All that Ken Burns jazz

Joining the historian's series on the Civil War and baseball is his take on a third uniquely American phenomenon so vast and convoluted, yet so personal, that critical panning and praise play a syncopation all their own.

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 7, 2001

"Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life."

- Drummer and bandleader Art Blakely

If Ken Burns' gargantuan documentary Jazz were a piece of music, it would probably resemble Duke Ellington's Newport Jazz Suite; a piece of music so powerful it pushed 7,000 fans to a near-riot when the maestro performed it during the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956.

Split into 10 episodes airing over 19 hours this month, Burns' Jazz is an equally epic journey with a strange twist: Its biggest flaws and grandest triumphs are often one and the same.

Its title and scope might fool you into believing this is a film that traces jazz's century-plus history. But Burns' work is really about the first 60 years of the form, telling the history of the genre and the nation through the lives of jazz's biggest stars.

Ellington and Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong loom largest, outlined in Burns' trademark mix of still photos, video and film clips, narration and commentary from experts. To a lesser extent, the lives of saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Miles Davis and vocalist Billie Holiday also frame the story, which traces jazz's evolution from the improvisations of slaves in New Orleans' Congo Square in the 1800s to Duke Ellington's death in 1974 and beyond.

"You've got a huge portrait of the United States embedded in jazz," says Burns, the Beatle-banged filmmaker whose Civil War and Baseball documentaries were PBS' most-watched works, each attracting more than 40-million viewers. "This is about race, world wars, sex and a Great Depression . . . many, many themes in American life."

And Burns has assembled a veritable marketing colossus to make sure America gets the message.

In addition to the documentary itself -- some PBS digital channels will air every episode 11 times a week -- there is a $65 coffee-table book, a 5-CD boxed set, a single CD compilation, greatest-hits CDs featuring 22 artists from the film, banners and music promoting the movie in 3,000 Starbucks stores nationwide and underwriter General Motors' outreach program aimed at 6-million students across the United States.

It's only natural to be suspicious of a project this large about an art form this subjective and divided. Could anyone make a 20-hour documentary about the Palestinian and Jewish conflict or Cuba and its exiles without stirring controversy?

Imagine then, the challenge of assembling a work of documentary television on music that is the foundation of everything from '50s-era doo-wop to modern rock and electronica.

Indeed, Burns himself admits he didn't dare assemble in one place the panel of advisers that helped shape Jazz's focus -- including controversial trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, writers Stanley Crouch and Gary Giddins and musician Matt Glaser -- for fear a fistfight would break out.

"The New York Times said they wanted to commend me for bravery . . . for going into a critical establishment that takes itself so seriously, it makes Bosnia look like a walk in the park," he says. "Jazz, like America, is about restless experimentation."

'I'd go to hell to hear a good band.'

-- Trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke

Any jazz fan can cite a long list of players and movements that Burns omits or barely mentions, including pianists Errol Garner, Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson, bandleader Stan Kenton, saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman, West Coast jazz, Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz and fusion.

Which leads to the most-publicized criticism of Jazz: that Burns limits music from the last 40 years to his final installment, politely declining to discuss much of anything in detail after Duke Ellington's 1974 death.

"I'm in the business of history, and history is about stories that are over," he says with passion. "I could do another 17 hours on the modern era, but we don't have the historical perspective and distance yet. I'm a historian, and I have to wait until we know."

While speaking, Burns reveals the weary irritation of a man who has answered the same question many times. Behind the edge in his voice is a hint of bitterness, piercing his normally energetic, earnest demeanor.

These are questions about Jazz that have swirled through newspapers, magazines and Internet Web sites for months -- a level of criticism the successful filmmaker may rarely face.

And Burns places the blame on clueless media types and the "jazzerati" -- a turbulent confluence of critics and outspoken musicians who see themselves as the guardians of jazz's legacy.

"These are people, many of whom are upset that I didn't interview them . . . so they're taking out their revenge in the only way they know how," he says.

"These people proclaim to love jazz the most, but they have given the impression that you need some sort of advanced degree to get hip with jazz," adds Burns, who readily admits he owned few jazz records before tackling this project six years ago.

"In some ways, they've done the greatest disservice to jazz, with their constant, esoteric carping. Out there in the world, no one cares."

But Burns has put himself in the crosshairs through the very scope of the project he's presenting. The stats alone are impressive: a budget of more than $3-million, with more than 500 clips of music, 2,400 still pictures and more than 2,000 film clips assembled over six years.

Everyone from jazz veterans Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton and Herbie Hancock to young star Joshua Redman and writer Studs Terkel were interviewed for the project. The voices of actors Matthew Broderick, Samuel L. Jackson, Eriq LaSalle, Amy Madigan, Adam Arkin and many others re-create historical quotes and provide narration.

