'Jazz': Search and Destroy

Informed jazz response in US was mixed: the avanters mostly hated it, for being hugely over-weighted to the past, and a Wynton Marsalis controlled operation. However, Chuck D — not exactly the object of Wynton's respect — wrote a letter to The Nation pointing out that most black foax had not the slightest knowledge of jazz, and that anything carefully researched and respectful with such a profile was interesting and valuable!

Armstrong is the most important popular musician of the first half of the last century, and under-valued in ours.

My hunch: I will find it tiresomely reverent, somewhat PC, somewhat bogus and — every now and then — brilliant.

Ken Burns' thing on The Civil War was genius: but his act may be a little tired.

also laughable is the inclusion of every corny shaggy dog story of jass apocrypha. that line about Louis (skull!) inventing scat when his sheet music fell off the stand, for example! (and that's a relatively contentful moment.)

the root of all evil: Wynton Marsalis as chief creative consultant or whatever. that guy is the Eric Clapton of jazz. THE evil one incarnate (he has horns).

...his hegemonic presence means that when you get past the Louis phase (oops, skull!), then he leaves out pretty much all the good stuff from the late '50s on (for which you could refer to the good book "As Serious As Your Life").

unreservedly a DUD.

Having read interviews with Burns where he defends his position that a) avant-garde jazz isn't 'jazz' at all, and b) jazz essentially ceased to exist after 1975, I was all prepared to huffily boycott this series, but the chance to see so much airtime devoted to a semi-popular music got the better of me. And I was SHOCKED by how truly awful 'Jazz' has been (so far, anyway, and I don't imagine it getting much better). Pinefox is right, the level of analysis really doesn't go much further than the old "Louis was a genius because he was a genius" school, and the directorial style is plodding, unadventurous and totally at odds with some of the ideas being pushed - that jazz is exciting, revolutionary, sensual, liberating etc. The whole thing feels like a passably well-made 'schools programme' - God knows what the unedited version is like!

Armstrong may well be "the most important popular musician of the first half of the last century, and under-valued in ours" but eighty odd years later I (and I'm sure others who came to jazz via post-punk rock/whatever) do find it difficult to imagine or recapture the shock of this music, esp. compared with the more immediate or 'modern' thrills of an Archie Shepp or whoever. I'm not saying that that older jazz is worse because it lacks rock dynamics, or anything like that - simply that I was looking forward to being educated/enlightened by this prog, and it utterly failed to inspire.

The Miles Davis documntary, on the other hand, was really brilliant. It was so balanced- so you got the genius of the player but also the flaws of the human being and, of course, many of the players were interviwed, and the concerts must have been something too, if you saw the footage.

There's a lot of being said about Ken Burns being a great documentary maker but there's enough here to suggest that this is a lot of garbage.

And, of course, you get to know why a lot critics such as Ben Watson can't stand Marsalis.

Enough said.

I agree that the overall effect of a prog like this, in context, might be beneficial. (Getting more people to talk about jazz, etc etc.) But that is, as it were, *despite* the actual content / style of the series itself.

When I suggest that there's been too much Louis A, I'm not knocking him, or saying I'd rather have more Miles Davis, or whatever. It's more the *type* of analysis that's the problem, rather than the performer. I will believe all those people who say Louis A was brilliant - but why, how, exactly? The closest they get to explaining, rather than just asserting, is when Wynton M, interviewed in regular big close-up, picks up his trumpet and plays two different things to show how the second one was - hey! - cooller (and yet... hotter) than the first. I suppose I have to admire his ability to do that... it's really when he *talks*, rather than when he plays, that he is 'performing' to an embarrassing, infuriating degree - taking positions, aligning himself with his heroes, posing as the fount of unquestioned wisdom. Unbearable.

Yes, some more players from the time would have been good, I suppose - and some fans - and some more serious 'history' (IT WAS THE JAZZ AGE - AND AMERICA WAS SWINGING LIKE NEVER BEFORE...). But what I need is more analysis - more explanation of why and how this music (which sounds familiar in the 'background' now, cycling endlessly by on the soundtrack) was different, special or exciting.

