Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play The Blues

[Ed Jewett]

.... Ken Burns's "Jazz" documentary [i]s a "travesty."

Listening to Parker on "Ko-Ko", I feel like I am back in History of Film in college. I fully appreciate that to appreciate, understand, or critique later-day film, or attempt to do something in the genre, one has to understand the history, and the roots. One has to watch Eisenstein and, god help us, even D W Griffith.

And I'm not a fan of Burns' "Jazz" either... though I do kick myself each time I recall that I studied film production a very short distance away from him during his college and early production years. I give him some props for trying to take on the subject, and trying to warm America to its musical greatness. That it was not received well by those who played the game says a lot. It makes me wonder how people who have a deep appreciation for the game (not the MLB variety of it) of baseball would regard his treatment of "Baseball". [I stuck to playing it, seeing my kids play it, coaching my kids playing it, watching some masterful amateurs, reading The Encylopedia, SABR, baseball quotes, watching some flicks abut the game, and calling games in a single-ump system in fastpitch softball at the 12-18 level.] So when I hear some of the old masters... some of the early recordings of Satchmo and many others come to mind... I can appreciate once in a while the greatness but more the spirit. My ear needs further training. Sometimes I do not appreciate why so many revere Coltrane (though there are two songs that are moving me in the same direction), but give me time.