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VHS : Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns |
List Price: $149.88Price: $68.98 You Save: $80.90 (54%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780780631472
Format: Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 0780631471
Label: Pbs Home Video
Manufacturer: Pbs Home Video
Number Of Items: 10
Publisher: Pbs Home Video
Release Date: January 02, 2001
Running Time: 999 minutes
Sales Rank: 2825
Studio: Pbs Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: January 08, 2001
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Editorial Review:
Description:
The story, sound, and soul of a nation come together in the most American of art forms: Jazz. Ken Burns, who riveted the nation with The Civil War and Baseball, celebrates the music's soaring achievements, from its origins in blues and ragtime through swing, bebop, and fusion. Six years in the making, this "soundbreaking" series blends 75 interviews, more than 500 pieces of music, 2,400 still photographs, and over 2,000 rare and archival film clips. The 10-part musical journey spotlights many of America's most original, creative--and tragic--figures, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.
Amazon.com essential video:
Accompanied by a menagerie of products, Ken Burns's expansive 10-episode paean, Jazz, completes his trilogy on American culture, following The Civil War and Baseball. Spanning more than 19 hours, Jazz is, of course, about a lot more than what many have called America's classical music--especially in episodes 1 through 7. It's here that Burns unearths precious visual images of jazz musicians and hangs historical narratives around the music with convincing authority. Time can stand still as images float past to the sound of grainy vintage jazz, and the drama of a phonograph needle being placed on Louis Armstrong's celestial "West End Blues" is nearly sublime.
The film is also potent in arguing that the history of race in the 20th-century U.S. is at jazz's heart. But a few problems arise. First is Burns's reliance on Wynton Marsalis as his chief musical commentator. Marsalis might be charming and musically expert, but he's no historian. For the film to devote three of its episodes to the 1930s, one expects a bit more historical substance. Also, Jazz condenses the period of 1961 to the present into one episode, glossing over some of the music's giant steps. Burns has said repeatedly that he didn't know much about jazz when he began this project. So perhaps Jazz, for all its glory, would better be called Jazz: What I've Learned Since I Started Listening (And I Haven't Gotten Much Past 1961). For those who are already passionate about jazz, the film will stoke debate (and some derision, together with some reluctant praise). But for everyone else, it will amaze and entertain and kindle a flame for some of the greatest music ever dreamed. --Andrew Bartlett
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The greatest compliment to this series is that it has created a torrent of discussion and the debates are still raging. I enjoy this series so much, I watch it nearly every year.
My critique has been discussed at length, so I summarize this way:
I appreciate Wynton Marsalis' discussion of the jazz with which he is familiar. This does not qualify Wynton Marsalis to decide, for everyone else, what constitutes jazz when the question of "fusion" comes up.
Much of fusion, both then and now, is largely rhythm section dominated (electric bass, drums, guitar and keys). Therefore, it may have been difficult for a Marsalis, a horn player, to appreciate.
Why refer to Marsalis and not Burns? Because nearly all of Burns' analysis depends upon the viewpoint of Wynton Marsalis.
Fusion (I call it "hard fusion") is not that difficult to document nor define, but Burns exits the discussion altogether when the subject of fusion is mentioned. Perhaps Ken Burns did not want Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham or Stanley Clarke to have the last word on how Fusion helped to keep the creative juices of jazz flowing.
Not all of fusion is rhythm instruments, however. A case could have been made for tenor sax player, Michael Brecker (RIP), who appeared regularly on many of fusion's finest releases including his own group, Steps Ahead. Brecker went on to produce outstanding post-bop jazz ... Read More
Rating: -
I will admit that this series has its shortcomings, however no one else has even attempted to produce anything better. I'm no great lover of Ken Burns, but he did at least attempt to bring the history of Jazz to the masses in some form or another. It's not perfect by any means, but if it can spur the interest of even one person to delve into the music itself then the doc and Burns have done their job. To all the naysayer's I propose that you shut your traps unless you yourselves are planning to raise the money, do the research, conduct the interviews, edit the material and produce a "more definitive" documentary on the history of America's only original art form? And to those morons that claim that this doc is somehow "racist" towards whites, you should all just shut the f*** up!
