The first month of the new millennium (January, 2001) brought a new craze to the American airwaves - jazz music. Suddenly, thanks to documentarian Ken Burns, folks were listening to and buying classic jazz tunes from Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, and more. The boy bands (N'Sync), rap metal (Limp Bizkit), and pop country (Faith Hill) that dominated the airwaves at the time were, for a brief and glorious moment, supplanted in the fickle attention span of the public in favor of the subtle melodies and swinging rhythms of jazz. Ken Burns' Jazz was a mini-series on PBS (visit website) that focused on jazz from its birth in the early 20th century till its fusion heyday in the 70's. Burns' film spoke eloquently about what many consider America's greatest contribution to the world of art and culture, and the series shone its spotlight on some of America's greatest artists.

The lasting contribution of Ken Burns' Jazz, however, is the fine series of compact discs that Sony released as a soundtrack-cum-companion to the show. For the first time, the multitudinous labels that held copyright to the master tapes of these jazz masters cooperated in allowing all of the artists' best recordings to be compiled together onto single volumes. The end result was, depending on how you look at it, either a fine place to start a jazz collection or a near-perfect "instant jazz library."

The single-disc sampler from the show is cursory in the extreme, but it's a wonderful initiation for neophytes or folks who just want a souvenir of the TV series (which is also available in its entirety on DVD and VHS video). The 5-CD box, however, is a rich cornucopia that will satisfy both ambitious beginners and serious collectors. The moderately-priced, individual-artist compilations fill out the picture richly. In some cases (say, Miles Davis), the CD's lead the listener to the extensive bodies of work that each artist built. In other cases (Sidney Bechet, for instance), these single discs represent much of the best music that the artists recorded during their brief careers. Use the links to Amazon below to view track listings or purchase each volume. [top of page]