Original subtitles

[Playing saxophone]

Man: Anyone that thinks that it's easy to go onstage

every night, 300 days a year,

and create something new...

Will never get the toll that it takes to be a jazz musician.

Captioning made possible by general motors

man: It's incredibly draining to start

from ground zero every day

and truly create something

that's as close as you can humanly get

to a masterpiece... By midnight.

[Applause]

Unlike other art forms,

you don't have private time to tinker with your creation.

You're out there, you are in front of people,

and you are creating of the moment.

And there is no net, there is no safety valve at all.

You are out there for all to see--

to fail or to succeed.

[Tan Playing]

Narrator: No one in jazz risked more

than the bebop tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon.

He was so tall and handsome

that he could draw a crowd, one writer said,

just by putting his horn together.

And when he played,

listeners could hear in his elegant, commanding,

utterly distinctive sound

faint echoes of Lester young

and all the other jazz giants with whom he played.

But by the time the 1960s began,

Dexter Gordon was finding work harder and harder to get.

He was not alone.

"The kids were jamming the rock halls,"

one musician remembered,

"and the older people were staying home and watching TV."

Desperate musicians took jobs wherever they could find them--

in cocktail lounges, television studio orchestras,

backing rock-and-roll performers on records.

Others abandoned performing altogether.

Still others left for Europe, in search of an audience.

In 1962, Dexter Gordon joined that exodus.

The america he left behind was entering an era

unlike any it had ever experienced before--

a period of selfless struggle...

And shameless self-indulgence;

of unprecedented progress in civil rights...

And deepening divisions between the races.

Jazz music would include it all,

but in the process,

it would become a tower of babel,

bitterly divided into schools--

dixieland, swing, bop,

hard bop, cool,

modal, free,

avant-garde.

Duke Ellington said,

"I don't know how such great extremes as now exist

can be contained under the one heading of jazz."

The question of what was jazz and what wasn't

raged as it never had before,

dividing audiences, dividing musicians...

Dividing generations.

And for many people,

the real question was whether jazz,

the most American of art forms, would survive at all.

[Playing Perdido]

in American life, you have...

All of these different agendas.

You have conflict all the time,

and we're attempting to achieve Harmony through conflict.

Which seems strange to say that,

but it's like an argument that you have

with the intent to work something out,

not an argument that you have with the intent to argue.

And that's what jazz music is.

You have musicians...

And they're all standing on the bandstand,

and each one has their personality and their agenda.

Invariably, they're going to play something that you would not play,

so you have to learn when to say a little something

and when to get out of the way.

So you have that question of the integrity,

the intent, the will to play together.

That's what jazz music is.

So you have yourself-- your individual expression--

and then you have how you negotiate that expression

in the context of that group.

And...it's exactly like democracy.

News announcer: There are rumors around

that this is britain's revenge for the Boston tea party.

3,000 screaming teenagers are at New York's Kennedy airport

to greet, you guessed it, the Beatles.

This rock-and-roll group has taken over

as the kingpins of musical appreciation

among the younger element.

Some music critics call their Harmony unmistakably diatonic.

Woman: Suddenly, all these people nobody ever heard of

were suddenly visible,

and they said they were making $100,000 a week or a night.

Making a lot of money.

And a lot in the music has been lost,

but I don't think we're dead.

I think somebody came to kill it.

I know who it was, too.

They brought over the English musicians from england

and covered us over, just like you cover a blanket...

And put everything in another perspective.

Narrator: In February 1964,

the Beatles landed in america,

and the gap between jazz and the general public,

already wide, grew still wider.

There was one exception.

We were playing a club in Chicago called the chez paree,

and our off day was Sunday.

So we got a call from Joe glaser, Louis' agent.

He said, "I want you to go into New York on your off day

to make a recording."

So we flew into New York on Sunday.

We got to the studio,

and they gave Louis the sheet music,

and Louis looked at it and heard it down, and he said,

"you mean to tell me you called me out here to do This?"

he hated it, you know?

But we did it. We made the record.

Then we went back to Chicago and finished out the engagement.

3 or 4 months later, we were out on the road

doing one-nighters out in Nebraska and Iowa--

way out, you know.

And every night, we'd hear from the audience,

"hello, Dolly! Hello, Dolly!"

so the first couple of nights, Louis ignored it,

and it got louder-- "Hello, Dolly!"

so Louis looked at me and said, "what the hell is Hello, Dolly?"

I said, "well, you remember that date we did a few months ago in New York?

One of the tunes was called Hello, Dolly! It's from a Broadway show."

We had to call and get the music

and learn it and put it in the concert,

and the first time we put it in the concert, pandemonium broke out.

Louis Armstrong: ♪hello, Dolly ♪

♪ this is Louis, Dolly ♪

♪ it's so nice to have you back where you belong ♪

♪ you lookin' swell, Dolly ♪

Narrator: Two months after the Beatles' invasion,

Louis Armstrong's Hello, Dolly!

became the number-one song in america.

Armstrong: ♪ I feel the room swaying ♪

♪while the band's playing ♪

Man: At a time with the top 40 was completely dominated by the Beatles,

this was really the last gasp of another age.

It was great fun, and the song had a hook to it

that people responded to immediately.

Armstrong: ♪ Dolly, never go away again ♪

The thing about Hello, Dolly! Is it's a damn good record.

It's a canny record.

It's basically Armstrong's group,

and Armstrong plays a full 32-bar trumpet solo.

It's the real thing. It's Louis Armstrong.

[Applause]

Narrator: No jazz musician has experienced

that kind of popularity again.

But within a few weeks,

rock-and-roll had recaptured the airwaves.

Armstrong: ♪ Dolly, never go away again ♪

[Applause]

[Drum playing]

Man: Musicians play because of the world around them

and what goes on.

Abbey Lincoln: ♪ ooh ♪

♪ooh ♪

♪ ooh ♪

Man: And don't forget

there was a lot of violence in the sixties.

Lincoln: ♪ooh, ooh ♪

Man: John F. Kennedy was blown away in 1963,

Malcolm X, medgar evers,

Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy...

All of this... Assassination went on.

The cities were burning,

the civil rights movement was going on,

people were screaming, the Vietnamese war...

