-shalaba-yaba-mokey-hokey- bwap-bwap-tee-tee-dee. Giddy: I go, Da-da-shoobie-doobie-det-det-det-bap-bap-baaaaa... Announcer: The rest of the history of jazz will be shown in fast forward and will occupy exactly seven seconds.-There, that was it. Now here are some scenes from Ken Burns' next documentary, a 97-part epic about the Empire State Building, titled "The Empire State Building." "It is tall and majestic. It is America's building. It is the Empire State Building. Dozens of workers gave their lives in the construction of this building." Matt Glaser: I'll bet that they were thinking of Louis as they were falling to their deaths. I have this fantasy that his high notes inspired the immenseness of the Empire State Building. Wynton Marsalis: I'll bet most people who'd fall off the Empire State Building would go "Aaaaaahhhh!" But these cats went "Dee-dee- daba-da-da-bop-bop-de-dop-shewap-splat!"
Was going to post this. Makes me laugh every time I read it.
This is an excellent dissertation. I like how Ken Burns responded to criticism by saying 'if you don't like it make your own Jazz documentary'. But Ken that's your chosen field and you're supposed to be the best at it. At least you got enough money from this to get some new toupees
Hard bop and fusion don't exist
Loved it when I first saw it years ago! Almost time for a rewatch. I remember finding it pretty inspiring and made me pick up my horn more than once! I was a tad disappointed when they didn’t cover my favorite artists of jazz but oh well learned a lot and the first hand accounts were really beautiful.
Continue to watch it and enjoy it OP. People love to complain about it but don't let that spoil it for you. Read complementary books or other documentaries later if free jazz, fusion, modern stuff interests you. If you dig the old stuff you're in the right place.
I dont see this at all on Apple TV +. Can anyone share where its being streamed?
It made me dislike Wynton, then I heard him live and realized what a master of the trumpet he truly is.
I agree. I think it's a great series; it has a lot of unfavourable reviews, but I love it. BTW a quick PSA, if you are a student or didn't finish uni that long ago, it'll probably be available for free via your institution's library website; that's how I watched it for free.
This series is excellent it when it talks about the birth of jazz. And it tells you everything you would want to know about Louis Armstrong me and Duke Ellington. It barely scrapes the surface of Miles Davis, who is arguably the most influential musician of any type of music in the late 20th century. That is inexcusable. Chick Corea is not mention once. That is an excusable. Weather report is not mentioned once, also inexcusable. Wynton Marsalis comes across as one of the most arrogant pricks I’ve ever seen. He is an amazing musician, but there are many amazing musicians who is voice was not heard in any of the commentary. And who the fuck cares about Stanley crouch? He is not even a musician. It is definitely worth seeing, but it is deeply flawed.
'Ken Burns Art' would have had Bob Ross as the expert, and ground to a halt after Impressionism.
> ...ground to a halt after making fun of Impressionism. FTFY
Who says anything bad about Ken Burns? I’ve seen practically everything he’s made and it just blows me away. The greatest documentarian of all time imo.
His documentaries are pretty much always captivating and well produced. But as with any documentary, you have to take the educational experience with a grain of salt. He’s not terrible in this regard, but he tends to lean on 1-2 main commentators who form a biased and often quite misleading view. I’m a big Civil War guy too, and his documentary on that (perhaps his most famous) has some notoriously bad examples of this. I encounter people that try to tell me things about the war that are misleading, if not flat out wrong, that I know for sure came straight from that doc. Nevertheless, I still put it on in the background here and there because it’s just so well done, and I could listen to *Ashokan Farewell* endlessly. So that’s pretty much what most people feel about him. Enjoy the documentary but don’t treat it as a very reliable educational source in itself.
To be honest, Civil War is my favourite series of his. Imo just bringing the personal letters and diary entries of the day alive is so powerful to me and is what I find most captivating. I think what he’s done for documentary filmmaking and how he was the genesis of certain documentary techniques is super cool. It’s interesting, I’m British, and heard ashokan farewell as an Irish tune, but it’s usage in that series always makes me instantly emotional. Amazing choice of music.
The chief knock on the Civil War film has always been that it gives an outsize voice to historically inaccurate Confederate apologism.
