Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:16:01 -0800
From: Mark Turner <nugroove@pacbell.net>
Subject: FW: Ken Burns' 144-hour Extremely Important documentary, "Jazz."
To: acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Message-id: <NDBBLNJFELDENIKFMGJNKEJOCMAA.nugroove@pacbell.net>
Importance: Normal

written by  John Grabowski <jgrab@earthlink.net>
and he first posted it to rec.music.bluenote
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>>Presenting Ken Burns' 144-hour Extremely Important documentary, "Jazz."
>>
>>Fade up on a grainy old photograph of a man in a three-piece suit,
>>holding a cornet.  Or a bicycle horn, it's hard to tell.
>>
>>Narrator:  Skunkbucket LeFunke was born in 1876 and died in 1901.  No
>>one who heard him is alive today.  The grandchildren of the people who
>>heard him are not alive today.  The great-grandchildren of the people
>>who heard him are not alive today.  He was never recorded.
>>
>>Wynton Marsalis: I'll tell you what Skunkbucket LeFunke sounded like.
>>He had this big rippling sound, and he always phrased off the beat, and
>>he slurred his notes.  And when the Creole bands were still playing
>>De-bah-de-bah-ta-da-tah, he was already playing
>>Bo-dap-da-lete-do-do-do-bah!  He was just like gumbo, ahead of his time.
>>
>>Announcer: LeFunke was a cornet player, gambler, card shark, pool
>>hustler, pimp, male prostitute, Kelly Girl, computer programmer, brain
>>surgeon and he invented the internet.
>>
>>Stanley Crouch: When people listened to Skunkbucket LeFunke, they heard
>>Do-do-dee-bwap-da-dee-dee-de-da-da-doop-doop-dap.  And they knew even
>>then how deeply profound that was.
>>
>>Announcer: It didn't take LeFunke long to advance the art of jazz past
>>its humble beginnings in New Orleans whoredom with the addition of a
>>bold and sassy beat.
>>
>>Wynton: Let me tell you about the Big Four.  Before the Big Four, jazz
>>drumming sounded like BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick.  But now they
>>had the Big Four, which was so powerful some said it felt like a Six.  A
>>few visiting musicians even swore they were in an Eight.
>>
>>Stanley: It was smooth and responsive, and there was no knocking and
>>pinging, even on 87 octane.
>>
>>Wynton: Even on gumbo.
>>
>>Announcer: When any musician in the world heard Louis Armstrong for the
>>first time, they gnawed their arm off with envy, then said the angels
>>probably wanted to sound like Louis.  When you consider a bunch of
>>angels talking in gruff voices and singing "Hello Dolly," you realize
>>what a stupid aspiration that is.
>>
>>Gary Giddy: Louis changed jazz because he was the only cat going
>>Do-da-dep-do-wah-be-be, while everyone else was doing
>>Do-de-dap-dit-dit-dee.
>>
>>Stanley: And that was very profound.
>>
>>Marsalis: Like gumbo.
>>
>>Stanley: Uh-huh.
>>
>>Matt Glaser: I always have this fantasy that when Louis performed in
>>Belgium, Heisenberg was in the audience and he was blown away and that's
>>where he got the idea for his Uncertainty Principle.
>>
>>Marsalis: Because the Uncertainty Principle, applied to jazz, means you
>>never know if a cat is going to go Dap-da-de-do-ba-ta-bah or
>>Dap-da-de-do-bip-de-beep.
>>
>>Wynton: Louis was the first one to realize that.
>>
>>Stanley: And that can be very profound.
>>
>>Stanley: I thought it was a box of chocolates...
>>
>>Announcer: The Savoy Ballroom brought people of all races colors and
>>political persuasions together to get sweaty as Europe moved closer and
>>closer to the brink of World War II.
>>
>>Savoy Dancer: We didn't care what color you were at the Savoy.  We only
>>cared if you were wearing deodorant.
>>
>>Stanley: Wynton always wears deodorant.
>>
>>Glaser: I'll bet Arthur Murray was on the dance floor and he was
>>thinking about Louis and that's where he got the idea to open a bunch of
>>dance schools.
>>
>>Stanley: And that was very profound.
>>
>>Giddy: Let's talk about Louis some more.  We've wasted three minutes of
>>this 57-part documentary not talking about Louis.
>>
>>Wynton: He was an angel, a genius, much better than Cats.
>>
>>Stanley: He invented the word "Cats."
>>
>>Wynton: He invented swing, he invented jazz, he invented the telephone,
>>the automobile and the polio vaccine.
>>
>>Stanley: And the internet.
>>
>>Wynton: Very profound.
>>
>>Announcer: Louis Armstrong turned commercial in the 1930s and didn't
>>make any more breakthrough contributions to jazz.  But it's not PC to
>>point that out, so we'll be showing him in every segment of this series
>>to come, even if he's just doing the same things as the last time you
>>saw him.
>>
>>Glaser: I'll bet Chuck Yeager was in the audience when Louis was hitting
>>those high Cs at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, and that's what made
>>him decide to break the sound barrier.
>>
>>Stanley: And from there go to Pluto.
>>
>>Wynton: I'm going to make some gumbo-
>>
>>Stanley: BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM-chickSS
>>
>>Giddy: Do-yap-do-wee-bah-scoot-scoot-dap-dap...That's what all the cats
>>were saying back then.
>>
>>Announcer: In 1964, John Coltrane was at his peak, Eric Doolphy was in
>>Europe, where he would eventually die, the Modern Jazz Quartet was
>>making breakthrough recordings in the field of Third Stream Music, Miles
>>Davis was breaking new barrier with his second great quintet, and
>>Charlie Mingus was extending jazz composition to new levels of
>>complexity.  But we're going to talk about Louis singing "Hello Dolly"
>>instead.
>>
>>Stanley: Louis went,
>>Ba-ba-yaba-do-do-dee-da-bebin-doo-wap-deet-deet-do-da-da.
>>
>>Wynton: Sweets went,
>>Scoop-doop-shalaba-yaba-mokey-hokey-bwap-bwap-tee-tee-dee.
>>
>>Giddy: I go, Da-da-shoobie-doobie-det-det-det-bap-bap-baaaaa...
>>
>>Announcer: The rest of the history of jazz will be shown in fast forward
>>and will occupy exactly seven seconds. --There, that was it.  Now here
>>are some scenes from Ken Burns' next documentary, a 97-part epic about
>>the Empire State Building, titled "The Empire State Building."
>>
>>"It is tall and majestic.  It is America's building.  It is the Empire
>>State Building.  Dozens of workers gave their lives in the construction
>>of this building."
>>
>>Matt Glaser: I'll bet that they were thinking of Louis as they were
>>falling to their deaths.  I have this fantasy that his high notes
>>inspired the immenseness of the Empire State Building.
>>
>>Wynton Marsalis: I'll bet most people who'd fall off the Empire State
>>Building would go "Aaaaaahhhh!"  But these cats went
>>"Dee-dee-daba-da-da-bop-bop-de-dop-shewap-splat!"
>>
>>"That's next time on PBSS"

written by  John Grabowski <jgrab@earthlink.net>
and he first posted it to rec.music.bluenote