Not Exactly All That Jazz

Two gunshots shatter the stillness, a violent collision of silence and sound.

Images of Paris in the 1920s flicker on a screen as a narrator describes an incident in which hot-tempered soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet pulled out a revolver and fired at a musician who accused him of playing a wrong chord.

In the isolation of a Manhattan mixing studio, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, producer Lynn Novick and the episode’s editor, Craig Mellish, watch closely, discussing possible ways to make the shots fit: to move the narration, for example, or adjust the picture. The exchange continues for nearly 15 minutes before Burns and Novick reach a decision. The shots, a sound-effects addition intended to create dramatic ambience, don’t work. They’ll have to go--at least for the moment.

It’s just one deliberation of a great many that have taken place over the past five years, as thousands of sounds, stories and images have been fused into a massive 19-hour, 10-episode documentary, “Jazz,” scheduled to air on PBS in January, the latest work from the creator of “The Civil War” and “Baseball.”

Beyond the doors of the studio, another argument is beginning to unfold, one of ideas and interpretations as dissonant voices within the jazz community confront the question of how the story of the music should be told, and whether Burns is framing it from a limited historical perspective. Specifically, questions arise about the influence of trumpeter, composer and Jazz at Lincoln Center creative director Wynton Marsalis, whose views on jazz have already triggered years of infighting around the jazz community, and whether “Jazz” glosses over the last four decades, leaving out key figures and musical styles.

The sniping will undoubtedly increase, long before the actual airing of “Jazz,” in part because of advance screenings Burns has and will continue to present around the country.

It’s not surprising, of course, that the documentary is already evoking some critical reactions. Jazz has always had its factions. Fans who recall the ‘40s can remember the wars of words between swing musicians and beboppers, in which the boppers referred to mainstream players (or to anyone who didn’t support the new music) as “moldy figs.”

But a work as large and ambitious as “Jazz” obviously presents an extremely large target. Burns’ acknowledgment of his ignorance of the music when he started the project makes it an even easier mark. Jazz, after all, is neither as manifestly historical as the Civil War, nor as popular with the mainstream as baseball. And the challenge Burns has faced with the project has been the need to understand that--whatever happened historically--the music’s essential creativity is the core of the story, simply because it is the factor that has always been the fuel that drove the players, both the great ones and the lesser known.

That’s a difficult task for a filmmaker who has tended to emphasize chronological, historical points of view. Burns has worked hard to keep the music central to the story. But he also views jazz and improvisation as a metaphor for American society and a device to explore African American history in the 20th century. It’s a useful, if arguable, technique that frequently makes extremely effective points. But it also tends at times to place the music at the service of Burns’ (and his advisors’) historical perspective.

Like the multi-episodic and much-honored “The Civil War” and “Baseball,” “Jazz” has been a long time in the making, in part because of the vastness of the subject, but also because Burns’ approach to filmmaking calls for the accumulation of huge amounts of minutiae.

Burns, a slender, smallish bearded man whose dark, Beatles-style bangs make him look considerably younger than his 47 years, is surely America’s best-known documentarian. His “Brooklyn Bridge” was nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, and “The Civil War” drew an audience of 40 million during its premiere in September 1990--the largest audience ever for a public television program. It received two Emmy awards. “Baseball” attracted 45 million for its 18 hours and received another Emmy.

Curiously, he found himself irresistibly drawn to jazz while making “Baseball.”

“I realize now that it actually incubated for a long time,” says Burns during a lunch break in the mixing, which is taking place at a studio in Manhattan’s legendary Brill Building (interestingly, a center, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, for the pop and rock ‘n’ roll songwriters whose music would eventually help draw young people away from jazz).

“There was a comment by Gerald Early, a writer we interviewed for ‘Baseball’ as well as ‘Jazz,’ ” says Burns. “He said something to the effect that, a thousand years in the future, America will be remembered for three things: the Constitution, baseball and jazz.

“That gave me an intellectual rationale to pursue a jazz film. But it wasn’t until the editing of ‘Baseball,’ when we found we were using throughout the central episodes [the music of] Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Clarence Williams, we realized that we absolutely had to do it.”

*

At that point, Burns experienced what can best be described as an intellectual epiphany, triggered by Early’s comment, but driven by his own sudden awareness that he had been working toward an American trilogy and that jazz was the final, missing piece.

“If the Civil War defined us, as [historian] Shelby Foote says,” Burns says, “and baseball was a way to understand what we’ve become, then jazz--in addition to being a pretty objective witness to the 20th century--was also a vision of the redemptive future possibilities of our republic. Because embedded in the message of jazz is a finely tuned constitution at work: all people listening, incorporating, dealing with the question of the individual as well as the collective. And you have essentially in jazz a model of what we might become when we live out, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] would say, the true meaning of our creed.