And so the music went that way. John Coltrane...

You know, some of trane's solos sound like

a child being whipped in a city.

Lincoln: ♪ooh ♪

♪ ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪

Mclean: There's just so much that went on during the sixties

that caused the music to really break out

into this whole hysterical and whole violent kind of sound

that came out of the music of that time.

Lincoln: ♪ ooh ♪

♪aaah! ♪

♪ Aaaah! ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪aah! Aah! ♪

♪ Aaah! ♪

♪ Eee! ♪

♪ Eeeee! ♪

♪ Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee! ♪

Lincoln: Max roach and Oscar brown, Jr., wrote the Freedom now suite,

and it wasn't anything I ever envisioned.

♪ Eeeee ♪

♪ ahh ♪

And I didn't think that screaming was really music.

I didn't think it was musical...

But it turned out to be.

[Lincoln continues with the Freedom now suite]

Lincoln: ♪ eee eee eee ♪

Narrator: During the 1960s,

many young African-Americans came to see

the promise of racial integration

as just another white man's trick.

Some black musicians came to believe that, too,

and struggled to reclaim jazz

from what they saw as white control.

Lincoln: The music was always social...

And it was always embraced by the country,

whether they want to admit it or not.

There are some people in the industry who would like to manipulate it,

and they want to take credit and say that we didn't do it.

They'll steal your ancestors here, if you let them.

[Switchbladplaying]

Narrator: The turbulent age had no more turbulent musical symbol

than the bass player Charles mingus.

As hot-tempered and unpredictable

as he was supremely gifted,

he had played with-- and learned from--

everyone from Charlie Parker

to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington...

And his complex, gospel-tinged compositions

were filled with witty allusions to all of them.

One of his tunes was called,

if Charlie parker Was a gunslinger,

there'd be a whole lot Of dead copycats.

[applause and cheering]

Second only to Ellington in the breadth and complexity

of his compositions,

mingus was, one critic said,

"jazz's most persistently apocalyptic voice."

Man: Yeah...2, 3, 4.

Narrator: In 1960, he and the drummer Max roach

led an "anti-festival" at Newport to protest

what they charged was white exploitation of black musicians.

And when he recorded Fables of faubus,

a scathing attack on the segregationist governor of Arkansas,

and Columbia records refused to allow him

to include the uncompromising lyrics on their album,

he put out the full version on a smaller label...

Called "candid" records.

Man: ♪ no more ku klux klan! ♪

♪ Name me someone ridiculous, dannie ♪

♪ governor faubus ♪

♪ why is he so sick and ridiculous? ♪

♪ He won't permit us in his school ♪

♪ then he's a fool! ♪

[Hambonplaying]

Narrator: The new musical militancy took many forms.

Tenor saxophonist and sometime playwright Archie shepp

wrote and performed pieces inspired

by the murder of medgar evers,

by the fiery rhetoric of Malcolm X,

by the continued violence in the south.

When white critics chided him for expressing

too much "anger" in his music,

shepp wrote, "we are not angry men. We are enraged.

You can no longer defer my dream," he said.

"I'm gonna sing it, dance it, scream it...

And if need be, I'll steal it from this very earth."

[Dreaming of the master Playing]

Beginning in the mid-sixties all across the country,

young musicians, both black and white,

tried to control their music by forming cooperatives--

the jazz composers guild,

the black artists group,

the association for the advancement of creative musicians.

The art ensemble of Chicago,

which often performed in African-inspired makeup and costumes,

created music that drew upon everything

from waltzes and funeral marches

to free jazz and rhythm and blues.

They called what they played not jazz,

trumpeter Lester bowie said, but "great black music."

Bowie: Well, the first thing we figured we better do

is change the name.

The name "jazz" had a lot of negative connotations.

It was whorehouse music, nigger music,

bullshit music, devil's music...

So we thought about it,

and we came upon the term "great black music."

We wanted to distinguish ourselves from

a normal jazz quintet or quartet that played taverns.

We wanted to-- the music was an art form,

and we wanted to present it as such.

But there was no place to do this,

and there was no one to help us.

No one was supporting the arts or thinking about the musicians.

So we said, "we've got to take care of this ourselves."

Narrator: Not since the days of black swan records in the 1920s

were African-Americans fully involved

with every aspect of their art--

from booking and recording to promotion and distribution.

But nothing the art ensemble of Chicago--

or any other avant-garde black cooperative did--

seemed able to win back a black audience.

The art ensemble once found itself playing

to just 3 people in its own hometown,

and it attracted its largest following

among white college students... In France.

[Rick, kick, sha Playing]

In an age when musicians questioned everything,

no musician was more adventurous--or controversial--

than the avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor.

Trained at the new england conservatory,

he came to jazz from the world of classical music.

His style owed as much to stravinsky and webern

as it did to the eclectic roster of jazz masters

he most admired--

bud Powell, Dave brubeck,

Duke Ellington, and thelonious monk.

Giddins: He brings together so many influences

from jazz and the classical world,

and he makes them into something new.

And it's very difficult to hear him at first,

because you're waiting for the caesuras,

the pauses, the places again to kind of rest up,

and he doesn't give them to you.

But after you listen to him for a while,

you can become mesmerized

by the hugeness of his attack and his sound.

Narrator: Pure energy drove his music, Cecil Taylor said.

But some critics called him a heretic

and insisted that his music was not jazz at all.

Taylor came to symbolize everything people loved--

and everything they hated-- about the avant-garde.

Man: Cecil found it hard to get work for a while

because he was so different.

Not only different musically,

but nobody could quite figure him out Personally.

and for a time, he was delivering sandwiches

and coffee and stuff for some kind of coffee shop.

But at night in his loft, he told me,

he would have concerts-- imaginary concerts--

and he'd play a complete repertory

to this audience that wasn't there.

And he said that kept his-- not only his spirit going,

but he was still able to get his music through,

even into the-- into the air.

[Playing piano]

Narrator: Cecil Taylor once said

that since he prepared for his concerts,

the audience should prepare, too.

That's total, self-indulgent bullshit,

as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, you know, I love baseball.

I mean, I'm not going to go and catch a hundred grounders

before I go to a game.

