In a message dated 2/20/01 1:11:48 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>But Fred, wasn't Wynton Marsalis the producer? Producers get to make these
>decisions.
JAZZ was produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick; Wynton Marsalis is credited
as "senior creative consultant." But in a larger sense, he, and his
sycophants Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray, were the editorial voice of the
project, and their ultra-conservative revisionist view of jazz history
permeated the film.
Works this large are seldom all bad or all good; I dug the archival footage
(although wished it hadn't been so often interrupted by the precious-voiced
narrator or one of the ubiquitous talking heads; very few complete
performances). And certainly Armstrong, Ellington, et al are more than worthy
of this scale of attention. But the documentary was not titled "JAZZ:
1900-1960" it was simply titled "JAZZ," and the artificial stricture of this
rewritten history was a direct result of the reactionary attitude of its
senior creative consultant.
-Fred Simon
