Original subtitles

[Giant steps Playing]

Branford marsalis: A lot of younger musicians

were hanging around with elvin Jones, and they were talking about,

"man, you know, we hear the intensity that you guys played

"when you were playing with Coltrane.

"What was that like?

How do you, like, play with that kind of intensity?"

And elvin looks at them and says,

"you got to be willing to die with the motherfucker."

And then they started laughing like kids do

and then they realize somewhere in the middle of that, he was serious.

How many people do you know

that are willing to die period, die with anybody?

And when you listen to those records,

that's exactly what they sound like.

I mean, that they would die for each other.

Captioning made possible by general motors

[chronology Playing]

Narrator: In the years that followed Charlie Parker's death,

Americans found themselves living in an anxious golden age.

They saw the reelection of the oldest president in their history

and the election of the youngest.

The Brooklyn Dodgers left New York for Los Angeles,

science conquered polio,

and the Soviets sent the first satellite hurtling into space.

Black Americans intensified their demand for civil rights,

insisting on integrated schools and public facilities,

refusing to move to the back of the bus.

Jazz of every kind survived,

but it struggled to find an audience.

Benny Goodman played jazz only occasionally now,

preferring to perform classical music.

Duke Ellington and count basie and dizzy Gillespie were still on the road,

but they found work harder and harder to come by.

Louis Armstrong would fall out of favor

with many black Americans

then risk his whole career on a matter of principle.

Miles Davis' brilliant music and arrogant self-confidence

would make him an icon for young blacks and whites alike,

but success did little to subdue his inner demons.

Members of the "cool," mostly white west coast school

continued to do well on college campuses,

and partly in reaction to their popularity,

a hard-driving drummer from Pittsburgh started a group

aimed at bringing jazz back to its African-American roots.

Meanwhile, against formidable odds

and in the face of withering criticism,

a handful of young innovators would emerge.

They pushed the boundaries of the music

far beyond where even Parker and the beboppers had gone,

until conventional notions of rhythm and Harmony

and agreed-upon chord sequences had all been abandoned.

The music was changing faster than ever now,

branching out in unexpected ways,

breeding factions and sometimes bitter quarrels

about artistic freedom and the very nature of creativity.

The definition of what was jazz and what was not

began to blur.

In the years that followed Charlie Parker's death,

jazz would struggle to embrace it all.

Matt glaser: When we talk about music,

the reason we use terms that sound vague

is not because there's anything vague about music,

but because music expresses human experience so specifically,

in such specific ways,

that when you attempt to find language to describe that,

the words fall short.

What's falling short in that equation is language,

not the music.

The music expresses things about human experience

that cannot be expressed any other way.

That's why it's so important.

[Crowd cheering]

[Playing I got a woman]

narrator: In 1955,

a blind performer from Albany, Georgia, named ray Charles

did something few other artists had ever dared to do.

♪♪ Woman... ♪♪

He blended jazz and blues

with the sacred music of the sanctified church.

♪♪ That's because ♪♪

♪♪ I got a woman ♪♪

♪♪ way over town ♪♪

♪♪ good to me ♪♪

♪♪ yes, I have... ♪♪

Narrator: Some denounced the result as blasphemous, "devil's music,"

but black teenagers flocked to hear it,

and I got a woman Shot to the top

of the rhythm and blues chart.

♪♪ She's a kind of friend indeed ♪♪

Ray Charles' brand of music became known as "soul."

♪♪ She's good to me♪

♪♪ yes, I have ♪♪

♪♪ she saves her lovin' ♪♪

♪♪ early in the mornin' ♪♪

♪♪ just for me ♪♪

♪♪ oh, yes ♪♪

♪♪ hey, I got a woman ♪♪

♪♪ way 'cross town... ♪♪

Narrator: Some whites were listening to soul music, too,

including a one-time truck driver born in tupelo, Mississippi.

♪♪ I--i--i--i--i'm her lovin' man ♪♪

Narrator: Now white teenagers had a new dance music of their own.

They called it rock and roll,

and the audience for jazz,

once the most popular music in america,

shrank still further.

♪♪ I got a woman ♪♪

♪♪ way over town, that's ♪♪

♪♪ good to me ♪♪

♪♪ good to me ♪♪

But for those who stayed with jazz,

the music would never be more thrilling.

Wynton marsalis: There are many different types of musicians

with different talents.

Like, one musician might be able to really hear Harmony,

another musician might be able to play really fast,

another one might have a tremendous personality that's very unique,

another one might just swing hard,

and some musicians' talent is in knowing other people,

and they can play, and when you hear them play,

you hear the sound of a lot of people in their playing.

Other musicians play, and you hear neurosis.

But it's great, you know.

Others play, you hear tremendous fear,

but you hear them confronting it.

So in jazz music, we have many different types of musicians.

And the music is powerful for any type of person.

And Sonny rollins is the type of musician

that's constantly questioning himself.

[St. thomas Playing]

Gary giddins: Sonny rollins is a titan.

He has that ebullience that I associate with Louis Armstrong,

and I think very few musicians have that.

But Sonny is an old-style musician

in the sense that he distrusts records.

He doesn't enjoy recording.

He believes that records are basically commercials

to bring people into the concerts.

That's where the music really takes place.

He's a live performer who likes to respond to the moment.

But he's such an honest musician that if he's not inspired,

he won't simply play by rote the way most musicians will

and turn out a perfectly acceptable performance

that the audience won't be able to tell there's anything wrong.

No. He'll riff all evening.

He'll goof off or play the same tune for half an hour.

I've seen him play the same melody statement for 20 minutes

like he can't get out of it,

there's nothing he really wants to play.

But you catch him on an inspired night,

and he'd tear the hair off your head.

Narrator: It seemed to many critics looking for an heir to Charlie Parker

that Sonny rollins was the most innovative

and influential saxophone player in jazz.

He grew up on the West Side of Manhattan,

a neighbor of thelonious monk, bud Powell,

and the great Coleman Hawkins,

whose big aggressive tone he would incorporate into his own.

It's like a lot of cats are practicers,

and then they practice, and then they come,

and then they play basically what they've practiced.

Sonny rollins would just come out and play.

And you can tell a lot of the things that he's playing

are just things that pop in his head,

immediately, right there.

The drummer will play something,

he'll hear it and turn it around.

He's in the moment.

Narrator: Like so many other admirers of Charlie Parker,

rollins became addicted to heroin.

But unlike many, he abruptly left New York

and worked as a day laborer for a year

to get himself off drugs.

When he returned and began working with the drummer Max roach,

he seemed more powerful

and more rhythmically inventive than ever.

His solos were long, endlessly imaginative,

yet linked with everything that had gone before.

One of rollins' best-known albums was Saxophone colossus,

and he seemed the living embodiment of that word.

Glaser: People have really underestimated

the intellectual achievement of jazz

and what it tells us about the human mind

and how capacious the human mind is.

And for me, Sonny rollins is a prime example of this.

I went to see him play a couple years ago

on the Saturday night before easter Sunday.

And I went to see the late show,

and he started to play his favorite theme song, St. Thomas.

he's playing, improvising just the most magnificent stuff

you've ever heard.

At exactly 10 seconds to midnight,

amidst his soloing, he plays...

[Singing tune of Easter parade]

back to St. Thomas.

the piano player cracks up, a few people crack up.

He had quoted...