With a name like Jazz and a running time close to a full day, who wouldn't expect a definitive history of the form?

But the central flaw in Burns' Jazz isn't the compressions and omissions. It's the certainty.

Louis Armstrong's early work with mentor King Oliver is "the most abstract and sophisticated music anyone has ever heard." Duke Ellington is "Jazz's most prolific -- and least knowable -- genius." Billie Holiday is "the most important female vocalist in the history of jazz."

Even now, Burns hails Armstrong himself as being "to American music what Einstein is to physics," calling jazz "the only art form Americans have created" (neatly sidestepping, for example, blues and country music).

It's a combination of self-importance, hero-worship and music snobbery common to those who would advance jazz as America's classical music. And it's a weakness Burns' Jazz shares with jazz itself -- a tendency to repetition and taking itself way too seriously.

Too often, Jazz unfolds like an indulgent solo -- a well-done work studded with flashes of brilliance and tedium.

Minutes will pass while Burns outlines the circumstances of Armstrong's arrival in Chicago, then Marsalis or Giddins will offer a vibrant quote or a rare piece of film will highlight a sterling performance.

Because it's a Ken Burns film, there's an over-reliance on still photos and narration (it's a formula I have trouble warming to; I fell asleep three times while trying to watch the first episode).

And with so many jazz greats still alive -- names like Louie Bellson, Chick Corea, Ramsey Lewis, Jimmy McGriff and Max Roach come to mind -- more of them should be interviewed in this film. (Burns refuses to name the "two or three" people not included because they wanted to be paid for their interviews, which he doesn't do.)

Still, there is much that works about Jazz -- most especially, its treatment of Louis Armstrong, who revolutionized jazz by combining bluesy style and rhythmic touches to create the concept of swing.

It's an argument Burns seals late in the film, with a clip of the trumpeter's midtempo jaunt, Dinah, that covers all his innovations: scat singing; melodic, controlled solos; a rhythmic charisma that entrances.

For those who only know him as the wide-eyed singer of pop confections such as Hello Dolly and What a Wonderful World, it will be a significant education.

There are many other highs: Wynton Marsalis demonstrating the history of trumpet fanfares by playing a few (indeed, he stands out as the film's best interview subject); an Armstrong sideman tearing up while remembering Satchmo's declining health; clips of a suave Ellington explaining the focus of his work; a sample of the drums and vocal screams powering Max Roach's jarring Freedom Now Suite in a too-short section on '60s jazz.

Still, few but the most ardent fans will likely watch every episode on PBS.

This critic suggests catching Part 3, called "Our Language" (the strongest Armstrong stuff), Part 7 "Dedicated to Chaos" (the rise of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis) and the final episode, "A Masterpiece by Midnight" (which covers Ellington's and Armstrong's deaths, along with jazz from 1961 to now). But each episodes shines according to the viewer's tastes.

"One of the reasons why it takes six years to make a film like this is that it's detective work," Burns says. "It's spending weeks tracking down a piece of footage from Switzerland or the wilds of Maine. (But) that's also the best part of the job."

"I contend that the Negro is the creative voice of America -- is creative America. And it was a happy day . . . when the first unhappy slave landed on its shores."

-- Duke Ellington

From the segregation of jazz clubs to the development of jazz within black communities in New Orleans, Chicago and New York, race emerges as a potent subtext for much of Jazz's narrative.

And in the same way rapper Eminem emerges as a descendant of KRS-One and Chuck D. or pop's Backstreet Boys stand in the shadow of the Jackson Five and Boyz II Men, Jazz traces the indebtedness of Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman and Beiderbecke to Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson and Ellington.

"How poetic is it that the only art form Americans have created is born in a community that has the historical memory of being unfree in a free land?" says Burns, who casts these white players as respectful students rewarded by a society tilted toward white people, not ripoff artists. "That's a stop-the-presses kind of story."

Despite all the bases it touches, you can't help but leave Jazz wishing Burns had sharpened his focus a little more. Perhaps looked just at the lives of several jazz giants, limited his vision to jazz's first 50 years or looked solely at the interplay between societal issues and the music.

But there's no denying that Burns, who sees Jazz as the final installment of a American history trilogy that started with The Civil War and Baseball, has created yet another singular, compelling look at the nation's ever-evolving cultural legacy.

"I hope the film will . . . help break down the general resistance to jazz, so people can listen to more sophisticated and elegant popular music than they do right now," Burns adds.

"If you think it's important to understand what happened at the Battle of Gettysburg, you also have to understand what happened in jazz. They're equally important in coming to grips with the history of American character."

TV PREVIEW: Jazz airs at 9 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 17, 22-24, 29 and 31 on WEDU-Ch. 3. Grade: A.

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