Customer Reviews

Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The fact that this box set has so much music for the price makes this collection a must-have for beginners or makes for great driving music to keep in your car. Forget about how you felt about the documentary, just look at this collection of great jazz and ask yourself, "How many better anthologies are out there that aren't twice the price?"

I understand those who feel that there were too many omissions, but face it: jazz has been around for 100 years (or so). Mr. Burns would have required 10 disks, with each disk representing a decade of jazz. Once again, look over the playlist, look at the price, and realize what a value this is.

Five stars for Ken Burns on this excellent compilation! I really like that Ken Burns was able to capture jazz from all the major periods of jazz from the traditional to fusion. Some say, as one reviewer did here, that bop was "crammed" in and traditional jazz was represented a little healthy in this series. My response to that is that is had to have been a tough, if not impossible job to pick 70-80 jazz tunes for a set like this to represent the history of jazz music. Still, he did a great job because to have a collection of songs like this you'd have to spend 3-4 times the amount of money this set sells for. I know because I have! True, many good artists and tunes were left out of this set, but this set wasn't intended to capture every great song from every period of jazz. It was meant to present good samples of jazz from each period. This excellent set is more than sufficent to get anyone exposed to jazz and to styles of jazz they may or may not have heard. I know people who have bought many albums they had never heard of until they bought this 5 disc set. Jazz educators are using it in colleges nationwide in jazz education studies. I highly recommend it for anyone.

There is a lot of great music/artists here, but a lot of great music is missing and a lot of artists are too heavily favored.
I don't like it when a group of writers try to shape the minds of a unknowing public. I think Kenny should stay away from the ARTS and stick with war and sports.

Maybe it's just too early to discuss the 'history' of jazz. Although the business of jazz may have died the music continues to thrive with new voices and minds refining the realtionship of the individual within a collective.
Unfortunaltey this film suggests otherwise.

Contrary to what some reviewers have stated, this is not a good place for someone wanting to get into jazz. This is mainly because this set costs too much for that. Also, there's over-whelmingly too much Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Dizzie Gillespie tracks here and little else. You would think that with a 5 disc box set, that Ken Burns could have come up with even little known but great jazz artists to include in this collection aside from adding a few more of the wider known ones as well. I am not a "jazz snob" and I feel it's unfair to some of the newer, more contemporary artists to be ignored as well - the rock equivalent of that would be refusing to acknowledge the talent of Jack White simply because he doesn't play like Clapton or Hendrix.