I mean, that's what--

we pay to see them do what they do

and to appreciate them.

Giddins: You have to learn to listen to Cecil Taylor

in the way that I think, in European music,

you had to stretch your willingness

to hear a piece of music develop.

When the third symphony was first performed by Beethoven,

critics said, "this is absurd.

No one will ever sit still for a 40-minute symphony."

They were used to the 15-minute symphonies of haydn.

So Beethoven's response was to write a 90-minute symphony.

And mahler wrote longer symphonies,

and we've learned how to hear more complicated

and longer music that makes greater demands on us.

Cecil Taylor's music

is a music that will hold your attention,

but I think you have to, in a sense, train yourself

to hear the way it works.

Man: Musicians seemed to think that importance in music

involved inventing the language, rather than using the language.

And I think it's been a major misunderstanding in all kinds of music

that I must be changing the vocabulary

or nobody is going to listen.

But it has never drawn much of an audience,

and, as I've said about Cecil Taylor,

whom I respect but do not listen to,

that he has every right to do exactly what he's doing

and exactly what he wants to do,

and I have a right to listen to somebody else.

[Cheering and applause]

[Things ain't what They used to be Playing]

The title of this number, ladies and gentlemen,

Things ain't what They used to be,

and this time, we use it for the purpose of giving background

to this finger-snapping business.

And, of course, you are cordially invited

to join the finger-snapping.

Of course, one never snaps one's fingers on the beat.

It's considered aggressive.

You don't push it. You just let it fall.

And if you would like to be conservatively hip,

then, at the same time, tilt the left ear lobe.

And if you're cooler than that,

then, of course, you tilt the left earlobe on the beat

and snap the finger on the after-beat.

And then you really don't care.

And so by routining one's finger-snapping

and choreographing one's earlobe-tilting,

one can become as cool as one wishes to be.

Thank you very much, gentlemen. It's been wonderful,

and...i hope we'll have this pleasure again sometime soon.

Listen...

I saw him one day when he was in his early seventies--

I guess late sixties.

He had just come off one of those horrible road tours.

I used to watch the itinerary.

He'd be going from Fargo, north Dakota,

to Chicago, to Boise, Idaho,

and he looked terrible.

Tired.

I said, "you know, on your ascap royalties, you could retire."

He said, "retire? Retire? To what?"

Man: See, in our century,

it's hard to understand somebody who could handle

all of these complicated personalities...

Deal with the roller-coaster complexities of show business...

Meet all of these different deadlines...

Write music for singers,

write music for different kinds of instrumentalists,

write for movies...

You know, do all of that kind of stuff...

And have such a high batting average in terms of the quality.

They just kind of--those people are hard to understand.

Well, they're not hard to understand;

they're not to B Eunderstood.

Narrator: Duke Ellington stayed on the road

all through the 1960s, traveling the world.

But he also continued to play high school proms

and college dances,

state fairs and elks halls...

Just as he always had.

Audiences expected to hear the old favorites

that he and his longtime collaborator, Billy strayhorn,

had arranged...

And he happily complied.

[Cheering and applause]

Johnny Hodges!

[Tourist point of view Playing]

Wynton marsalis: I think that the reason Duke didn't doubt

his music or his vision is because he loved hearing it.

Every night, he could hear it.

And also, he was always developing.

He's a master of form.

He's like a person playing with different puzzles.

He's always moving things around

and putting them in different places,

so he's creating thousands of forms.

Narrator: Ellington continued to experiment,

expressing his religious faith by presenting

a series of concerts of what he called "sacred music,"

and making challenging albums

with some of the leading innovators of the day,

including Charles mingus, Max roach,

and the saxophone player John Coltrane.

In 1966, all 3 members of the jury for the pulitzer prize for music

recommended that Ellington be given

a special prize for his life's work.

The advisory board turned them down;

no such award had ever been given in the past.

Two of the 3 judges resigned in protest.

The 66-year-old Ellington professed to be unperturbed.

"Fate is being kind to me," he told a reporter.

"Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young."

[Blood counPlaying]

Narrator: Ellington was on the road

in Reno, Nevada, on may 31, 1967,

when he got a telephone call.

Billy strayhorn,

his close friend and co-composer for nearly 30 years,

was dead of cancer.

Ellington fell silent.

Someone asked him if he was going to be all right.

"No, I'm not going to be all right," Ellington answered.

"Nothing is all right now."

On April 29, 1969,

almost two years after strayhorn's death,

Duke Ellington turned 70,

and president Richard Nixon paid official tribute to him

at the white house.

Nixon: The president of the United States of America

awards this presidential medal of freedom

to Edward Kennedy Ellington.

In the royalty of American music,

no man swings more or stands higher than the Duke.

[Cheering and applause]

Ellington: "Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

And, of course, we speak of freedom of expression.

We speak of freedom, generally, as being something very sweet

and fat... And things like that,

but at the end, when we get down to the payoff,

what we actually say is that, uh, we would like very much

to mention the 4 major freedoms that my friend

and writing and arranging composer, Billy strayhorn,

lived by and enjoyed,

and that was freedom from hate, unconditionally...

Freedom from self-pity,

freedom from fear of possibly doing something

that may help someone else more than it would him...

And freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel

that he is better than his brother.

[Applause]

Narrator: Ellington kissed the president 4 times.

When Nixon asked him why,

Ellington replied, "one for each cheek."

[Playing Impressions]

Man: What happened was that the avant-garde movement

got its high priest with John Coltrane.

And Coltrane came along and really thought of himself

as making a religious music.

Of course, it was avant-garde music,

and it was...It was sort of free, and it was...

People described his saxophone playing,

with these solos that were going on for 40 minutes all in the upper register,

speaking in tongues and being possessed by spirits

and all this sort of stuff.

Giddins: Coltrane clearly was asking a lot of the audience.

I mean, some people were just offended.

It was noisy and loud and...And relentless,

and they ran from it.

I know M Yfirst response when I heard him

do it live for the first time.

It was truly a white noise.

And when it was over, I felt elated,

and I couldn't explain why.

I certainly couldn't have analyzed what was going on up there,

but there was something about the force

and the sincerity and the drive.

