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
Episode Six
Swing: The Velocity of Celebration
1937-1939
As the 1930s come to a close, Swing-mania is still going strong, but some fans say success has made the music too predictable; their ears are tuned to a new sound -- pulsing, suffused with the blues. It’s the Kansas City sound of Count Basie’s band and when he brings his music to New York, it quickly reignites the spirit of Swing, and gives the entire nation a “reason for living.” Soon Basie’s lead saxophonist, Lester Young, challenges Coleman Hawkins for supremacy, matching the old sax-master’s muscular sound with a lighter laid-back style of his own. Young teams with Billie Holiday for a series of recordings revealing them as musical soulmates.
By the decade’s end, Chick Webb's swing gains a national audience by taking a chance on a teenage singer named Ella Fitzgerald --achieving the fame he dreamed of. Duke Ellington is hailed as a hero in Europe, amid anxious preparations for war. A few weeks after that war begins, Coleman Hawkins, the old master, startles the world with a glimpse of what jazz will become, with an innovative improvisation on the old standard, “Body and Soul.”
Episode Seven
Swinging with Change
1940-1942
As the l940s begin, and Americans prepare for the inevitability of war, jazz is changing. Underground and after-hours, in a Harlem club called Minton’s Playhouse, a small band of young musicians, led by the trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie and the brilliant saxophonist Charlie Parker, have discovered a new way of playing -- fast, intricate, exhilarating, and sometimes chaotic. A three year recording ban keeps their music off the airwaves--still saturated with the sounds of swing. When America finally enters the war in l941, big band music is part of the arsenal, boosting morale both at home and overseas. Some band leaders enlist, while others contribute to the war effort by touring army bases and making V Discs. Duke Ellington reinvigorates his band, discovers a true partner, the gifted young composer Billy Strayhorn, and creates some of his most memorable recordings.
Episode Eight
Dedicated to Chaos
1943-1945
In war-torn Europe, jazz is banned by the Nazis, but great musicians like the Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt continue to play, turning the music into a symbol of freedom, and a weapon of resistance. For many black Americans, however, that sound has a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they find themselves fighting for liberties their own country denies them and wondering what jazz really means to musicians who play together on the battlefield. They are forced to eat separately once they come home. Authorities padlock the Savoy Ballroom to keep black servicemen off its integrated dance floor, and military police patrol Swing Street, breaking up fistfights sparked by prejudice and pride.
Meanwhile, Duke Ellington premieres his most ambitious work ever, the symphonic suite tone portrait of black life in America, “Black, Brown and Beige." As always, he continues manipulating his player's talents, turning his orchestra into a single instrument with which he creates music of astonishing perfection.
Louis Jordan popularizes a music that will come to be called “rhythm and blues,” and soon after the atom bomb forces Japan’s surrender, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie enter the studio to create an explosion of their own. The tune is called “Ko-Ko,” the sound will soon be called “bebop,” and once Americans hear it, jazz will never be the same.
Episode Nine
Risk
1945-1949
The postwar years bring America to a level of prosperity unimaginable a decade before, but the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation makes these anxious years as well. In jazz, this underlying tension will be reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop, and in the troubled life of bebop’s biggest star, Charlie Parker.
Nicknamed “Bird,” Parker is a soloist whose ideas and technique are as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong’s had been a quarter-century before. He is idolized -- his improvisations copied, his risk-all intensity on stage imitated, and his self-destructive lifestyle adopted as a prerequisite for inspiration. Parker’s example helps brings a narcotics plague to the jazz community. Parker is not the only bebop innovator. His longtime partner, Dizzy Gillespie, tries to popularize the new sound by adding showmanship and Latin rhythms. Although the music is astonishing, young audiences are now swooning over pop singers and crooners like Frank Sinatra.
Louis Armstrong forms the “All Stars,” a small, integrated band and plays the old standards he loves. In l949 he returns home to New Orleans to be honored in the city’s Mardi Gras parade, only to discover the city will not allow him to play his scheduled concert. Promoter Norman Granz, meanwhile, breaks down barriers all across the country when he tours with his Jazz at the Philharmonic group, insisting on equal treatment for all of his musicians.
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Latest comments
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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