The Ken Burns Jazz box set...worth the plunge (if I find a cheap used copy) or not?

My picks:
1. Louis Armstrong - This is Jazz #1
2. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
3. The Best of Billie Holiday on Verve
4. Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth
5. John Coltrane - My Favorite Things

also: get a best of by peewee russell

these would have released records under their own name with other ppl there and so on...work through it like that.

Don't get the Jazz box. And if you want a really great, non-obvious Miles album, pick up Water Babies.

I'm not a jazz fan though.

Just keep telling yourself that... ;-)

the last disc is great as an example of just how bad jazz can go.

!!!

I don't think it's any secret that neither Burns nor Wynton know or care where the good jazz is, post-70s.

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd500/d515/d51530d003a.jpg

http://www.kind-of-blue.de/bilder/boxen/philharmonic_box_set.jpg

That sounds awesome!

Then personally I reckon the next ones you need are:
Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um

it's quite clear that Wynton Marsalis is something of a cockfarmer. but there may be something to the idea that once jazz became solely the preserve of whitey soi-disant sophisticates it headed up its own arse. Not like I'd know or anything.

the last disc of the Ken Burns Jazz set is mostly hilarious in its awfulnesse, including Marsalis' lame-o pieces.

I tend to think that his genius lay more in identifying musical styles that were already happening at grass roots level and co-opting those styles (and frequently the young unknown musicians that actually *had* invented them); personalising them as necessary to incorporate the trademark Miles sound; then popularising the style by using his own existing high profile to raise the profile of the music.
[Compare and contrast: David Bowie]

Of course this may be complete bollocks.

once jazz became solely the preserve of whitey soi-disant sophisticates it headed up its own arse

Do you mean the musicians or the critics/supporters? If it's the former I have to disagree. No one will dispute that jazz isn't popular music anymore, especially black popular music, but that doesn't mean the music isn't happening and that the players aren't for real. I get just as much out of Mark Turner, Brian Blade, Kenny Garrett, Reid Anderson, Dave Holland, Derrick Shezbie, and Ben Perowsky as I do out of anyone from the 40's/50's/60's. Most of the them are black, but that's not the point, they're all doing some really fresh shit because they're great musicians, not out of some elitist agenda.

The dark horse 2nd Miles disc after KoB is My Funny Valentine & 4 & More, reissued as a 2cd set "1964 the Complete Concert" this is Miles playing his old repetoire, including some music from KoB, much, much faster, mostly due to Tony Williams' aggression. A big part of understanding and, most importantly, enjoying jazz, is becoming familiar with standards and the different interpretations that exist of them, and the 1964 concert is a good way to do that.

After 1964 Concert, get ESP or Miles Smiles... for electric Miles, I really love "Get Up With It". The song "He Loved Him Madly" supposedly inspired Eno to develop Ambient music...

Benny Goodman.

Fletcher Henderson.

Haven't listened to the other two (unless I borrowed them before, which is possible). Anyway, I was just being brain-dead or something.

However jazz seems to have gone through a seismic shift around 1957-59 (cf: 1977-79 in rock maybe?) and unfortunately it's around this point that Mr Burns seems to have lost perspective / interest / the plot.

As a Rockist I think you're far more likely to "get" jazz if you start off with some of the stuff that's convinced countless previous generations of rockists's before you:
Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew;
John Coltrane - Blue Train, A Love Supreme;
Charlea Mingus - Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady.

Once you've tried those I reckon you'll have enough information to either know that jazz definitely isn't for you (yet!) or which aspects of jazz interest you enough to want to explore further.

Seriously, I should stop posting so impulsively.

("Rockist" is just a handle and not necessarily an indication of my aesthetic.)

Or at least list one or two that you really do enjoy.

