All language subtitles for JAZZ - 07 - Dedicated to Chaos (1940-1945)

[Charlie Parker's
Bird gets the worm playing]

Narrator: In the summer of 1939,

a 19-year-old saxophone player
from Kansas City named
Charlie Parker

jumped a freight train
and headed for New York

ready to try the big time.

He wandered the Harlem streets,

stared up at the marquee
of the savoy ballroom,

and dreamed of playing there
someday.

He took a $9.00-a-week job
washing dishes at a little club,

just so he could hear his idol
art Tatum on the piano
every night,

and he played his saxophone
whenever and wherever someone
would give him a chance.

One night that December,
during a jam session
at Dan wall's chili house

on seventh Avenue
between 139th and 140th,

he did something
he had never done before.

Parker discovered a new way
to create a compelling solo

based not on the melody
of a tune,

but on the chords
underlying it.

"I came alive,"
Charlie Parker said.

"I could fly."

Man: I think genius ultimately
is unknowable.

We're never going to really
understand what makes
a Mozart or a schubert

any more than we're going
to understand where an Armstrong
or a Parker come from.

And it's only happened
relatively few times

where a musician comes along
and can completely
transmute the music.

Wynton marsalis:
Charlie Parker--

he's got to be
one of the most complex
characters that ever lived--

just a genius of music.

He understood all of what was
going on around him.

And he understood what they were
Tryi Ngto play,
and he played all of it.

[Tommy dorsey's
Well git iPlaying]

Narrator: By 1940,

the great depression
had finally ended.

The swing music that had kept
American spirits up
during the lean years

was still everywhere,

and it showed no signs
of slowing down.

It blared from movie screens,

poured from 350,000 jukeboxes,

sold more than
30 million records.

But overshadowing everything

was a new European war
that would eventually spread
to the entire world--

a war that would kill more than
55 million people.

Although america--
for the moment--
was still at peace,

young men were now subject
to the draft,

and jazz would soon be
called upon to play a new role

as a symbol of democracy

in a world threatened
by fascism and tyranny.

Duke Ellington continued to go
his own distinctive way--

artfully manipulating
his musicians

and making some of
the most memorable recordings
in jazz history.

Louis Armstrong
toured the country
with his own big band,

but now--for the first time
in his life--

whenever he came in
off the road,

he had a real home to go to.

Meanwhile, after hours
and out of earshot

of a country still
obsessed with swing,

a group of defiant
young musicians got together

and began to perfect
a new way of playing.

For the next several years,

working behind the scenes
as world war ii raged,

they would question
some of the most basic
assumptions of jazz.

Their leaders were the gifted
trumpet player dizzy Gillespie--

a free-spirited
virtuoso performer--

and the man he called
"the other half
of my heartbeat"--

his friend Charlie Parker,

whose revolutionary style

would alter the way a whole
generation of soloists played
on every instrument,

just as Louis Armstrong had done
a quarter of a century earlier.

By the time the war
finally ended,

the country
and its most distinctive music

would never be the same again.

[Dizzy Gillespie, thelonious
monk, and Kenny Clarke
playing Kerouac]

man: It's been a long time now,

and not many remember how it was
in the old days, not really--

not even those who were there to
see and hear it as it happened

and who shared,
night after night,

the mysterious spell created
by the talk, the laughter,

greasepaint, powder, perfume,
sweat, alcohol, and food--

all blended and simmering

like a stew
on the restaurant range...

And brought to a sustained
moment of elusive meaning

by the timbres and accents
of musical instruments
at minton's playhouse.

It was an exceptional moment,

and the world was swinging
with change.

Ralph Ellison.

Narrator: In 1940,

as Hitler's armies continued
their relentless drive
across Europe,

a cramped and dingy club
called minton's playhouse

on 118th street in Harlem

began to attract some
of the most adventurous and
dissatisfied musicians in jazz.

Minton's was managed
by an ex-bandleader
named Teddy hill

who came up with the idea of
serving free food and drinks
on Monday night

for any musician
willing to come in and jam--

free from the regimentation
of the swing bands.

"Many a big-time
commercial sideman

likes to get away
from all the phony music
he plays for a living,"

one musician said.

"When you're playing
for yourself,

you discover the really good
ideas that are inside of you."

Soon, minton's got
an underground reputation

as the hippest place in town.

The house band included two
brilliant young innovators:

The pianist thelonious monk

and the drummer Kenny Clarke,

who spurred on soloists
with astonishing
kicks and accents

and cues of his own invention.

Jimmy Cobb: So he started to
play accents with the bass drum
and his left hand

while playing the cymbal beat
with his right hand
on the cymbal.

You know, like
ding-ticka-ding-digga-ding

tuh-gomp-de-bomp
tuh-gomp-de-bomp.

Like that instead of...

[Thump thump thump thump]

Through the whole thing.

Narrator: Coleman Hawkins,

chu Berry,

Charlie Christian,

Don byas,

milt hinton,

and Mary Lou Williams

were all regulars

at sessions that sometimes
went on till dawn.

Saxophonists
Lester young and Ben Webster

"used to tie up in battle"
when they came to minton's.

"Like dogs in the road,"
the bartender remembered,

"they'd fight
on those saxophones
until they were tired out.

Then they'd call their mothers
and tell them about it."

[Dizzy Gillespie
and Roy eldridge playing
I've found a new baby]

the great trumpet player
Roy eldridge was
often there, too--

short, fiery,

and always on the lookout
for anyone who dared try
to best him.

Giddins: Roy eldridge had
an extremely personal sound.

In some ways, it's almost
antithetical to Armstrong's.

Armstrong's is...
It's brilliant. It's golden.

It's, um...
It's all the fullness
of life.

Roy eldridge's sound
has a very human quality to it.

There's a cry in it.
There's a roughness.
There's an edge.

You feel like it's him speaking,
at times.

It seems to come from right
inside his belly and work out,

and you can hear all
of the effort that goes into it.

Narrator: It was at minton's
one evening that eldridge
himself was unexpectedly cut

by one of his most ardent
admirers...

John birks Gillespie.

There's one guy that I remember

that came on the stand
and played,

and when he played, I looked up,

and he was different.

That was dizzy Gillespie.

[Gillespie and eldridge play
Sometimes I'm happy]

narrator: He was born
in cheraw, south Carolina--

the son of a bricklayer
who beat him
every Sunday morning,

whether or not he'd done
anything wrong.

At the laurinburg institute--

a state technical school
for blacks--

he studied piano and developed
a lifelong fascination
with theory and composition.

Gillespie's first jobs
were with Philadelphia
big bands

playing Roy eldridge-style solos

but fast,
a fellow musician said,

"like a rabbit
running over a hill.

Any key--it didn't make
any difference."

When I first heard
dizzy Gillespie,
I just said,

"well, there's no sense
in even listening to him

because you know nobody
will ever play like him."

He just extended
the range again.

He played with such rhythmic
sophistication.

He created another whole way
of playing the trumpet.

