Music
Jazz: The Gift
The genius of jazz music
John Coltrane
Sarah Vaughan
Wynton Marsalis
Minor Hall
Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Chick Webb
Count Basie
Jazz: The Gift explores the evolution and the genius of America’s greatest original art form. Not simply a chronicle of musical fact or lore, Jazz shows this remarkable music in the context of the complicated country that gave birth to it and shows how this remarkable art form became a part of world culture. Jazz raises questions about race and class, art and commerce, virtuosity and collaboration, the individual and the community, the confluence of cultures and the universality of experience.
Jazz: The Gift introduces jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, employing engaging and detailed portraits of the great men and women of jazz to demonstrate how and why they make their music.
Episode One
Gumbo
Beginnings to 1917
JAZZ begins in New Orleans, nineteenth century America’s most cosmopolitan city, where the sound of marching bands, Italian opera, Caribbean rhythms, and minstrel shows fill the streets with a richly diverse musical culture. Here, in the 1890s, African-American musicians create a new music out of these ingredients by mixing in ragtime syncopation's and the soulful feeling of the blues. Soon after the start of the new century, people are calling it jazz.
Tonight, meet the pioneers of this revolutionary art form: The half-mad cornetist, Buddy Bolden, who may have been the first man to play jazz; Sidney Bechet, a clarinet prodigy whose fiery sound matched his explosive personality; Freddie Keppard, a trumpet virtuoso who turned down a chance to win national fame for fear others would steal the secrets of his art.
The early jazz players travel the country in the years before World War I, but few people have a chance to hear this new music until 1917, when a group of white musicians from New Orleans arrive in New York to make the first jazz recording. They call themselves the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and within weeks their record becomes an unexpected smash hit, catapulting them to stardom. Americans are suddenly jazz crazy, and the Jazz Age is about to begin.
Episode Two
The Gift
1917-1924
Speakeasies, flappers, and easy money: it is the Jazz Age, when the story of jazz becomes a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and of two extraordinary artists whose lives and music will span almost three-quarters of a century -- Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
Armstrong, a fatherless waif who grew up on the mean streets of New Orleans, develops his great gift -- his unparalleled musical genius -- with the help of King Oliver, the city’s top cornetist. In 1922, follows him to Chicago, where Armstrong’s transcendent sound and exhil-arating rhythms inspire a new generation of musicians, white and black, to join the world of jazz.
Meanwhile, Ellington, raised in middle-class comfort by parents who told him he was “blessed,” outgrows the society music he learned to play in Washington, D.C., and heads for Harlem. There he forms a band to create a music all his own -- hot, blues-drenched, and infused with the gutbucket growls of his new trumpet player, Bubber Miley.
As the Roaring Twenties accelerate, Paul Whiteman, a white bandleader, sells millions of records playing sweet, symphonic jazz, while Fletcher Henderson, a black bandleader, packs the dance floor at the whites-only Roseland Ballroom with his innovative big band arrangements. Then, in 1924, the year Whiteman introduces George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Henderson brings Louis Armstrong to New York, to add his improvisational brilliance to the band's new sound, and soon Armstrong is showing the whole world how to swing.
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Latest comments
Eric Speak
Mon 5 January 2009, 20:26
Hi,
Is there anywhere I can see when everyone one of these episodes are being broadcast?
Thanks in advance.
Eric.
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Derek Tickner
Wed 7 January 2009, 21:37
Jazz ‘The Gift’ Absolutely Brilliant, I hope there is a re-run later as I missed the first 30 minutes of the first episode.
When I get the TV Mag now the first thing I look at is the progs. on 256 and 257 for the coming week..Jazz is my first love but now I watch and enjoy artists such as Santana, Clapton, Orbison etrc. plus your classical output.Puccini and Verdi being my favourites, but Wagner stirs you (Tanhauser). What about Rusty Watson, MJQ and Gerry Mulligan. Thanks for a good and entertaining programme, you have my viewing
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David Billing
Sat 10 January 2009, 10:01
Great series.
Is it available or to be made available on DVD?
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Eric Speak
Sat 10 January 2009, 11:49
David,
The series is available on dvd at the usual major online shops- if you have a look its called ‘Jazz - A Film By Ken Burns’ and retails at between £40-£55 for the 4 disc boxset.
Hope this helps and I agree, the series is fantastic, well done to Sky Arts for giving jazz lovers this!
Eric.
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loopguru
Sat 10 January 2009, 23:01
Great to have any jazz programme, but very disappointed that the last fifty years or so only gets a single episode. The problem is that an American-centric view of jazz is inclined to ignore the amazing European jazz and jazz/electronica scene that has built up over the last 15 years. What would be brilliant is a programme that explored this as well.