Looking at the Burns CDs they seem to be far more representative than the series - the Miles one covers all the bases including the eighties ("Tutu"), Herbie Hancock is represented by both the stunning Blue Note stuff from the sixties and the funky (non-jazz?) seventies, the Ornette Coleman CD has a good dollop of his Atlantic recordings and some later ones, etc. The five CD set looks pretty good with bebop coming in about halfway through the middle disc (the series, apparently, hits bebop about 95% of the way through). I don't think anyone picking up a few of the Burns CDs will get the sort of distorted overview that the TV series gives, though they won't get a true picture of post-1975 jazz either (wot no Jarrett?).

It has some fine scholars: Giddins himself isn't a disaster. But the most potent stylist — the closest it has to what it needs — is evil manipulative sold-out fuck St*nley Cr**ch, Wynton's mentor. No one is in a city league of shaking his confidence in himself, and the trunk of the tree of the music rots.

Crouch sure is scary. Even his name is scary. Then you see the guy himself, and you think - Wow - you deserve your name.

1) I am confused by people's expectations for this program. Ken Burns is a mainstream entertainer, not a historian, and this show was designed to appeal to average people who know little about jazz but enjoy long, drawn-out historical narrative. If the interviewees were to expound on the tonic 7ths and flatted 5ths that made Louie Armstrong so great, people would tune out. It was not designed for music critics or those into serious analysis. It is much more entertainment than comprehensive history (like all Burns programs, I imagine.)

2) The most interesting thing for me in all the discussion that followed the program in the U.S. is Burns' choice about when jazz "ends." This really pissed off the critics, that people like Derek Bailey and Cecil Taylor were given little screen time. I think, though, that Burns is telling the story of jazz and its impact on popular culture, and when you look at it that way, jazz is basically dead.

When my father was in college, kids were listening to Brubeck's "Take Five" the same way 80s college kids played REM. Through the 50s and into the earlier 60s, jazz was still very much popular music. Records sold well and the names were familar. Copies of Louis Armstrong 78s were selling the millions, and he had a huge effect on tens of millions of people worldwide. Archie Shepp probably sells 5,000 copies of a record at most, his music has much more to do with the avant-garde than it does the dance music tradition of Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington.

At some point jazz transformed from being pop into being a challenging specialist music, and I think it is plenty fair that Burns omits the latter from his history.

[Note: I do realize that Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" sold very well and was probably also omited from the program (I didn't watch that far), but I don't think its unreasonable to wonder if "Bitches Brew" is actually jazz.]

>>> I am confused by people's expectations for this program. Ken Burns is a mainstream entertainer, not a historian, and this show was designed to appeal to average people who know little about jazz but enjoy long, drawn-out historical narrative.

Well, I repeat that I know nothing about jazz. A lot less, probably, than most of its 'mainstream' audience in the US had. But is historical narrative mainstream-'entertaining' when it's as painstakingly drawn-out as this? No, I think the inordinate lengths of time involved bespeak not an idea of 'entertainment' but an idea of 'education'. And 'education' is what I want from the programme. (Of course, this isn't *really* opposed to 'entertainment'. It would entertain me if someone would start talking about SCALES.)

>>> If the interviewees were to expound on the tonic 7ths and flatted 5ths that made Louie Armstrong so great, people would tune out. It was not designed for music critics or those into serious analysis.

But I think it makes the claim that it *is* a serious analysis, or history. And from my POV, to understand the meaning of the history (that Louis A met Bix B on 24th Street on 16th May 1925, etc, and Things Were Never The Same Again) requires an understanding of what is going on - what is at stake - *musically*.

>>> The most interesting thing for me in all the discussion that followed the program in the U.S. is Burns' choice about when jazz "ends."

I can believe that this is interesting - BUT it's the one and only thing that everyone has talked about re. this programme! I would be quite happy with a Jazz prog that only went up to 1960, if it informed me better than this one does about that period.

>>> At some point jazz transformed from being pop into being a challenging specialist music, and I think it is plenty fair that Burns omits the latter from his history.

Hm - I don't actually see this. I am not convinced that jazz is any worse as avant-garde than it was as pop. And like Tracer H, I would have thought that an account of how and why it stopped being pop would be crucial.