♪♪ With your easter bonnet ♪

♪♪ with all the frills upon it ♪

That is, exactly the time it had turned into easter Sunday,

he quoted Easter bonnet After playing a solo for 15 minutes.

What kind of mind does this tell us about?

[It could happen to you Playing]

Narrator: But for all the self-confident swagger of his sound,

Sonny rollins was always his own toughest critic.

In 1959, the pressure of having to outdo himself every night

became too much.

He stopped performing altogether

and began venturing alone out onto the williamsburg bridge

to play his saxophone into the wind.

Wynton marsalis: He's the type of musician

that's always reassessing himself.

So I could see how at a certain time,

he didn't feel he was developing

to the level that he wanted to develop,

so he just stopped playing publicly

and went out and would practice on the bridge.

And, you know, it's like a romantic thing,

somebody on the bridge with a saxophone.

But the whole conception of isolation

and having to really confront the dragon...

Which is the dragon of music and of practicing your horn.

And then when he came off of that period

of intense personal development,

he was playing even more horn than he played before.

I think Sonny rollins was one of the heirs to Louis Armstrong

who understood that pitches are not centrally important in jazz.

Rhythm is.

He could play a solo using one pitch

that would swing so violently you couldn't believe it.

[Rollins playing one-pitch solo]

There's no end to what you can do with rhythm.

And to fuse polyrhythm with complex Harmony

is an amazing achievement of jazz.

Narrator: Rollins returned to jazz in triumph,

only to abandon it again several times

over the years that followed,

as his restless talent and his private anxiety about its worth

battled for his heart and mind.

"We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can,"

he once said.

That's a very familiar scene--

Duke Ellington at his piano.

As we both know, bands come and go.

How do you account for the fact

that yours has been up there for so long,

that it's constantly in demand

for, what, more than 30 years now, isn't it?

Oh, it's about 80% luck-- good luck, that is.

My idea of good luck

is being at the right place at the right time,

doing the right thing before the right people.

[Caravan Playing]

Narrator: Despite his near-universal fame,

by the mid-1950s, Duke Ellington was in trouble.

Some of his finest musicians had left him.

Rumors flew that he could no longer afford to stay on the road.

He admitted to a reporter

that, "our band is operating at a loss now."

In the summer of 1955,

he found himself playing his old tunes

for an ice show at the aquacade in flushing, New York.

Then in July 1956,

the jazz impresario George wein invited him

to appear at the third annual outdoor jazz festival

held at the tranquil summer retreat

of some of america's wealthiest families--

Newport, Rhode Island.

Ellington saw the festival

as a chance to reinvigorate his career,

and he did something he had never done.

He gave a pep talk to his men before they went onstage.

Narrator: Ellington had put together a piece

called the Newport festival suite.

it went over well enough with the audience,

but as it came to a close,

people began heading for the parking lot.

[Diminuendo and crescendo in blue Playing]

Ellington called for one of his old standbys,

diminuendo and crescendo In blue.

people stopped, listened, and hurried back to their seats.

Then tenor saxophonist Paul gonsalves began to play.

George wein: People sat in reserved seats normally,

and they sat and watched the concert,

and once in a while, they'd stand up and cheer and give a standing ovation.

But a woman started to dance

when Ellington had Paul gonsalves playing his tenor solo.

And Duke saw this woman dance.

Everybody crowded around to see the dancing of this woman,

a blond woman from new bedford.

She was quite attractive.

It really took hold.

And Ellington saw this thing happening,

and he just kept Paul gonsalves playing.

Clark Terry: And as it began to build,

some gorgeous, voluptuous lady in the audience

decided that she was being moved to the point

where she could no longer contain herself,

so she jumped up on the stage

and started allowing herself to be flounced around a bit.

Ha ha.

And Ellington kind of enjoyed that,

and it inspired him,

and he in turn inspired the band,

and the band was, uh...

Sam woodyard was the drummer,

and he started pounding a little heavier,

so things begin to build up to a real frenzy.

Narrator: Gonsalves dug in,

one furious chorus following another.

Wein: Duke caught that spirit.

He kept playing that piano and comping and comping

and kept it going and kept it going.

And you could see in his face the joy and the excitement.

This was something that never happened for him

with all the years he'd been playing.

Narrator: The audience became so enthusiastic

that George wein, afraid of a riot,

began frantically signaling Ellington to cut the number short.

But Ellington refused to stop gonsalves.

Gonsalves went on playing for 27 choruses.

The crowd demanded 4 encores.

Ellington: Paul gonsalves!

Paul gonsalves!

Narrator: A record of the concert

sold hundreds of thousands of copies,

more than any other record Duke Ellington ever made.

Wein: Every time I saw Duke after that,

he would be talking about the introduction

of the Diminuendo And crescendo in blue.

he would say, "I was born at Newport in 1956."

Lots of luck he was "born."

He'd only created the whole history of American music

prior to 1956.

But the band was working more. They were getting more money.

People were calling for the band,

and Duke felt a new surge in his life.

[Surrey with the fringe on top Playing]

Stanley crouch: Now, miles Davis benefited from the reaction

that people were beginning to feel in the 1950s

against the suburbanization of the United States.

You know, a lot of mass packaging

in a kind of a projection of a certain sublime mediocrity,

if you will.

So people wanted something that was elegant

but that had a bite to it.

Narrator: After miles Davis had kicked his heroin habit,

he resolved to make up for lost time.

He was under contract to a small label named prestige

and recorded a steady stream of albums

with group after group of gifted musicians--

Sonny rollins,

Horace silver,

milt Jackson,

red garland,

Paul chambers,

Philly Joe Jones,

cannonball adderley,

and a youthful veteran of rhythm and blues bands--John Coltrane.

Wynton marsalis: His sound becomes really clear.

His direction is clear,

playing the long lines with a beautiful sound,

always with that sense of swing,

because he always could really swing.

And real swinging rhythm sections that are very organized.

You don't hear a lot of sloppiness on his recordings

because he has people in very defined roles,

and his albums are always good to study

because you can hear what's going on at that time.

Narrator: Like Duke Ellington,

Davis was always able to incorporate

the distinctive sounds of disparate musicians into his own music,

like the sense of space he heard

in the work of the pianists Ahmad Jamal and thelonious monk.

Crouch: From monk, he learned that you could use

the new kind of harmonic ideas that had arrived,

but you could use them in the spare, telling way

that Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong

and blues singers and players used their material.

[The man I love Playing]

So you didn't need to use the baroque elements

that you got in bop.

You could just cut straight to the chase, as the saying goes.

Because he learned from monk

that whereas one guy might play 7 or 8 notes,

monk might play 3 or 2.

But they'd be so tellingly placed

that they would have the same impact.

Sometimes bigger.

Giddins: He was the young romantic.

He was a true romantic.

He played ballads the way nobody else could play them.

They weren't sentimentalized.

They were beautiful, and they were deep,

and they didn't require a lot of hand-wringing.

And they were different from anybody else.

You'd have these almost stark melodies

in a romantic ballad,

and the starkness would make the romance all the more compelling.

And he knew that.

It was just him and the trumpet,

and you were feeling as you watched and listened

that you were sort of eavesdropping on a very private moment,

and it was almost an imposition

when the other musicians would come in.

Narrator: Davis had become a consummate professional,

and his tenderness when playing love songs

had begun to win him a whole new audience.

But miles Davis wanted more.