Generally, the trumpet players
will play a rhythm like...

The syncopation would be like...

[Plays melodic lines]

Now, you get to dizzy,
he's playing riffs like...

[Plays fast runs]

I mean, what is that?

[Blue n' boogiPlaying]

Narrator: Gillespie was
experimenting with the music--

playing chord changes,

inverting them,

and substituting different notes
he remembered--

trying to see how different
sounds led naturally,

sometimes surprisingly,
into others.

He was excitable
and unpredictable
on the bandstand--

sometimes standing up
and dancing when others soloed.

His fellow musicians
didn't know, he said,

"if I was coming
by land or sea"...

And they began to call him
"dizzy."

Man: There was a great irony
in that name

because in strictly
musical terms,

nobody in dizzy's generation

was more intellectual,
was more, uh...

Whose approach to music was more
intellectual than dizzy.

Dizzy was one of the best
teachers in that generation,

and that's what he did.

He taught people.

Anytime you asked him,
he'd go to the board
and show you.

He'd go to the piano
and show you.

[Cab Calloway's band
playing Blue interlude]

narrator: In 1937,

Gillespie went to New York.

Cab Calloway:
♪ I love you so ♪

♪ want you to know ♪

♪ each hour I'm not with you
is a blue interlude ♪

♪ you're part of me... ♪

Narrator: Eventually,

the hugely popular entertainer
cab Calloway

hired him for his band

and then found him
more than he'd bargained for.

Calloway:
♪ a blue interlude ♪

Hinton: Dizzy used to drive
cab Calloway crazy...

Calloway:
♪ I never realized
I needed you so badly ♪

And we'd get on the stage,
and cab would be singing
a ballad,

♪ I love you, my dear... ♪

And dizzy would act like he'd
look out in the audience
and see somebody that he knew

and wave at them,

and the people in the audience
just started laughing,
and cab was singing a love song,

and when he looks around to see
what's happening,

he sees that like
we're all in church.

Narrator: Calloway wasn't
pleased with Gillespie's antics

and hated the musical liberties
Gillespie took on the bandstand.

He dismissed the new playing as
"Chinese music"

and barred it
from his orchestra.

[Gillespie and Parker play
Dizzy atmosphere]

Gillespie didn't mind

because at minton's--

far away from the commercial
world of swing--

he was free to experiment
with frantic tempos,

fresh harmonies,
unfamiliar keys--

free to solo the way he wanted.

Only the most talented
and inventive were able
to keep up with Gillespie,

and those who held their own

took justifiable pride
in their achievement.

[Parker quintet playing
Scrapple from the apple]

then, in 1940,

word began to spread about a new
alto saxophone player
from Kansas City.

It was Charlie Parker.

"He was playing stuff
we'd never heard before,"
Kenny Clarke recalled.

"He was running
the same way we were,

but he was way out ahead of us."

"He had just what we needed,"
Gillespie said.

"We heard him and knew
the music had to go his way."

Kenny Clarke had invented
a new drum style, right?

There was another way you could
play the drums, right?

Dizzy Gillespie
and thelonious monk
had worked out

these other ways
of playing the chords.

They told the bass player
how to walk the notes

that would fit the way
they wanted it to go, see,

but they didn't have
the phrasing.

See, they had everything
but the phrasing,

and Charlie Parker brought
the mortar, see.

They had the bricks.

They had the bricks,
but he brought the mortar.

His phrasing was what made
the bricks hold together.

See, before he got there,
they were just interesting
bricks.

When he came...

When he put that rhythm that
he brought from Kansas City
and out of his imagination in

and he locked it in together,

because dizzy said that he said,

"when we heard him--
when we heard his phrasing--

we knew the music
had to go Hi Sway."

Narrator: Charles Parker, Jr.
was born in 1920

and raised
in Kansas City, Missouri.

[Parker's Now's the time
Playing]

His father was
a tap-dancer-turned-Pullman-chef

who drank too much and deserted
his wife before his son was 11.

His mother Addie bought him
a saxophone at 13,

and he began to haunt the bars
that flourished just a few
blocks from his home--

trying to sound like the altoist
buster Smith,

who was a master of what was
called "doubling up"--

playing solos
at twice the written tempo.

Murray: But to appreciate
his music,

it's absolutely essential
to remember that he was
a Kansas City musician.

Therefore,
he's a blues musician,

and one of the things that
impressed the older masters
about him--

like Coleman Hawkins
and Roy eldridge
and all the musicians--

is that he could play the blues
like nobody else.

Narrator: At 15,

he left school for good
and joined a local band,

but Parker also began to drink,

to use marijuana,

then benzedrine dissolved
in cups of black coffee

that allowed him to play
without sleep night after night.

He married at 16,

was a father at 17,

and spent every spare moment
furiously practicing

and listening over
and over again to the records
of chu Berry and Lester young.

[Parker's Meandering Playing]

On Thanksgiving day 1936,

Parker was in a terrible
car crash.

His ribs were broken,

his spine fractured,

his best friend killed.

Parker spent two months
recuperating in bed--

easing his pain and his anguish
and sorrow

with regular doses of morphine.

Giddins: He seems to have
completely changed
at that point.

He became remote,
difficult to communicate with--

both with his young wife,
with friends,
with his mother Addie--

and he seemed older.

Narrator: One day,

his wife came home to find him
injecting himself with a needle.

Charlie Parker was barely 17

and already hooked on heroin.

He stayed away from home
for weeks at a time,

sold his wife's belongings,

finally persuaded her
to give him a divorce.

"If I were free," he told her,

"I think I could be
a great musician."

It was then that Parker made
his first trip to New York,

and it was there,
at Dan wall's chili house,

that he had his remarkable
musical revelation.

[Parker's Cherok Eeplaying]

Giddins: Charlie barnet,
who was a very successful
bandleader,

had a big hit record with a tune
by ray noble called Cherokee,

and Parker was fascinated
by the changes, the chords,
the harmonies,

and he played it over and over
and over again...

And it was while playing
Cherokee That he came,
as he said,

to his great discovery.

Parker figured out that
he could play any note--

any note in the scale--

and that he could resolve it
within the chord

so that it would sound
harmonically right.

This was the great discovery.
He said, "I came alive."

It meant that he could
really fly.

He could fly right out of
the conventional chord changes,

and he could make it work.

He could make it bluesy.
He could make it swinging.

And so it brought everybody
alive

because he was basically wiping
the slate clear of all
the cliches of the swing era

and providing a whole melodic
and harmonic content that was
completely new in jazz.

[Jay mcshann band
playing Swingmatism]

narrator: Parker returned
to Kansas City

and for the next two years

played in the big band led by
the blues master Jay mcshann,

astounding everyone with what
he had learned in New York.

Parker was playing
like no one else now--

soaring so inventively
on the saxophone

that the band sometimes
couldn't follow him.

So fast,
one listener remembered,

he sounded "like a machine."