I would like to be kinder to this programme... but it does take a lot of my time to watch it, just to hear someone telling me for the 158th time that Louis Armstrong was a one-off.

jazz (the music) - http://www.topmag.co.uk/jazzguide/content.html was a free guide given out in Tower shops, which gives an idea of some of the rough categories in jazz (and it does include avant-garde and go beyond 1975) and has recommended records within each section. Their Top 100 (like all lists) is debatable. Possibly more useful in building a collection than Burns' Jazz.

As much as I would have liked to see more stuff on post-70s jazz and its offshoots, I think Burns's reasoning for not including it was valid. He said that he is an (amateur) historian, and that the stuff in the last 25 years was more the territory of journalists. Fair enough. He also tried to make clear in his interviews that it's not the definitive history of jazz, just his own effort to understand it, etc.. Too bad all the books and cds that were released along with the program clearly said "The Definitive"...

Josh linked to the official site awhile back where you could download the complete interview transcripts. These were very amusing, especially the obvious leading questions that were put to more open- minded like Joshua Redman who don't share the Wynton/Crouch view of thigns.

I think so too, pinefox. But maybe giving such an account would have been too hard to do while remaining consistent with their dogma that the avant-garde stuff lacks value. (This is different from saying that it - as well as the fusion, which became a lot more popular than the ag stuff - is just not jazz, but they don't consistently make that distinction, rather they often mix the claims together - to support which one, I'm not sure.)

Where Burns scored with _The Civil War_ and _The West_ (which I've only seen a little of: BBC2 always screen it as a run at 9am over Xmas week...) was that we KNEW these were mighty conflicts with many many dead, and his elegiac quietness, stepping back from terrible scenes into onlooker journals (eg Mary Chesnut, anyway one of the great American writers of the period), was (I think) brilliant. But Jazz is being set up as a rising inevitable triumph, an unchallenged success story — American rescues itself! hurrah! — when it isn't even that, actually. As the Pinfox and others have noted, the question why it stopped "being pop", and — give or take a little leap in its minority share courtesy this series — how commands less sales than showtune music, is the story of a failure. No fair blaming Armstrong for this: but the way they present him, puffing him to wear a crown which marks him out as a king some of us wouldn't remotely give fealty to (and I ADORE his music, and have to say loved hearing it tonight), is really a problem masquerading as a solution (in "our crowd", the "rock listener people", if you like, he's HUGELY underrated. But the hype he gets here will exacerbate that, not lessen it. I think this series is a coffin-nail in a particular way of thinking/seeing/hearing jazz: cuz the *only* option — for a living musician — is to fight against it. This history is more of a battleground than presented anyway — competition is basic to it, and has mostly been elided out of it, in the name of vaprous communal uplift, or something.

Disappointing: but I'll probably watch the rest of it.

Close enuff fer jazz, as they used to say...

chastened,

A lot more of the transcripts are here.

Oh, and Pinefox - you should get yourself a good book.

And yeah, my earlier post wasn't thought out very well. There was a serious missed opportunity w/ the show re examining what changed for jazz and why in the 60s and 70s (this is just going from what I read.)

I couldn't think of any more 'objective' sources though, I never really read through a whole book about the subject.

The most awesome thing I've read (part of - it's very long) is Paul F. Berliner's ethnomusicological study Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, which tries to lay out just what exactly is going on when jazz musicians improvise, which is in my experience typically a poorly-explained thing which is vitally important for really appreciating jazz (on its own terms - not saying you couldn't just dig the sounds of it some other way). As suits Berliner's field, the book's material is made up of interviews with extensive interviews with jazz musicians, analysis of written music and transcribed improvisation (copious examples provided, including those which show the group interaction occurring during soloing), observations of musicians playing in clubs and in practice, and IIRC even Berliner in improvisation lessons - the whole shebang. Reading it is great because it's such a clear exposition of things I've picked up from (slightly) playing and (overwhelmingly) listening to jazz. The attention to detail is wonderful, and despite it being an academic study Berliner's style is clear and readable, even enjoyable. So I'm sure it would be an aid to appreciating jazz - though being able to hear what they're talking about, or to connect it to things you have heard, is probably important (i.e. you need recordings).