“And so, this represented a very logical progression, even though it came to me in a very emotional fashion.”

Even though Burns is far and away the most visible figure in the productions of Florentine Films--the New Hampshire-based organization he co-founded in 1976 with two other graduates of Hampshire College, Roger Sherman and Buddy Squires (both of whom continue to work with him)--the actual nuts-and-bolts work of the documentary-making process is very collaborative.

“The first thing we try to do,” says Novick, “is immerse ourselves in the subject through meetings with the scholars, reading all the books we can get our hands on and so forth. And, in the case of ‘Jazz,’ that process also meant listening to the music, looking at the archival visual resources that are available and trying to come up with a concept that would make sense as a film.”

That process is considerably fine-tuned by the need to create proposals to generate financial backing. General Motors, a Burns associate since 1990 and a sponsor of, among others, “The Civil War” and “Baseball,” is the sole corporate underwriter of “Jazz.” The company also has signed an additional 10-year contract with Burns, running from 2002 to 2012, to provide 35% of the funding for all his projects.

“Ken’s work is an attractive package because it’s about the American experience,” says John G. Middlebrook, GM’s vice president and general manager of vehicle brand marketing.

“It relates to people’s personal lives, and it certainly fits a lot of the American ideals we’re trying to support here at GM,” he says. “Some people say Americans get more of their history from Ken Burns’ work than any other source. I think that’s probably true, and I think it’s good for us to be associated with him.”

“Jazz,” which has a budget of more than $3 million, also received funding from a long list of other sources, including PBS, the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the Park Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“The NEH is the most demanding in terms of proposals,” Novick says. “They require you to do an extensive process that involves a conceptual essay, a treatment of every episode and a breakdown of all the elements that are going to be included. It ends up being about 600 pages or so. But, in all honesty, it actually became our original blueprint.”

At this point, Geoffrey C. Ward, who has written most of the Burns documentaries since 1984, stepped in. Of the many subjects he has covered, jazz was perhaps the most appealing.

“The one I knew squat about was baseball,” Ward says. “My dad was a fan, but not me. In fact, when I called him up and said I was doing the history of baseball, he said, ‘Boy, you don’t know a god----- thing about baseball.’

“But jazz is something I’ve been quietly obsessed with since I was a little boy. I always loved the sound of it, and I loved the sound of Louis Armstrong especially.”

While the various elements--footage, stills, audio, interviews--were being assembled, Ward wrote a working script.

“At the same time,” says Ward, “Ken was thinking about the whole project on his own. Then Ken and I sat down with the script and went through it. He made a lot of wonderful suggestions, we rearranged, cut and pasted, and went at it all over again, producing two or three drafts. When we reached a point at which we were reasonably happy that the story had been told, it went to the producers and editors.”

*

Aside from his collaborative involvement with the script-writing, Burns, Novick says, “doesn’t like to get too involved in the nitty-gritty of the initial part of the process.”

“Because he doesn’t want to be an expert,” she continues. “He’d rather be a representative of the audience, so that he can watch the film, not knowing about the parts that we decided not to put in. And that’s very helpful, because there’s a tendency to not see the forest for the trees when you’re putting material together, thinking that you have to tell every single story, or you have to be sure to mention these 10 things, or conversely that you can assume that everybody knows that so-and-so did this.”

What one senses in conversations with the various contributors--Burns, Novick, Ward--is the extent to which each brings in his or her own perspective. Clearly, Burns is the filmmaker, the sole individual whose name headlines his films. As such, he has the final word.

“You can be sure about that,” said Marsalis in a backstage conversation at Los Angeles’ Playboy Jazz Festival in June. “Ken’s the guy, and the ultimate decisions are his. We had a few differences, and I wouldn’t have done everything exactly the way he did, but it all comes back to the fact that he’s the filmmaker.”

Novick agrees. But her day-to-day, continuing contact with Burns (she has worked with him since July 1989, was associate producer of “The Civil War” and producer of “Baseball,” “Frank Lloyd Wright” and “Jazz”) gives her a somewhat broader perspective on his methodology.

“In terms of the visual storytelling and the musical storytelling,” she explains, “he puts a stamp on a film, to a very great degree. But with something of this scope, it’s not possible for him to sit down and look at every picture and pick what to use for every scene. So the editors and the producers will map things out, and then he’ll come in and say, ‘Oh, this doesn’t work,’ ‘Fix that,’ ‘Change this around.’

“One of the great joys of working together for a long time is that we know each other really well, and no one’s afraid to say what they think. . . . But in the end, Wynton’s right, Ken is the director, and he will make the final decision about whatever the issue is.”