[Mcshann octet playing
I found a new baby]

Older saxophone players,

put off by his impassive look

and his unwillingness
ever to play to the crowd,

called him "Indian,"

but it was with mcshann's band

that he got his distinctive
nickname "bird."

Word of Parker's genius
was spreading fast,

and when musicians visited
Kansas City,

they all made it a point
to go and hear him.

Crouch: Charlie Parker put
another kind of complexity
in the music.

He didn't have that big, creamy
alto saxophone sound

that you get from Johnny Hodges,
Benny Carter, Willie Smith,
those kind of players.

His sound was hard.

It was a brittle sound.

You know, it was a sound
that was, as they would say,

devoid of pity.

[Ellington's Jump for joy
Playing]

Narrator: In July of 1941,

the summer before
america would be drawn
into the second world war,

Duke Ellington and his orchestra

came to rest momentarily

in Hollywood.

They were working on something
altogether new:

An all-black musical called

jump for joy.

there was to be no shuffling,

no dialect,

no blackface comedy.

It was meant to honor
black america's contribution
to the country.

"I contend," Ellington told
an interviewer,

"that the negro is the creative
voice of america--

"icreative america--

and it was a happy day
when the first unhappy slave
was landed on its shores."

The show opened
to rave reviews.

Ivie Anderson: ♪ fare thee well,
land of cotton, cotton... ♪

Narrator: "In Jump for joy,"
Said the Los Angeles tribune,

"uncle Tom is dead.
God rest his bones."

Those who were in the cast

never forgot
its liberating power.

"Everything,"
one dancer recalled,

"every setting, every note
of music, every lyric
Mean Tsomething."

But Jump for joy Ran only
11 weeks

and never made it to Broadway.

The country wasn't ready
for a show about civil rights.

[Siren]

Its attention was now
focused elsewhere.

Franklin d. Roosevelt:
December 7, 1941--

a date which will live
in infamy--

the United States of America...

Narrator: On December 7, 1941,

america found itself forced
to defend freedom

in nearly every corner
of the globe.

Jazz would go to war, too.

And swing--

still america's
most popular music--

helped to remind the men
and women of the armed forces
of home.

[Glenn Miller's In the mood
Playing]

"Bandsmen today are not just
jazz musicians,"
said Downbea Tmagazine,

"they are soldiers of music."

Giddins: I think the swing era

and all of those
great bandleaders of that period

reminded Americans--

at a time when they were willing
to be reminded of what was
unique about the country--

of what a democracy was.

It's no accident that
Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw
were Jewish

or that count basie
and Duke Ellington
and jimmie lunceford were black

and that white audiences
were responding to...

The whole country was making
a hero out of Benny Goodman.

Well, this was a big thing
at that moment,

and it reminded everybody that
there was something special
about this country,

and when the war started,
it became even more underscored

because the war, in a sense,
was about, you know,
ethnic cleansing,

and jazz became identified...

It epitomized
the American spirit--

the spirit of freedom
and swing--

and, you know, we are
a young, vibrant nation.

The way we dance represents us.

The way we listen to music
represents us.

This was purely and uniquely
American.

Narrator: But on the home front,

the music industry faced
daunting new obstacles.

Blackouts darkened
nightclubs and dance halls.

Late-night curfews
and new cabaret
and entertainment taxes--

as much as 30%--

kept still more customers
at home.

The rationing of rubber
and gasoline drove band buses
off the roads,

and servicemen now filled
the Pullman trains,

making it difficult
for musicians to get around
by rail.

A shortage of shellac
curtailed recordings,

and companies stopped making
jukeboxes and musical
instruments altogether

for a time

because they were deemed
unnecessary to the war effort.

The country needed weapons now.

The draft stole away
good musicians

and forced bandleaders to pay
their replacements more
for less talent.

"I'm paying some kid trumpet
player $500 a week,"
Tommy dorsey complained,

"and he can't even
blow his nose."

But swing endured,

and its irresistible tunes

became the anthems
of wartime america.

[Machine gun fire]

[Gene krupa's Drum boogie
Playing]

Man: Swing's the kind of stuff
we go for.

It's great morale music.

On our trip to the pacific,
some of my shipmates
had musical instruments.

Every day, they used to get
together in a jam session.

That's all they played.
That's all they wanted to hear.

And when my brother got back
from 26 missions over Japan,

do you know what he wanted
to hear?

Drum boogie.

Men: ♪ boogie! ♪

Anita o'day:
♪ do you hear the rhythm
rompin'? ♪

♪ You see the drummer
stompin'? ♪

♪ Drum boogie, drum boogie ♪

♪ boogie! ♪

♪ It really is a killer ♪

♪ drum boogie, drum boogie ♪

♪ the drum boogie-woogie ♪

Narrator: At one point
during the fighting,

there were 39 bandleaders
enlisted in the army,

17 in the Navy,

3 in the merchant marine,

and 2 more in the coast guard.

Glenn Miller,

whose infectious swing hits like
In the mood

epitomized the war years,

disbanded his own hugely
successful orchestra

to form an all-star
air force unit

and perished when his airplane
disappeared

over the English channel.

Benny Goodman,

still the king of swing,

was deferred because of
a back injury,

but he and many other musicians
volunteered for the u.S.O.

And made special "v discs"
for the men and women stationed
overseas.

Artie Shaw led a Navy band
that toured the south pacific,

playing in jungles
so hot and humid

that the pads on the saxophones
rotted

and horns had to be
held together with rubber bands.

17 times they were bombed
or strafed by Japanese planes.

There were times when it was
really very moving.

You'd play three notes,

and they instantly...

The whole audience was instantly
roaring with you.

They heard...
They knew the record,

and you got the feeling that
you'd created a piece of durable
americana

that was speaking
to these people.

[Shaw's Begin the beguine
Playing]

I remember an engagement
on the U.S.S. Saratoga--

this huge carrier--

and we were put
on the flight deck,

and we came down into this
cavernous place where they...

3,000 men in dress uniforms.

And a roar went up.

[Crowd cheering]

I tell you, you know,
it really threw me.

I couldn't believe what I was
seeing or hearing.

I felt something extraordinary.

I was, by that time, inured
to success and applause
and all that

that you'd take that for granted
after a while.

You could put your finger out
and say, "now they're going
to clap,"

but this was a whole different
thing.

These men were starved

for something to remind them
of home and whatever is
mom and apple pie,

and the music had that effect,
I suppose.

[Ellington's I let a song go out
Of my heart Playing]

Crouch: If you know
the person who makes

the best lemon meringue pie
on the eastern seaboard,

now, you can get everybody
and their mama in the kitchen

and they can show them,
"this is what I do, right?"

And sit down and they'll all...
They're not going to get it.

It's going to be something that
they don't get,

and so the best thing to do is
you say,

"ok. Now we know what
the ingredients are,

"but they don't tell us
anything,

so the best thing to do
is just appreciate it."

Just cut you a piece of it
and eat it.

Duke Ellington's like that.

Giddins: Everything comes
together for Ellington
in the early 1940s.

He has a contract at rca

which basically gives him
carte blanche to record
what he wants to record.