I don't know what's on the Burns thing, but I was going to suggest one way into Monk might be to check out his Columbia recordings. The first thing I ever heard from him was Monk's Dream from 1962. It's largely compositions he recorded earlier in his career (well, in fact, a lot of what Monk did was continually record the same basic songbook over and over), but in the lp format the band is able to stretch out, take longer solos. It's a lot less dense and frenetic than the earlier classic Blue Note stuff where they had to compact it all within the strictures of 78s. I mean, Monk is one of the more relaxed soloists of the bop era, but even with him 20 three-minute compositions flying by on a cd can be tough to digest. With something like Monk's Dream, or the earlier stuff on Riverside that was intended for lp, you're allowed to let your attention wander in and out a bit more. The extended solos give you the opportunity to situate yourself, to pick up on what it is in his playing that makes Monk uniquely Monk. That can be tough to do when he's only soloing for a couple verses or whatever. Also, check out anything where he's playing blues, which can be easier to get into and follow than his own knotty compositions...

I have one Riverside Monk album (Thelonious Himself) which I like a little bit, but only a little. (Actually my favorite track is the last one, with Coltrane.) I've always like "'Round Midnight" as a composition, though I don't like every version of it I hear (including some by Monk himself). When I started playing the Ken Burns Monk collection tonight, it was kind of interesting to realize that I knew most of these pieces, although I didn't know, or had forgotten, that he wrote them. I don't think I would find bluesy stuff easier. I don't especially like the blues.

*

I've made this list before, but I really like lots of Sun Ra. (I don't hear where Monk is any more difficult than some of the Sun Ra I like, but perhaps there is something going on technically that I am missing.) My favotie Sun Ra collection is Out There a Minute, but I like lots of his other recordings. I think it has a lot to do with his unusual rhythm section (which some have accused of being sloppy in places--maybe so, but I like it) and just the sounds themselves that the Arkestra produced which often seem quite distinctive. I am easily turned off if I don't like how things sound on a basic, irreducible, level, even if the sound is organized into interesting structures. (I don't want to give the impression that it's just the rhythms and pure colors of the Arkestra that appeal to me, but I think that makes it easier for me to get into the structures.)

I like some Coltrane: "Giant Steps" (the track song, not the whole album); "My Favorite Things" (esp. the Live at Newport version, which I happened to hear on the radio a long time ago and now have on CD--but also the album My Favorite Things, for the most part); some cuts ("Wise One," I think is the main one) from Crescent; "Teo" (from Someday My Prince Will Come), but not particularly Miles Davis on the same track; and A Love Supreme when I am in the right mood, but I almost never want to listen to it.

Billie Holiday. And now I am learning to like Ella Fitzgerald's songbook material. But I think it would be easy to like these (and other) jazz singers without particularly liking most other types of jazz.

Scattered things: Art Ensemble of Chicago's "Theme De Yoyo", a track off a Jimmy Giuffre album (that's out of print, of course), "Driva Man" (sp? am I imagining it's spelled that way when it's really spelled conventionally) from the Max Roach Freedom Now Suite (something like that) album (also out of print and I don't have a copy in any form). I could think of some others, I'm sure, but the very fact that so often it's a case of getting into one particularly piece, rather than a whole album or career makes me think I don't have much feel for the genre itself.

Really, I've been exposed to quite a bit. I'm only talking about stuff I like. And I've actually been pleased to find a track or two that I've liked on some of these other Ken Burns CD, but to say "Here's a collection of Charlie Parker's most famous work. Yeah, I like a couple of these songs" is sort of the same as saying, "I don't really like Charlie Parker."

Also, there's stuff I liked as a teenager that I like a whole lot less now, including Ornette Coleman (things that were coming out at the time, so stuff with Prime Time) and Albert Ayler, so what am I to make of that?

*Name change to avoid confusion over "Rockist", "Rocket", etc.

