Ken Burns' JAZZ starts Monday on PBS!

I sat in the audience at Wolf Trap near Washington DC for the Marsalis/Lincoln Center group last summer. Great Concert??

Well if Marsalis is going to be the main commentator you can bet there will be more than a fair share devoted to Satchmo, his hero. Time Magazine had an article on the series and noted that several very important jazz figures were given scant coverage and Burns really didn't have too great an interest in jazz prior to conception of this project.

The series will be flawed, Marsalis is conceited--a fabulous technician of limited musicality--but it's better than nothing. See the dissing of the series by the great W. Balliet in the New Yorker.

What is evident in all of Ken Burns' documentaries that we may not pick up on in "The Civil War" because it is a important part; is that Burns tends to spend a lot of time giving the viewer a civil rights lecture and putting a civil rights bent on everything he covers. I learned very little about Thomas Jefferson the man, and his importance to our nation, and instead saw hours of a account his owning slaves, whether he had a baby with one of them, and how we should all feel about it.

Whatever negatives aside, as a diehard jazz junkie, I am really stoked for this series. I don't see any other programs so dedicated to the subject. And short of being enrolled in Sdcampbell's class, this is the best I can do. Whatever and whoever is featured, I will eat it up.