I've not read all of Lewis Porter's study of John Coltrane, but it's also very good - biographical information and more importantly musical analysis, also fairly heavy on the musicology (heavier than Berliner's book, I think) - goes a long way toward making a case for Coltrane's improvositions as "compositions" in the more highbrow sense; it's also just useful for explaining what the hell Coltrane was up to as his career moved on, which may seem baffling at first.

The Pinefox should probably not read Miles' autobiography because he would find it vile (just a guess). I guess it does provide some insight, as Jordan says, but factually it's notoriously unreliable (even to the point of outright lifting sections from an earlier bio, or so I have read).

Charles Mingus' autobiography Beneath the Underdog is said to be an excellent piece of jazz writing by an actual jazz musician, something of which there aren't all that many examples. Mike Daddino was kind enough to give me a copy, but I haven't read more than the first two chapters yet - ask me what I think in, oh, late June or early July. The beginning was heart-warming and slightly sad, though, just what I expected from a Mingus autobiography.

Gunther Schuller's two books on early jazz and the swing period are considered classics of the field, never read 'em though. Scholarly stuff; Schuller is also IIRC respected for his classical writing - he was instrumental in the "third stream" movement to form a new music fusing elements of classical and jazz (cf. perhaps the most common example given, Gil Evans' collaborations with Miles Davis).

Unfortunately I can't recommend a good book on my favorite period, from the late fifties to late sixties, because I've never read one. But there's a nice little book by Michael Feathers on jazz in the sixties which does a pretty good job of covering the trends of the time - movements to the avant-garde, fusion, and most importantly a nice idea about how the decade could be seen as a time when a kind of static pluralism developed, where many different styles and traditions began to exist stably, characterizing a different direction for jazz as a whole (which may be part of what Burns missed out on?). Probably I would like Feathers' book better if it went into greater detail, musical examples and such, but then I'm like that.

I think the difference with Mingus is that his (good) heart comes through (which I say also recalling that I've read some more of it, excerpted in the "Reading Jazz" anthology ed. Gottlieb, which is not a very good anthology).

The Cook/Morton collections are good, but, yes, frustrating (unless you maybe get them ALL, a mad idea).

I like Graham Lock's Braxton books — OK, disclaimer: piece by me in the essays collection, Mixtery — and his book of his own jazz essays. I believe he has a Sun Ra book out currently also.

Has anyone mentioned the Imamu? Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka's BLUES PEOPLE is still his masterpiece, before he got (a) all CultNat, and (b) Maoist...

Has Brian Case ever done a collection? His stuff in Maker/NMe in the 70s was SO FANTASTIC: great writer lost to booze, alienation and ennui...

Also 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya' edited by Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, (from about 54?) is really good - gets up to bebop and the early avant-garde, plus plenty of interesting material on early jazz and life in New Orleans etc, something which I hoped to get from 'Jazz' (the series) but which it failed to provide. The book is entirely paragraphs from interviews with a wide range of jazz musicians, all pieced together to make a fascinating read. Definitely better to hear things from the original sources and not what Wynton thinks 80 years later.

Brian Priestley's JAZZ ON RECORD is pretty good. Priestley is way cool: an old-skool Brit modern jazzer who RATES GARY NUMAN!

Gidins comes across as a reasonable sort in his interview - last night I read the relevant passages from the Meltzer comp where R. calls him a 'pigfucker' - and has this useful point to make in relation to Mark Pitchfork's post - "It's worth remembering that the avant garde is the longest lived movement in the history of jazz. It's been with us for 40 years now, much longer than swing or bebop or even dixieland. And it's stronger now that it's ever been, with more places in which it's performed than ever before. So while it always has a narrow audience in terms of size, it has an extremely devoted audience."

Stanley Crouch, in his interview, makes the amazing claim that pretty much the only avant jazz worth hearing is by people who at some point or other played w/Ornette Coleman ('cos Ornette swung and had tunes...)

