Aside from Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw, Bix Beiderbecke, Glenn Miller and Gerry Mulligan, that is.
the no talent Marsalis Brothers
... and that, right there, is the moment when you surrendered any shred of credibility. I have a lotof areas of disagreement with Wynton, but to describe the Marsalises as "no talent" is outright absurd.
Don't think so? Convince me. Pock up a horn and do what any of them do. I mean, it doesn't involve any talent, right? I'll give you a week.
My main gripe with Wynton is that he has a narrow view of what "real" jazz is -- he practicaly disowned Branford for going on tour with Sting. To me, jazz is a growing, evolving, organic thing -- and fusion is a natural direction for it to take. You wouldn't expect much from a Miles Davis recording of a Cyndi Lauper song, but "Time After Time" is beautiful.
But his comments in the Burns documentary are insightful, and he can illustrate them by playing licks in a way few jazz scholars can. He brought a lot to the serie, and while I disagree with him a lot, I didn't find anything objectionable in his comments in the Burns series.
Personally, I'd like to have seen more of Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. -- Connick was a piano student of Ellis Marsalis, and was practically a 5th Marsalis brother, and Branford and Harry are, as a team, the best ambassadors Jazz has. They're both more likable and engaging than Wynton.
You mean his 'leftest' slant on history, don't you? With the definition of leftist being any position you don't happen to agree with?
If you had listened to the Bob Costas interview of Burns this past Saturday on the radio, it would have made your blood boil. Costas is anti-Bush, anti-Rep and makes no bones about it. Ken Burns described self as a liberal and to the Left politically. They discussed the fact that blacks fought in WWII despite that they were denied equal rights at home. They compared WWII, the good war, to the "bad war" in Iraq. Burns said that this series would be from the perspective of the individual and not from those at the top. It sounded alot like a Studs Terkel opus filled with anedotal experiences set into an historical context. You can bet that there will a liberal message worked into the series.
It's the slant that comes through in spades. Burns is the leading propagandist for the left. The fact that so many on this forum can't recognize it tells me he has his viewers right where he wants them.