Each of the final decisions Burns makes is based upon the fundamental canons of his work as a filmmaker--that his pictures tell entertaining stories, that they have compelling narratives and that they educate via illumination. In the case of jazz, however, Burns is dealing with a layering of elements considerably different from those of “The Civil War” and “Baseball.”

Jazz has repeatedly been described, with considerable justification, as the soundtrack of the American 20th century. But Burns also sees it as “an unusually curious and objective witness to that century.”

“In that sense,” he adds, “our picture is also about two world wars, it’s about the Great Depression, about sex and the mating call between men and women, it’s about drug abuse and its terrible costs, and, of course, it’s about the extraordinary building blocks of creativity.”

That’s a tall order, but it is a perspective that allows Burns to function in the manner he finds most comfortable--as a narrative historian. Which, almost by definition, meant that the story of jazz would be told in chronological fashion.

“We could have organized it completely differently,” Novick says. “We could, for example, have done thematic episodes. But what we find is that, for a general audience, a story that has characters can be easier to grasp. If you’re already a jazz fan, you might prefer to not follow a linear progression, and instead hear an episode about bebop because you love that particular kind of jazz. . . . But we felt it was a bigger challenge and a better opportunity to reach more viewers if we told the story via a chronological narrative.”

*

Burns elected to take the route of following his principal characters--Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Billie Holiday and Count Basie--over the course of their careers rather than focus solely upon the creative high points. That decision displays Armstrong, for example, throughout much of his life, exploring the complex ways in which he has been viewed--musically and personally--by successive generations.

“When I started to make this film,” says Burns, “Louis Armstrong, to me, was the guy with the big smile, the handkerchief and a kind of [Uncle] Tom-ish attitude who wonderfully transformed popular song. I didn’t know that he was the most important person in music in the 20th century, which by now my film says with every pore--that he is to music what Einstein is to physics and the Wright Brothers are to travel. I loved discovering that, and what I’ve done has been to share my process of discovery.”

He also, despite his protests to the contrary, has tended--perhaps more so in this than in any previous documentary--to take a Great Man historical perspective. Given the obvious impact Armstrong and Ellington, among others, have had upon jazz, it’s an understandable decision. But it also has given Burns an unusual narrative problem.

By placing so much emphasis upon Armstrong, Ellington and Parker, their deaths--Parker in 1955, Armstrong in 1971, Ellington in 1974--create substantial gaps in the story.

“There’s no question about the fact that the deaths of Ellington and Armstrong in the early ‘70s affected the narrative arc of the show,” Novick says. “After these two major characters have departed, you just can’t watch another two hours. It feels as though it’s over, and then you want to have a sort of conclusion.”

Ward agrees, underscoring the thorny problem of how to handle a narrative that has lost its principals.

“It’s very hard,” he says, “after asking people to watch that many episodes, to say, ‘We’re now going to introduce you to 20 new characters’--a structural problem as much as anything else. But it also represents our genuine willingness to admit that nobody knows for sure what’s going to be remembered. We’re pretty sure what’s going to be remembered from 1945. From 1975, I’m not so sure.”

The net result was a decision--one of many certain to be questioned vigorously within the jazz community, at the very least--to cover the period between 1960 and the present in one final episode. In other words, one-tenth of the documentary is devoted to 40% of the century under examination.

Burns himself expresses regret that pianist Erroll Garner, the composer of “Misty” who was highly visible from the mid-’40s to the mid-’60s, didn’t make the cut. And it is, indeed, a bit difficult to understand why there was no room for one of the great individualists of jazz piano playing.

“Great as Garner is,” says Burns, “you don’t want to take away space from a Charlie Parker or a Miles Davis or a Thelonious Monk to support somebody who wasn’t a seminal inventor, even though he was very popular and did wonderful things.”

Others don’t take such a sanguine point of view. Jazz producer-manager Marty Khan, writing an open letter to Burns on the jazz Web site https://www.birdlives.com, decries a report that composer George Russell, whose theoretical work has been a vital influence on artists such as John Coltrane and Bill Evans, and who is one of the few jazz winners of a MacArthur Foundation grant, has been left out of the film.

“I can only say that omitting Mr. Russell would be the equivalent of having ignored Curt Flood [in ‘Baseball’]. . . .” writes Khan. “I can only assume that you are getting some very poor advice and serious misinformation.”

“The last 40 years of jazz--that’s my lifetime, folks--is crammed into the final two-hour episode,” writes Tom Cuniffe on the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Web site. “Now, whether or not you believe that any of the stylistic developments in jazz since 1960 have truly changed the overall history of the music, they still deserve to be explored in some depth.”

*

Anticipating similar barbs, Ward simply shrugs.

