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    The Story of Jazz
    Umbrella Entertainment/AV Channel . R4 . B&W . 98 mins . E . PAL

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    The Story of Jazz is a bit of a cut-and-paste job, cobbled together with clips from various other jazz documentaries.

    But it does manage, within its 98-minutes, to give a very fair account of the history of jazz. There are no complete performances here, just snatches. But the survey moves along at such a steady rate that this doesn't seem to matter - this is a historical survey, not a concert.

    It's a relatively sanitised history, which makes me feel it might have been aimed at a schools market. The program looks for instance at New Orleans at the turn of the last century, and cites that city's street-parades as one key ingredient in the mix which produced jazz. No mention here that the word jazz was derived from 'jass', an early synonym for 'f*ck', and that jazz developed in the New Orleans brothels - it was, literally, music to f*ck by.

    No mention here either of the tragic link between jazz and drugs - of how many brilliant careers were cut short by heroin.

    But despite these things being glossed over, this is still a worthwhile introduction for novices to this major area of 20th century music. Particularly welcome is the focus it places on two absolute masters of the genre, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday - the cream of a very strong crop indeed.

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    Interview footage is in colour, but most of the performance footage is in black and white, with a mixture of footage shot on film or video. The transfer is excellent; the actual quality of the footage does of course vary markedly according to age and condition. Most footage is as good as you're ever likely to see.

    Sound has been remastered from original mono sources to Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, but this has served to just give some welcome warmth and depth to what remains a basically mono-sounding audio perspective.

    There are no extras on this disc.


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  •   And I quote...
    "This cut-and-paste history of jazz succeeds in giving a decent overview of one of the major musical movements of the 20th century."
    - Anthony Clarke
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