No longer are they going to
throw different pop tunes at him

and tell him that this has got,
you know,

he's got to do
these kinds of hits,

so now Ellington--
he wants hits himself, you know?

Everything goes right.

Every time he walks
into the recording studio--
another masterwork,

and not just masterworks,
but popular.

Announcer: Well, friends,
at the beginning
of our broadcast,

we asked you to buy
that extra bond,

and here's Duke Ellington
to tell you why.

Ellington: Friends,
every bond you buy...

Narrator: Duke Ellington
was 42 years old
when the war began--

too old for the army,

but he did all that he could
for the cause,

including acting as host
of a weekly radio program
that sold war bonds:

Your Saturday date
With the Duke.

[Ellington's The kissing bug
Playing]

Ivie Anderson:
♪ you say that i'm
the one you love ♪

♪ you swear by every
star above ♪

♪ and then you kiss
some other miss ♪

♪ you're nothin' but
a kissin' bug ♪

♪ kissin' bug ♪

Narrator: Ellington's popularity
was never greater,

and his music had never been
more rich,

in part because of
a new addition to his band.

Just before the war broke out,

Ellington was on tour
in Pittsburgh.

There he was introduced
to a local pianist named
Billy strayhorn.

He was just 23 years old,

small and bespectacled,

and still supporting himself
as a drugstore clerk

while he looked for music work
at night,

but he played Ellington's
standard Sophisticated lady

with such flair and originality

and had already written such
interesting tunes of his own

that Ellington asked him to come
see him when he got back
to New York.

[Ellingtonplayingg
Take the "a" train ]

when the two men next met,

strayhorn had written
and arranged a brand-new song

based on Ellington's directions
on how to get to his apartment
in Harlem by subway.

Take the "a" tra Iwas a hit

and quickly became
Ellington's theme,

and strayhorn would become
his lifelong collaborator.

They were very different.

Strayhorn was warm, gregarious,
homosexual.

Ellington was private,
enigmatic, and a ladies' man,

but both were dedicated
to the same all-consuming goal:

The greatness of
the Duke Ellington orchestra,

of Duke Ellington's music,

and of Duke Ellington himself.

Ellington called strayhorn

"my right arm, my left arm,

"all the eyes in the back
of my head.

"My brain waves are in his head,

and his in mine."

Woman: There were maybe two
people that Duke Ellington
valued above all others.

I believe that one of them
was his mother,

and the other one
was Billy strayhorn.

You must know that they loved
each other.

Basically, I think,

the joy of them finding
each other

was the core of their
mutual creativity.

They brought out the best
in each other.

It was like a musical marriage.

I've never really seen
two people connect
so well together

as Duke and Billy.

They really dressed each other,

and they became so close that
Billy could really read
Duke's musical thoughts,

and Duke could read
Billy's musical thoughts.

I may be somewhere
like in Los Angeles,
and he's in New York,

and I get to the 17th bar
of a number, and I decide,

well, I think rather than sit
here and struggle with this

I'll call strays,

and I'll call him and say,

"look, I'm in e-flat
or someplace

"and, uh, the mood is this,

"and, you know, this man
is supposed to be walking
up the road,

"and he reaches
a certain intersection,
and I can't decide

whether he should turn left,
right, go straight ahead
or make a u-turn,"

and he says, "oh, yes, I know
what you mean," you know?

And, um, "well, I think you
could do that better
than I could."

That's his first response,
you know?

But all the time, he's thinking
about how he can outdo me,
you know?

And then, uh...And very often,
without any more than that,

we come up with practically
the same thing.

Giddins: In a very short time,
he became his alter ego.

He became the guy he could
deputize to conduct the band,

to sit in at the piano
if he was conducting,

and most important,
to fill up the book

not only with original
arrangements and compositions--

because strayhorn then proved
to be maybe the second greatest
composer in jazz in that era

after Ellington--

but also to work
so closely together
on collaborative pieces,

on suites and longer works
and even shorter works

where you can't tell whose hand
is, you know, leading who.

[Ellington's Daydrea Mplaying]

Narrator: For almost 3 decades,

Ellington and strayhorn
would work together

to make a great orchestra
still greater.

Mercedes Ellington:
It was very private.

I think that only
the two of them knew what
their relationship was like.

Up to the point
of meeting Billy strayhorn,

I think that my grandfather
was a very lonely person

on the musical level.

There was no one he could
communicate to on that level,

and if you can imagine:

What if Mozart
had somebody like that?

It would be such an opening.

It would be such a joy

to be able to not necessarily
say something

but just write a note and have
somebody else write a note,

and you write a note, and then
it's all the same thing.

It's like communicating
with just feelings.

[Rumbling]

Man: Jazz expresses
the hope of a free people

who hunger for a better life.

It is based on individuality,

which is contrary to the very
fundamentals of nazism.

Earl hines.

Narrator: By the end of 1941,

the Germans had overrun
most of Europe:

Czechoslovakia,

Poland,

Belgium,

Holland,

Denmark,

Norway,

and France.

Devastating air strikes
threatened britain, as well.

[Fire alarm rings]

[Benny Goodman playing
Makin' whoopee]

but despite their domination
of Europe,

the Nazis had failed to crush
jazz--

the music that propaganda
minister Joseph goebbels
had once called

"the art of the sub-human."

It flourished underground--

a bright symbol of resistance.

In Germany itself,

young fans called "swing kids"
defied the gestapo

to meet in secret, play records,
tune in allied radio, and dance.

In 1942, the Nazis
changed tactics.

Goebbels ordered the propaganda
ministry to organize its own
radio swing band

and aim its broadcasts
of familiar American tunes

with new, poisonous,
anti-semitic lyrics

at the allies.

♪ Another war ♪

♪ another profit ♪

♪ another Jewish
business trick ♪

♪ another season ♪

♪another reason ♪

♪ for makin' whoopee ♪

♪ we throw our German names
away ♪

♪ we are the kikes of u.S.A. ♪

♪ You are the goys, folks ♪

♪ we are the boys, folks ♪

♪ we're makin' whoopee ♪

Narrator: To divert attention
from their hideous crimes,

the Nazis eventually made
a propaganda film

intended to demonstrate
to the world

their supposed kindness
to the Jews.

The infamous
terezin concentration camp
outside Prague

was dressed up
as a model village,

and its occupants were given
new clothes.

They were then photographed
being entertained
by inmate musicians,

including a jazz band called
the ghetto swingers.

[Train whistle]

Once the filming was over,

the musicians' reward was to be
sent to the death camp
at Auschwitz

along with hundreds of thousands
of other innocent people.

[Parker's Bird of paradise
Playing]

Ellison: Charlie Parker
stretched the limits
of human contradiction

beyond belief.

He was lovable and hateful,

considerate and callous.

He stole from friends
and benefactors

and borrowed without conscience

and yet was generous
to absurdity.

He could be most kind
to younger musicians

or utterly crushing in his
contempt for their ineptitude.

