"Gumbo" traces the roots of jazz from the 1800s to 1917. The viewer will catch glimpses of Jelly Roll Morton, who err...

How can one explain the genius of a Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington? Blessed with skill and talent far exceeding th...

Colorful characters like the tragic Bix Beiderbecke, powerhouse Bessie Smith, and the braggart Jelly Roll Morton, mak...

"The True Welcome" continues many of the stories begun in Episode 3, following several troubling years for Louis Arms...

1935 was the year that swing became the most popular music in the country and that the king of swing, Benny Goodman, ...

Swing would be reacquainted with its blues roots by way of Kansas City, when Count Basie and the Barons of Rhythm bro...

"Dedicated to Chaos" finds jazz musicians teetering on the brink of the modern era, fighting against the straightjack...

The bop revolution’s influence would spread to other musicians, but unlike swing, it would never become a popular mus...

Critics who had believed that Charlie Parker was "too much" musically, could not have welcomed the arrival of Ornette...

Obviously Ken Burns knows that he can’t fit the last thirty-nine years of jazz history onto two hours of video tape, ...