"The real money," he said,

"was in getting to the mainstream of america."

He had been recently signed

by the biggest label in the business, Columbia records,

a company with all the resources he would need

to become a bigger star.

But he could not begin to record for Columbia

until he had produced 4 final albums for prestige.

Davis was so eager to move on

that he managed to make all 4 records in 2 days.

No second takes were ever needed.

Wynton marsalis: Miles' music appeals

to the vulnerable side of people.

His music speaks to the solitary person inside of each of us.

And it soothes us in knowing that we all feel alone.

But on the other hand, he swings.

And this combination of 2 opposite things,

you put them together,

and that's a cocktail that is irresistible.

At the Rouge lounge all this week

is one of the great jazz groups in the country today,

and that's the Max roach-cliff brown ensemble.

And with us tonight is one of the outstanding jazz trumpeters

in the country today-- emarcy recording star Clifford brown.

[Playing Oh! Lady be good]

narrator: In the hard living world of jazz,

Clifford brown stood out.

Drugs and alcohol didn't interest him,

nor was he temperamental.

Brown routinely arrived an hour early for recording dates

to clean his horn and ready his mind.

And he always seemed to have time

for younger players eager for advice.

His only vice was chess.

"Clifford was a profound influence on my personal life,"

Sonny rollins remembered.

"He showed me that it was possible to live a good clean life

and still be a good jazz musician."

Giddins: Clifford brown didn't take any drugs,

and he didn't smoke, and he didn't curse,

and he was a, you know, purebred young man.

But he played with more brilliance

than anyone who had come along since Parker,

and in a sense he proved that it wasn't about drugs.

And in fact, it has often been suggested

that the end of heroin's sway over jazz

occurred in the middle 1950s for 2 reasons:

One, because of Charlie Parker's death,

and 2, because of the arrival of Clifford brown.

[I get a kick out of you Playing]

Narrator: As much as his fellow musicians admired brown's character,

they were awed by the warmth and richness of his tone...

And the long, melodic dancing lines

that seemed to flow effortlessly from his horn.

Joe lovano: I love Clifford brown's playing.

It's some of the warmest playing on any instrument

that's been recorded in jazz.

The passion that he played his lines with, you know?

He created, when I say lines, I mean his phrases, you know,

the way they unfolded and kind of just oozed out of his horn.

Narrator: In 1954,

he had joined forces with the brilliant drummer Max roach.

For more than 2 years,

their quintet was one of the most innovative in jazz.

And it seemed to many that Clifford brown was destined

to join the ranks of the greatest of all trumpet players--

Louis Armstrong, dizzy Gillespie, miles Davis.

[Song ends]

[Applause]

Brown: Thank you very much.

You've made me feel so wonderful.

[Easy living Playing]

Narrator: On the evening of Monday, June 25, 1956,

at the end of a rare day off spent with his wife and infant son,

brown took part in a jam session in Philadelphia.

He hadn't really wanted to be there,

but characteristically, he was doing a favor for a friend.

Now he would be forced to drive through the night

to get to his next gig in Chicago.

It was after midnight

before brown and the pianist Richie Powell finished playing.

They took off in Powell's new car

with Powell's wife Nancy at the wheel.

It began to rain.

Suddenly, the car skidded out of control,

flew over an embankment, and turned over.

All 3 passengers were killed instantly.

Dizzy Gillespie was about to go onstage

at the Apollo theater in Harlem

when his men heard the news that Clifford brown was dead.

When the curtain Rose,

most of the musicians were in tears.

"For his artistry," Gillespie said,

"there can be no replacement."

Sarah Vaughan: ♪♪ I don't know why ♪♪

♪♪ but I'm feelin' so sad ♪♪

♪♪ I long to try ♪♪

♪♪ something I've never had♪

♪♪ never had no kissin' ♪♪

♪♪ oh, what I've been missin' ♪♪

♪♪ lover man, oh, where can you be? ♪♪

Giddins: Sarah Vaughan is my favorite singer.

Vaughan: ♪♪ the night is so cold ♪♪

♪♪ and I'm so all alone... ♪

Giddins: She had the most astonishing range

of any jazz singer.

She was extremely sophisticated harmonically--

I mean in the way that Charlie Parker and dizzy Gillespie

and all the great instrumentalists of bop were.

People make the mistake of calling her operatic

and saying that if she wanted to,

she could have been an opera singer,

and I think they're entirely missing the point.

She had the range,

but she had no interest in that kind of singing.

Her whole approach to phrasing

is much more oriented around the church and around jazz.

Vaughan: ♪♪ I've heard it said ♪

♪♪ that the thrill of romance ♪♪

♪♪ can be ♪♪

♪♪ like a heavenly dream ♪♪

Cassandra Wilson: The tone of her voice,

the richness of her voice...

Vaughan: ♪♪ I go to bed ♪♪

Wilson: ...For me, was otherworldly.

Vaughan: ♪♪ with a prayer ♪♪

I felt I left my body when I listened to Sarah Vaughan.

Vaughan: ♪♪ ...Love to me ♪♪

♪♪ strange as it seems ♪♪

Chops like you wouldn't believe.

Another one of those vocalists

who can stand right next to an instrumentalist

and deliver with as much dexterity

and with as much clarity

as any instrumentalist of her time.

Narrator: Sarah Vaughan saw herself as a musician

rather than a singer.

She was a gifted pianist in her own right,

and when she closed her eyes onstage, she said,

she could see--and sing--

lines that might have been improvised on the piano.

Musicians loved her for her perfect pitch and rhythmic sense,

her sophisticated ear for chord changes,

and her astonishing voice.

She could sing everything from soprano to baritone.

They called her "sailor" at first

for the richness of her vocabulary

and her fondness for good times.

Later, she became known as "sassy."

"Sassy," dizzy Gillespie once said,

"can sing notes other people can't even hear."

Vaughan: ♪♪ the way you wear your hat ♪♪

♪♪ the way you sip your tea♪

♪♪ the memory of all that ♪♪

♪♪ no, no, they can't take that away from me ♪♪

Margo Jefferson: Harmonically, melodically,

this woman can do anything.

She was always an experimentalist.

Vaughan: ♪♪ the way you haunt my dreams ♪♪

Jefferson: You hear

when she's just utterly enjoying herself musically.

You hear her very complicated relationship to lyrics,

the way she will distance them often

and play with them, parody them,

claim to forget the words,

which I'm not at all convinced she always forgot,

you know, and substitute scat.

I think all of that bespeaks a chafing at the boundaries

of the popular song as a jazz musician.

♪♪ The way your smile just beams ♪♪

♪♪ the way you sing off-key, key, key ♪♪

♪♪ the way you haunt my dreams ♪

♪♪ no, no, can't take that away from me ♪♪

♪♪ can't take that away from me♪

I'm looking for a boy singer.

I'd like to get a young singer for my band, you know.

A young, young singer?

Yeah, a young singer.

I'd like to.

I don't think you have to go any further.

Well, who is it?

You?

Ahh, you kill me, daddy!

Giddins: He did not distinguish

between being an artist and being an entertainer.

Since you, uh, brought memories to my memory,

look here, uh...

Giddins: He was a great artist,

but he was there to entertain you.

He wasn't offering his art as, you know, homework.

It wasn't for 4 credits.

It was to have fun.

Look at daddy Mitch.

Drape it on us there, daddy.