He was passive,
yet quick to pull a knife
and pick a fight.

He was given to extremes
of sadness and masochism--

capable of the most staggering
excesses

and the most exacting physical
discipline and assertion
of will.

Ralph Ellison.

[Mcshann octet playing
Oh! Lady be good]

mcshann: You know, we used
to have a expression when
the cat's blowing out there.

A lot of times bird be blowing

and cats holler,
"reach, reach."

What we meant by that--

we knew that the cat knows
his potential--

what he can do.

If you keep hitting on bird
like that,

"reach, reach,"

bird will just do
the impossible.

And he was that type of person.

He would do the impossible.
You'd make him do
the impossible,

and that's the reason the cats
would do that, you know,

and...see, because he always
had enough stored back here

that he never did run out.

Narrator: In late 1942,

as American forces fought
German troops for the first time
in north Africa,

Charlie Parker,

deferred from the army
because of his drug addiction,

left mcshann
and joined Earl hines' big band.

The group was full
of young revolutionaries

who wanted to push
the boundaries of the music

including Sarah Vaughn,

Billy eckstine,

and dizzy Gillespie.

It was Gillespie who had
convinced hines to hire Parker,

but all of Parker's habits
came with him.

Crouch: One guy told me
that when Parker was
in the Earl hines band,

he came, and he gave this pin
to this guy, right?

And he told the guy to put it
inside his jacket.

He said, "what is this for?"

He said, "when I nod off
and it's time for me to solo,"

he said, "just stick me
in the leg with this pin."
Right?

Somebody else gets tapped
on the shoulder, maybe, right?

So, he begins his entrance
with the pain of this pin being
stuck in his leg.

That's the way he starts
to come in to play.

[Parker and Gillespie jamming
Sweet Georgia brown]

narrator: But it was
in the hines band

that Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie were finally
able to play together

every night.

"Out on the road,
things started happening
between Charlie Parker and me,"

Gillespie remembered.

"We were together all the time--

playing in hotel rooms
and jamming."

Jackie mclean: They would
practice together

and work out these ideas,

and I think that they wanted
to play something that the older
musicians couldn't play.

I think they wanted
to get up on the stage

and play ideas in keys
and on chord progressions

that would be difficult
for other musicians
to stand up and play.

Narrator: Their combined talents
released so much
musical energy--

"fire," one musician called it--

that others
simply got left behind.

But Parker and Gillespie's
innovations went mostly unheard.

The American federation
of musicians

had ordered its members
to stop making records

until the record companies
agreed to pay them

each time their music was played
in jukeboxes or on the radio.

Record companies refused.

It would be more than two years
before the issue was
fully settled

and musicians could return
to the studios.

And so, except for
a handful of musicians

and a few devoted fans,

Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie's
new way of playing

remained a secret.

[Josh white's Uncle Sam says
Playing]

Josh white: ♪ well,
airplanes flyin' 'cross
the land and sea ♪

♪ everybody flying but a negro
like me ♪

♪ uncle Sam says,
"your place is on the ground" ♪

♪ "when I fly my airplanes" ♪

♪ "don't want no negro 'round" ♪

Man: Though I have found
no negroes

who want to see
the United Nations
lose this war,

I have found many who,
before the war ends,

want to see the stuffing knocked
out of white supremacy.

American negroes are confronted
not with a choice,
but with a challenge

both to win democracy
for ourselves at home

and to help win
the war for democracy
the world over.

A. Phillip Randolph.

Narrator: In 1941,

a. Phillip Randolph,

president of the brotherhood
of sleeping car porters,

threatened to lead
a mass march on Washington

unless Franklin Roosevelt
opened up jobs
in the defense industries

which had been closed to blacks.

Roosevelt agreed,

but not even Randolph could talk
the president into integrating
the armed forces.

A million African-Americans
would serve--

nearly half a million overseas--

all on a basis
of strict segregation.

Even blood supplies for saving
the lives of the wounded

were carefully
separated by race.

During the war years,
there were bloody confrontations

between black and white troops
at military installations
all across the country.

Off base, black soldiers
were harassed, beaten,

barred from buses and even
from restaurants where
German prisoners of war

were allowed to eat.

And a new, great black migration
from the south

in search of defense work
led to violent conflicts
over jobs and housing

in 47 cities
in the summer of 1943.

African-Americans grew
increasingly impatient

with the hypocrisy
of fighting bigotry abroad...

While tolerating it at home.

No one felt more alienated
than young black jazz musicians

like Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie.

They seemed to be special
targets of white policemen

and white servicemen
who objected to their
being well-dressed,

their hipster language,
their new assertiveness.

Black musicians began to call
one another "man,"

in part because they were
so often called "boy."

Josh white: ♪ got
my long government letters ♪

♪ my time to go ♪

♪ when I got to the army,
found the Sam old Jim crow ♪

♪ uncle Sam says ♪

♪ two camps
for black and white ♪

♪ but when trouble starts ♪

♪ we'll all be
in that same big fight ♪

♪ if you ask me, I think
democracy is fine ♪

♪ I mean democracy
without the color line ♪

♪ uncle Sam says,
"we'll live the American way" ♪

Louis Armstrong:
♪ when the sun sets in the sky ♪

♪ flowers never die ♪

♪ friends don't pass you by ♪

♪ for that's my home ♪

♪ when the folks
say howdy do ♪

♪ like they mean it, too ♪

♪ where mama's love
is true ♪

♪ 'cause that's my home ♪

Narrator: Louis Armstrong
was 40 years old
when the war began,

and, like Duke Ellington,
too old for the army.

But he did what he could,

playing segregated army camps
and Navy training stations

and visiting military
hospitals

where black and white
wounded alike begged him
to sign their casts "satchmo."

He still spent most
of his time on the road.

Armstrong was happily
married now

to an ex-dancer
named Lucille Wilson.

Shortly after their wedding,

she bought a house
in a working-class
neighborhood in queens.

When his tour ended
and Armstrong's taxi

pulled up to the front door
of his new house,

he couldn't believe
it was his.

"I rang the bell,"
he remembered,

"and sure enough,
the door opened,

"and who stood
in the doorway

with a real thin
silk nightgown?"

For the rest of his life,
Lucille Wilson Armstrong

would provide him
with the stable home
he'd yearned for

since his boyhood
on the streets of New Orleans.

Man: I listen not so much
to the timbre of the voice,

but to the feeling.

It was something
that went deep inside.

For instance, when he would
do a tune like That's my home,

Louis said, "I'm always welcome
back, no matter where I roam,

just an old sweet shack,
we call it home, sweet home."

But he could do that so much
that, so help me,

I'd have to fight back
the tears.

Now, every night,
we'd do that,

and just certain things he did
that had such--

such artistic--
and emotion. Emotion.

It was, uh...

It was much more
than just a great singer.

Armstrong: ♪ ...Pass you by ♪

♪ for that's my home ♪

Shaw: He didn't have
a great voice,

but his heart
and his soul,

he was a giant.

