Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Star Dust - Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra
2. Soon One Mornin' (Death Come A-Creepin' in My Room0 - Mississippi
3. Memphis Blues - Lieut. Jim Europe's 369th Infantry ("Hell Fighters") Band
4. Livery Stable Blues - The Original Dixieland Jazz Band
5. Charleston - James P. Johnson
6. Chimes Blues - King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
7. Back Water Blues - Bessie Smith
8. The Pearls - Jelly Roll Morton
9. Dead Man Blues - Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
10. Wild Cat Blues - Clarence Williams's Blue Five
11. Cake Walkin' Babies (From Home) - Clarence Williams's Blue Five
12. Sugar Foot Stomp - Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra
13. Heebie Jeebies - Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five
14. Potato Head Blues - Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven
15. West End Blues - Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five
16. The Mooche - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
17. East St. Louis Toodle-Oo - Duke Ellington & His Washingtonians
18. Black Beauty - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
19. Mood Indigo - The Jungle Band
20. There Ain't No Sweet Man (Worth The Salt Of My Tears) - Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke
21. Singin' The Blues - Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke
22. Riverboat Shuffle - Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke
23. Hotter Than 'Ell - Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra
24. I Got Rhythm - Ethel Waters

Disc 2:

1. It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
2. Echoes of Harlem - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
3. Moten Swing - Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra
4. St. Louis blues - Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra
5. Ain't Misbehavin' - Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra
6. For Dancers Only - Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra
7. King Porter Stomp - Benny goodman & His Orchestra
8. Rose Room - The Benny Goodman Sextet
9. Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing) - Benny Goodman Sextet
10. Jumpin' at the Woodside - Count Basie & His Orchestra
11. Sent for You Yesterday and Here You Come Today - Count Basie & His Orchestra
12. Lester Leaps In - Count Basie's Kansas City Seven
13. Oh, Lady, Be Good! - Jones-Smith Incorporated
14. Without Your Love - Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra
15. Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
16. God Bless the Child - Billie Holiday with Eddie Heywood & His Orchestra
17. Three Little Words - Art Tatum
18. Rebecca - Pete Johnson & "Big" Joe Turner
19. Harlem Congo - Chick Webb & His Orchestra
20. A-Tisket, A-Tasket - Chick Webb & His Orchestra featuring Ella Fitzgerald
21. Shine - Django Reinhardt & Le Quartet du Hot Club de France
22. Dear Old Southland - Noble Sissle & His Orchestra

Disc 3:

1. Body and Soul - Coleman Hawkins
2. Cotton Tail - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
3. Take the 'A' Train - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
4. Begin the Beguine - Artie Shaw & His Orchestra
5. In The Mood - Glenn Miller & His Orchestra
6. Well, Git It! - Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra
7. Solitude - Billie Holiday with Eddie Heywood & His Orchestra
8. Drum Boogie - Gene Krupa & His Orchestra
9. Salt Peanuts - Dizzy Gillespie & His All Star Quintet
10. Groovin' High - Dizzy Gillespie Sextet
11. Ko-ko - Charlie Parker's Re-Boppers
12. Scrapple From the Apple - Charlie Parker Quintet
13. Enbraceable You - Charlie Parker Quintet
14. Get Happy - Bud Powell Trio
15. Epistrophy - Thelonious Monk
16. Straight, No Chaser - Thelonious Monk
17. Manteca - Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra
18. Moon Dreams - Miles Davis Nonet
19. Just Friends - Charlie Parker
20. Rockin' Chair - Louis Armstrong
21. They Can't Take That Away From Me - Sarah Vaughan & Her Trio
22. Walkin' Shoes - Chet Baker & Gerry Mulligan
23. Fine and Mellow - Billie Holiday

Disc 4:

1. Doodlin' - Horace Silver & The Jazz Messengers
2. I Get A Kick Out of You - Clifford Brown & Max Roach
3. St. Thomas - Sonny Rollins
4. Django - The Modern Jazz Quartet
5. Take Five - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
6. So What - Miles Davis Sextet
7. Giant Steps - John Coltrane
8. Rick Kick Shaw - Cecil Taylor Trio
9. Chronology - Ornette Coleman
10. Original Faubus Fables - Charles Mingus
11. Acknowledgment - John Coltrane Quartet

Disc 5:

1. Hello, Dolly! - Louis Armstrong
2. Desafinado - Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd
3. In a Sentimental Mood - Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
4. Tourist Point of View - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
5. E.S.P. - The Miles Davis Quintet
6. Spanish Key (single version) - Miles Davis
7. Birdland - Weather Report
8. Mister Magic - Grover Washington, Jr
9. Rockit - Herbie Hancock
10. Un Ange en Danger - M.C. Solaar & Ron Carter
11. Tanya - Dexter Gordon
12. Soon All Will Know - Wynton Marsalis
13. Death Letter - Cassandra Wilson
14. Take The "A" Train - The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2000-11-14
• Number of discs: 5
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: 1.24 pounds