[Band playing Ko ko mo (I love you so)]

yeah. We're going now.

♪♪ Talk to me, baby ♪♪

♪♪ whisper in my ear ♪♪

♪♪ talk to me, baby ♪♪

♪♪ whisper in my ear ♪♪

He could be almost like a vaudevillian

and do a kind of a low humor routine with velma middleton.

He could joke with the musicians, with the audience.

He could tell slightly off-color stories.

And then he could pick up the trumpet

and play something that would bring tears to your eyes.

He did not distinguish,

and this drove a lot of people nuts.

A lot of people wished that he had just, you know, never recorded pop tunes.

He should have been on some kind of ivory tower,

occasionally sending forth a recording

or appearing in carnegie hall.

That's not Louis Armstrong.

♪♪ Oh, there's dimples on her elbows... ♪♪

Gerald early: There was something about Armstrong

that seemed to be a certain kind of shadow

of a certain kind of minstrelsy,

and I believe it made a lot of black people uncomfortable.

Then, too, his music,

he had made certain kind of adaptations

in his music for popular taste

but not significant adaptations in his music

for black popular taste.

[Scatting]

Armstrong just really didn't seem to be speaking

to that community anymore...

[Scatting]

And I believe that's why he had such trouble with black people

in the fifties and sixties.

♪♪ Yeah, kokey ♪

♪♪ kokey ♪♪

♪♪ ko ko mo ♪♪

[Scatting]

♪♪ Oh, yeah ♪♪ ♪♪ oh, yeah♪

[Applause]

Ha ha ha!

What he did, what he played came from within.

It came from, uh...

It came from his own heart, from his mind,

where it wasn't anything contrived.

It was him.

It was Louis, what he was,

the essence of his being.

That's the difference.

He was a completely honest man--

musically and in every other way that I knew about.

[Aunt hagar's blues Playing]

Narrator: On September 9, 1957,

Louis Armstrong was about to go onstage in grand forks, north Dakota,

when he saw on television a crowd of whites

jeering at black children

who were trying to enter central high school in little rock, Arkansas.

Orval faubus, the state's segregationist governor,

defied the United States supreme court

and ordered in Arkansas national guardsmen with drawn bayonets

to keep the students out.

Armstrong was outraged.

He had just been asked to undertake a goodwill tour of the Soviet union

for the state department.

Jazz had always been a symbol of American freedom,

and Armstrong would be the first American jazz artist

to appear behind the iron curtain.

Now with little rock, he was reluctant to go.

What are you going to tell the Russians

when they ask you about

it all depends what time they send me over there.

I don't think they should send me now

unless they straighten that mess down south.

And for good.

I mean, not just to blow over.

To cut it out, I think.

Because they've been ignoring the constitution,

although they're taught it in school.

But when they go home, their parents tell them different,

say, "you don't have to abide by it

"because we've been getting away with it a hundred years,

"so, uh, nobody tells on each other.

So don't bother with it."

So if they ask me what's happening if I go now,

I can't tell a lie. That's one thing.

And I wasn't lying, the way I feel about it.

Narrator: Armstrong canceled the tour.

"The way they're treating my people in the south,"

he told a reporter, "the government can go to hell.

It's getting so bad, a colored man hasn't got any country."

Armstrong's white road manager was appalled,

afraid he had ruined his career.

Shaw: He said, "Louis Armstrong never said nothing like that,"

because he's thinking about those big fees, you know?

He said, "Louis Armstrong never said anything about that.

He didn't say anything like that."

Louis said, "yes I did.

"I meant it, and I'll stand by until my dying day.

"All I ask is that they take those little kids into the school.

Why can't they go to school?"

Giddins: And he had some very dark words for faubus.

He called him an uneducated plowboy,

and he criticized eisenhower

for not going down there and taking, you know,

that little black girl in his hand

and marching her into that school.

Well...from any black entertainer at that time,

that was powerful stuff.

But from Louis Armstrong?

Narrator: No other jazz musician spoke out so forcefully.

Now critics, both black and white, attacked him.

Editorials called for a boycott of his concerts.

Louis Armstrong wouldn't back down.

But the controversy--

and the killing schedule of one-nighters

Armstrong always insisted on keeping--

eventually took its toll.

In the summer of 1959, on tour in Italy,

he suddenly collapsed

with what was later diagnosed as a heart attack.

Armstrong told the press

that his old friend bix beiderbecke

had tried to enlist him for Gabriel's band.

Reporter: About 2 days ago,

they practically had you in the cemetery.

No, it must have been longer than that.

It must have been longer than that.

The trouble was that Sidney bechet and bix

tried to get me up there to play first chair,

but I didn't want to.

They didn't want to pay me nothing but union scale, so...

You didn't hear Gabriel blowing his horn, did you, Louis?

Well, I didn't get that far, see what I'm saying?

Narrator: He was back playing again 2 weeks later.

[St. Louis blues Playing]

Ossie Davis: Louis Armstrong, to me, is a smile,

a handkerchief, and sweat...

And the capacity to move me above and beyond tears.

I was working on a film called A man called Adam,

which starred Sammy Davis Jr.

Louis Armstrong was also in the picture.

One day at lunch, everybody had gone out.

The set was quiet.

As I came back toward the set, I looked up,

and there was Louis Armstrong sitting in a chair,

the handkerchief tied around his head,

looking up with the saddest expression

I've ever seen on a man's face.

I looked, and I was startled,

and then I started to back away because it seemed such a private moment.

But he heard me backing away, and he broke out of it right away.

"Looks like these cats are going to starve old Louis to death.

Hey, man, wow," and everything, you know.

I went into it with him, but I never forgot that look.

And it changed my concept of Louis Armstrong,

because I, too, as a boy

had objected to a lot of what Louis was doing.

I figured all them teeth and all that handkerchief--

we called it "ooftah,"

by that which we meant,

you do that to please the white folks, don't you?

You make them happy and all that stuff.

You make us look like fools.

But it was only then I began to understand something about Louis.

He could put on that show, he could do that whole thing,

because in that horn of his, you know,

he had the power to kill.

That horn could kill a man.

So there was where the truth of Louis Armstrong resided.

Whatever he was...

The moment he put the trumpet to his lips,

a new truth emerged, a new man emerged,

a new power emerged.

And I looked on Louis for what he truly was after that.

He became an angelic presence to me after that moment.

Boy: Ladies and gentlemen,

as you know, we have something special

down here at birdland this evening--

a recording for blue note records.

Let's get together and bring art blakey to the bandstand

with a great big round of applause.

How about a big hand there for art blakey!

Thank you!

[Playing Bu's delight]

Jackie mclean: You could feel the rhythm

anywhere you stood on art blakey's bandstand,

because art was so strong,

and his style was about energy and thunder, you know.

An art blakey thunder.

Wynton marsalis: Art blakey, like all the jazz musicians,

is that combination of soul, intelligence, and spirituality.

He could just do things nobody else could do

and could get by with it.

And you talk about, like, dissipation, getting high,

lying, hanging out late, any of that,

but you still had to love him.

Narrator: The drummer art blakey made it his life's work

to bring back to jazz the audience it had lost to rhythm and blues.

He had launched his own big band at 15

and developed his thunderous style

while playing with Fletcher Henderson and Billy eckstine.

He twice visited west Africa, fascinated by its rhythms,

and he adopted islam

and sometimes called himself Abdullah ibn buhaina.

