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Having enjoyed Burns "Civil War" I was disappointed with "Jazz"

202.213.139.125

In Reply to: RE: Wrong, possibly on two counts... posted by EBerlin on October 22, 2008 at 18:03:21

+ agree with EBerlin; this was altogether too narrow a take
Stanley Crouch ( who has long been a critic of Miles Davis, amongst others ) was given too much room for opinion + too much screen time

Needed: More input from the existing Jazz greats ( Helen Merrill, Sonny Rollins et. al. ) Burns may have still been able to get Jay McShann in front of the camera; I have another ( Japanese ) documentary where McShann reminisces about giving Charlie Parker his start in Jay's band, how "Bird" got his nickname, and what it was like playing in NY + Kansas City in the '30's + '40's
Not enough of this type of thing

And more modern contemporary Jazz players for sure, Jazz is not a dead genre

My argument is as much about what was in "Jazz" as much as what was missing

Entertaining, but lacking in the admirable balance + sweeping authority of "The Civil War"

GW

Follow Ups:

agreed...no self-respecting jazz fan could have been content with Ken Burns' treatment - Jazz Inmate 22:47:14 10/22/08 (0)
If your idea of jazz is Louis Armstrong, Duke, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Diz, you'll love it. But Burns' narrative is too exclusive and hindsight driven. It doesn't work for me. Part of the reason is he spends so much time on jazz's development from New Orleans music and dancehall/swing big bands. He started running out of time and budget before he even got to 1950. Like many, I think the most exciting advances in jazz came toward the end of that decade and into the 1960s. So the emphasis on earlier periods left me flat. And some who I regard as the absolute geniuses of jazz, like Bud Powell and Wayne Shorter, were given short shrift.
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Call it, friendo.

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