Jazz : A Film By Ken Burns (2001)
PBS

Description

The story, sound, and soul of a nation come together in the most American of art forms: Jazz. Ken Burns, who riveted the nation with The Civil War and Baseball, celebrates the music's soaring achievements, from its origins in blues and ragtime through swing, bebop, and fusion. Six years in the making, this "soundbreaking" series blends 75 interviews, more than 500 pieces of music, 2,400 still photographs, and over 2,000 rare and archival film clips. The 10-part musical journey spotlights many of America's most original, creative--and tragic--figures, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Special features of the PBS DVD Gold include bonus performances and The Making of Jazz documentary.

Collected reviews and ratings

9.0 allmovie | Keith Phipps

Informative enough to turn any newcomer onto the music and stirring enough to light a fire under heard-it-all experts.
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8.0 documentaryfilms.net | Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Jazz is an audacious undertaking that will successfully introduce jazz and jazz history to the uninitiated, as well as teach jazz lovers a thing or two.
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6.0 New York Times | Julia Salamon

It's a vital, personal testimonial to performers and composers who used their art to find their way in an often frightening and unwelcoming world. As Ellington, a poetic philosopher as well as great musician, once said, ''This isn't piano; this is dreaming.'' ''Jazz'' is full of dreams.
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6.0 Los Angeles Times | Don Heckman

For those of us who believe in the vitality and the importance of jazz as one of the world’s most significant creative expressions, “Jazz” has been a welcome arrival, a flawed but valuable acknowledgment of its historical relevance.
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4.0 DVD Future | Anthony Clarke

...the middle episodes, around the swing period and into the birth of be-bop, are compulsive viewing. But buy the DVD set? I couldn't recommend repeated viewing.
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2.0 All About Jazz | David X. Young

I never felt that a music I have deeply loved and made part of my life for half a century could produce such joyless tedium.
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