Like I said up-thread, I really liked _The Civil War_: but yes, part of the reason was that its form was in a ey way appropriate to an American sensibility of that era, the Cult of the mid-Century Dead, the Second Great Awakening in the Time of the New Necropolis (and that was BEFORE the war/ Gettysburg etc etc). "I did not stop to [??] with death/and so he stop'd for me"

Like I said, I think it's a nine-day success which signals a collapse and an end, rather than a revivification. For one thing, given the bully-pulpit they've co-opted for themselves, the actual intellectual content ON THEIR OWN TERMS, of what Crouch- Marsalis deliver, is SO WEAK. I don't mean boohoo no Braxton = boohoo no substance, I mean, if [x] does thinks Billie is the Most Important Singer in Jazz, what does that actually mean TO [X]? What are the specifics that get him moist?

I wanted to get into some of those photos themselves and talk out the odd little things that were never discussed, the blind-spot elements which push a bit against the cliché-grain of the narrative (the sweat under Gene Krupa's arms).

It's the middle of the night. I have to sleep.

ok, i was only kidding, but how about "although critically disparaged at the time, miles davis's heavy fusion was, of course, truly the way ahead for jazz, and the truth of this promise is bourne out by new album by [whichever terrible contemporary dance music crossover saxophonist]...."

1. Episode 428 of the "Fire Music" strand: "Studio Rivbea: The Consolidation Years" written by Wen Batson.

April 1976 was a busy month for Sirone. His great sonorous rat- infested bass was the lynchpin of "People's Republic" which placed the Revolutionary Ensemble at the centre of human development. They knew society and attempted to mould it to my liking. But they ultimately failed, as all "free" music did, as indeed all "jazz" did, as its sickening umbilical link to recognisable notes and compromise Republican-voting 4/4 rhythms (albeit suggested only) denied its potential to dent the world and reverse the tanks in the way that the Zappa/Terry Bozzio torrential duet on "My Plimsoll Done Got Bitchy (Movement 16: Crystal Prequel)" opened up a new vista of communal community which could only be sneezed at by a capitalist nose drenched in treacherous red. I was 14 when "Grand Wazoo" came out, you know (entire ILM personnel writes: now come on, Carlin, you did this routine last week. Do something different!). During one of my many prestigious exclusive coffee mornings with the apex of Western, not to mention Eastern, music, Derek Bailey, he humorously biffed me on my socialist bonce for uttering the dread word "jazz." How I howled! But not as deep and sonorous a howl as Frank Wright on Center of the World Vol 96. October 1977 was a busy month for Cecil McBee . . .

2. "Eye LUV Jazz!" by Jupitus Maconie.

Introduction: "Take Five."

TARA MARIELLA VOICEOVER SLUT: Jazz? Mmm . . . niiiice! (intoned as if this were a mindblowing and original insight, much like stout Cortez atop the Darien peak). No tunes! Striped bowlers! What's the real story? Yeah, right!

STUART "WRY" MACONIE: Jazz!! What was that all about? Eh? Eh?

UNHEARD OF DULWICH COMEDIENNE: When I woz like five, yeh, my dad made me listen to like Miles Davis and stuff. I wanted the Osmonz! YEH DONNY! I wanted a Raleigh chopper!

Cut to stock footage of Miles and Coltrane doing "So What." Lasts all of two seconds before being pointlessly intercut with excerpts from "On The Buses" and a floating plastic bag.

WRY "MACONIE" STUART: Albert Ayler! What was that all about? It was a bit like Nora Batty consummating with Quackers out of Tich and Quackers with Julio Cortazar looking onward before turning into a pomegranate peacock! Eh? Eh? Thing is I actually know about this stuff and listen to it! But you want dumb - look at the ratings! So I'm laughing AT you, plebs! Eh? Eh?

(ad infinitesimalum)

3. Erm, that's it, 'cos it's been a long week. "The Invisible Band"! What's THAT all about? Eh? Eh?

I once read Branford M, much the more likeable of the brothers (a Yes fan!!), being more sensible about this issue: re horrible poverty and oppression producing the blues, and black America's escape from the worst of same in the 50s as a damage to the music...

