Ken Burns Jazz: The Story Of America's Music [Box]

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is renowned for the thoughtful approach he takes to big subjects (baseball, the Civil War, etc.). Jazz fans are fortunate to have someone as intellectually curious as Burns to chronicle the music. As expected, he takes the historian's view that's needed to really cover the story of jazz's development. The fact that a five-disc box can barely scratch the surface speaks more about jazz's rich legacy than it does about any shortcomings of this impressive soundtrack to Burns' work.
The discs are divided up chronologically, moving from the Dixieland sound of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver to the big bands of Duke Ellington, on to the bop innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. If this set is lacking in its representation of more "modern" jazz variants (free jazz and beyond), it's only because the 1920s and '30s material that gives the box much of its heft is such an endangered species in need of careful attention. The jazz innovations of the latter 20th century are well catalogued elsewhere, but the nearly lost world of pre-swing is what this box illuminates best.|