This music seemed to just take you

out of the conventional world, and it defined the period.

Narrator: John Coltrane insisted

that jazz could speak to people's souls,

could help to heal a corrupt and tortured world.

His vision extended far beyond race and nationality.

"The main thing a musician would like to do," he said,

"is to give the listener a picture

of the wonderful things he senses in the universe."

Wynton marsalis: The thing that's always in John Coltrane

is the lyrical shout of the preacher

in the heat and full fury of attempting

to transform the congregation.

And that's the source of John Coltrane's power.

His music is very earnest.

All right, you think of the most earnest person you ever met.

That's John Coltrane.

Just well-meaning...

And his sound just projects such deep belief,

and it's so--it's so warm with spiritual substance

and compassion, and his playing is just--

it's so lyrical and beautiful, and it's singing and soaring,

but in the middle of the sound itself is

an earnestness that, when you hear it,

it changes the way you perceive the world.

Narrator: In 1964, Coltrane made one of

the best-selling jazz albums of the decade,

and one of the most influential records of all time.

It was a 4-part devotional suite called A love supreme.

[a love supremPlaying]

That's one of the first records I ever heard,

and I hope it's the last record I ever hear.

I mean, it's one of the greatest records of all time.

I think with that record, you feel that the artist--

you feel that John Coltrane is just...

He's laying his soul out there.

It's right there.

It's one of the purest forms of expression

you're ever going to hear.

Branford marsalis: The first time I heard A love supreme,

it's one of those records I couldn't put it down.

I listened to it for, like, 6 months straight.

I just kept listening to it.

I would put on A love supreme In the morning for breakfast.

Then I'd put it on at lunch,

and I'd put it on when I'd go to bed at night.

I would put it on when I was watching the television.

It was just on all the time.

I couldn't believe that kind of sustained intensity.

And...everybody talked about the physical challenge of it,

but as I spent more time listening to it,

and as I got older, I realized that once you put yourself

in a certain intellectual frame of mind,

I mean, what is physical?

Because it was almost as though he had transcended the body

when he started playing.

Narrator: Over the next two years,

Coltrane put out 10 more albums,

each one more experimental than the last.

In 1966, someone asked him

what his plans were for the next decade.

"To try to become a Saint," he said.

But he had only months to live.

John Coltrane, 40 years old,

died of cancer on July 16, 1967.

[Playing Naima]

cuscuna: When you think about John Coltrane...

He recorded from 1955 till his death in 1967.

The body of work and the amount of changes...

The amount of artistic success in those 12 years is astonishing.

Some people are shooting comets,

and we just have to appreciate their pain

and be lucky that we were on this earth

at the right time to really appreciate them.

Man: Let's welcome miles Davis and the quintet.

[Cheering and applause]

Narrator: In the mid-1960s, miles Davis,

the great, perpetually restless trumpet player,

changed direction once again and formed a new quintet...

Featuring Wayne shorter on saxophone...

And one of the best rhythm sections in jazz history--

the bass player Ron Carter...

Drummer Tony Williams, just 17 when he joined Davis...

And the pianist herbie hancock, who began his career

performing a d-major piano concerto by Mozart

with the Chicago symphony at the age of 11.

Hancock: We weren't playing chords anymore.

It's really hard to describe what we were doing.

We didn't talk in detail about what we were doing, it just--

things would kind of just happen, you know,

and everybody was constantly working on one thing or another,

and you just had to keep your ears open,

keep your eyes open, and keep your heart open.

Narrator: Miles Davis had always been skeptical

about the avant-garde,

but now he edged toward it,

creating some of the most intricate

and imaginative jazz ever played.

Redman: I don't know if there's ever been

a group of 5 musicians who communicated spontaneously

with each other as well as those 5 musicians did.

They could do anything with any form, with any tune,

because they knew each other so well as musicians.

What Ron Carter and Tony Williams

and herbie hancock did

was they created an elasticity.

They could stretch sections,

they could stretch or contract the tempo...

And there was an empathy among those 5 people

where they could think as one.

They were never inhibited by structure,

they were never inhibited by predictability,

they were never inhibited by musical signposts.

They were free to go anywhere they wanted to,

and they knew everyone else would follow.

That's a luxury that few of us ever experience--

in marriage, or in music, or in any kind of art form

or any kind of teamwork.

[Applause]

Narrator: Davis continued to play his new music

in concerts around the world,

but in his spare time, he was listening to something else.

[Higheplaying]

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ the beat is getting stronger ♪

Narrator: In the summer of 1969,

in the face of mounting competition from rock-and-roll,

George wein, the organizer of the Newport jazz festival,

decided to include led zeppelin and sly and the family stone

among the jazz giants he loved.

♪ Baby, baby, baby, don't break my heart, yeah ♪

♪ all right ♪

♪don't break your heart ♪

♪ yeah ♪

♪ boom laka laka laka, boom laka laka laka ♪

Wein: Every night was sold out.

We drew about something like 80,000 people in the 4 days,

where normally we would draw 35,000 or 40,000 or 50,000.

And miles, who normally came up to Newport and didn't--

didn't appear until he was due on the stage

and left immediately afterwards as fast as he could get out of town,

stayed the entire 4 days.

♪ Gonna take it higher ♪

Wein: And he watched the reaction of that crowd,

and he saw those kids.

It changed his life forever.

♪ Higher! ♪

♪ Want to take you higher ♪

♪ higher! ♪

Wynton marsalis: I think that when miles stood up

and saw sly and the family stone...

They got thousands of people hollering and screaming at their music.

They got the electric guitars going, the afros,

the psychedelic pants, the groove is--

the"boom boom boom" is hot,

and everybody's hot, and they're screaming.

He's playing the trumpet in a jazz band.

He could feel that he was old and out-of-date,

and he did not want to grow old.

Narrator: Miles Davis was 43 years old that summer,

and even he was no longer playing to the sell-out crowds

that had once flocked to hear him.

The president of Columbia records was worried.

Miles should be playing for young rock fans, he said;

that was the way to sell records.

"I started realizing that most rock musicians

didn't know anything about music," Davis said.

"But they were popular,

and I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet."

[Spanish kePlaying]

Hancock: Miles always wanted to reach the people.

