He won a place on MY avoid-list for his History of Jazz series, in which he fell for the stupid old-school definition of jazz as expressed by Wynton Marsalis, whom Burns bought-into as the end-all and be-all of "real" jazz authorities. What a wanker.
Louis Armstrong defined jazz as strictly Dixieland -- Louis thought that Bird and Coltrane and straight-ahead jazz and hard bebop wasn't jazz at all -- just like asshat Wynton thinks electric-fusion jazz ala Eddie Harris, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis (in his later years) and Steps Ahead (Brecker Bros./Michael's Brecker's supreme work on the Electronic Wind Instrument, or EWI, etc.) isn't jazz at all because the instruments are electronic and there is a touch of rock cross-over in the mix. The Old School wankers like Wynton have DECLARED IT SO, and Ken Burns made them the end-all and be-all of authoritative figures.
So interesting, good, adventurous electric jazz, a fusion of jazz forms and rock, is all but DEAD in American radio, and taken over by bland, insulting, but palatable Metamucil "smooth jazz" because stubborn old farts like Marsalis their old-school narrow-minded crap of insisting that it's either Straight Ahead Bop or Nothing at All.
And Ken Burns VALIDATED that, thereby enabling the languishing of a truly great and genuinely AMERICAN music form. Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis can both go jump in the lake, the big phony-baloney racists.
I just finished watching the Jazz series, and to tell the truth enjoyed it. Of course, it had typical Burns bias, but I liked the old footage and listening to the tunes.
It was kind of interesting to go through the history. My first exposure to jazz from a musician friend was Song X.
Ornette is not for the uninitiated.
I truly enjoyed Burns' Civil War, but the Baseball one sent me to the showers. When trying to enjoy videos of old time baseball players one, I think, can only tolerate only so much gratuitous bludgeoning about historical race issues that have been corrected (nay overcompensated for IMO) already.