Amazon.com
This five-CD box set soundtrack to filmmaker Ken Burns's 10-part, 19-hour documentary Jazz spans nearly a century of jazz styles, from the martial rhythms of James Reese Europe to the soul-jazz of Grover Washington Jr. It includes time-tested classics like Benny Goodman's 1938 classic, "Sing, Sing, Sing"; John Coltrane's chanting 1965 immortal track, "A Love Supreme"; Billie Holiday's blue-ember ballad, "God Bless the Child"; and Ella Fitzgerald peeling off "A-Tisket A-Tasket." Bebop is represented by Charlie Parker's orchestral bop version of "Just Friends"; Thelonious Monk's nocturnal calling card, "'Round Midnight"; and Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" and "Groovin' High."

The jazz-instrumentalist-as-singer comes to life on Coleman Hawkins's "Body and Soul" and Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers' "Doodlin'." Clifford Brown and Max Roach's "I Get a Kick out of You" epitomizes the hard-bop era, while Miles Davis's "So What" stands as the modal masterpiece. The cool school is in session with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan dishing out "Walkin' Shoes," and the Modern Jazz Quartet's soulful elegy "Django" straddles all the above musical orbits. As for Django Reinhardt, he's featured on "Shine" with the justly famed Le Quartet du Hot Club de France.

Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" and "Potato Head Blues" and Duke Ellington's rousing rendition of Billy Strayhorn's anthem, "Take the A Train," and his moody "Solitude" show why they are the Olympian masters of this art form--and the most frequently featured artists in the series. Although Ken Burns tries bringing the music up-to-date with Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, and two jazz-hip-hop-influenced tracks--Herbie Hancock's robotic "Rockit" and the French-language "Un Aige en Danger" by MC Solaar and bass legend Ron Carter--there are significant holes here. After Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, the avant-garde period from the late 1960s to the 1980s is lacking. And aside from the bossa nova hit "Desafinado," Latin jazz is also missing. It's a tough task summarizing jazz in five CDs, and Burns has given us a vibrant and vivid multicolored aural portrait of the music. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Jazziz
Ken Burns Jazz - The Story of America's Music collects 94 tracks of music on five CDs along with 48 pages of annotation, explanation, and photographic documentation. It's all in the service of telling a tale of Americans working together, overcoming differences and conflicts, and moving toward a common goal. The general backdrop, of course, is the development of an indigenous music and its intertwinings with American life throughout the 20th century. But the central characters of this boxed-set story are really Burns, by now this country's pre-eminent documentary filmmaker; the producers at PBS, the original if no longer the dominant national television network; and the staffs of two major record labels, Verve and Columbia Legacy, who, in combination, possess a significant slice of jazz's history in their vaults.

Before it can be appreciated as a telling of jazz's tale, Ken Burns Jazz needs to be considered as the landmark in jazz promotion that it is. Burns is one of few Americans - maybe the only one - who could commandeer some 20 hours of television time dedicated to jazz, a music that, despite its rich history, now appeals to only a small minority of American ears. Burns has surrounded his 10-part PBS documentary with a book, a five-CD boxed set, a 20-track "best of" CD, and 22 single-artist discs that compile the work of artists profiled in the series. The musical output represents a rare and historic union of two companies that regularly compete for market share in jazz's reissue bins (and that's where much of the action is these days).

But this is about raising jazz's market share overall, and one need only read the evangelical zeal of Burns' liner notes to appreciate that. That's something we need not - in fact, should not - look at cynically. If the record executives are hopping on Burns' bandwagon, it's for a good reason: Besides the fact that jazz isn't heard all that much by general audiences, even when it is heard, it lacks context. For most people, jazz needs a storyline, a framework. Burns focused his lens in an effort to do just that, and it may prove to be the most powerful vehicle to drive jazz sales since the "young lions" movement of the early 1990s, when Wynton Marsalis and others were the focal points of resurgent interest in jazz.

As with that movement, discontent is likely to ripple throughout the jazz community in reference to the five-CD set. "What about Jackie McLean?" they'll cry. "Is Dizzy Gillespie's 'Manteca' all there is to Afro Cuban jazz?" they'll shout. "What about artists playing in clubs today, like Joe Lovano and Geri Allen and Greg Osby?" And let's not even talk about free improvisation. There are omissions to catch the eye of nearly any jazz lover.