He always wanted to make a presentation

of what he felt in his heart.

But how that could be expressed

and the sounds that he could choose

didn't have to be acoustic.

It could be electric.

The beats didn't have to be jazz beats,

they could be kind of rock-and-roll backbeats...

And he could still play the way he played.

Narrator: Davis discarded the jazz standards

that had made him famous

and replaced traditional instruments with electronic ones.

The result would be called "fusion."

Wynton marsalis: That was the first music of jazz that was not horn-based...

Or singing.

That music was based on electronic instruments.

The electric guitar is the main instrument, or a synthesizer.

Narrator: Davis' best-known fusion album,

released in 1970, was called Bitches brew.

it sold more than 400,000 copies in its first year.

Over the next 4 years,

Davis managed to record 15 more albums,

and played to big crowds in places

where only rock musicians had appeared before.

[Playing Jack Johnson]

early: Miles had decided he was going to be the ultimate Walt Whitman.

He was going to absorb everything,

so he put in all these instruments.

He had sitars and tabla drums and electric guitars...

2, 3 keyboardists, all this kind of stuff.

He just threw in all the elements-- free jazz, jazz rock...

Everything became thrown into this thing.

And what happened, I think, was that the very elements

that made miles such a great bandleader in the earlier bands,

when he was playing acoustic music,

when he was able to bring out everybody's individuality

within the framework of his own vision,

fell apart with the fusion bands 'cause it was too much going on,

and too much of people not listening to each other.

So instead of being the kind of challenge that jazz normally is,

where people are listening to each other

and trying to solo but complement at the same time,

just became playing tennis without a net.

Narrator: Some musicians and critics

now began to accuse Davis of having abandoned his art,

of selling out...

But by helping to fuse jazz with rock,

miles Davis had created a vast new audience for his music

and spawned a host of other fusion groups

that would continue to explore the hybrid sound for decades.

[Starduplaying]

Glaser: I'm just very happy to be on earth

when there is Louis Armstrong.

People try to imagine what it was like

to be on earth before Mozart.

Mozart's music is so important to us.

Try to imagine what it was like

to be on earth before Louis Armstrong.

It has meant so much to so many people, his music.

It is--he makes people happy.

I can't imagine a higher calling in life

than making people feel joy.

Narrator: Louis Armstrong had seen it all--

New Orleans in the time before jazz began

to spread across the country,

the first days of recording, when he had revolutionized

first instrumental music and then American singing.

He had witnessed the swing era and the bebop years,

had endured the rejection of a younger generation,

and stood his ground on civil rights.

And he was still on the road,

as celebrated abroad as he was at home.

How you doing?

[Band playing Rockin' chair]

[Louis Armstrong playing slow trumpet]

By the time he gets to the later years,

there's so much information in one note

that he doesn't have to play... [Humming fast scat]

He could just play... [Humming slowly]

But it's some wisdom.

Now, he's going to state that melody for you,

and there's going to be so much soul and feeling in the melody,

it's just going to be warm.

You're just going to want to swim in it.

That light is still on,

and as long as that light is on,

Louis Armstrong is important.

And that light was always on.

That's something that god gave him.

That's something that's in this man.

No other man has that.

[Crowd cheering]

Narrator: Between engagements,

Armstrong always came back to Lucille

and the modest house in queens he and she had bought together

when they were first married.

He never saw any need for anything fancier.

Well, Louis was a people person,

and if Louis came home from the neighborhood,

very often the neighbors would have banners out--

"welcome home, pops."

Armstrong: ♪ when the sun sets in the sky ♪

Jacobs: He'd sit on the steps in the front of his house

and buy kids good humors...

And he'd ask them, "was your homework good?

Were you a good boy?"

Armstrong: ♪ that's my home ♪

Jacobs: And he and Lucille would have a party

and have the neighborhood kids in.

[That's my home Continues]

Narrator: But by the late 1960s,

his huge heart was failing.

He was hospitalized for a time,

returned to the road,

fell ill again,

lost weight.

His doctor ordered him to stop playing the trumpet,

begged him not to try to record,

to stay off the stage.

Armstrong couldn't do it.

[Band playing The saints go marching in]

narrator: In July of 1970,

George wein staged a celebration at Newport

for Armstrong's 70th birthday.

Many of the musicians with whom he had played over the years

had come back to be with him.

Wein: He was ill for a couple of years, and...

And he was quite frail.

The doctor didn't want him to play,

but he allowed him to come to Newport.

It's this...Re-energizing

when the opportunity for him to do what he wanted to do

and to know that he was out there reaching people...

And he put everything he had into that evening.

Narrator: Wein wanted to save Armstrong's strength,

and suggested he simply walk onstage unannounced,

rather than sing his theme song.

Armstrong, weak as he was,

wouldn't hear of it.

Giddins: It was very important for an entertainer to have a theme song,

because only the really great ones had songs that instantly meant Them.

so Louis Armstrong had a sentimental southern tune--

sleepytime down south. He was very attached to it.

He loved the-- it was a beautiful melody.

You know, you didn't give something like that up lightly.

Armstrong: For as long as I live,

sleepytime down south Will be my...

My lifelong number, because it...Lives with me,

and it's my theme song, and when I walk out on that stage and say--

and everybody's waiting, quiet--

♪ now the pale moon's shining ♪

♪ on the fields below ♪

♪ the folks are crooning ♪

♪ soft and low ♪

♪ you needn't tell me, boy ♪

♪ because I know, yes, yes ♪

♪ when it's sleepytime down south ♪

[Singing scat]

♪ Soft wind blowin' through the pinewood trees ♪

♪ the folks out there ♪

♪ live a life of ease ♪

♪ when old mammy falls on her knees ♪

♪ when I say... ♪

[Singing scat]

♪ Oh ♪

♪ good evenin', everybody ♪

The show's on, daddy.

[Band playing Sleepytime down south]

wein: When he dressed up for that evening,

he had on a nice brown suit, as I remember...

[Crowd cheering]

And there was a glow on his face.

There was a glow in his eyes.

There was a glow in his skin.

And he just sang so beautifully, and he projected.

It was like, "hey, I'm here again."