Armstrong:
♪ like they mean it, too ♪

♪ where mama's love is true ♪

♪ 'cause that's my home ♪

[Applause]

[Artie Shaw's band
playing Summertime]

man: In the late twenties
and the very early thirties,

novelists, poets,
newspaper columnists,
and publishers

combined to portray Harlem
as negro heaven.

It's time now for Harlem
to quit kidding itself.

Harlem never has lived up
to its reputation.

Harlem is, and has been
for years, in a bad way.

It has refused
to face facts.

But it seems that sham
can no longer go on.

Amsterdam News.

narrator: On April 21, 1943,

the doors of Harlem's
best-loved ballroom,
the savoy, were padlocked.

Both city and military
authorities claimed that
armed forces personnel

had contracted venereal diseases
from the women they met there.

The real reason,
angry Harlem residents charged,

was that blacks and whites
had not just danced together
at the savoy,

but had gone home together.

Hitler has scored a Jim crow
victory in New York.

The reverend
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
told his congregation,

closing down the savoy
was "the first step toward
segregation" of the city.

There were race riots
over jobs and housing

all across the north
that summer.

And in August, as allied bombers
pounded German cities,

violence came to Harlem, too.

[Siren]

6 were killed, 700 injured,

and nearly 1,500 mostly
white-owned shops were
damaged or destroyed.

The old dreams
of the Harlem renaissance
were deferred again.

Harlem was beginning
to get a reputation
among whites

as a dangerous place--

so dangerous that many jazz fans
hesitated to visit it anymore.

By this time, the living heart
of jazz had already moved

to a single block
of old brownstones
on the West Side--

52nd street,
between fifth and sixth avenues.

Musicians called it simply
"the street."

I would say most people,
when they first come
to New York,

want to see the statue
of Liberty,

which you see anyway
when you come in by boat,

as you did in those days,

and the empire state building,
but I wanted to see 52nd street,

which I had heard so much about.

Narrator: There were 7
cellar clubs in that one block--

Jimmy Ryan's, the onyx,
the famous door,

the troc, the downbeat,
the spotlight,
and the three deuces.

Everybody played there,
and a visitor could hear
every kind of music

drifting out over the street
all at once...

Traditional New Orleans
jazz, swing,

even the experimental sounds

that Parker, Gillespie,
and their friends
had begun to make.

Man: I was just a kid,

and my brother was
3 or 4 years older,

and we would come down
the West Side highway,

which had been
constructed by then,

and we'd get off
at 52nd street and drive.

Before we checked
into a hotel, we would drive
straight across town

and just drive
down 52nd street.

It was the most beautiful thing.
It was so exciting.

There was red Allen
and higginbotham
at Kelly's stables.

And here was art Tatum
at the three deuces

and count basie
at the famous door.

And it was like being
in a candied heaven,

and the candy was the jazz
that you could grab hold of.

And that night, we would take,
like, $10 or $15 that my father
had given us to go out.

We'd go to 5 clubs.

It was just the greatest
feeling that one could have,

and you never forgot
that feeling,

because as you sat
in those clubs, particularly
at 3:00 in the morning--

I was half-asleep,
but I wasn't asleep.

And you felt that musicians
were playing for you.

Narrator: The street
was a favorite haunt
of servicemen on leave.

But the volatile mix
of alcohol and race
caused constant trouble.

White soldiers and sailors
from the south were enraged

by the sight of so many
well-dressed black musicians.

Dizzy Gillespie
was once attacked

simply for walking
with a light-skinned
black woman.

And in the near-riot
that followed,

he escaped with his life
by hiding in the subway.

The unofficial queen
of 52nd street
was Billie Holiday.

"Working on the street
seemed like a homecoming
every night," she recalled.

"I was getting
a little billing and publicity,

so my old friends
knew where to find me."

Man: They loved her.
They loved her.

As soon as she would walk on--
shh--complete silence.

I mean, it could be chaos
going on in the club,

and just total silence.

She had that presence,
as soon as she walked on--

that look, and you knew
you had to shut up and listen.

And they did.
She was fantastic.

Narrator: But her new celebrity
did nothing to curtail

the toughness for which
she'd been known since girlhood.

When two drunken white sailors
snuffed out their cigarettes
on her fur coat one night,

she told them she'd meet them
outside, then beat them both
senseless with her fists.

In 1941, she married
a sometime marijuana dealer
named Jimmy Monroe

and began smoking opium.

Then she moved in
with a good-looking
trumpet player named Joe guy.

He was addicted to heroin.

Soon, she would be
using it, too.

"I spent the rest of the war
on 52nd street,"
Billie Holiday said.

"I had the white gowns
and the white shoes,

and every night, they'd
bring me the white gardenias
and the white junk."

When her mother Sadie
died suddenly,

holiday felt abandoned,
terrified of being alone,

and her music
began to change.

The way she sang any song,
like, uh, In my solitude,

anything that has
that feeling,

she had a very, very
lonesome--was part of her life,

and she had run into
an awful lot of men

that didn't treat her
very well,

and all of this--
that she had been raped
when she was very young

and all that kind of stuff...

Holiday: ♪ in my solitude... ♪

Rowles: All this that was
inside of lady day

came out of her
with the words.

Holiday: ♪ ...Me ♪

♪ with memories ♪

♪ that never die ♪

♪ I'll sit in my chair ♪

♪ filled with despair ♪

♪ there's no one
could be so sad ♪

♪ with gloom everywhere ♪

♪ I sit and I stare ♪

♪ I know that
I'll soon go mad ♪

♪ in my solitude ♪

♪ I'm praying ♪

♪ the lord above ♪

♪ send back my love ♪

Man: I still play
her records now.

When you saw her,
it was just so different

than any other person
you had seen onstage singing.

The way she would sell a song.

Her music--the way she could
make a song--

anybody else could sing
that song,

and when lady day sang it,

it was a different song
altogether.

It just made you feel
good all over,

or...she'd make you
want to cry.

It would bring back
the great moments
in your life,

and it might bring back
the saddest moments
in your life.

This was Billie Holiday.

Holiday: ♪ gloom everywhere ♪

♪ I sit and I stare ♪

♪ I know that
I'll soon go mad ♪

♪ in my solitude ♪

♪ I'm praying ♪

♪ dear lord above ♪

♪ send me back my love ♪

And after you've
absorbed the day

and you get all settled down,
you're quiet,

you're all ready
to go to sleep now.

You turn out the light,
and you put your head
on the pillow.

And you get your sleeping
stance together, and...

There's the idea you've been
looking for all day long now.

And you get up and get the paper
and pencil and jot it down.

And usually before you go
to sleep, you got
the next part of it.

Ha ha ha!

[Duke Ellington band
playing Harlem airshaft]

narrator: All through
the war years,

Duke Ellington kept
his remarkable
orchestra together

and kept them on the road,
playing his utterly unique
brand of swing.

Ellington himself
wrote incessantly--

aboard trains and buses,

in cars roaring
down the highway,

on napkins in restaurants
and nightclubs,

even in the bath,

turning out masterpiece
after masterpiece,

music that would rank
among the greatest of all
American compositions.

