It seems natural to follow last week’s post about Women in Jazz Day in New York and the many women in jazz festivals out there with a post on the fifth and sixth episodes of Ken Burns’ film JAZZ. For the first time in the series, these episodes give us biographies of influential women in…
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The fourth episode of Ken Burns’ documentary JAZZ begins with the stock market crash of 1929. Jobs were lost, fortunes were lost, and the glitz and glamor of the of the roaring twenties was suddenly very far in the past. The Jazz Age ended when the Great Depression began, but jazz did not. This episode…
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In January, I reviewed the first episode of Ken Burns’s 2001 documentary JAZZ. Today, I continue with episode two, The Gift. One of the best anecdotes in the episode is the story of Louis Armstrong’s first record, made with King Oliver’s Band. Before microphones, musicians stood around a horn like the one on a phonograph to record.…
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