But that's not the point. Ken Burns Jazz is the accompaniment to a film - the story as Burns tells it. In Burns' 10-part telling, the first nine episodes run through 1961, with the last summarizing the music since. This decision is a clear point of controversy, especially for those whose ears are more attuned to recordings of the '60s and beyond. Burns firmly contends that he is a historian, that he's telling a story of the inspiration behind the development of jazz.

Those taking Burns' project overall as a manifesto - that jazz stopped decades ago - are overreacting or misinterpreting. Taken on its own terms, a good deal of important detail is imparted as Discs One, Two, and Three move through the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. As one would expect, heaping helpings of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are laid out. There's also some music that helped give rise to jazz, like a 1919 recording of James Reese Europe's 369th U.S. Infantry "Hell Fighters" Band, two early Jelly Roll Morton tracks, and King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, recorded in 1923. The first four discs support Burns' story quite well - that is to say, he succeeds in setting the music in a meaningful context for general listeners. But Disc Five, which moves from Armstrong's 1963 version of "Hello, Dolly!" to the Miles Davis Quintet's "E.S.P." (1965) to Herbie Hancock's 1983 MTV hit "Rockit" before ending with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's "Take the 'A' Train" seems a confused hodgepodge - an attempt to cover too much ground. That's not surprising: Burns' story doesn't really deal in-depth with free jazz, fusion jazz, hip-hop jazz or contemporary forms of any stripe. He's waving the flag of jazz as sewn by its founders. And if this box sends listeners off to fill in the gaps or extend the tale themselves, there are any number of satisfying sequels to assemble.

--- Larry Blumenfeld, JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Major inclusions...minor omissions
Along with a number of other jazz fans and critics, I've been looking forward to the Ken Burns Jazz video history with mixed emotions, given that what has already been issued--the book in particular--seemed to lack a basic understanding of the art form's most-recent half-century. Although there is some evidence of that stance here, the sheer abundance of classic tracks on this five-CD set makes it an excellent introduction to the art form, particularly for newcomers. Absorb this box, and you are well on your way to experiencing the width and depth of this ever-evolving art form, one that at its best values both teamwork and individuality.

What I like about this set is that with five-CDs, there is room to give a number of important events in jazz history a bit more play than just a cameo appearance. For instance, Louis Armstrong's 1920s classic hot 5/hot 7 recordings are represented by three key tracks. With 2-3 examples of such creative peaks, one can better discern the unique qualities of each artist. With multiple chances to listen, one can become more familiar with a player's sound...the consistencies and variances in a player's solo approach become increasingly apparent when comparisons can be made.

Other early greats are similiarly documented, from Ellington, Basie, Goodman, and Billie Holiday up through the late-1940s bebop revolution (Monk, Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Davis, etc.). The one negative about this set is that, after bebop, there isn't enough room left in the box to continue this comparison process. Thus, only two artists (Ellington and Davis) out of jazz's most recent half-century get more than one track per creative peak each..and at least in Miles' case, the two successive tracks are nearly bookends to a extended, rapidly evolving period of creativity.

Even so, there is at least a taste of the avant-garde, fusion, pop jazz, bossa nova, neo-classicism, etc., so recent events are not entirely ignored, just given relatively brief exposure. Add that to the excellent overview of jazz's up-and-coming decades, and this set overall serves a valuable purpose, particularly for those who wonder what jazz is ALL about.

A wonderful introduction to jazz, with a few provisos....
This is a wonderful 5-disc set of the history of jazz music. In fact, I listened to it all in one sitting, and I can say as an introduction for those uninitiated in the ways of jazz, this is a superb collection. However, it is by no means thorough. I suppose you might expect this from an introduction, but I was somewhat surprised to see its extensive inclusion of Ellington, Davis and especially Armstrong at the expense of some rather less well known artists. Alloting to the great Django Reinhardt a single track seems a crime. Even so, it's a good listen. As my dear friend says, a true jazz afficianado is never satisfied.

Wonderful Gift for the Jazz Fan in Your Life
I received this boxed set as a Christmas gift from a good friend of mine who knows that I love jazz. The five CDs are a wonderful representation of the history of jazz, from its beginnings just after the turn of the century, to contemporary greats. Featuring the music of legends like Dizzie Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Wynton Marsalis, Benny Goodman, and countless others, it's well compiled and well published. If however, you're already a jazz fan, and have particular likes and favorites, then you might be better off buying a more specified box set. Personally, though, I was thrilled with the gift, even if it didn't particularly highlight favorites of mine such as Ella Fitzgerald and Antonio Carlos Jobim. It's a great choice for seasoned jazz fans, or perhaps for someone who is interested in learning more about jazz. A great starter set! I'm very much looking forward to the series on PBS.