But jazz, he once said,

"doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa."

It was an African-American creation, he insisted.

"It couldn't have come from anyone but us."

[Applause]

[Doodlin' Playing]

Narrator: In 1955,

blakey and a young pianist and composer named Horace silver

established a quintet they called the jazz messengers.

Michael cuscuna: They brought in gospel influences,

blues influences, things that people could relate to

who were not deeply into modern jazz,

and it caught on very quickly.

The message of the group was

"we swing, we're earthy, we play the blues.

"You can walk away humming it, but we're not going to cheat

on the quality of the music or the creativity."

And they found a way to do everything.

Narrator: The records they made for blue note

incorporated the sounds of gospel and rhythm and blues

and were meant to provide a swinging, earthy alternative

to the cool, popular sounds of west coast jazz.

Critics labeled the music blakey had begun to play "hard bop."

Tunes by the messengers,

the soulful electric organ player Jimmy Smith,

and a host of others started turning up on jukeboxes

in black neighborhoods across the country--

Chicago's south side,

central Avenue in Los Angeles,

125th street in Harlem.

Even their titles celebrated the culture from which they came--

home cookin',

cornbread,

grits 'n gravy,

the preacher,

back at the chicken shack.

early: What you got was black musicians who were saying,

"we're going to invent a musical style and form

"that white people can't copy.

"It's going to be technically something that they can't copy.

"It's going to have a certain kind of swing

"or certain kind of rhythm that they can't copy,

"certain kind of way of playing.

"But also because it's going to be so ethnicized

"that they really can't copy it

"without absolutely looking like a minstrel show.

I mean, so they can't do it."

Narrator: Art blakey's music was always filled with joy.

"When we're on the stand," he said,

"and we see that there are people in the audience

"who aren't patting their feet

"and who aren't nodding their heads to our music,

"we know we're doing something wrong.

"Because when we do get our message across,

those heads and feet do move."

Horace silver eventually went on to form groups of his own,

but art blakey kept the name the jazz messengers,

and for 45 years, traveled the world spreading his message

to anyone willing to listen.

Cuscuna: We used to call him

the greatest jazz university around.

He used to ask players

that another leader might find valuable, indispensable,

and want to hold on to,

he used to tell musicians, "well, you're ready now.

"You've got the tunes. You've got the experience.

"It's time for you to lead a band,

get 5 young cats and feed the tributary of jazz that way."

Well, he's the greatest bandleader that I ever worked with.

I not only learned so much

about how to lead a band from art,

but I also learned how to grow up and be a man from art.

Narrator: Generation after generation of future stars

would get their start or hone their skills with blakey.

Jackie mclean,

Hank mobley,

Donald byrd,

Bobby Timmons,

Benny golson,

Woody Shaw,

Lee Morgan,

Freddie Hubbard,

Keith jarrett,

joanne brackeen,

Wayne shorter,

wynton marsalis.

Yeah, the messengers were the training ground

for a lot of great musicians

because he gave you a chance to play

and to learn how to play.

He would put his swing up underneath you

so that you could learn how to play,

and when I first sat in with him, I knew I wasn't playing nothing.

He said, "man, you sad, but that's all right."

And when you were around him,

you were around the essence of jazz music.

So he put that in us.

If you want to play this music,

you have to play it with soul, with intensity,

and every time you touch your horn, you play your horn.

This is not a game.

Mclean: Everybody had to do their job,

or you were replaced.

And in every city that we went to,

if there was a star alto player there,

he would invite him to come and play with the band.

And that was always to keep me on notice

that there was always somebody waiting in the wings.

[Blues march Playing]

Narrator: On the road, blakey was indefatigable,

playing gig after gig

and outplaying musicians half his age.

And he was utterly fearless.

Wynton marsalis: The drummer art Taylor told me one time

that some some gangsters in Brooklyn took his drums

because he owed them some money.

He says-- so art blakey says--

after a gig, it was, like, 3:30 in the morning,

art blakey said, "let's go to their house."

They knew who these people were.

"Let's go to their house and get your drums."

So they went up there. 3:30, 4:00 in the morning,

art blakey knocks on the door,

and a guy answers the door with his gun in hand.

And art blakey goes, "this man is a musician,

"and you've taken his drums.

"Now, uh, he owes you some money,

"but there's no way for him to make the money

"if you deprive him of a means

"of making a living. He's a musician.

He's not a criminal."

So when art blakey got finished talking,

the guys went and got his drums and gave them to him.

And that's how he was.

He could just do things that other people could not do

because he believed in it so much.

You know, and when he told me the story,

I could see art blakey doing that

because he could just talk to you a certain way,

and it would make you believe

that you could do something.

He had that belief in him.

Narrator: "Fire-- that's what people want,"

he told his young musicians again and again.

"Jazz," art blakey said,

"washes away the dust of everyday life."

[Dickie's dream Playing]

On December 6, 1957,

2 jazz writers--Whitney balliett and nat hentoff--

helped gather

an extraordinary group of musicians

for a one-time-only live program on CBS

called The sound of jazz.

nothing like it had ever been tried before on American television.

It was an all-star assemblage--

Jo Jones and count basie,

thelonious monk and Coleman Hawkins,

Gerry mulligan and Ben Webster,

Lester young...

And Billie Holiday.

Hentoff: Lester and Billie had been very close for years.

But for some reason-- and nobody could tell me why--

they had gone way apart in preceding years,

and when we were there

for the blocking and the sound check,

they very carefully were on different sides

of the studio.

He was supposed to be in the big band section, in another section,

and I said, "look, why don't you just do the thing with Billie?

And you can sit down, you don't have to stand."

And the thing with Billie was a small group-- Roy eldridge, Lester--

and Billie was singing one of the very few blues

she ever did--

fine and mellow, Which she wrote.

[Playing Fine and mellow]

♪♪ my man don't love me ♪♪

♪♪ he treats me, oh, so mean ♪♪

♪♪ my man ♪♪

♪♪ he don't love me ♪♪

♪♪ he treats me awful mean ♪♪

♪♪ he's the lowest man ♪♪

♪♪ that I've ever seen ♪♪

Narrator: Ben Webster played the first solo.

Hentoff: Lester got up,

and he played the purest blues I have ever heard.

And their eyes were sort of interlocked,

and she was sort of nodding and half-smiling.

It was as if they were both remembering

what had been, whatever that was.

Holiday: ♪♪ treat me right, baby ♪♪

♪♪ and I'll stay home every day ♪♪

Hentoff: And in the control room,

we were all crying.

Holiday: ♪♪ just treat me right, baby ♪♪

♪♪ and I'll stay home night and day ♪♪

♪♪ but you're so mean to me, baby ♪♪

♪♪ I know you're gonna drive me away ♪♪

♪♪ love is just like a faucet ♪♪

♪♪ it turns off and on ♪♪

♪♪ love is like a faucet ♪♪

♪♪ it turns off and on ♪♪

♪♪ sometimes when you think it's on, baby ♪♪

♪♪ it has turned off and gone ♪♪

Narrator: When the show was over, they went their separate ways.

[It's the talk of the town Playing]

Lester young was now living

in the Alvin hotel on 52nd street.

He had moved there from long island,

telling his wife that he could not bear

to be so far from the world of jazz

that had always been his real home.

Alcohol had destroyed his health.

Mclean: And I'd come in and call Prez's room,

see if he wanted me to go to the store or anything for him.