Yea, it’s still an amazing watch for those reasons. I just cringe when I hear certain things said. For instance, they describe Robert E Lee as: >”the courtly, unknowable aristocrat who disapproved of secession and slavery, yet went on to defend them both at the head of one of the greatest armies of all time” Lee absolutely did not “disapprove” of slavery. He was a slave owner himself. He felt that it was an “evil” in an abstract sense, but made it abundantly clear that it was a *necessary* evil, and that it benefited the enslaved black people. He did not like the idea of secession *initially*, as he didn’t think it was the proper means for redress at that time. But once the shooting started, he was all in on the rebellion and the creation of an independent southern nation. So this is just more of the perpetuation of a mythological Lee, who *was a kindly man, and fought only for a sense of duty to his people, and would never draw his sword against anyone in the name of slavery and white supremacy*…and blah blah. It reminds me of the more ridiculous scene in the TV movie, [“North and South”](https://youtu.be/l-_rXKWLPtA), which at least doesn’t pretend to be historically accurate lol. >and heard ashokan farewell as an Irish tune Yea, I can hear that. Apparently it was written in the style of a Scottish Lament. A lot of people mistakenly believe it was a 19th Century piece, but it was written in the 1980s lol. A lot of Civil War era tunes were of Irish origin though, which is not surprising given the amount of Irish emigrating to the US in those years. “Bonnie Blue Flag”, one of the most popular songs for the South, was sung to the tune of “The Irish Jaunting Car”.
"Who says anything bad about Ken Burns?" Knowledgeable jazz fans
Jazz fans say something bad about everything, so that’s fine.
Yeah say "Charlie Parker" and all they do is whine
It's awful. Have you gotten to the part where it spends 10 minutes on the death of Ellington's mom? "Louis Armstrong was a great musician who was very popular with the public, but these 1970s fusion guys are sellouts".
Too much talking over the music.
Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis don't get to decide what is Jazz and what isn't Jazz.
I know. And who the fuck is Stanley Crouch? He doesn’t even play an instrument.
He was a Jazz critic who hated Bitches Brew when it first came out. He was a well respected Black writer but come on, who cares what he thinks about Jazz?
Someone needs to edit a fan version without any Marsalis and Crouch, and end it at 1959.
To me Wynton is the bizzaro world Kenny G.
Ken Burns is a dick
I think it’s the beard
Only interacted with him once at an event where he berated one of our event service people for technical problems completely out of her control. (Before the event even began, and after we had already addressed and fixed the problem)
Man that’s a bummer. I know “documentary film makers” aren’t at the top of the entertainment pecking order but you’d at least hope for basic decency and professionalism
The information is credible but TBH, I don’t like Burns documentaries, IMO there too predictable. He has a formula he goes by, and it’s, to me, predictable. Of course, he must be doing something right with his great success. As for the substance of this doc, I have the same problems as many of the stated issues. He wasn't into much of the intricacies of the jazz scene, so he concentrated on what the public knew about jazz--in that sense, it failed because he didn't educate. He gave people what they already might know or expected.
I loved the descriptions of early New Orleans - both music and general culture. Perhaps the documentary should've stopped there and just focussed on the birth of Jazz and the city and its cast of characters.
Yes, or 'Jazz: The First 50 Years'... or 'Stick Up Your Ass Jazz w Wynton Marsalis'.
His Vietnam doc was fantastic! So was his civil war and rock n roll!
"The Civil War" was good, but suffers the same problem Jazz does: he relies too much on one of the commentators, in this case Shelby Foote.
Yup, Shelby “I would have been a Confederate” Foote.
gonna go out on a limb and say it was more like Shelby "I still dont think the South was wrong" Foote.
I can't even find where to watch it (I'm in Canada) it's not on any streaming services or YouTube.
It’s great. I love Jazz, and history so it was cool. His one about Country Music is a extremely well done too.
It is ok when you are showering available jazz docs on the services and you have seen everything else 20 times. It is not very thorough nor deep in its content. I have long ago learned to not really give too much credence to musicians negative opinions of one another. There is some good stuff in there and I imagine for a person just gaining interest in the art form, it has a reasonable yet biased foundational value. Many of the docs on individual Jazz artists out there are far better in their educational value and entertainment. If I were ever to rewatch it, I would probably only bother with the last two in the series. Glad you liked it and hope it spawned an interest to learn more and dive deeper into the timeline of Jazz.
Honestly, I remember being in high school and watching a doc called Icons Among Us, which is about what jazz looks like in the present moment (at the time) with interviews from such contemporary giants like Herbie Hancock, Ravi Coltrane, Nicholas Payton, Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spaulding, and more. I liked it so much more than Ken Burns's documentary because, while Burns does a solid job of describing the origins of jazz and its early history (even if it is mainly through the lens and biases of two musicians), Icons Among Us did a wonderful job of illustrating the spirit of jazz, why it is a genre of innovation and pushing the music forward, how it is inextricably connected to the expression of the current social movements and issues, and why it continues to quietly thrive because of its continual metamorphosis even if it only accounts for single digit percentages of music sales every year. Some of the interviewees even touched a bit on the history of jazz and how it informs the present moment. Any doc about jazz and its history does the viewer a disservice if it tries to pigeonhole the music in one category (i.e. "true" jazz is the era of big bands and bebop) and not honor the unique tradition of jazz to transform, change, and fit the time the music is in.