Ken Burns-Jazz The Story Of American Jazz   (5 CD Box Set)
Verve/Columbia

Filmmaker Ken Burns say's for a lot of us exploring history is like reading the phone book. He has a point, I still get flashbacks of trying to understand or at least remember the facts of High School History. We seem to be a society who lives in the present, we worry about the future, but we have very little time for the past. Interestingly when we talk with someone who's been there or at least has a passion for history it seems to wake us up and we listen. Ken Burns who scored big points making history more than just palatable but essential with his PBS series on Baseball & the Civil War has returned with the final part of his Americana trilogy JAZZ.
Last Months Magnificent tribute to this vital art form showed us that History is a story well told so this 5 CD box set is more than your average best of series, it provides us with a solid evolution of the genre. By not being encyclopedic the TV series had an excitement and I think were bound to see a lot of born-again Jazzer's exploring not just this compillation but the 22 individual artist CD's released under the Ken Burns Jazz banner through Verve/Universal & Columbia.

The 94 song box set fittingly opens with the legend described as being the messiah of Jazz Louis Armstrong. Burns says "Each time we did an interview for the film, whether it was with musicians who played with him years ago or musicians struggling today to come to terms with his legacy; whether it was critics, writers or historians, friends, hangers-on or people in management, each would in the end shake their head and say that Louis Armstrong was a "gift from God" or "an Angel." Others that built the Jazz foundation like Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane etc. are well represented. Though this is a must collection for neophytes and aficionados alike with great segues from ragtime to swing something gets lost from bebop to fusion in other words nothing important has happened since the sixties. Burns explains "However, this is a history, and so the bulk of our series is pre-1970. I consider the modern era the province of contemporary critics and journalists. Not enough water has passed under the bridge to make historical judgements of the past 30 years." So if your clear that this is the history to the art form you'll be in Jazz heaven. I listened to the whole set in one sitting and thought of the old quote from drummer Art Blakey "Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life" I actually felt better educated from this set than all the other Jazz compilations out there and remember there are many. Through the music and superb liner notes we get the feeling that this is a kind of homage to black Americans a common thread in both of burns previous PBS series. It's important to point out that Jazz and Swing represented 70 % of the music industry in the 30's and 40's with interest high on this project and great signage in most major CD shops Ken Burns Jazz could help the genre out of the single digits.

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