Even when I was 19, 20 years old, you know,

I loved Lester young so much, you know,

I would spend any moment I could.

Sometimes he would say, "yeah, come on up,"

and I'd go up to his room

and go buy him some cigarettes or something like that.

It was kind of sad.

He used to sit at the window

and look across at birdland at the people coming and going.

Narrator: He still played from time to time

but spent his last days moving from movie house to movie house

on 42nd street

or listening to his record player--

other people's music-- frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday--

never his own.

Lester young died in his room at the Alvin hotel

on march 15, 1959.

His influence was everywhere.

"Anyone who doesn't play like Lester," one musician said,

[God bless the child Playing]

Holiday: ♪♪ them that's got shall have ♪♪

♪♪ them that's not shall lose ♪♪

♪♪ so the Bible said ♪♪

♪♪and it still is news ♪♪

♪♪ mama may have ♪♪

♪♪ papa may have ♪♪

♪♪ but god bless the child that's got his own ♪♪

♪♪ that's got his own ♪♪

Rowles: I knew she was bad off.

Ben Webster used to say, "oh, me, that poor girl."

We did her last record date for Norman granz

out here at capitol records.

And she was very wasted.

And I have a picture that was taken

of red Mitchell and me at the piano and her,

and she looks very, very weak and frail.

Doesn't look like the lady day that I first met...

Because she had been into some awful deep stuff.

Holiday: ♪♪ money ♪♪

♪♪ you've got lots of friends ♪♪

Narrator: By the time Lester young died,

his old friend Billie Holiday

was almost unrecognizable.

Holiday: ♪♪ but when you're gone ♪♪

Narrator: Some evenings she could not remember the lyrics of songs

she had been singing nearly every night

for more than two decades.

Holiday: ♪♪ rich relations give ♪♪

Narrator: In may of 1959,

2 months after Lester young's death,

she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

Somehow, someone managed to smuggle heroin into her room.

A nurse discovered it.

Holiday was placed under arrest.

Police were stationed at the door of her room.

Holiday: ♪♪ that's got his own ♪♪

♪♪ that's got his own ♪♪

Narrator: Billie Holiday, perhaps the greatest of all jazz singers,

died at 3:10 A.M., July 17, 1959.

She was 44 years old.

Holiday: ♪♪ rich relations give ♪♪

Narrator: The official cause was cardiac failure.

The real cause, said her manager Joe glaser,

was "a concoction of everything she had done in the last 20 years."

Holiday: ♪♪ mama may have ♪♪

♪♪ papa may have ♪♪

Rowles: I got the word from New York that she died.

And it was-- it was just a tragedy,

but I sure hope that she's resting comfortably.

Ossie Davis: I can't think of Billie Holiday

without tears coming to my eye.

There was always something of pain,

always something...

That was heartbreaking in her rendition.

And she wasn't only talking

about her own heartbreak.

She was talking about yours, too.

Uh, the thing that joined us,

you know, was the common concept

that the misery she was singing, you know,

was one that included us and embraced us all.

She could, like a mother with a big, warm bosom,

reach out and embrace and hold close--

not in the gospel sense,

but in the sense, you know,

"god bless the child that's got his own."

Holiday: ♪♪ he just don't worry 'bout nothin' ♪♪

♪♪ 'cause he's got his own ♪♪

♪♪ yes, he's got his own ♪♪

[New rhumba Playing]

Narrator: In 1956,

miles Davis found still another way to express his genius...

And he did it with his old friend,

the arranger Gil Evans.

Giddins: And when miles really became important

and was signed with Columbia records in 1956,

one of the first things he did was to sign up Gil Evans

to write an album that became known as Miles ahead.

and this was the first of the 3 major works they did together,

and they are among the most exquisitely beautiful

and satisfyingly realized lps of that whole era.

Narrator: Miles ahead,

porgy and Bess,

and Sketches of spain

are 3 of the best-loved

jazz albums ever made.

All of them featured Davis

in lush orchestral settings.

[Concierto de aranjuez Playing]

Giddins: Gil once told me that the sounds

that miles made in those years

were extremely difficult for him.

They were painful physically and emotionally.

I mean, in a way, he was a kind of, you know,

Marlon Brando of the trumpet.

He was really changing the sound of the instrument.

And Gil was able to find, you know,

rich, original orchestrations

that just seemed to wrap themselves around miles.

Gil would just create a chord,

and then he would throw, you know,

a couple of minutes of open space

for miles to fill it in.

And the chord would anticipate what miles would play,

and then the following chord

would pick up on what miles had played.

They really thought together as one.

Those are the kinds of records,

especially Sketches of spain And Porgy and Bess,

that I remember a lot of women would have in record collections

that were otherwise rock and roll

and a couple of classical,

and there would be one jazz record,

and it would be that because it was so sophisticated and worldly

and it would set a mood and it was sexy and erotic,

and if you wanted to impress somebody on the first date,

that was always the record that would go on the turntable.

[Teo Playing]

Narrator: Miles Davis was now

the highest paid musician in jazz, black or white,

and he had become a defiant symbol of success

for a new generation of African Americans.

He was fond of fine clothes, fast cars, and beautiful women,

"a black man," a fellow musician said,

"who lives like a white man."

Davis cultivated a cool, tough, angry demeanor,

and his rudeness--to fans and to other musicians--

was legendary.

Miles Davis did not take anything from anybody.

He was also powerful enough

to have his way with white management.

It bothered Davis

that Columbia had put a pretty blonde

on the cover of Miles ahead,

and when he released Someday my prince will come,

he insisted it feature his second wife, Frances.

Frances Davis: Miles had style.

He had something that was electric to everybody.

Ladies just--you know, they went crazy over him.

He was absolutely beautiful.

The exhilaration of just miles walking on a stage--

it was a turn-on for everybody.

His look, his appeal to the masses was incredible,

like no other musician I've ever seen.

Lovano: His personality, his whole presence was amazing.

His whole-- I don't know--

the vibrations in the room changed

when he walked in the room.

Everybody's eyes focused on him.

It was, like, he had some magical, mystical things

that was happening, uh, in his persona.

Troupe: We all used to act like miles.

I used to talk to girls like I thought that miles would talk to girls.

You know, we heard he had this hoarse whisper,

so I'd stand up and talk to women--girls, like--

well, girls at that time,

[hoarsely] "Hey, baby, what's happening?

What's going on?"

Early: But he was the person

who was talked about, really as a personality,

more so than Ellington or more so than any of the other people.

Miles. I mean, he was known first name.

Miles. Miles this, miles that,

miles with the suits, miles with the women.

He was the jazz hero for my generation,

and this came along at the time of the civil rights era,

when my generation was sort of rejecting Louis Armstrong,

was sort of rejecting the whole idea

of a black person as an entertainer,

and that was very powerful for us.

His cool, the way he went about his business...

The, uh, sort of inside/outside way with miles.

Because on one level, miles was Mr. Outside

in sort of his stance about race

or his stance about music

or his sort of f-you stance about life.

But he was also Mr. Inside.

He was popular. He was respected.

Whites and blacks liked his music.

I mean, there were lots of things about miles

that made him very attractive that way.

[Mood Playing]

Narrator: But for all his growing fame,

for all his success,

Davis could never completely mask

his deep insecurity...

Or control the anger that was so much a part of his personality.

