I've been watching Ken Burns' 2001 documentary miniseries, "Jazz". It's all about the evolution of jazz and the great names who helped direct that evolution. The segments progress in more-or-less chronological order, from the early 1800's in New Orleans through the minstrel and ragtime eras, into the jitterbugging, Lindy-hopping 20's, the swinging 30's and so on...

I've just finished the 6th episode, which ends in the late 1930's just as big-band swing is peaking, and that puts me at somewhere close to the 12 hour mark.

It's fascinating. Many of the photographs he pans across are spectacular. Watching the musicians navigate their respective eras, on and off the stage, is enlightening. And the shit these geniuses had to put up with due to the insanity of racial segregation was awful, to say the least. How can you tell a guy who can play trumpet like Louis Armstrong or compose like Duke Ellington that they aren't good enough to eat or sleep in the hotel whose ballroom they just filled ? Christ, people are stupid!

A couple of things disappoint me about Burns' presentation, so I must complain. First, his musical selections tend to stick too much to one style. There's way too much of that almost comically fast and somewhat stiff, 20's-style: fox-trotty, ragtime, popular dance music, and nowhere near enough blues-flavored or down-tempo pieces. It seems to dominate every episode and makes it hard to hear how jazz progressed. This is made even worse by the way he jumps around within an era, as he tells different stories. He'll play something that really sounds different from other music of the era, and that sets you up to think that you've just reached a pivotal moment. But then he'll shift to a different musician, whose story starts five years back. And so it's more of a churning, three steps forward, two steps back, progression.

And, he loves superlatives. His favorite musicians are always pioneers, breaking stylistic barriers, changing the way other musicians thought about rhythm or tempo or whatever. But sometimes he fails to illustrate what he's talking about. He'll give some guy credit for forever changing the way solos were played, for example, then follow it with a snippet of a song that sounds pretty much like all the other songs he's played on the episode. And he hardly ever gives an example of another later musician demonstrating said influence. Then, he'll backtrack six years to start the next story and that's the end of that. You just have to take his word for it.

And then there's the Art Tatum bit. I think Tatum shows up in episode 5, early 30's. So, you're watching along, you've had a good 10 hours of ragtime, foxtrot, jitterbug dance music which all kind of blends together after a while. And then there's a little story on pianist Art Tatum. Burns sets him up as the blind guy who was so good other pianists would get up and let Tatum take over their spot on-stage, if he so much as walked into the room. Brilliant pianist, obviously. And then he plays some Tatum. And it's nothing at all like the big blocky 'stride' piano that everybody else was playing - none of that loud boogie-woogie stuff. In this bit, Tatum was playing long flowing piano lines with extended chords stuck in here and there in passing, bits of dissonance, spinning well off the melody, with no apparent desire to get people dancing. In other words, it sounded like the more introspective jazz of the 50's. More like Monk, less like Fats Waller. And it was the first time I'd noticed a real significant leap in the sound of jazz, in the whole series to that point. But Burns didn't mention that. Tatum gets credit for being a great player, but Burns doesn't note that Tatum, at least in that bit he played, was twenty years ahead of everyone else. Maybe Burns wants to say that because it took 20 years for the mainstream of jazz to pick up on what Tatum was doing in the early 30's that Tatum wasn't a pioneer, just an oddball who stumbled into a style that others would rediscover later. Or maybe Burns didn't want to get ahead of the story he was trying to tell (and therefore miss the chance to show six more hours of big-band swing!) Or, maybe I need to wait a few more episodes to see if Burns picks up on Tatum again. In any case, it puzzled me.

But, those complaints aside, I do enjoy this. Most of the commentators are pretty interesting; especially Wynton Marsalis who seems to live and breathe this stuff and does a good job of illustrating the "revolutionary" changes this or that player made when Burns' musical choices fail to make the point. And, Burns spends enough time on the bands or soloists that he likes to give a solid overview of their particular sound, so it's pretty easy to find new musicians to investigate. And, again, the history is interesting.

So, in the past week or so, I've purchased collections from:

• Sidney Bechet. Hot damn, that guy was a beast! When he takes a solo it sounds like he's going to blow his horn to pieces.
• Louis Armstrong's 5- and 7-piece bands. Need to listen more.
• Benny Goodman's trio/quartet. I've always loved small-band clarinet jazz, but never knew Goodman did any. Thought he was all about the big band.
• Count Basie. He sounded a lot more interesting on the show than he does in the collection I bought.

Luckily, these things are all like $7 on Amazon for 18 or 20 songs. Bargain bin!

Obviously, I got shit to do at work today...