Posted by Robert Hoyt on February 04, 2001 at 23:16:23:
The Ken Burns documentary on jazz bothered me as I watched it unfold over several January evenings on P.B.S. Compiling a history is always, of necessity, a subjective exercise to some extent. When trying to summarize any series of events, one has to make decisions about what to include and what to omit. Ken Burns had to make choices and he opted for certain themes which he thought would trace the history of the music and on which he could drape the main events that he wanted to describe. He must have concluded that telling the story of jazz would be an excellent opportunity to weave in all types of significant themes, i.e. World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, the move of middle class America to the suburbs and, especially, the constant and divisive theme of racism in our society. It wasn't going to just be the chronology of how this music developed in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America; it was to be a micorcosm of life in the U.S.A. over the past one-hundred years. It had to be big and important and profound.
From all accounts, Burns was not a jazz aficionado until six years ago when he became a true convert to the glories of "America's only art form" and began working on his nineteen hour documentary. He would need help in making sense of the myriad types of music now included under the banner of "jazz," music so disparet in tone and temperament that the boundaries of definition would be severely strained to include Joe Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton alongside John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Who were the really important figures? What were the seminal events? Which types of music were actually jazz and which ones were bogus? Apparently he turned to Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Crouch, Gary Givens, et. al. and adopted the concept so common among critics that jazz evolved in an unbroken succession from rude, humble origins to a glorious art form via Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and, oh yeah, Wynton Marsalis. This view posits the belief that there have been certain transformations in jazz over the years which must be accepted as obvious improvements. These include the notion that extended solos and unlimited freedom of expression are good, while formal structure and anything that encroaches on this unlimited expression is something that must be overcome. Conversely any "retro" movements, any expression that doesn't further what the critics have concluded is the acceleration of jazz from a mere popular music to an art form, are to be disdained and dismissed. Modernism just has to be an improvement over the simple, folk-like, embryonic statements of those early pioneers, who wouldn't have known a flatted fifth from their ear-hole.
So "now you has Jazz," a film by Ken Burns. And now, what Bunk Johnson and George Lewis did on the American Music sides; what Lu Watters, Turk Murphy and Bob Scobey achieved at the Dawn Club; what Wild Bill, Pee Wee, Teagarden and all the barefoot mob accomplished on the bandstand at Condon's in the Village, counts for nothing. Ever hear of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings? Ken Burns hasn't. It doesn't matter that they were extremely influential, were one of the earliest jazz bands on wax and had perhaps the first interracial record session. And who was that guy who sang with the Rhythm Boys? I seem to recall he was highly regarded in some circles many years ago. Didn't fit into Burns' vision, I guess. If only he'd died a young and tragic death or burned his brain out on heroin, he might have made the cut.
No Red Nichols and His Five Pennies. (He didn't make many records, anyway, did he?) No Bob Crosby Band wailing on "South Rampart Street Parade." No Jelly Roll tapping his foot and crooning "Mamie's Blues" into Alan Lomax's portable recorder at the Library of Congress. No Commodore Music Shop where Milt Gabler held forth. No rebirth of traditional jazz with Mutt and Ory and Jimmie Noone on Orson Wells' Mercury Theater. No trad boom in England with Ken Colyer and Chris Barber. No delicious ensembles by Matty Matlock and the "Pete Kelly's" gang in the West Coast studios. No Preservation Hall in New Orleans where Percy Humphrey, Kid Thomas and Jim Robinson "stomped 'em down" one last time. Didn't happen. Or if it did, it was so inconsequential that it didn't merit even the slightest nod of acknowledgement.
And that's the real shame in what Burns has perpetrated. Disenfranchisement is a popular term these days, covering a multitude of sins but that's what it seems to me Burns has accomplished. He's disenfranchised a whole legion of people whose taste in music doesn't coincide with the prevailing theme among some jazz critics that traditional jazz, or "dixieland," doesn't really count. It's not real music and the people who prefer it couldn't possibly comprehend the more sophisticated and avante-garde expressions of the real jazz masters of today. Traditional jazz can't be talked about seriously anymore when telling the story of this "great and only American Art Form," with a capital A. At least that's the gospel according to Burns. And it's a terrible insult to the music and many of its greatest practitioners.