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 CRITICS FIDDLE WHILE KEN BURNS -- The Balance Sheet By Don Rose When I was a boy, the bottom-line question my family had about local, national or world events was, "Is it good for the Jews?" Now that Ken Burns' 10-part PBS documentary "Jazz" has aired and its accompanying books and records marketed, we've accumulated an incredible range of commentary on the film -- generally negative -- rivaling the series and book itself in size and scope. All of which leads to the ultimate question, "Is it good for jazz?" My answer -- recognizing a multitude of Burnsian sins -- is, on balance, a reluctant "yes." Granted the film is riddled with more holes than a Swiss cheese, let's remember: Swiss cheese can still make a sandwich. I don't reach this conclusion easily. I am as frustrated, irritated and annoyed as anyone by the sins of omission, the sins of commission, the bad politics and the plain silliness encountered throughout. Let's explore some of them. Sins of omission. Most significantly, as virtually all commentators note, the last 40 years of jazz are crunched into one two-hour segment (contrasted with an earlier two-hour piece devoted to just two years of the swing era). This is unforgivable -- a mortal sin. Burns' feeble excuse, that the time period is too recent to be able to judge it historically, is sheer nonsense. Scant mention is given to important musicians and movements of the period, from the Eric Dolphy-Richard Davis-Andrew Hill avant-garde of the early '60s through the M-Base movement of the late '80s and '90s. Scores more are dismissed almost out of hand and they even go so far as to crap on Cecil Taylor. (Shame on Branford Marsalis for being the one to do so.)
This is in itself an historical judgment -- a very bad judgment, indeed. It's the judgment of the Albert Murray-Stanley Crouch-Wynton Marsalis school of jazz history and culture. It's a political-philosophical judgment that might have been tolerable if offered as theory, not fact, and presented with some contrasting commentary. Throughout the film, during every period, scores of significant players are omitted or noted only in passing. The contributions of dozens of important white players are omitted -- granting that none of them are the equal of Armstrong, Parker or Coltrane. This is clearly part of the black-supremacy view of the Murray-Crouch-Marsalis combine. Other than Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson and a brief reference to Charles Mingus, little is said about composer-arrangers. Even in the hours devoted to Duke Ellington, there is bare mention of the giant players in his band and their essential contribution to his total gestalt as both soloists and creators of the lines that would inspire and be absorbed into his own compositions. Perhaps worse, in one segment, all we learn of the brilliant trumpet player Fats Navarro and arranger Tadd Dameron, among others, is that they were junkies; the only mention of Woody Herman is that Stan Getz and eight of 16 members of his Second Herd were junkies, too. Yet another sinful omission is the absence of important living musicians as commentators/witnesses. Where are Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver, to mention only two masters who lived and worked through half the history of this music? Might their comments not have the value of "musician" Matt Glaser and a couple of hyperbolic publicists who prate superlatives throughout the series? (Glaser's claim to fame, I recently learned from Francis Davis' splendid review in the Atlantic Monthly, is that he was a violinist in an orchestra that recorded background music for an earlier Burns documentary.) Where, in fact, were critics such as Davis with other perspectives? Gary Giddins was excellent, but even his comments were too often edited down to superlatives, whereas his strength lies in rendering fine distinctions. When serious contemporary musicians such as Jackie McLean, Joe Lovano or the late Lester Bowie get some face-time, there is no effort to place them historically or artistically -- in effect giving them equal standing with Glaser and the prating publicists. Finally, speaking of omissions, why was there no identification of any of the exquisite music that was being aired, outside of a half dozen or so key recordings? Granted the background was largely pastiche, there were long passages of famous solos that could have been captioned briefly without distorting the filmic flow. Sins of commission. There were dozens of howling errors -- not to say misjudgments -- in the course of the show, but the most destructive, to my mind, was the equation of artistic quality and commercial success. Yes, early jazz became a national rage; swing was both art and moneymaker; even Charlie Parker had a hit or two on the charts as did Miles and Coltrane. Wonderful for them! The celebration of Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" seems to offer proof that he was still a major force -- though, in fact, his genuine contribution to the music was over by the early '30s. (Sorry, Wynton.) Dave Brubeck is given a surprising amount of time, apparently because he was a commercial success and known quantity. (Hey! Where was Kenny G?) Applying this standard, however, to evaluate jazz music is a disgrace. The Art Ensemble of Chicago is ridiculed because it once played before an audience of only three. (Never mind that they jam-packed European concert halls.) The avant-garde couldn’t draw crowds or sell records. The inference is that the absence of mass appeal and sales is what was artistically wrong with latter-day schools of jazz. The value of Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul" lies intrinsically in its music -- not the fact that it turned out to be a jukebox hit. Bud Powell never, to my knowledge, had a jukebox hit. It's great when a musician makes a little bread, but commerce is not the ultimate measure of his or her art -- though it apparently means a lot to Burns. He can sneer, however -- in what I hope is an unintentional anti-Semitic slight -- that Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw (both Jewish) were motivated by money and fame, leading us to assume that others were driven purely by art or the muse. Burns' art, in fact, suffers from its own sins of commission. He gives us far too many long, repetitive passages -- how many times does he have to pound the joys of the Savoy ballroom into our heads, with the same photos and virtually identical commentaries? How many commentators have to keep echoing each other to make a point -- yes, yes, yes, yes, Ellington and Billy Strayhorn were a wonderful, brilliant, compatible pair of composers and great buddies. How many commentators does it take to make the point? One measure of a jazz player's skill is the ability to handle turnarounds -- the transitions from bridge to melody and back. Burns, for the most part, handles his turnarounds poorly; the transitions from story to story within each segment are unusually klunky. As many critics point out, this film, focused on swing, simply doesn't. Had Burns edited out the repetitious passages, the duplicative commentaries, the endless Armstrong trivia and inconsequential stuff such as a long passage on entertainer Louis Jordan, he could have included a lot more music and information in the same total time. He might even have found another two hours to cover the later Coltrane, the later Rollins, Dolphy, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and many more -- perhaps even the despised avant garde. Burns needs a fact-checker, too. Jazz was not born solely in New Orleans. Beboppers were not the first players to base their improvisations on a song's chords and not simply its melody. They may have used altered or substitute chords in the '40s, but a decade earlier Hawkins' landmark solo on "One Hour" was based purely on the changes. Ellington and other writers at that time created new tunes based on the changes of existing songs. (Variations on "Tiger Rag" were as prevalent then as "How High the Moon" in the bop era.) Burns lets Murray assert that jazz equals blues -- suggesting, as Murray always does, that you aren't a jazz player unless you're blues-based. Well, that's Murray's long-held position, but it ain't gospel. Where is the questioning or dissenting voice? Pure silliness. Right off the bat we have Wynton reminiscing about old New Orleans as if this 40-year-old had been around at the turn of the 20th Century. Then he tells us about Buddy Bolden's beautiful sound and fine trumpet lines. In the background we hear a blues-drenched trumpet. It must be Buddy, no? Except it couldn't be Buddy because Buddy never recorded. Ever. Not even Wynton's daddy, Ellis, could have heard Buddy because he was born long after Buddy quit playing. At the endless end credit we learn that the lovely trumpet was Wynton recreating the imagined sounds of good old Buddy. Do we need this phony omniscience? Do we need it especially from someone with his own personal political ax to grind? Wynton is entitled to his views (even Crouch and Murray are!) but they are personal views to which there are equally valid opposing views, though here they're palmed off as truths. On the other hand... When Wynton picks up his horn to give us a musical illustration, he can be both brilliant and instructive. He's a wonderful teacher, as his own Bernstein-like public TV series showed. The viewers could have used lots more like this -- using Wynton or others to demonstrate aurally exactly what was going on in the music as it evolved. The film also does a generally good job placing the music in a socio-historic context, even though it may dwell too long on the outside, nonmusical world at times. It makes necessary, valid points about race in America, even if some of them are overdrawn. Despite the repetitions and klunkiness, there are long and frequent passages of filmic and aural beauty. Burns is a master at the use of the moving camera scanning archival stills; there were moments I thought we had new moving pictures. The archival research of photos and film was magnificent. The musical research itself was prodigious, even if there were factual errors; I've found some factual errors in key jazz history books. That's no excuse for inaccuracy, but I've never heard anyone suggest we ought to ban or burn, say, Gioia's The History of Jazz. We were introduced to most of the giants of the music despite the many omissions cited -- and most of their stories were well told. The "great man" theory of history may be questionable, but it is well within the critical tradition to tell the story of the music through sequential biographies. The method is especially useful in audio-visual presentations, which almost always result in shorthand and glissing around complex issues. Novices will come out of this 18-hour experience with a lot of solid information despite the missing stuff and the misstatements. (Unfortunately this isn't like a book whose second edition can carry corrections. The worst part is the film foreclosed anyone else undertaking the job for at least another decade.) People new to the scene will have heard a lot of good music and information; those familiar with only one or two schools of jazz will have a broader panorama and perhaps be motivated to listen to more. Most importantly, this film had a huge audience. We haven't seen the final numbers, but PBS says its total daily viewing audience on the average doubled while the series was running. Millions of people were exposed to the music and the stories, flawed as the totality may have been. Millions have learned something new and it's likely many of them will be the fans of the future. (When I was a kid, just learning about the music, with not a lot of records readily available and some very mediocre books on hand, I suffered from a hell of a lot more misinformation and gaps in history than exist in all of Burns. Somehow I came through it okay. Maybe.) Reports from around the country suggest jazz record sales have increased, particularly the accompanying package, which includes a five-disc anthology and 20 individual discs featuring the most prominent artists. Recently, 20 out of the top 100 best-selling CDs were jazz -- almost all of them part of the package or discussed in the film. (Billie Holiday was outselling Lee Ann Rimes!) The Parker, Hawkins and Lester Young discs are especially noteworthy collections; same for Holiday and many more. These collections alone may be the most worthy byproducts of the film. It's good to know they are selling well -- not because it will make Burns richer, but they will enrich the music libraries of thousands of people. So I reach, again, the bottom line. I wish it had been better, more accurate and less one-sided theoretically. It was a mediocre Swiss cheese sandwich, but, on balance, it was good for jazz. The preceding first appeared on the Jazz Institute of Chicago web site at www.jazzinstituteofchicago.org. It is reprinted with permission. -- Ed. RETURN TO APRIL/MAY 2001 MAIN INDEX © Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved. |
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