Ken Burns

When I took American History in high school, we watched Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary. I liked it for three reasons: (1) Since he wasn’t lecturing while it was on, Mr. Taylor was less likely to suddenly ask you a question because he could see you weren’t paying attention, (2) I have always been very interested in the Civil War and (3) it had lots of cool photographs (I think it’s funny that every Civil War picture is attributed to Matthew Brady), even if it did keep showing the same ones over and over again.

When many years later in 2001, Ken Burns came out with a documentary called Jazz, I was very excited. Jazz was my “thing.” I worked at a recording studio at the time, and my co-workers, who were largely unfamiliar with the style but intrigued by my “strange” tastes in music, all made it a point to watch the miniseries. Imagine my profound disappointment when the documentary turned out to be revisionist history propaganda legitimizing only commercial pop as relevant jazz and all but entirely dismissing the socially conscious, revolutionary music that I held so dearly.

Wynton Marsalis seems the major consultant for Ken Burns’ Jazz. Consulting Wynton Marsalis on jazz is like consulting Drew Barrymore on television acting. I hold him largely responsible for the trite bullshit you hear at contemporary jazz clubs, on jazz radio and at Barnes and Noble. I’m going to try to hold back the disdain I have for this man in this blog, but I hope he suffocates from his head being shoved so far up his own pompous ass.

I like Louis Armstrong as much as the next guy. His work with King Oliver was revolutionary, and his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings absolutely essential. But after the twenties, he spent most of his career singing the blues and pop show tunes for a white audience, albeit with a singular voice. The song he is best known for, “What a Wonderful World,” is either highly satirical or highly embarrassing, but poignantly demonstrates that he was what we now call a “sellout.” Why, then, does the documentary spend at least 50% of the ten episodes obsessed with Louis Armstrong?

The first time I heard a Charlie “Bird” Parker recording, in 1993, it was by far the most “out there” thing I had ever heard. It took me several listens before I realized that he was playing a song with a melody and not just moving his fingers as fast as he could and blowing. His jagged rhythms, blazing melodic lines and ingenious use of harmony created be-bop, but for all of its uncompromising complexity, Parker’s compositions are entirely catchy, and I find myself humming them all the time.

Charlie Parker was a revolutionary and a genius who expressed the innermost expressions of himself and his race. But instead of playing the great bebop tunes penned by arguably the greatest musician of all time, Ken Burns completely misrepresented Bird by focusing on him covering ballads. My jaw dropped in disbelief as I watched them kill my hero on PBS. When, the next day, the owner of the recording studio (my boss) remarked that it was interesting that Bird was considered revolutionary at the time, but that his playing was tame and mellow by today’s standards, my heart almost broke.

I dejectedly watched the next couple episodes, curious to see how they would destroy my other heroes, most of whom came into their own in the late fifties and early sixties. The answer was clear- they’d do it by hardly mentioning them, discrediting them and by not playing their best work. Episode nine, the second to last episode, ended at the end of the fifties, leaving my favorite era of jazz, the sixties, untouched. I didn’t watch episode ten.