You know, "I'm still here. I'm still Louis Armstrong,

and I'm still going to give you a great evening of music and entertainment."

♪ Now the pale moon's shining ♪

♪ on the fields below ♪

Narrator: Tributes poured in from fellow musicians.

"Louis Armstrong," bing Crosby said,

"is the beginning and the end of music in america."

Armstrong: ♪ you needn't tell me, boy... ♪

Narrator: Dizzy Gillespie said simply...

"No him, no me."

Armstrong: ♪ when it's sleepytime down south ♪

♪ yes ♪

Narrator: After his appearance at Newport,

Armstrong went back on the road,

but he soon grew dangerously weak again.

In march of 1971,

he was offered a two-week engagement

at the Waldorf-astoria in Manhattan.

His doctors were against it,

afraid he would die onstage.

Shaw: He had so much music in him,

it's--no way he could have lived and not played.

One of the worst experiences I had with him--

I did the last 3 weeks with him,

and we were at the empire room at the Waldorf-astoria.

And the doctor--he'd been in intensive care--

the doctor told him, said, "Louis, don't do it. You can't do it."

Louis said, "well, I got a contract. I got to do it. My fans."

And they...Had to help him...

On. [Sighs]

[Voice cracking] They...

They had to help him on and off. [Sighs]

[Birds singing]

Narrator: In the early morning hours of July 6, 1971,

Louis Armstrong--

the most important figure in the history of jazz--

died at his home in queens.

Jacobs: And Oscar Cohen called and said, "Phoebe,

pops is gone."

[Voice shaking] Uh...

My heart broke...

But I guess I knew, in the flash of that moment,

that Louis would never die,

because Louis was a spirit.

He was a spirit. Inasmuch as he encompassed my life,

I know he must have touched on millions of people.

Wynton marsalis: Louis Armstrong's overwhelming message is one of love...

Really, when you hear his music,

it's of joy.

His music is so joyous.

He was just not going to be defeated

by the forces of life,

and these forces visit all of us.

There's always something. My great-great-grandmother used to say

that life has a board for every behind,

and it's a board just fit to yours, so...

Maybe your board is not going to work on somebody else's behind,

and when it's your turn, you're going to come up and that paddle is going

to be put on your Booty, and it's going to hurt as bad as it can hurt.

And Louis Armstrong is there to tell you, after you get that paddling,

"it's all right, son."

♪ Whoa, dinah ♪

♪ is there anyone finer ♪

♪ in the state of Carolina ♪

♪ if there is and you know, show her to me ♪

♪ dinah ♪ [Singing scat]

♪ ...to the eyes of dinah Lee ♪

♪ baby, every night, when I ♪

♪ shake with fright, oh ♪

♪ 'cause my dinah might change her mind ♪

[Singing scat]

♪ Oh, man, oh ♪

♪ dinah ♪

♪ dinah ♪

♪ oh, dinah, oh, babe ♪

♪ dinah Lee ♪

♪ dinah, dinah, dinah... ♪

[Singing scat]

♪ Oh, baby, every night when I... ♪

[Singing scat]

[Playing trumpet solo]

[Crowd cheering]

Narrator: In the years after Louis Armstrong's death,

Duke Ellington continued to write...

In restaurants and nightclubs,

in airplanes and taxicabs and hotel rooms.

"Music is my mistress," he said,

"and she plays second fiddle to no one."

Giddins: Ellington's last decade is one of the best in his whole career.

When strayhorn died in 1967,

Ellington, as if to compensate--

for the first time, not having strayhorn by his side after 28 years--

he wrote more than ever, and the pieces became

more and more experimental and different--

the Latin American suite, The afro-eurasian eclipse,

which is, you know, a real attempt to--to describe

a one-world music in the language of ellingtonia.

Narrator: But in the spring of 1972,

Ellington was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Characteristically,

he told no one.

Woman: My grandfather never complained.

That was part of that upbringing--

that you never show your true feelings.

So if you were ill or if you were in pain,

it was impolite.

I'm sure...When doors were closed--

behind the dressing room,

in his own private place--

there were complaints, there was truth

about what was really going on, but none of us ever saw that.

[Playing Sentimental lady]

man: Uh, what tune, since you've gone back to the piano,

what tune, um...

Have you written, which you think is the best?

Oh...

The one coming up tomorrow...

Always.

Narrator: For the first time in his long career,

he began canceling public appearances.

When Ellington was hospitalized in New York,

he asked that his electric piano be brought to his room

so that he could keep on working--

on a comic opera,

a score for a dance troupe,

still more sacred music.

When his eyesight began to fail,

he simply wrote larger...

Sometimes using the backs of the hundreds of get-well cards

that flooded his room.

Edward Kennedy Ellington--

considered by many

the greatest of all American composers--

died on may 24, 1974.

I think we always feel we never said enough...

Or did enough for someone...

So good to you, and, uh...

It just took everything out of me.

A person has gone, but you keep him alive

in your memories and your thoughts.

Each one of us had a different experience.

I still remember...Looking up from the trombone section

when Duke would come on at night, take his place at the piano,

and he'd look up and just smile.

You know, "we're here together again, aren't we?

Come on, let's go." And it was great.

Narrator: He was buried in woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx,

not far from Louis Armstrong...

And next to his mother,

who had been the first to tell him

that he was blessed.

[Band playing In a sentimental mood]

Narrator: In the 1960s,

the city of New Orleans tore down the house

in which Louis Armstrong was born...

To make way for a police station.

By then, the Lincoln gardens on the south side of Chicago,

where Armstrong had played with king Oliver,

had long since closed its doors.

Law and order had come to Kansas City,

and most of the wide-open clubs, in which Lester young

and count basie and Charlie Parker once played, vanished.

The cotton club in Harlem,

where Duke Ellington first broadcast his Jungle music,

was gone.

So was the savoy ballroom,

where chick webb once took on all comers,

and Ella Fitzgerald first became a star.

Birdland, the club named for Charlie Parker,

abandoned jazz

for rhythm and blues.

In 1968,

the last club on 52nd street

finally closed its doors.

Even the five spot,

where ornette Coleman and John Coltrane

first performed their demanding music,

eventually went out of business.