13-Jun-2001 22:11:32

I am not trying to be a troll (maybe I am being one, but I'm not trying to be one!); however, I'd like to confuse the issues a little here. I do not consider myself a jazz fan, though there are three figures in jazz who made a lot of music I really like, and there are other things I have heard here and there that I have liked. Here is my case history. I grew up listening primarily to pop, rock and R&B, plus the music I heard at church. My mom had a few records of big band music, but not many. When I was in 5th or 6th grade I started to listen to (probably fairly mainstream jazz) on the radio, on my own (from what I can remember). Around the same time I had my first exposure to a punk rock (cover) band and liked it. Around this time my family moved to a new area and at some point I went looking for the station I had been listening to and ended up stumbling onto an entirely different station, which introduced me to an incredibly eclectic mix of music: modern classical/avant-garde/experimental, free jazz, electronic music, various obscure progressive rock from Europe, reggae, punk/new wave/industrial, traditional forms of music from around the world, and other things I didn't take to as much, including a lot of folk music from closer to home (home being the U.S., in my case). Anyway, in junior high and high school I tended to gravitate to whatever was avant-garde. It's hard for me to sort out how much of the avant-garde (in all the arts) I really liked, and how much I was simply intrigued by, but I definitely liked some of it. In fact, I can think of some free jazz and fusion (e.g., "Bitches Brew") records I liked then which I don't especially like now. For a long time I considered myself someone who liked free jazz, but who didn't especially have a taste for anything from earlier phases of jazz. I think the thing that finally killed that illusion was going to see Charles Gayle play live. It made me realize that I didn't really love free jazz, as such, after all. Charles Gayle made me cry "uncle!" I have also seen the following widely recognized performers, live (and possibly others I am not remembering): the Sun Ra Arkestra (with and without Sun Ra); Don Cherry; Oliver Lake; Steve Lacey; Pharoah Sanders; Max Roach Archie Shepp and Odean Pope; John Zorn (if you consider him jazz); George Russell; McCoy Tyner; Cecil Taylor; and Byard Lancaster. This past winter I bought a "starter" set of jazz CDs from 1201 Records, focused mostly on big band and bop. While I certainly respect the skill and artistry involved, very little of the music actually grabbed me. In fact, I was relieved to finish an initial listening to the whole collection, so that I could go often and listen to things I wanted to be listening to. I have taken a couple group swing classes, but that did not seem to make me enjoy the music more (where learning to salsa had quickly turned me into a salsa music fan).

Despite years of exposure to jazz of various sorts, much of it self-initiated, I still don't like most of it. Incidentally, the three people who have been at the center of a lot of work that I especially like are: Billie Holiday, John Coltrane (whose sound always stood out for me even back in high school), and Sun Ra. On the one hand, I think I am able to enjoy their music without really digging jazz a whole lot. On the other hand, I have to admit that appreciating how their work relates to jazz more broadly would add depth to my appreciation and perhaps enjoyment. I don't find that I get anywhere by pushing myself, and I'm not even sure why I should want to, except that, well, for one thing, it would be nice to like this form of music which grew up in the U.S., instead of being more at home, overall, with Arabic music, for example. (Let me tell you, if you have not learned to enjoy Oum Kalthoum's singing--YOU are missing something!) I will keep trying, but not very hard. Tomorrow night I go see Andrew Hill for the first time, Saturday Jimmy Bosch (also for the first time--but he really is more Latin than jazz), and Sunday the Arkestra (always a treat). And then maybe I'll get around to buying those Carpenters CDs I want (no joking).

(Apologies to Lord Custos for belatedly hijacking his thread and going on/off about myself.)

armstrong hot fives and hot sevens
anything by bechet
ellington: far east suite
something feat.charlie parker & dizzie gillespie (i've got an LP called "the birth of modern jazz" tho that's probably long vanished (haha it has the WORST drawings ever committed of the two of them on the cover)
m.davis: in a silent way (personally i prefer post-bitches stuff b ut that's possibly a diff.kind of music altogether)
ornette coleman: science fiction
and the 1987 company rec.w lee konitz on it

the one thing that jumped out of mark's list was 'anything by bechet'.