“I think the jazz family is as dysfunctional a family as I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I mean the amount of warfare that goes on within it. But we’ve simply told the story of jazz as best we can, and hope that it might stimulate people to read lots of books, see lots of films and buy lots of CDs. That should make everybody in jazz happy.”

Ward points out that “The Civil War” generated similar reactions.

“We had young, more radical historians who felt that we hadn’t done enough about slavery,” he says. “On the other side, there were people in gray Confederate uniforms--with swords--who picketed Ken wherever he spoke.”

Burns takes a defensive stance on the allocation of time in the final episode by offering an extended description of what it actually does cover.

“It has Armstrong and ‘Hello, Dolly,’ ” he says. “Then the whole Mingus, Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble protest. We have Duke and the death of Billie, we have John Coltrane and his second chapter and his death. We have Miles turning first to the avant-garde, then helping to create fusion, setting off an argument about whether that is in fact jazz. We simply say, ‘It’s an argument and it’s going to spawn a lot of really creative music.’

“We cover the deaths of Ellington and Armstrong in valedictorian passages. Then we basically say, ‘We’re in the mid-’70s, jazz is dead.’ Because that’s what most people felt at the time; even Miles Davis said that jazz was dead.”

Burns uses that assertion--which will surely raise more hackles--to set up a bit of drama.

“Then the film begins to rise up,” he continues. “Wynton joins Art Blakey and there’s this huge renaissance in the ‘80s of new jazz talent led by Wynton. We wind up with our ‘outro,’ which sort of looks at where we’ve been with a montage, and talks about various contemporary people playing a variety of stuff.

“So I don’t feel that we haven’t at least acknowledged that all of the diverse schools are alive and thriving. And we’re celebrating the diversity of, as we say, a ‘proudly mongrel American music’ at the end.”

Burns views the gathering criticism from a somewhat more Olympian perspective.

“My congregation is a broad national audience,” he says. “While I aim high and expect a phenomenal degree of attention on their part, I want to nevertheless present them with just one plate and not a whole smorgasbord.

“I’m happy to do battle with anyone who doesn’t think Armstrong, Ellington, Parker and Coltrane gave us the pantheon of jazz, or with anyone who wants to take issue with the fact that they get the most screen time. . . . All our consultants, who represented a wide range of jazz philosophy, never once quibbled with our choice of emphasis.”

Still, there are those who will undoubtedly point out that the consultants are headed by Wynton Marsalis, who has never apologized for either the specificity or the conservatism of his definition of what jazz is and what jazz isn’t. And the frequent presence in the film of his close associates at Lincoln Center--writers Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch--may bother jazz observers already disturbed by what they view as Lincoln Center’s tendency to minimize the importance of iconoclastic developments in the post-Bop jazz decades. Marsalis’ critics, in fact, will undoubtedly suggest that the final episode, covering the last 40 years of history in less than two hours, is evidence of the impact of his perspective.

*

Back at the sound studio, the mixing process continues, undeterred by concern about the critical response “Jazz” will receive. Its release is still months away, with a vast promotional effort scheduled to begin in September with the announcement of a far-reaching range of ancillary products and endorsements.

“Any further thoughts about the gunshots?” Burns asks the room.

After a long beat of silence, Novick suggests, “Maybe we should take one last look.”

“OK,” says sound mixer Dominick Tavella, pushing a few buttons and returning Bechet and 1920s Paris to the screen.

The picture rolls, the voice-over narration continues and the shots return. As the group confers again, a last comment by Burns comes to mind--one that bypasses the process, the conclusion and the potential controversy surrounding “Jazz.”

“Making this film,” he said as our lunch conversation ended, “has changed me in every single way, much more so than anything else I’ve ever done. It’s changed me as a father by giving me an opportunity to share this music with my children; it’s changed me as someone who has spent his entire life trying to understand the dynamics of this country, and who now finds in this music probably the quickest way to get at its heart; and it’s changed me as a filmmaker because the demands of making a film about music, and the stylistic solutions that had to be brought to bear in order to make it, have represented, for us as filmmakers, a quantum leap.

“But most of all,” Burns says, “it’s changed me in the sense that I can’t believe I survived so long without jazz in my life. And now I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

“Jazz”

The 10 episodes on PBS:

“Gumbo” Beginning to 1917.

“The Gift” 1917-1924.

“Our Language” 1924-1929.

“The True Welcome”

1929-1934.

“Swing: Pure Pleasure”

1935-1937.

“The Velocity of Celebration”

1937-1939.

“Dedicated to Chaos”

1940-1945.

“Risk” 1945-1956.

“The Adventure” 1956-1960.

“A Masterpiece by Midnight”

1960 to the present.