Metally.net Music Store - Ken Burns's Jazz: The Story of American Music

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Manufacturer: Sony

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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0074646143223
Format: Box set
Label: Sony
Manufacturer: Sony
Number Of Discs: 5
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 2000-11-14
Studio: Sony

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Not the whole story, but a good start
Comment: When I discussed the Ric Burns documentary about the old West with an Amerindian acquaintance, I complained that the film concentrated on the Lakota, to the exclusion of other peoples. My friend answered that, as the Lakota was the best known native American culture, that was a good place to start, and the audience would then move on to learn about other parts of the story.

I suppose the same is true of the documentary by Ric's brother Ken Burns, on the history of Jazz, on which this box set is based. It is heavy on Louis Armstrong and on the Big Band sound of the Swing era - probably the Jazz best known to the general public - but light in other areas, including the many, varied strands of Jazz in the last 30 years or so. There is a whole series of albums in the Ken Burns Jazz Collection, featuring individual artists, for those who want to pursue the story and start to fill in the gaps.

It is easy to list regrettable omissions from this set (and many reviewers have done so) and just as easy to point out how impossible it is to do full justice to a century of music that had multiple sources and spread rapidly to a plethora of sub-genres (and many reviewers have done that too). The omission of Erroll Garner is one that struck me, especially ironic as the booklet accompanying this set has his name displayed on the cover! The British Trad Jazz that took hold in the early 50s and is still going strong (Chris Barber, Kenny Ball and their followers) is another indispensible part of Jazz history that finds no place in this collection. I realize that this is specifically titled the story of American music, but Django Reinhardt gets a look in, as does some forgettable French rapper.

But this collection of 94 tracks, featuring recordings from 1917 to 1995, attractively packaged and with good notes, remains a great introduction to Jazz. In fact, now that the price has come down so much, it can be recommended for every music fan.

Customer Rating:

Summary: KEN BURNS JAZZ
Comment: this music is classic jazz!
for anyone starting a jazz collection, you need this set.
if you like the pbs jazz series, your gonna love this music!

Customer Rating:

Summary: A Good Selection, An Odd Accompaniment to the Documentary
Comment: To chronicle the first six decades or so of American jazz in five CD's is an ambitious undertaking. Ken Burns pulled it off by making it the soundtrack to stories he wanted to tell. This made for heavy representation of songs from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis easy choices. The documentary, in some ways, tells like an allegory of racism and civil rights in 20th century America, yet the soundrack includes white musicians like Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Dave Brubek and Benny Goodman in the CD selections. Brubek's inclusion is particularly notable after the documentary was so dismissive of "West Coast Jazz" - I don't even remember Take 5 being mentioned in the documentary. It would have been nice to include Bill Evans since every jazz pianist that followed him credited Evans as an influence, but his work as side man on "So What" is all we get. Herbie Hancock's Rockit is nowhere close to representative of his body of work. My main disappointment is that after Free Jazz and the like, jazz had nowhere left to go except backwards, yet the contemporary "pop" jazz at the end comes across as the latest and greatest thing yet. I respectfully disagree.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great Intro to Jazz
Comment: For those just getting into Jazz or just need a refresher course this is a great CD. I brought it for my husband who is a big Jazz fan and he just loves it and gets alot of use out of them.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Ken Burn's Jazz CD
Comment: A great cd with many remastered original recordings of jazz greats. Each cd features a different jazz era, so one can select a jazz genre to suit one's mood.

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Editorial Reviews:

This five-CD box set soundtrack to filmmaker Ken Burns's 10-part, 19-hour documentary Jazz spans nearly a century of jazz styles, from the martial rhythms of James Reese Europe to the soul-jazz of Grover Washington Jr. It includes time-tested classics like Benny Goodman's 1938 classic, "Sing, Sing, Sing"; John Coltrane's chanting 1965 immortal track, "A Love Supreme"; Billie Holiday's blue-ember ballad, "God Bless the Child"; and Ella Fitzgerald peeling off "A-Tisket A-Tasket." Bebop is represented by Charlie Parker's orchestral bop version of "Just Friends"; Thelonious Monk's nocturnal calling card, "'Round Midnight"; and Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" and "Groovin' High."

The jazz-instrumentalist-as-singer comes to life on Coleman Hawkins's "Body and Soul" and Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers' "Doodlin'." Clifford Brown and Max Roach's "I Get a Kick out of You" epitomizes the hard-bop era, while Miles Davis's "So What" stands as the modal masterpiece. The cool school is in session with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan dishing out "Walkin' Shoes," and the Modern Jazz Quartet's soulful elegy "Django" straddles all the above musical orbits. As for Django Reinhardt, he's featured on "Shine" with the justly famed Le Quartet du Hot Club de France.

Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" and "Potato Head Blues" and Duke Ellington's rousing rendition of Billy Strayhorn's anthem, "Take the A Train," and his moody "Solitude" show why they are the Olympian masters of this art form--and the most frequently featured artists in the series. Although Ken Burns tries bringing the music up-to-date with Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, and two jazz-hip-hop-influenced tracks--Herbie Hancock's robotic "Rockit" and the French-language "Un Aige en Danger" by MC Solaar and bass legend Ron Carter--there are significant holes here. After Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, the avant-garde period from the late 1960s to the 1980s is lacking. And aside from the bossa nova hit "Desafinado," Latin jazz is also missing. It's a tough task summarizing jazz in five CDs, and Burns has given us a vibrant and vivid multicolored aural portrait of the music. --Eugene Holley Jr.