(And I have done a little digging into Coltrane's discography. I must have heard at least a dozen other Coltrane discs by now.)

for instance, I hate the write ups that coltrane's late period discs get and yet there's shit loads of praising for a love supreme and so on. I don't think there is an ideal entry point with coltrane and if the focus on to that ONE record shifted then that would be welcome.

''and the 1987 company rec.w lee konitz on it''

its called ONCE and its on incus (search my lee konitz thread on ilm too :-))

In my experience, flogging jazz recs to a fairly mainstream puntership, 'Birth of the Cool' (too OLD sounding) and 'Bitches Brew' (too FREAKY sounding) put loads more ppl off Miles/jazz than poor old 'Kind of Blue' - just as 'Ascension' and 'Blue Train' are far bigger turn-offs for 'Trane neophytes than 'A Love Supreme' (tho' I agree it's a more 'problematic' rec, and def. not the best intro to either Coltrane OR 'jazz' - ditto v. much 'Free Jazz' by Ornette Coleman)

I'd say that most of the ppl posting on this thread know more abt jazz than 95% of the gen pub, and that the ILM-jazzbo-aesthetic is HEAVILY skewed to the out/free/hardcore/improv end of the market I mean, me too, but a lot of the (FANTASTIC) recs listed on this thread cld well be utter turn-off for disco/soul/pop/danceheads wanting to get 'into' jazz, for instance)

Here a few recs that I find often hit the spot w/ ppl who don't know too much abt jazz but want to 'learn' (tho' most of this stuff wld be kind of a turn-off for dedicated freesters):

'Chet' - Chet Baker
'Mister Magic' - Grover Washington Jr
'Thrust' - Herbie Hancock
'Sweetnighter' - Weather Report
'Undercurrent' - Bill Evans/Jim Hall
'Workin' - Miles Davis
'Way out West' - Sonny Rollins
'The Steamer' - Stan Getz
'The Melody at Night, With You' - Keith Jarrett
'Memphis Underground' - Herbie Mann
'Root Down' - Jimmy Smith
'Speak No Evil' - Wayne Shorter
'Point of Departure' - Andrew Hill
'Fusion'/'Thesis' - Giuffre/Swallow/Bley

Mingus/Monk/Ornette Coleman/Dolphy - tough-going at first

I don't mean to be contrary, I do know this is the accepted orthodoxy but this has always kinda baffled me - I've always found Mingus in particular to be *extremely* listenable and there's a lot of Monk, Ornette & Dolphy's stuff that (I think) is reasonably accessible too.

OK so you probably wouldn't want to start off with "Free Jazz"; but are "Something Else!", "The Art Of The Improvisers", "The Shape Of Jazz To Come", "Change Of The Century" or "This Is Our Music" *really* that much more difficult than, say, "Point Of Departure"?

Incidentally, I've never heard "The Melody At Night With You", but my understanding is that it's hardly a typical Keith Jarrett album so anyone who tried that and liked it and then went on to "The Koln Concert" (being probably his best-known album and one which I think is quite heavy going) would be in for a bit of a shock wouldn't they?

Obviously it's largely personal but I'm sure I'd have been more put off if the first jazz I'd started to explore had been Weather Report (it all sounds a little too much like self-indulgent look-how-clever-we-are wankery to me) or Sonny Rollins (something about his stuff just sounds too chirpy and fuckin' gleeful to me - maybe I just hate fun!)

I did approve of several of the others Andrew mentioned 'though and I'm conscious that I'm digressing so far that in danger of completely losing sight of the point I was originally trying to raise, which was this:

Can someone *please* explain to me what's supposed to be so fuckin'; difficult about dear ol' Charlie Mingus? They even use his music on TV adverts, so surely it can't be that alien(ating).... can it?

Aah well, maybe it's just my ears (I listen to *far* too much Captain Beefheart you know!).