During the late 1930s,

jazz and swing had provided 70% of the profits

in the music industry.

By the mid-1970s,

it was less than 3%.

In 1975,

miles Davis himself said that jazz was dead--

"the music of the museum."

Branford marsalis: Jazz just kind of died.

It just kind of went away for a while.

There were still people playing.

There were still people playing,

but to be honest, with the exception of a few

like Kenny barron or Ron Carter or sir Roland Hanna--

who really just stayed with it, you know--

a lot of the more talented younger generation

that was supposed to come up did something else,

and that had never happened before.

Wynton marsalis: Today you go in to make a modern recording,

all this technology-- the bass plays first,

then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet,

then the singer comes in, then they ship the tape somewhere...

Well, none of the musicians have played together.

You can't play jazz music that way.

In order for you to play jazz,

you've got to listen to them.

The music forces you at all times

to address what other people are thinking

and for you to interact with them with empathy

and to deal with the process of working things out.

And, uh...That's how our music really could teach

what the meaning of American democracy is...

The thing in jazz that will get bix beiderbecke up out of his bed

at 2:00 in the morning to pick that cornet up

and practice into the pillow for another two or 3 hours...

Or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world

for 50-something years just nonstop,

get up out of his sickbed, crawl up on the bandstand, and play...

The thing that would make Duke Ellington,

the thing that would make thelonious monk, miles Davis,

Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams...

The thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this--

and they did give their lives for it--

is that it gives us a glimpse

into what america is going to be when it becomes itself.

And this music tells you that it will become itself.

And when you get a taste of that...

There just is nothing else you're going to taste that's as sweet.

That's a sweet taste, man.

[Piano playing Let's get down]

[band joins in]

Narrator: In 1976,

Dexter Gordon came back to america.

For most of the past 15 years,

he had been living in Europe,

where jazz still had an enthusiastic audience,

and where musicians could always find work.

When Gordon opened at the village vanguard,

he wasn't sure how he would be received.

Woman: Well, it was a whole new era

when Dexter Gordon walked into this room.

People came from all over because they knew about him--

he didn't think they did-- and they were there

waiting for him to appear, and here he came,

this long, tall, beautiful man-- so elegant, you know.

[Crowd cheering]

Lorraine Gordon: And he just played this gorgeous music, and people just went nuts,

and happy and thrilled, and gave him the honor he truly deserved.

[Gordon playing Let's get down]

man: Dexter Gordon was one of my favorite musicians when I was growing up.

My dad played saxophone and had a lot of records of Dexter Gordon.

And I was present at the village vanguard during his homecoming week,

and it was just amazing to feel the impact of his sound and his presence.

To be in a room with him...

At that time, for me-- I was 23 years old at the time--

and...it just hit me like a ton of bricks--

just his sound, the power of his tone.

Narrator: He played straight-ahead jazz--

without synthesizers, without electronic bass,

without a drum machine--

and the crowds stood to cheer him after every tune.

Columbia had offered him a contract,

and the special two-record live album he made at the vanguard

was called Homecoming.

it sold surprisingly well.

There was still an audience for the music

that flowed directly from Louis Armstrong

and Lester young and Charlie Parker.

[Song ends]

[Applause and whistling]

Narrator: A year after Dexter Gordon's triumphant comeback,

the drummer art blakey was in New York,

auditioning young musicians for his jazz messengers...

Just as he had been doing for 3 decades.

Cuscuna: On this night, this young kid sat in on trumpet,

and he was astonishing.

His ideas were fresh and different

and very concise and clear-- very clear thinker.

And at the end of the set, I said--i asked art--i said,

"who the hell is that?" And he said,

"well, that's Ellis marsalis' kid."

And Ellis marsalis was a wonderful New Orleans pianist

who was little-known outside New Orleans,

but a favorite musician of a lot of us.

And he introduced me to him, and later on he said,

"he's in his first year at Juilliard and, of course,

"you know, I couldn't do that to Ellis.

"I just couldn't pull him out of school and offer him the job,

you know, so I can't give him the gig."

But two sets later, about 4:00 in the morning,

we were all hanging out at the club, and I said,

"so, art, did you decide on any new members?"

He said, "just one-- wynton marsalis."

[Marsalis playing Soon all will know]

narrator: Wynton marsalis was born in 1961 in New Orleans,

a year before Dexter Gordon began his self-imposed exile in Europe.

He was brought up surrounded by music.

His father, Ellis, was a pianist,

composer, and music educator.

His older brother branford played the saxophone.

Two younger brothers, delfeayo and Jason,

would become musicians, as well.

By his mid-teens, marsalis was playing

in all kinds of groups around New Orleans:

Marching bands, funk bands,

and the New Orleans civic orchestra.

Wynton marsalis: We had a partner of mine across the street.

We would play records for each other, you know?

Then it would be, like, tower of power

and early earth, wind and fire, Marvin gaye, Stevie wonder.

You know, everybody would bring in, like, "what's going on?"

So I took one of my father's Coltrane albums out.

It was actually My favorite things,

'cause I liked the cover-- it was blue and red.

And trane was playing the soprano, and I said, "man, let's check this out.

Let's check this trane out." So I put trane on--

♪ doo ding, doo ding, doo doo doo ling ♪

So they started playing My favorite things, And we're all, like, "yeah."

You know, trane and them played. The song was, like, 10 or 15 minutes or something.

It was too long for the cats, you know,

so everybody was like, "yeah, you know, ok."

And I was like, "yeah, you know, I kind of like that."

And then I started listening to Giant steps,

and every day I would come home in the summertime

and put that Giant stepAlbum on.

And I can hear trane right now, you know? ♪ doo Dee doo ♪

It's just something in the sound of it.

[Playin Surrey with The fringe on top]

narrator: Marsalis soon began to soak up

all the jazz history he could,

grounding his own experiments

in a thorough knowledge of the music's rich past.

Wein: And I listened to him play...

And i--i started to cry.

I couldn't believe it, because I never thought

I'd hear a young black musician...Play that way,

and I could hear that he had been listening to Louis Armstrong.

And that meant so much to me, because the only musicians--

young musicians--that paid attention to Louis Armstrong were white musicians.

Young African-American musicians did not pay attention to Louis Armstrong.