He claimed to have written
Solitude In 20 minutes,

leaning up against a wall
while waiting to get
into a recording studio;

black and tan fantasy
In a taxi going through
central park;

and Mood ind Igoin 15 minutes
while waiting for his mother
to finish cooking dinner.

During its half-century
on the road,

scores of musicians appeared
with Ellington's orchestra,

but none was ever
allowed to get too close.

"He was a miraculous Jigsaw,"
one friend said,

"and seldom did anyone pick up
more than a few pieces
at a time."

Marsalis: Well,
with Duke Ellington,

you're not going to
get to know him too well,

because he has a certain space
that he's reserved for himself,

and he has tremendous range
and great understanding.

He's a great listener.
He's always listening--
and a great observer.

So you might not know it,
but he's observing everything--

the way you walk,
the way you say things,
what you have on.

Just little mannerisms,
things that you wouldn't know.

He's a great flirter,

so he's always flirting,
and ladies love him

because he's such
a great flirter,

but it's not just
that he flirts,

it's that his flirtations
are accurate,

and the best flirt
is always accurate,

and he's almost always accurate
because he's always observing.

So he can look at a woman,
he can tell if she's a singer,

what kind of job she has,
so his flirt is going to
come to you--

"how did you
know that, Duke?" Oh.

[Band playing
Jack the bear]

narrator: Ellington focused
his uncanny understanding
on his men, too.

Every note he wrote
was meant to be played
by a specific musician,

casting his arrangements
the way a director
would cast a play.

He had carefully
and meticulously
built his band,

and it was made up
of distinct individuals--

"18 maniacs," he once said.

Each had special strengths
and a unique sound

Ellington cleverly exploited.

Giddins: Each of the soloists
is a storyteller

and has his own personality,
and all of this was very novel.

If he says that this solo
is going to be by bubber Miley,

you know that it's going to have
a certain quality

that it won't have
if it's played by Johnny Hodges.

A cootie Williams solo
is different from
an Arthur whetsol solo.

That's why Ellington did not
write a concerto for trumpet.

[Trumpet playing]

He wrote a Concerto for cootie.

he took the musicians,
what they could do,
what their personalities were,

and then he made them
the centerpieces in the play,
in the musical work.

Narrator: Over the years,
there would be drunks
and drug addicts

among Ellington's men,
and at least one kleptomaniac

who raided his fellow musicians'
belongings nearly every night.

They often failed
to turn up on time

and sometimes had to be
bailed out of jail.

Some refused to speak
to one another

or even to Ellington
for years.

None of that mattered
much to him...

Provided they could play.

Man: Even his most loyal
followers couldn't understand

how the band could be
so great with such seeming
lack of discipline.

They wondered how all
of this inventiveness
and beautiful music

could be produced as bandsmen
drift on and off stage,

yawn, act bored, apparently
disdaining the people,
the music, and the entire scene.

Rex Stuart.

Crouch: Negro Americans
are not predisposed

to follow people.

They really aren't.

See, that's why there's always
a certain element of chaos

in the negro world,

because, see, I think
from slavery forward,

we just didn't like--no!

So somebody telling you
over and over,

you got to do this,
you know, "I'm not doing that!

Just because you said that?"

Say, "yes, but it's right."
"I don't care.

"So what if it's right?
I ain't doing it anyway.
"Why am I not doing it?

"For the same reason
that dostoyevsky said
I'm not going to do it.

"So I can tell you
that I exist.

So I'm just going to
mess your stuff up, right?"

Now, the fact that
Duke Ellington

was able to get
these knuckleheads
to cooperate--

he would start fights
between people.

He would go over
to one guy and say,

"you know, so-and-so said
you're not really playing."

And then he'd go to the other
guy and say, "you know..."

[Muttering]

Then he would write a piece
with both of them in it,

and they would be so furious
at each other

that they would actually
work and work and work
on the piece

to make sure that
they played it better
than the other guy, right?

And then in the process
of playing it,

they would both sound
so good that that would
resolve the argument.

I mean, he had two guys
who got along again,

and he had
a great performance.

Narrator: No member of
Ellington's band ever played
more beautifully--

or caused more trouble--
than his first great tenor
saxophone star, Ben Webster.

"If he had a few
drinks in him,"

"he was an animal."

His nickname was "the brute."

I've gone to his house
with his mother in Kansas City,

and his mother
was a schoolteacher.

And when he was
in his mother's house,

he was like
little lord fauntleroy.

We would go right
around the corner
and go and have a beer,

he'd knock 4 people down
before we got out
of the door good.

Narrator: Despite
his legendary drinking
and ferocious temper,

Webster was famous for the huge,
virile, swaggering tone
he brought to solos.

One of his best-known
performances

was in an up-tempo
his boss had written
especially for him--

cotton tail.

[playing Cotton tail]

Ben Webster.

Giddins: Cotton tail Is one of
the great jam session tunes
of all times.

It's a very swinging piece,
and it really kind of typifies

this state of grace
that Ellington fell into
in the early forties

when he couldn't record
anything or write anything
other than masterpieces.

And I think when people
heard that for the first time,

it just--you know,
it just epitomized
what an exciting, energetic,

almost liberating
kind of music that it was.

And so it inspired dancers.

[Band playing
Black, brown and beige]

Giddins: Ellington was always
trying to break out of molds,

and one of the molds
that he and every other
musician in the world

was forced into was that
of the 3-minute recording.

And because so much
of big band music

was associated with dance
and pop numbers and show tunes,

people began to think
of the music

as though it couldn't work
beyond those limitations.

And so he moved the music
beyond the 3-minute level.

He began to explore
areas of the music

that no one else had really
been willing to Wade into.

Narrator: On the evening
of January 23, 1943,

as Soviet troops struggled
to break the Nazi stranglehold
on stalingrad,

Duke Ellington presented
an ambitious 44-minute work

at carnegie hall.

Proceeds from the concert
were to go to Russian victims

of the war.

Ellington had helped create
the swing music that still
gripped the country,

but now he tried
to move beyond it

by writing an extended
composition in 3 movements.

He called the piece
Black, brown and beige--

a tone parallel to the history
Of the negro in america.

man: Black, brown and beige,
I think, in 1943

was the culmination
of this movement

of writing
about negro Americans.

Duke wanted to capture the mood
of the slaves working

on the plantation,
out in the fields.

The first part of
Black, brown and beige
Was called The work song...

and how well he captured that
with the band.

You just could see this
and feel it.

[The work so Playing]

And then with this,
there was a religious element.

Duke wrote a second movement
called Come Sunday,

which was an expression
of the people on Sunday

relieved of their labors
and their toils.

They had a chance to pray.

To rest, yes, but to pray
and ask god to help them.

Come sundayWas an expression
of a longing for liberation,

a longing for freedom.

That expression,
with Juan tizol's opening
statement on the valve trombone,

with ray Nance's violin
and Johnny Hodges stretching up
with the full melody,

that captured the religious
fervor of his people.