Ah well, maybe there's a clue to my dilemma here - I love loads of jazz but I find most blues (with the notable exception of Howlin' Wolf) pretty tedious to be honest.

On the specific point I'd agree wholeheartedly re: Coltrane but not re: Miles.

As regards the reason why so many jazz collections begin and end there 'though, I have a sneaky suspicion that it's the same reason that e.g. so many reggae collections begin and end with "Legend": *Tokenism*; i.e. sadly I don't think it wouldn't matter whether the two essential jazz albums were Kind Of Blue and A Love Supreme or Unit Structures and Blues & The Absolute Truth or Song For My Father and The Inner Mounting Flame or Brilliant Corners and The Heliocentric World Of Sun Ra Vol. 1 or.... - a lot of jazz collections would begin and end with the requisite 2 albums.

Also: Just listened to disc three. And the shift from Glenn Miller big band chatanooga choo-choo pop-jazz and freakazoidal be-bop "indie" jazz has begun. Very abruptly I might add. After track 09 ("Salt Peanuts") it gets back to "modern" Jazz.
I was hoping the changeover would be a bit less sudden, so I can understand how Jazz went from Bix Beiderbecke to Ornette Coleman. No dice.

The missing link(s) between Beiderbecke to Coleman? Miles Davis (and either Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk if you want to play connections on AMG)!

LUDIC LOG
10.21.2004

ROGER EINHORN, JAZZ HISTORIAN: Tomcat Jepsen changed the way that people thought about jazz kazoo, there's no doubt about it.

BILLY MOORE, TENOR SAXOPHONIST: I remember we was at the Woodhull Lodge up in Syracuse. It wasn't a big jazz town at the time and the Woodhull was about the only place in town you could really wail. I was there with Jody and Yank and Big Bill Murfree, and we was just shooting the breeze, having a few drinks, wating for Monroe who was the headliner that night, when suddenly this short skinny dude who's been up on stage without none of us even starts to take notice draws a harp up to his mouth. At least we thought it was a harp. But man, what come out don't sound like no harp I ever heard.

ROGER EINHORN: Of course, before Tomcat Jepsen, nobody thought about jazz kazoo at all. It wasn't considered one a jazz instrument. It still isn't, really.

TOMMY "BLUE" RODGERS, BANDLEADER: At the height of his career, when we were playing with Tomcat at the Blue Note in D.C., we had some reporter from the San Francisco paper come snooping around, looking for the next big thing. And at the time, we thought that was Tomcat Jepsen. So he asks us to say what it is about the notes he'd blow that was so special. And Hilton Fontaine, who was our clarinetist at the time, he said, "Man, you got to stop listening to the shrill, buzzing, annoying notes he plays. You got to listen to the shrill, buzzing, annoying notes he doesn't play." I never forgot that. That's how come I can tell it to you right now.

ROGER EINHORN: People like to say he's the greatest jazz kazooist of all time. Other people like to say he's the only jazz kazooist of all time. A few people like to say he's the worst jazz kazooist of all time. Who can say who's right? Maybe all of them. Maybe none of them.

KEVIN DUCOTTE, JAZZ CRITIC: The kazoo has always borne a curiously muddled reputation. Half musical instrument, half vocal technique, half that trick you do where you put a piece of paper in front of a comb...there are some schools of thought that say it's the most underrepresented instrument in the jazz idiom since the Jew's harp, while most contemporary critics argue that you can't get anything out of the kazoo you can't get out of a vocalist with throat cancer humming. But everyone agrees that Tomcat Jepsen is the beginning and ending of the conversation about jazz kazoo. Hopefully.

ROGER EINHORN: Bird, Miles, Diz, 'Trane, Monk -- I think it's safe to say that all of these giants of jazz were completely unaware of Tomcat Jepsen's existence. He didn't play with every single one of them. He never met them or interacted with them in any way. He was aware of them, though -- he covered all their material, on that golden kazoo. It was a pretty one-sided relationship.