[Playing Caravan]

narrator: By the age of 21,

after just two years on the road with art blakey,

wynton marsalis was a star, the leader of his own group.

His first record had sold more than 100,000 copies--

unheard of in the 1980s for an acoustic jazz album.

Cuscuna: Wynton was the first new acoustic jazz player

with something to say.

And fortunately thereafter, with his brother branford

and a lot of people that wynton knew,

the floodgates opened, and suddenly in the eighties

there were a lot of new players that pumped new blood into jazz,

which was a--which was very much of a saving grace.

Narrator: By the late 1980s and early 1990s,

marsalis' success inspired record companies

to seek out and promote new stars.

In 1992,

he was named artistic director of jazz at Lincoln center,

and 5 years later,

wynton marsalis became the first jazz composer

ever to win the pulitzer prize in music.

[Band playing Death letter]

but by the very nature of the music,

no individual artist has ever been the sole focus of jazz in america.

Dozens of supremely talented musicians

now feed the many tributaries of jazz.

Christian McBride...

Lewis Nash...

David Murray...

Steve Coleman...

Joe lovano...

Jacky terrasson...

Greg osby...

Geri Allen...

Marcus Roberts...

Joshua redman...

And Cassandra Wilson...

♪ I got a letter this morning... ♪

Narrator: ...Who has found brand-new ways of singing everything,

from pop tunes and the ballads of Billie holliday

to early delta blues.

Wilson: ♪ got a letter this morning ♪

♪ how do you reckon it read? ♪

♪ Mmm, it said, ♪

♪ "hurry, hurry, on account of the man you love is dead"♪

♪ well, I packed up my suitcase ♪

♪ took off down the road ♪

♪ when I got there ♪

♪ he was lying on the cooling board ♪

♪ I packed up my suitcase ♪

♪ took off down the road ♪

♪ mmm ♪

♪ when I got there ♪

♪ he was lying on the cooling board ♪

Narrator: The jazz world is filled with young artists,

eager to Mark out their own paths

and committed to avoiding the pitfalls

to which so many of their forebears had fallen prey.

♪ ...where he used to lay ♪

♪ I got up two in the morning ♪

♪ right, right at the break of day ♪

Woman: I believe that you can communicate tragedy...

By learning the lesson from someone else's tragedy.

I think that's the whole point, is that...

For these people who have already done this for us--

our predecessors--

they've lived these lives, they've done the drugs,

they've done...You know...

All of these things, and...

I think the point of it is that we now...

Benefit from that, and we stand on their shoulders,

and we have the responsibility of extending the music.

We have the responsibility of...

Pushing the music into the 21st century.

Crouch: One of the things that's very important

about what's going on in jazz today is that

young people involved in jazz...

Are people who have real courage.

Courage is something you can't buy.

Courage is something you can't sell.

And when somebody actually takes a real risk--

like these young people do who go into jazz,

knowing that they're never going to be like puff daddy combs

or Madonna or any of those people--

they're not going to get into that.

So that assertion among young people of real courage,

real aesthetic belief-- that can only beget good.

Redman: I think jazz is as alive and as well

and as active and creative as it's ever been.

I think there's a lot happening in terms of the combination

of jazz with other sounds from around the world,

or from within American music.

[Singing scat to Love for sale]

redman: There's a lot happening with the combination

of jazz with r and b,

jazz with Latin music,

jazz with west Indian music,

jazz with gospel music,

jazz with hip-hop.

[Man singing rap]

[Crowd cheering]

Redman: But ultimately, what matters is

the emotional power of the music.

[Crowd cheering]

The important thing is that jazz is moving,

expanding in many different directions,

and that there are original artists out here

who have something original to say,

who are expressing their original feelings

and original experiences as human beings today.

And as long as that continues, jazz will be fine.

[Conductor humming along]

Low, low, low!

Boy: Jazz is like... You're a painter.

And you want to create a certain image.

You throw out a color,

and I want to throw out plenty of colors

so they could see what kind of painter I am.

I want to illustrate what kind of music--musician I am.

Conductor: Ok, hold on.

Ahhh...

Girl: The harmonies-- it's like, they hit me,

and it's like...Wow!

Just--i want to do that!

Hold it out!

I want to learn how to get from here to there,

and how did we get from this type of music

to the kind of music that's on the radio?

Wah!

Wah!

Everything grows out of what's been done before,

so it's really interesting, and, hopefully...

I'll take it my way someday.

Go!

[Playing saxophone solo]

You didn't do it in there.

Wynton marsalis: The reason the debate around jazz is

always heated and strong is because

jazz music deals with the soul of our nation.

And through this music, we can see a lot

about what it means to be American.

In our generation, there was a belief that jazz music was dead,

so there was all the celebration that went with that--

"ah, finally! No more jazz!" Now, here we are.

We're still swinging, and we ain't going nowhere.

There's plenty of us out there swinging,

and we're going to keep swinging.

[Playing Wild man blues]

[crowd cheering]

Giddins: I once asked a musician where jazz was going,

and he said, "it'll go wherever we take it. We're the musicians."

And I don't know of a really better answer.

One thing I do know about the future of jazz is

that nobody has adequately or accurately predicted it.

Nobody in the swing era predicted bebop,

nobody in the bebop era predicted the avant-garde,

and, certainly, nobody of the avant-garde predicted fusion.

Some young musician's going to come along--

hopefully, it will be someone really thrilling, like Armstrong or Parker--

but somebody of extraordinary gifts,

and he or she will play a music that no one else has heard,

and that will be the next movement.

[Whistle blows]

[Band playing Oh, but on the third day]

narrator: The musical journey that began in the dance halls

and saloons and street parades of New Orleans

in the early years of the 20th century continues...

And shows no sign of slowing down.

Jazz remains gloriously inclusive...

A proudly mongrel American music,

still brand-new every night...

The voices of the past still its greatest teachers.

[Playing jazz]

[Ella Fitzgerald singing scat]

[Jazz music playing]

[Applause]

Thanks so very much, ladies and gentlemen.

All the kids in the band want you to know that we do love you madly.

[Laughter]

[Jazz music continuing]

[Applause and cheering]

[song ends]