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JAZZ: SWING: THE VELOCITY OF CELEBRATION {PART 6 OF 10} (TV)

Summary

The sixth episode in this ten-part miniseries detailing the history of jazz music in America. This installment begins in 1937 as World War II loomed and the Great Depression took another turn for the worse. Swing continued to grow and sell records, however, as Americans sought an escape from their troubles, and Count Basie popularized the "stomp" style of music in Texas, Oklahoma and other middle-America areas. Musician Coleman Hawkins helped bring the tenor saxophone, which was not considered a "serious" instrument, to a central position in jazz, using its expressive sounds as one would a human voice. The eccentric Lester Young, inspired by Frankie Trumbauer, became Hawkins' "rival," though their playing styles were notably opposite. Young and many other musicians eventually migrated to Kansas City, which gained infamy as a den of sin and enjoyable debauchery under the reign of corrupt politician Tom Pendergast. Wynton Marsalis demonstrates the improvised riffs typical of Kansas City jazz, and Gary Giddins explains how musicians from all over the country found a common language in the twelve-bar blues.

William "Count" Basie was at the center of Kansas City's music scene: born in New Jersey, he traveled to New York and learned from the great Harlem musicians before heading to Missouri and forming his own band, "The Barons of Rhythm," in which Young featured. Noted for their exceptional rhythm section, the Barons played on national radio, and when jazz impresario John Henry Hammond II heard their improvised "One O'Clock Jump," he drove from Chicago to Kansas City to hear them in person. Elsewhere, Louis Armstrong was relieved when third wife Alpha Smith ran off with a bandmate, leaving him free to marry his beloved Lucille Wilson. Count Basie headed to New York in 1936 and, after a "disastrous" show at the Roseland, hastily rearranged his band and hit the road. He soon hired hard-living singer Billie Holiday, who had a brief affair with guitarist Freddie Green and developed a platonic "musical kinship" with Young, whose style perfectly complemented her unique vocals.

On January 16, 1938, Benny Goodman and his band "scandalized" New York by bringing jazz music to the revered Carnegie Hall. Drummer Gene Krupa noticed his bandmates' nervousness and brought them back to their "swinging" state of mind with his adventurous playing, and by the final number, "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)", the delighted audience was dancing in the aisles. Immediately after the show, Count Basie headed uptown to the Savoy Theater, where he "battled" Chick Webb and his band, just as Goodman had done a year previously, and Webb was again deemed the "winner." Hammond paid for air conditioning so that Basie's band could play the Famous Door club all through the sweltering New York summer, though "paranoid" perfectionist Goodman was forced to rebuild his famous band after several of his musicians departed, feeling antagonized by his demanding, unfriendly style. Goodman was angered when Hammond arranged for guitarist Charlie Christian to join him onstage sight unseen, but Christian's innovative playing then so impressed Goodman that he hired the young man on the spot. At the same time, Webb's singer Charlie Linton found teenage vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, whose hard-luck life on the streets resembled Holiday's, though Webb was taken aback by her less-than-glamorous appearance. Linton forced Webb to accept her, however, and Fitzgerald's talents soon garnered great success for the band and earned her the nickname "The First Lady of Swing." Their swinging version of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a huge hit, but Webb's lifelong spinal tuberculosis worsened and finally killed him in 1939.

Holiday repeatedly encountered racism and segregation when she performed with Count Basie's band and then Artie Shaw's, forced to use service elevators and avoid performing on the radio alongside white musicians. She eventually returned to performing solo in nightclubs, and when poet Abel Meeropol presented her with a haunting song about the specter of lynchings, she was initially nervous about its grim content. However, "Strange Fruit" became an iconic anthem in the fight against racism, as well as Holiday's best-known song. Basie again proved the popularity of big-band music at the first outdoor jazz festival on New York's Ward's Island in 1938, while across the ocean Duke Ellington and his band earned rave reviews for a European tour. When they arrived in Germany, however, they were forbidden by Nazi race laws from even alighting from their train, and they were forced to perform in underground theaters in France, hinting at the dark shadow of war that was soon to overtake the world.

This asset is missing the final "Coda" section and closing credits. Commercials deleted.

Details

  • NETWORK: PBS
  • DATE: December 4, 2000 9:00 PM
  • RUNNING TIME: 1:31:46
  • COLOR/B&W: Color
  • CATALOG ID: B:74969
  • GENRE: Education/Information
  • SUBJECT HEADING: Education/Information; Jazz; African-American Collection - Music; African-American Collection - News/Talk
  • SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 2001
  • COMMERCIALS:
    • TV - Commercials - General Motors products

CREDITS

  • Ken Burns … Executive Producer, Director
  • Pam Tubridy Baucom … Coordinating Producer
  • Lynn Novick … Producer
  • Victoria Gohl … Co-Producer
  • Peter Miller … Co-Producer
  • Sarah Botstein … Associate Producer
  • Natalie Bullock Brown … Associate Producer
  • Shola Lynch … Associate Producer
  • Karen Kenton … Associate Producer
  • Madison Davis Lacy … Consulting Producer
  • Geoffrey C. Ward … Writer
  • Keith David … Narrator
  • Gary Giddins … Interviewee
  • Wynton Marsalis … Interviewee
  • Ossie Davis … Interviewee
  • Artie Shaw … Interviewee
  • Louis Armstrong
  • Count Basie (see also: William James Basie)
  • Charlie Christian
  • Duke Ellington
  • Ella Fitzgerald
  • Benny Goodman
  • Freddie Green
  • John Henry Hammond II
  • Coleman Hawkins
  • Billie Holiday
  • Gene Krupa
  • Charlie Linton
  • Abel Meeropol
  • Tom Pendergast
  • Alpha Smith
  • Frankie Trumbauer
  • Chick Webb
  • Lucille Wilson
  • Lester Young