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Bill Davidson
Sun 11 January 2009, 00:20
This is the best programme on jazz that I have ever seen. More please!!
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J Bishop
Mon 12 January 2009, 09:32
I watched thsi on BBC ages ago and was delighted to see it reprised on Sky Arts
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Graham Clarke
Mon 12 January 2009, 17:12
A super programme. Really sets the scene for this great modern art form.
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Derek Tickner
Mon 12 January 2009, 21:33
Sorry !!! just read Eric Speak’s comment above, and your answer to my enquiry about ‘Box Sets’ it is out there already.
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Nigel Kemp
Thu 15 January 2009, 11:00
I have just found this site after e-mailing Hanna Fayaz but my comments are still the same. Utterly outstanding. As a swing and bee bob enthusiast it is gratifying to see Jazz being so well represented on this programe. More of the same.
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Paulus B.L.
Thu 15 January 2009, 18:34
Having been a jazz muscian, an Agent, a writer and whatever else in Jazz since the 4Os, I am just pleased with anything at all that even smells like JAZZ ! Perhaps once or twice on TV in the middle of the night if I am lucky, but it happens very, very rarely. Its OK, because I am.. used to it, so my thanks go to SKY ! PLEASE KEEP IT GOING NOW BOYS ! THANKS. Paul
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Sonia Ellington
Thu 15 January 2009, 18:37
One of the best Jazz documentaries I have seen on TV thank God for SKy + !! I can now watch it at my leisure
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JOHN DEVEREUX
Fri 16 January 2009, 23:58
Outstanding documentary,totally absorbing.I have had so much pleasure from watching this.Thank you so much.
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jean newton norfolk
Sat 17 January 2009, 13:07
What a wonderful series please can we have more swing and jazz
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Abbassi
Sun 18 January 2009, 20:28
Thankyou Sky Arts for a wonerful documentary, please keep more documentarty like this coming .
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Caroline
Sun 18 January 2009, 20:56
Just wonderful!
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Scott Ryan
Sat 24 January 2009, 18:55
Great series - BUT in the 1935/37 edition - althought the late, great Artie Shaw appears in a commmentary role his wonderful music - for some CRAZY reason - does not!? If you want to know what jazz is all about listen to Artie Shaw’s last recordings from 1953/54. Absolutely wonderful! Also in the same edition Billie Holiday is described as the “GREATEST female singer in the history of jazz”! Yes, she’s great. But PLEASE...that title belongs to another fantastic singer. The greatest woman singer of the 20th century: Miss Ella Fitzgerald!
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Patrick Taylor
Tue 17 February 2009, 16:24
Jazz-The Gift. Splendid! Too many talking heads,as usual these days, but this programme ameliorated that quite a bit by letting the music go on behind the talker - quite clear but without obscuring the words. Very clever.
BUT WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO RUN IT AGAIN - I MISSED EPISODE 4 . HOW LONG HAVE I GOT TO WAIT FOR IT?
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Sari from Sky Arts
Fri 27 February 2009, 10:01
For those awaiting a repeat of this series, we are looking at repeating Jazz: The Gift later on in the year.
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PacerB
Thu 6 August 2009, 21:26
When will this be running again?
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Tubbyshaw
Wed 7 October 2009, 10:35
Great series - more jazz from the archives please especially from the modal and hard bop era. Mmmmm… nice!
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David Corbett
Mon 12 October 2009, 10:20
I remember when this series was originally shown on the BBC, in fact it is a BBC co-production. It was shown late in the evening in irregular time slots. Ken Burns has made many definitive documentaries and this series is no exception. I bought the DVD Box Set when it first came out in 2001. At the time I think it cost about £60.00 but well worth the money. If you want a definitive history of Jazz, buy it or watch the series on Sky, but do not miss it.
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Patrick Skinner
Fri 16 October 2009, 13:38
A truly wonderful series which might just bring the beautiful American art form, jazz, to new generations. Garry Giddins - marvellous! A series like this, great though it is, can only scratch at the surface of what jazz meant to the radio and disc listeners of the 30s and 40s - with many great musicians like Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins and Rex Stewart missed out or hardly mentioned, and too much time, perhaps, given to Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman - but this is just an encouragement to search the web for the wealth of fantastic early and middle period jhazz that is available on disc or download. Repeat as often as you wish and, please, dig up and repeat more jazz footage - and don’t forget the Europeans!
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steve perry
Sun 18 October 2009, 16:20
brilliant series.
for once i wish the credits could be shown at the end in verrry slow motion
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