Ken Burns' JAZZ starts Monday on PBS!

I'm really looking forward to this, but don't know when I'll have time to watch that much TV, even on time-delay. I'm sure there'll be much fascinating material, even though Sugarbrie's reservations sound realistic. Along these lines, note that all of jazz from 1961 to the present is covered in a single episode, the last! And, the series concludes with Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. A little self-congratulatory, perhaps?--considering that Warsalis was Burns' senior advisor on this project. So, perhaps Marsalis' conservative tastes and (may I say without being too disrespectful) smugness is reflected throughout the whole series. But, as I say, I look forward to a lot of fascinating material. However, it could be summer before I am able to view all the tapes.

That's life, folks. I agree w TubeG. How can you dig into the origins of the sound of jazz without dealing with racism (among other factors)? That would be the same as trying to understand the blues without dealing with racism. And what makes looking into the history of a music interesting is learning about the people and personalities that made it go. How could you possibly do this without dealing with racism? To leave that out would result in less understanding, more superficiality. It might still be entertaining, of course, but I don't fault Burns's approach here.

Hi, Snook2. Maybe someone else should have stepped forward, but Marsalis did step forward. The man has a vision and a mission. I have my gripes about him, and I share your concerns about lack of exposure for other deserving musicians, but I'm not gonna knock WM now. Overall I think he's been very good for jazz and also is doing a good job on the series. Though he's a very talented trumpeter, I'm not a big fan of his playing. However, when I saw him a few years ago doing some of his arrangements of Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton with a small contingent of his Lincoln Center musicians, I thought how terrific it was that someone was doing that. Plus, it sounded great.