I think Marsalis is like Eric Burdon: he "wants to be black"

WM and Miles are both MAJOR mindgamers: no room for em both on the same stage. I doubt the given reason for the incident = the real reason — or that MD cd even articulate the "real" reason. WM disses MD via respect for LA: intolerable to MD cz it thows up HIS psychic relationship to LA, in terms — in late age — of success and failure and achieved achievement. The "Pops" remark — esp.in oedipal combo with the name "Pops" — sort of makes my point: you don't "forget" Armstrong (of all people) because he's just competely minor to you (like you might forget, I dunno, Ian Carr), you forget him because if you thoght abt him too clearly, you'd just shut the fuck up, toss yr trumpet in the garbage and go to Med School.

Actually, if we simply simplify the Jazz Arc to Pops-Miles-Wynton, and just dig about at their emotional relationship PLUS career twists PLUS personnel marginalia, we'd get a REAL INTERESTING better history of jazz as a popular/modernist form, what went right, what went wrong, where to now.

Daryl? Daryll? [Consults FIELDS OF GOLD: the Best of Sting 1984-1994, to discover HAHA absolutely no musician credits given!! That'll teach those fusion fatheads to whore themselves to the Man]

(Man != Maaan)

I am now listening to Fields of Fire. Yes I am.

OK: I was at a screening of Pokémon 3: The Spell of the Unknown this morning. The short shown with it — Pikachu and the Pichus — is set in old cartoon New York (Pikachu has a kind of countryboy adventure in the Big City: lifts, alleys, airshafts, flagpoles, you get the picture. The entire 20- minute work is soundtracked not with computer blings and John Williams knock- off, but with CLASSIC HOT SWING!!

The programme did not leave me any better informed or more enthusiastic about jazz. That's not necessarily a bad thing, or the prog's fault. Possibly I am ineducable. But one thing did stay with me beyond the bombast - and beyond the soloists and blowers and wild men.

I loved the last few seconds, in which Duke Ellington said goodbye, as it were. That seemed right - as though he had been orchestrating it all. I don't know owt about Duke E. 'Take The A Train' was played countless times during the series (I saw it on the credits over and over again, often x2 for one episode), but I still have no idea whatsoever how it goes. I know more about 'Z Train' than 'Take The A Train'. (Has anyone ever heard 'Z Train'? For that matter, has anyone ever heard 'Take The A Train'??) Still, the thing is, Ellington somehow seemed more compelling as a figure, to me, than many of the others. Perhaps because he came across as not a Musician (though I daresay he was a great one), not a Soloist, but a Composer - an organizer. In pop I am attracted to the idea of the figure who conceptualizes, plans, organizes (the Arranger, to use a Joyceans' term?), then delegates and deploys, gives the plan to someone else and goes off to hide behind it. Maybe it's even a Flaubertian- impersonality schtick, this, the omnipotent artist hidden behind their handiwork. (Bacharach?)

I daresay that Duke E was not really the kind of figure I am trying to describe. But I got a feeling that he was a wee bit closer to it than some of the up-front soloist types. A writer, a thinker, a planner, a leader - that was the image I got. And I like that, and I took away a small fascination with this fellow. I appreciate, though, that jazz folks may think I've got it all wrong.

But having said that: I think the program focused a bit too much on some of the players' roles as soloists, to the detriment of their other qualities. Charles Mingus definitely fits the description you gave, despite (I think) being much more prominent as a soloist than Duke. (This makes sense, of course, because Duke was such an influence on Mingus.) A lot of other musicians known for being soloists played big roles in other areas, as well - it just helps to have more familiarity with them to see how. Probably not on the scale of Ellington, but then his band was big and so there are a lot of different things for a mastermind to mastermind.

aargh...

Branford Marsalis: It's a Jazz Thing

World renowned saxophonist Branford Marsalis goes in search of the true spirit of contemporary jazz, embarking on a musical journey taking him from New York to Chicago and Paris to London.

Who is watching?

10.04 :: Branford Marsalis to present new TV documentary

...The 90-minute documentary was made by production company Somethin' Else and is directed by Christopher Walker. The documentary follows Marsalis' travels around Europe and the US as he meets leading contemporary figures in jazz including Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin and Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, Medeski Martin and Wood, Tim Berne, Evan Parker, David S Ware, Ken Vandermark and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Commenting on the project, Jez Nelson, the executive producer on the show, says: 'There hasn't been a major, terrestrial jazz TV show for many years ? so this is really exciting for us. Branford is that rare thing ? a great musician who's also a superb and engaging presenter ? this should be a fantastic journey!'