BILLY MOORE: He was really tearing it up, brother, I tell you that. There was such passion, such intensity, such fire in his playing -- it sounded like the way an angel would play, or maybe the Devil. There would be times when you'd just get so caught up in the moment, so overwhelmed and just blown away by the performance...I mean, sometimes it would be three, four seconds before you'd say to yourself "Wait a minute! That motherfucker is playing a goddamn kazoo!" And then you'd walk the hell out. But those three or four seconds, they were something else.

ROGER EINHORN: It wasn't literally golden, of course. It wasn't even painted gold. It was red and silver. I don't know what it was made of. Tin, I guess.

VICTORIA JEPSEN, WIDOW: What is a kazoo, when all is said and done? It's just a cheap instrument you can get for a quarter at a toy store. It's a little metal tube with a membrane on the side that makes this really irritating buzzing sound when you hum or talk through a hole into it. But when my Tommy would play it, it became...well, it was still a kazoo. But it kept him out of the kitchen. That's something.

And with that, I put this thread back to bed.

The longest tootle
By John Grabowski

[Voice-over] Presenting Ken Burns' 144-hour extremely important documentary, "Jazz," subtitled "Take a Pee Now."

[Fade up on a grainy old photograph of a man in a three-piece suit, holding a cornet. Or a bicycle horn, it's hard to tell.]

Narrator: Skunkbucket LeFunke was born in 1876 and died in 1901. No one who heard him is alive today. The grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. The great-grandchildren of the people who heard him are not alive today. He was never recorded.

Wynton Marsalis: I'll tell you exactly what Skunkbucket LeFunke sounded like. He had this big rippling sound, and he always phrased off the beat, and he slurred his notes. And when the Creole bands were still playing, "De bah de bah ta da tah," he was already playing, "Bo dap da lete do do do bah!" He was just like gumbo, ahead of his time.

Stanley Crouch: When people listened to Skunkbucket LeFunke, what they heard was, "Do do dee bwap da dee dee de da da doop doop dap." And they knew even then how profound that was.

Narrator: It didn't take LeFunke long to advance the art of jazz past its humble beginnings in New Orleans whoredom with the addition of something you've probably never heard of before, the Big Four.

Marsalis: Before the Big Four, jazz drumming sounded like "BOOM chick BOOM chick BOOM chick." But now they had the Big Four, which was so powerful some said it felt like a six. A few visiting musicians even swore they were in an eight.

Crouch: It was smooth and responsive, and there was no knocking and pinging, even on 87 octane!

Narrator: Next came the great Tootsie-Roll Gorton. Gorton was a cornet player, gambler, card shark, pool hustler, pimp, male prostitute, Kelly girl, computer programmer, symphony orchestra tambourine player, brain surgeon and he invented the Internet. He's also famous for the song "Ain't Gonna Give You None of My Tootsie-Roll."

Crouch: Tootsie-Roll is a name that's sexual in nature. Let's just say it's that motion you get when you roll your tootsie, OK? And the people then -- don't kid yourself -- they understood this. And it was very profound.

Marsalis: Tootsie-Roll went "Deep daap da dee dap doop doop bowp bawp." And no one in New Orleans had ever heard that before. In fact, he often put a handkerchief over his head when he sang so no one would steal his stuff.

Narrator: He agreed to make a record, but only if they kept the recording machine turned off.

Crouch: And when you listen to that record today, you hear silence. But he did triumph -- white cats never stole his stuff.

Marsalis: Actually, even though there's nothing on that record, I know what he sounded like, because I am attuned to the highest level of spirituality to which he played. He sounded like this. [Marsalis throws handkerchief over head] "Dweep dep da dee dee bah bah du du bwab be beee."

Narrator: When any musician in the world heard Louis Armstrong for the first time, they gnawed their arm off with envy, then said the angels probably wanted to sound like Louis. When you consider a bunch of angels talking in gruff voices and singing "Hello, Dolly," you realize what a stupid aspiration that is.

