Posted By:
Bob RousseauI also felt the "Jazz" documentary paled compared to the baseball. I thought it was because (from what I seem to remember) Burns was much more of a longtime baseball fan, but he didn't start paying attention to jazz til sometime before working on that documentary, hence he relied more on Wynton Marsalis to tell the tale. There was more of a variety of historians in the "Baseball" documentary, I seem to remember. Also, another part of what made the Baseball docu so enjoyable was not just the factual, but was hearing those writers talk about how much baseball meant to them from the time they were kids (Robert Creamer saying things like going to see Ruth play as a little boy and Ruth having swung around on his heels and facing the general area Creamer was, and Creamer thinking "Babe Ruth is looking at ME!"; Shelby Foote talking about his uncle Roy taking he and his cousin Roy to the hotel where the Yankees were staying during the 30s- and going on up to say hello. Those stories were magical (and then of course, you had Buck O'Neill who added so much and then those other few Negro Leaguers to tell more of what they actually experienced. Wynton Marsalis is so young, he didn't have the same kind of stories to tell, and what are you going to do, get someone to say "I took "Kind of Blue" out of the record jacket and just sat back and marveled"...not quite as palpable as someone going out to a ball field and actually watching someone in motion. Those anecdotes really put faces on being a fan, and made it easier to relate to. I haven't seen "Jazz" since it was on TV, but as I recall, there was precious little of that. In a way, I also felt that Burns had already told alot of the story of 20th century America in "Baseball" and consequently, there was less to tell, or it was more repetitious in "Jazz".