So far NYC and Chicago have been visited

NYC, including

David S Ware
Tim Berne
DJ Spooky
Frisell
Dave Douglas
Michael Brecker

Chicago including:

Chicago Underground Trio
Ken Vandermark
Art Ensemble of Chicago

This wasn't a history as such but more like 'this is jazz in 2004' type prog (I'm assuming that the date of broadcast - falling on the same weekend in which the london jazz fest begins - isn't a mere coincidence).

Branford set his position as an anti-pop market - this is a minority music; we've accepted this and we're just doing our thing. Given what I saw in 'jazz' I couldn't believe that there wz a prog with tim berne, matthew shipp, ken vandermark...and that even acknowledged jazz could come out from places like europe - not only that but he visited paris, norway, sweden, london etc. so from that pov I liked it!

He wz consistently for jazz as an imporvisational, acoustic art (and with a capital A too, which I found odd when he mentioned that his younger listening consisted of rock and funk) but he would only take an arg so far - when criticizing matthew shipp's experiments with hip-hop I half agreed when listening to samples but prob not even for the same reasons (isn't improvising with a steady beat jazz anyway - so what if the beat is a hip-hop one?) and I loved matthew's dismissal of genre (against marsalis setting out boundaries for it). His bias against electronic music really fell flat when a norwegian musician talked abt hancock's 'sextant' as a model for what he was doing and how it wasn't all button pushing.

He wasn't for 'chasing the kids' and competing with rock but when ken wandermark talked about how his emotional intensity would reach out to first time concert goers - but at the same time being dismissive of technique (and wandermark sort of agreeing!) it was just odd even if I knew where he wz coming from.

time spent on hawkins is partly because his progressivist leanings, harmonic ideas, etc. gave him certain affinities with the young players that he ended up associating with later in his career, to benefit of both parties; and because the story of his career provides a contrasting example of a swing-era musician looking for a way to be professionally successful (or just secure) apart from occupying a standard part in the swing music industry.

along with the berliner book, certainly the best thing i've ever read on jazz.

oh, and the musicological stuff is demanding (i can kinda follow the basic harmonic theory jargon but i've never studied it enough to -feel- what it means, which makes reading this stuff a battle against vagueness) but consistently illuminating.

[Please forgive me for not re-reading everything up-thread; I will do so later and discover that whatever I say has already been said.]

I loved the series, because I tend to be ignorant of pre-bebop jazz, and there was a wealth of material that was new and wonderful from those early decades. It was nice to see the young Louis Armstrong in full possession of his mojo, and to learn that his lithe singing — quite a bit removed from the gravelly self-parody of the Louis I would see on TV as a kid — was almost the equal of his trumpet playing.

But I was among the chorus of haters (like Jarrett) who resented the coverage of the post-Ornette-goes-to-New-York years. I've calmed down since, and can see the documentary now as a history of the jazz industry rather than a history of jazz. It makes sense, in that context, to cover the fifth decades of Ellington and Armstrong's careers, rather than give adequate space to "Not Jazz as We've defined it" — New Thing, AACM, Brötzmann, fusion, and so on.

It's odd/interesting that the Ornette portion was so nicely done, considering the short shrift given to what follows him, but it makes sense in light of the later acceptance of his music by the Jazz at Lincoln Center people. Welcome to the jazz-industry canon, Mr. Coleman.

The film begs for a Jazz II, covering 1960 onwards, but with Carla Bley and Rafi Zabor replacing Wynton and Crouch as consultants. Unfortunately, that's not the sort of thing that attracts the corporate sponsorship. Give it 20 years.

Anyway, I think your approach is the right one - yeah, the film was incomplete, but now there's a perfect opportunity to create their own take on it or to cover the ground that was missed. Hell, there should be 10 films.

Wynton Marsalis called this 11-year old jazz pianist his hero last year

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/arts/music/joey-alexander-an-11-year-old-jazz-sensation-who-hardly-clears-the-pianos-sightlines.html

that led me to Kojo Roney (Wallace Roney's 9 year old nephew!) channeling Tony Williams, and holy shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Ow0YEO9qM