And then the music would change.

A bright tempo.
Emancipation proclamation. Joy.

They were moving around.

He expressed all the movements
of the negro.

Then he began
to move northward.

He began to fill in cities--

Chicago, Philadelphia,
Washington, New York--

and get into the full stream
of urban life and living.

Sherrill: He was really
fighting for freedom.

The limitations that had
been put on blacks
through the years

was really unacceptable.

And so he was really shouting
musically, saying,

"we need to be free."

Narrator: The audience
at carnegie hall that night,

which included the first lady
of the United States,
Eleanor Roosevelt,

loved Black, brown and beige,

and the concert earned
thousands of dollars
for Russian war relief.

[Applause]

Sanders: When someone played
with Duke Ellington,

I think they were aware
they were with someone
very special.

Here was a composer.

And his music had such quality
and such richness...

That they felt privileged
to play it.

I know that was my feeling.

When you are in that orchestra,

when you come to actually
sit down and open up
that huge library

and begin to play,
then you get to meet
not only the composer,

the orchestra leader,
the piano player, the arranger,

but you see, you meet
the man himself.

Man: Ellington always feels
that he has found sanctuary
when he boards a train.

He likes to hear
the whistle up ahead,

particularly at night,
when it screeches
through the blackness

as the train gathers speed.

Frowning, his hat
on the back of his head,

swaying from side to side
with the motion of the car,

occasionally sucking his pencil
and trying to write firmly

despite the bouncing
of the train,

humming experimentally,
america's latter-day bach
will work through the night.

The new yorker.

The new yorker.
[Explosion]

[Explosion]

[Men shouting]

[Benny Goodman banplaying
Somebody stole my gal]

Man: When you get
a group of musicians
really playing,

and in the days
of the swing bands,

it was this feeling
of freedom,

and then a guy
would get a solo,

and this was his
expression of freedom--

a trumpet player, a trombone,
or saxophones, or the pianist...

And then they were
completely free,

away from the constriction
of the written music,

but improvising
on top of it.

And this is the thing I love
the most about jazz,

it's the thing that expresses
the United States.

It expresses freedom.

All over the world,
jazz is accepted as
the music of freedom.

It's the most--it's more
important than baseball.

Narrator: Dave brubeck
had been in college
in stockton, California,

when america entered the war.

His father had always
wanted him to become a cattleman

and help out
on the family ranch.

But brubeck loved jazz
and dreamed of touring
with Benny Goodman's swing band.

He graduated in 1942,
joined the army as a rifleman,

married a fellow student
on a 3-day pass,

and shipped out to Europe
in the summer of 1944,

fully expecting to go
right into combat.

Brubeck: I finally ended up
in Europe

3 months after d-day,
fortunately,

and we went to verdun.

And they said, "you're going to
have to be at the front soon,

but tonight there's going to be
some girls come up and entertain
you, red cross girls,

so they had a piano
on the back of a truck

where the side of the truck
came down and made a stage.

And they asked
over their loudspeaker,

"we need a piano player.
Is there a pianist that will
come up and play for us?"

So nobody went up,
and I finally raised my hand.

I remember I was sitting
on my helmet

in a place called
the mudhole,

and I went up there,

and a colonel
heard me play,

and he said, "this guy
shouldn't go to the front."

"We want to keep him here
and form a band."

Narrator: The United States
army may have been segregated,

but Dave brubeck's
wolf pack band was not.

The men ate, slept,
and lived together

and shared experiences
they would never forget.

The band once played
so close to the front lines

that German planes
swooped down to strafe them,

and the whole audience
rushed for their arms
to shoot back.

During the battle
of the bulge,

brubeck and his men got lost
and found themselves deep
in German territory.

It was hours before
they found their way back

to the American lines.

The wolf pack remained
with George patton's third army

until the war in Europe finally
ended on may 8, 1945.

Through it all,
the band remained integrated.

[Glenn Miller's band
playing American patrol]

But when Dave brubeck
and the wolf pack band got home,

nothing in america
had changed.

Brubeck: When we landed
in Texas,

we all went
to the dining room to eat,

and they wouldn't serve
the black guys.

The guys had to go around
and stand at the kitchen door.

This one guy,
he said he wouldn't
eat any of their food,

and he started to cry,
and he said,

"what I've been through,
and the first day I'm back
in the United States,

I can't even eat
with you guys."

He said, "I wonder why
I went through all this."

You know, the first
black man that I saw,

my dad took me to see
on the Sacramento river
in California.

And he said to his friend,

"open your shirt for Dave."

There...

There was a brand
on his chest.

And my dad said,
"these things can't happen."

That's why I fought
for what I fought for.

[Airplane engine]

[Explosion]

[Charlie Parker band playing
Bird gets the worm]

mclean: I've always felt
that the world
around the musician

has a great influence
on what he produces
musically.

And with the acceleration
of the technology
in world war ii, you know,

the propeller plane developed
into the jet plane,

and of course the atomic bomb,
and everything sped up,
and so did the music.

The music began to accelerate.

Narrator: On November 26, 1945,

11 weeks after
the surrender of Japan,

Charlie Parker finally made
his first recordings
under his own name

for the independent label
savoy records.

Dizzy Gillespie and
a 19-year-old newcomer named
miles Davis played trumpet,

and Gillespie sometimes
sat in at the piano.

Curly Russell was on bass,
Max roach on drums.

4 sides were cut that day:
Billie's bounce,

thrivin' from a riff,
Now's the time,

and a new tune built on
the chord changes of Cherokee
Called Ko ko.

[band playing Ko ko]

Giddins: Ko Kois one of
the most extraordinary
recordings in jazz history,

there's no question about it.

It was the recording
that really unleashed Parker
on the jazz world.

For two years before then,
there was a recording ban,

so nobody around the country
heard Charlie Parker.

It was explosive,
out of nowhere.

The first thing you have to
remember about Parker,

because you get into
the musicological innovations,

is that it was shocking,
the way Louis Armstrong
was shocking in the 1920s.

[Saxophone playing]

Narrator: "There was
a revolution going on
in New York,"

one saxophone player remembered,

"a rebellion against
all those blue suits
we had to wear

in the big swing bands."

"It was a cult," another
recalled, "a brotherhood."

"Soon," a third remembered,
"there was everybody else,
and there was Charlie."

And now, for the first time,
the public would have a chance
to hear his music.

Charlie Parker's secret was out.

Ellison: Usually, music
gives resonance to memory...

But not the music
ThenIn the making.

Its rhythms were out of stride
and seemingly arbitrary...

Its drummers frozen-faced
introverts dedicated to chaos.

And in it, the steady flow
of memory, desire,
and defined experience

summed up by the traditional
jazz beat and blues mood

seemed swept like a great river
from its old, deep bed.

We know better now and recognize
the old moods in the new sounds,

but what we know is that
which was then becoming.

Ralph Ellison.

[In a mellotonPlaying]