No amount of toughness could change the fact

that he was still a black man in a white world.

He would be afraid to go in to the hotels himself

to check on our reservations,

thinking because he is a black man,

they're going to say, "no, we don't have your reservation."

He would send me in to take care of that part of it.

I mean, he really, um...

Feared the prejudice that did happen in this country then.

Narrator: One evening,

Davis was taking a break outside birdland

when a white policeman told him to move on.

Davis refused.

"I'm working here," he said.

The officer beat him bloody with his Billy club.

That incident and other indignities

only fueled Davis' alienation and rage.

He had fistfights with club owners,

swore at fans who dared speak to him.

His private life was just as complicated...

And violent.

Frances Davis: Miles was very possessive. I was his possession.

Here I am,

this ballerina who'd performed all over the world,

on Broadway now,

and he comes to the theater one evening in his Ferrari

and says to me,

"Frances, a woman should be with her man.

I want you out of West Side story."

I couldn't even mention another man.

When I mentioned that Quincy Jones was handsome,

and all of a sudden, I was down for the count.

I had to call the police because I thought,

"this is going to be the end of me."

It was hard,

but I was in love with him, so I took it all.

Wein: I didn't love miles Davis. I loved dizzy Gillespie.

I loved Duke Ellington. I loved count basie.

I really loved those people.

I never loved miles Davis.

People Loved miles Davis,

but it was a sort of a masochism.

Miles treated everybody in very weird ways.

That worked with miles that are still being pains in the asses

because they learned how to be a pain in the ass from miles Davis,

and they try to mimic him and imitate him.

And miles-- it worked for miles.

I was proud of working with miles. I didn't love him.

[All blues Playing]

Narrator: Despite the turmoil in his private life,

miles Davis astonished the jazz world once again

in 1959.

He had brought his sextet into the Columbia studios

to make another album--

5 original tunes built on simple scales, or "modes,"

rather than the complicated chord progressions

that had characterized bebop.

This opened up the world for improvisers

because they could get away from the-- almost the gymnastics

of popping through all of these complicated harmonic labyrinths

and just concentrate on inventing melody,

because the Harmony didn't change.

The guys who had been bebopping through all those chords

for all those years

were naturally falling into certain cliches,

certain easy kinds of phrases.

Miles forced them out of it.

Narrator: Davis was committed to getting something spontaneous

out of his musicians.

None of his men ever saw any of his new tunes

before they got to the recording session.

Troupe: When miles came in,

he comes up with little scraps of paper--

little bitty pieces of paper--and says, "there's your part.

There's your part. There's your part. There's your part."

But he wanted that tension,

and he knew that they were great musicians.

He told me the trick was to pick great musicians when you do that

because he had learned that kind of technique from bird.

So you put them in that spot,

you give them a little bit of something,

and then if it's a great musician,

then they kind of play beyond themselves.

Narrator: The great musicians who Rose to their leader's challenge

included tenor saxophone star John Coltrane...

Alto saxophonist Julian "cannonball" adderley...

Bassist Paul chambers, Jimmy Cobb on drums...

And a new and little-known pianist,

bill Evans.

Hentoff: And this was a time

when there was a great deal of fierce rejection

among some younger black musicians

of the idea "a," that whites could play the music,

but, more to the point,

that whites shouldn't be taking away jobs from jazz musicians.

And this coincided with the great popular--

great for jazz--popular interest in so-called west coast jazz,

which was almost entirely white, was pretty bland,

and those people were making a lot of money.

So here he hires bill Evans.

Narrator: When it came to music,

color didn't matter to miles Davis.

Evans' playing, he said,

added a "quiet fire" to his group.

It reminded him

of "sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall."

The album Davis and Evans

and the other members of the sextet produced together,

kind of blue,

is the best-selling jazz album of all time.

[Blue train Playing]

Glaser: Music is one of the few things

that involves your body, your emotions, your mind,

and your spirit,

all operating simultaneously.

You're playing. Your body is involved.

You're feeling emotions,

you want to express something emotionally.

Your mind is active.

It's constructing structures over the chord changes

of this particular tune.

And your spirit.

If you're--it's a prayerful kind of thing,

so in that sense, it's a very rare gift to be a musician,

to be able to spontaneously, as a jazz musician,

have conversations with other people

in which all of the parts of themselves are embodied

and happening at the same time.

Wynton marsalis: Jazz music is existence music.

It doesn't take you out of the world.

It puts you In The world and makes you deal with it.

It's not the kind of thing

of a religiosity of, you know, "thou must."

It's not. It says, "this is,"

and that's it. "This is."

It deals with the present. Yes. All of that is what happens.

There's a guy--somebody was laying out drunk in the street.

It might have been the cat who's playing.

It might have been Charlie Parker.

But that fact doesn't alter the power--

that is the power of what he's saying.

"Yes, I did that, and I also do this."

It's the range of humanity that's in this music.

Narrator: John William Coltrane,

like all great jazz innovators,

sought to take the music to places it had never been

and became in the process-- to some of his admirers--

something like a savior

and an inspiration to a whole generation of young musicians.

Bowie: Coltrane is like the father.

He is one of the ones that really led us

into this spiritual quest,

who really made people aware

of the spirituality of jazz.

This had existed for years before,

but Coltrane was putting it on another level.

He was bringing it to the forefront.

[Mating call Playing]

Narrator: He was born in 1926,

in a little north Carolina town called Hamlet,

grew up in high point,

and moved to Philadelphia as a teenager.

There, he studied saxophone

at 2 different conservatories,

played rhythm and blues, listened to Lester young,

then got a job with a big band led by dizzy Gillespie.

He first won fame playing with miles Davis,

but Davis let him go for a time

because he had become addicted to heroin.

In 1957, while playing with thelonious monk,

Coltrane underwent

what he called a "spiritual awakening."

He gave up drugs, liquor, cigarettes,

began to study eastern religions and eastern and African music,

initiating a relentless search for meaning

that he never abandoned.

For the rest of his life, John Coltrane seemed determined

to fill his music with more of everything--

more notes, more ideas, more energy.

Redman: John Coltrane never rested.

He always needed to move.

Once he discovered one thing,

he realized 10, 20 more things that there were to discover.

He kept on pushing himself,

and he never allowed his art to either stagnate

or to even rest.

It was constantly moving.

John Coltrane raised the standards

of what it means to be a dedicated musician.

Narrator: Like his friend Sonny rollins,

he seemed unable to put his music aside even for a moment.

He and rollins routinely phoned one another,

played a phrase or two into the receiver,

then hung up and waited for the other to call back

with a musical answer of his own.

[Chasin' the train Playing]

I consider one of the really defining recordings of Coltrane

to be Chasin' the train, Which he made in 1961.

He recorded it live at the village vanguard.

It was a 16-minute solo on one side of a record.

He plays about 80 choruses. I once tried to count.

It's almost impossible not to get lost,

because he keeps trying to break through the boundaries of the blues,

and the rhythm section keeps holding him back a little bit,

but you can just feel him champing at the bit.

Now, of course, to a lot of people, they couldn't get it,

because it seemed repetitious or monotonous.

The idea here, though, was the effusiveness.

That was what was--it wasn't about detail anymore.

It wasn't about, "gee, that's a perfect 12-bar Louis Armstrong solo

where every note counts as if in a poem."

This wasn't a poem.

This was a very long novel.