Rating:  -
I saw some of this series when it first came out on PBS, and now I'm seeing it again, having finished "The Gift" up to this point. Frankly, I don't know how much more of it I can take.
The subject matter is fine, but the amount of gushing hyperbole from the Talking Heads is close to unbearable. I suppose it's perfectly OK to be enthusiastic about something, but such total lack of restraint renders anything they have to say suspect; there's no judgment here, no sense of balance.
I teach a music appreciation class at a large university, and if there's one thing I've learned about effective teaching over the years, it is to refrain from telling your students how they're supposed to feel or react. Don't go around telling them that Mozart is a Great Composer and therefore they are supposed to feel ecstatic or moved or whatever when they hear Mozart. Present Mozart -- with affection, however much or little you can in the time you have, and let them make up their own minds.
But that's precisely what these talking heads -- and presumably Ken Burns -- absolutely refuse to do. They tell me what I'm supposed to feel or think about these figures in question. By their careless tossing around of hyperbolic phrases, overstatements, and ridiculously pompous pontificating, they leech out a great deal of the value of the subject.
Which is truly a shame, given that the subject is a truly engaging one, or can be. The series contains a wealth of images ... Read More
Rating:  -
My main issue is that Wynton suggested after seeing Civil Wars and Baseball that Burns should do a series about the only truly American art for that being Jazz (or black music from field hollers to blues etc).Wynton is sort of neo-con about jazz and I am not into totally free jazz or commercial fusion or jazz light.I agree that the innovations after 1964 into atonal free jazz or more akin to avant garde classical like Schoeneberg or Cage.But when covering be-bop into the important "New Thing" that fit politics and culture of time iot was like "Coltrane and Miles had gone into modal jazz but newer ,younger players started an avant garde "New Thing....but wait in 1964 Louis Armstrong had his last big hit with "Hello Dolly".All of the critics were referred to Burns by Marsallis or the themes and emphasis were his own as Burns didn't know what to do but photo research.You've heard this I am sure but in case you haven't there it is.I think Armstrong (and actually Bechet before him to lesser degree) revolutionized everything with the solo in jazz and he and Ellington then Bird and Diz,Monk,and Miles and Trane were the main figures.But jazz is so rich from post beatles avante-garde,the Loft Scene,European players and critics that for as long as it was many voices were left out and that's a shame.
Peace
Chazz
Rating: -
Ken Burns is an effective filmakeer; if only he were an effective historian! Jazz is a deeply flawed project. The rise of recorded sound and the mass media compressed the history of Jazz. In less than a century, Jazz has seen as many movements/counter-movements and revolutionary outbursts as art or classical music saw over many centuries, but in Jazz, movements last years, not decades, and what was considered "radical" in 1945 was "traditional" or even "old hat" by 1960. Yet this rich tug of war between sub-genres is almost entirely absent in Burns' work.
Because Burns is not a trained musician, he relied on others to flesh out the idiom's history for him. In choosing Wynton Marsalis as his cultural beacon, he inadvertently chose by far one of the most conservative voices in Jazz. Mr. Marsalis is a formidable musician, but many in Jazz dispute his very narrow outlook on the art. In Mr. Marsalis' world, the only "real" jazz is blues infused. Blues is indeed a powerful component of jazz, but the 12 bar alternation of the three chords (I,IV and V) is just one of a panoply of styles. Styles that don't fall into Marsalis' limited stylistic orbit are either completely ignored in Burns' work, or dismissed as the peripheral musical ravings of a hack.
Burns' film only covers some aspects of Jazz from 1900 to 1961. It's like telling the story of Classical music but stopping short with Brahms, blithely ignoring anything that came after 1890, sweeping the huge burst of ... Read More
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