Gary Giddins: Louis changed jazz because he was the only cat going "Do da dep do wah be be," while everyone else was doing "Do de dap dit dit dee."

Crouch: And that was very profound.

Marsalis: Like gumbo.

Crouch: Uh-huh.

Matt Glaser: I will always have this fantasy that when Louis performed in Belgium, Werner Heisenberg was in the audience, and he was blown away by Louis' freedom and that's where he got the idea for his uncertainty principle. And I will always believe that even if you say it's crazy.

Giddins: It's crazy.

Marsalis: Because the uncertainty principle, applied to jazz, means you never know if a cat is going to go "Dap da de do ba ta bah" or "Dap da de do bip de beep."

Crouch: And that can be very profound.

Narrator: The Savoy Ballroom brought people of all races, colors and political persuasions together to get sweaty as Europe moved closer and closer to the brink of World War II.

First Savoy Dancer: We didn't care what color you were at the Savoy. We only cared if you were wearing deodorant.

Second Savoy Dancer: Word!

Glaser: I'll bet Arthur Murray was on the dance floor and he was thinking about Louis and that's where he got the idea to open a bunch of dance schools.

Crouch: And that was very profound.

Giddins: Let's talk about Louis some more. We've wasted three minutes of this 57-part documentary not talking about Louis!

Marsalis: He was an angel, a genius and much better than "Cats."

Crouch: He invented the word "cats."

Marsalis: He invented swing, he invented jazz, he invented the telephone, the automobile and scat singing.

Crouch: People today wonder why it's called scat singing. But back then -- don't kid yourself -- they knew what it meant.

Marsalis: There was even a song, "Don't Give Me None of Your Scat."

Crouch: And that was very --

The others: -- Profound!

Crouch: Word!

Glaser: I'll bet Chuck Yeager was in the audience when Louis was hitting those high Cs at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, and that's what made him decide to break the sound barrier.

Crouch: And from there go to Pluto.

[shot of an empty chair]

Marsalis [off camera]: I'm making gumbo. Who wants some?

Giddins, Glaser and Ken Burns raise their hands.

Crouch: "BOOM chick BOOM chick BOOM chick BOOM chick ..."

Narrator: In 1964, John Coltrane was at his peak, Eric Dolphy was in Europe, where he would eventually die, the Modern Jazz Quartet was making breakthrough recordings in the field of third stream music, Miles Davis was breaking new barriers with his second great quintet and Charlie Mingus was extending jazz composition to new levels of complexity, to name just a few. But we're going to talk about Louis singing "Hello Dolly" instead.

Crouch: Louis went, "Ba ba yaba do do dee da bebin doo wap deet deet do da da."

Marsalis: Sweets went, "Scoop doop shalaba yaba mokey hokey bwap bwap tee tee dee."

Giddins: I go, "Da da shoobie doobie det det det bap bap baaaaa ..."

Ken Burns: The reason I made "Jazz" is, I wanted to see if I could make a documentary that felt longer than the history of jazz itself, and yet still leave out half the great people because "there wasn't enough time."

Announcer: The rest of the saga of jazz music will be shown in fast forward and will occupy exactly seven seconds. There, that was it. Now here are some scenes from Ken Burns' next documentary, a 97-part epic about the Empire State Building, entitled "Ken Burns' Empire State Building."

[Grainy shot of King Kong crushing airplanes with his fists.]

Narrator: It is tall and majestic. It is America's building. It is the Empire State Building. Dozens of workers gave their lives in the construction of this building.

Glaser: I'll bet that they were thinking of Louis as they were falling to their deaths. I have this fantasy that his high notes inspired the immenseness of the Empire State Building.

Marsalis: I'll bet most people who'd fall off the Empire State Building would go "Aaaaaahhhh!" But these cats, they went "Dee dee daba da da bop bop de dop shewap splat!"

Announcer: That's next time on PBS.