And, like in Tolstoy, it's not about every word being right.

It's the overwhelming effect.

And it just pinned your ears back,

and you knew that you were in a new world,

a brave new land for jazz.

[Applause]

[Playing My favorite things]

narrator: In 1961, Coltrane formed a new quartet--

McCoy tyner at the piano,

Jimmy Garrison on bass,

and elvin Jones, a master of complex rhythms,

on drums.

Coltrane himself now often played

the soprano saxophone,

the instrument the New Orleans master Sidney bechet

had introduced to jazz.

Their stunning transformation

of the sentimental hit from The sound of music--

my favorite things--

became the first jazz cut since Dave brubeck's Take five

to receive wide play on the radio.

Soon, John Coltrane was making more money

than any other jazz musician except miles Davis.

But Coltrane barely noticed.

The music was all that seemed to matter to him,

and the men with whom he played

shared his almost mystical belief

in the importance of what they were doing together.

Cuscuna: The energy, the power that came out of that group

was just astonishing.

I guess my most vivid memories of birdland are seeing Coltrane.

In the peanut gallery,

the tables were very nicely spaced,

and I remember we used to just get up

and dance to John Coltrane.

It was as close to having a religion as I ever got.

[Eventually Playing]

Narrator: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington,

Charlie Parker and dizzy Gillespie,

Sonny rollins and miles Davis and John Coltrane

had made their individual statements

while working within established rhythm and Harmony

and sequences of chords.

One man rejected all of that.

Jazz, he said, must be "free."

His name was ornette Coleman.

"The theme you play at the start of a number

is the territory," he said,

"and what comes after, which may have very little to do with it,

is the adventure."

Giddins: At some point, if you go far enough out of the chords,

the question arises,

"why use the chords at all?

"What would happen if we get rid of the chords,

"and we don't have a harmonic contour?

What if we just improvise melodically?"

Ok. Another question is, "why do we have to play 4/4 time all the time?

"I mean, where is that written?

"What would happen if we don't?

"What if the drummer could improvise a kind of time

"that responds moment to moment to whatever the soloist

"or whatever the ensemble is playing?

"And if you don't have chords and if you don't have standard time,

"what does the bass player do?

"How does he find his place?

And ornette Coleman put together a quartet that did that.

It played a free music.

[Faithful Playing]

Narrator: In a Los Angeles garage,

ornette Coleman brought together

a group of like-minded but much younger musicians--

the trumpet player Don cherry,

the drummer Billy Higgins,

and a 22-year-old bass player from the ozarks

who had once played on the stage of the grand ole opry,

Charlie haden.

He invited me over to his apartment, and we arrived.

He opened the door. Music was everywhere--

on the rug, on the bed, on the tables.

I uncovered my bass. He reached down,

and he picked up a manuscript, and he said, "let's play this."

I said, "ok." I was real scared, you know.

He says, "now, I've written the melody here.

"Underneath it are the chord changes.

"Those are the chord changes I heard when I wrote this melody,

"but when we start to play,

"after I play the melody and I start to improvise,

"you play the changes. You make up new changes that you're hearing

from what I'm playing and from the tune."

And I thought to myself, "somebody's finally giving me permission

to do something that I've--what I've been hearing all this time."

And we started to play,

and a whole new world opened up for me.

It was like, uh, being born again.

I was hearing music so much more deeply than I'd ever heard.

It's like a desperate urgency

to improvise completely new.

We used to talk about it as if--

playing music as if you've never heard music before.

And we played all night, all day, all night, all day.

I think we took a break to go get some food,

and we played for about 2 days.

That was my first experience playing with ornette.

Narrator: Coleman managed to find a small label willing to back him,

and he made 2 albums.

Slowly, his reputation began to grow.

In November of 1959, ornette Coleman

brought his new sound

to the center of the jazz world--

New York City.

The five spot,

in Manhattan's east village,

was a favorite hangout

for the abstract expressionist painters--

Franz kline, willem de kooning, Jackson pollock.

Its management prided itself

on featuring the most adventurous musicians in town,

and nothing was more anticipated

than the arrival of the ornette Coleman quartet.

[Focus on sanity Playing]

Haden: The first night I played at the five spot,

I was uncovering my bass, Billy was putting up his drums,

and cherry was getting his horn, ornette was getting his horn out,

and I looked up at the bar,

which was facing the stage,

and standing along the bar was wilbur ware, uh...

Charlie mingus, Paul chambers, Percy Heath,

every great bass player in New York City was standing there,

staring me right in the face.

And I said, from that moment on, I close my eyes.

I think we played there for 4 months, 6 nights a week,

and every night, the place was packed.

One night I was playing with my eyes closed again,

and I'm playing,

and all of a sudden, I open my eyes,

and somebody's up on the stage

with his ear to the "f" hole of my bass.

And I looked over at ornette,

and I said, I said, "Coleman, who is this?

Man, get him off this bandstand."

He says, "that's Leonard Bernstein."

Narrator: Bernstein pronounced ornette Coleman a genius,

and Lionel Hampton asked to sit in...

But trumpeter Roy eldridge

said he'd listened to him drunk and he'd listened to him sober

and he couldn't understand him either way.

Miles Davis declared him "all screwed-up inside,"

but John Coltrane came to play with him between sets.

Coleman saw himself as solidly in the jazz tradition.

"Bird would have understood us," he said.

"He would have approved of our aspiring

to something beyond what we inherited."

Mclean: A lot of people in the mid-fifties

were already playing music that had an open concept,

what I call the "big room,"

a place where you could cross a threshold

and have no barriers, you know,

no key signatures, no chord progressions,

no particular form, you know,

and later on,

ornette came to New York with his quartet

and stood his ground

and made this music really sink in

and work, you know,

and that's the thing that I admire about ornette,

not only his writing and playing,

but the fact that he stood his ground

and stood by his music and took the slings and arrows

of all the criticism that came towards him,

because a lot of musicians from the bebop school

thought that they were just playing any old thing.

[Free jazz Playing]

Narrator: In 1961, ornette Coleman issued

a record called Free jazz.

the cover art included a painting by Jackson pollock.

Just one piece filled both sides of the record.

It would help provoke a debate

about the definition of jazz that has never ended.

Albert Murray: Ornette Coleman came up and says, "this is free jazz."

But what is freer than jazz?

As soon as you say jazz, you're talking about freedom of improvisation.

The whole thing is about freedom,

about American freedom.

So why anybody would want to free it

because the whole idea of art is to create a form

that is a bulwark against entropy, or chaos.

You see, that's the function of jazz.

It's not to be formless and absolutely self-indulgent.

"I want to go this way, I'll go this way, I'll go that way."

That's like embracing the waves in the sea, you know.

And so it's like, you cannot embrace entropy.

You cannot embrace chaos.

We wanted people to like our music. We really did.

But I really believe that most great musicians are free musicians.

If you listen to Coleman Hawkins play, to improvise,

if you listen to thelonious monk improvise,

if you listen to bud Powell,

they improvised on a level that I call beyond category,

playing so free and so deeply

at a level of, you know, I call it "with your life involved."

And that's what we did.

Being willing to give your life--

to give Up Your life,

risking your life, it's almost like being on the front line in a battle.

Being able...

Wanting to give your life for what you're doing.

Narrator: For the next 40 years,

the avant-garde music that ornette Coleman and many others played

would continue to inspire and to divide

the world of jazz.