REVEL IN THE GLORIES OF 'JAZZ' BURNS' DOCUMENTARY SURPASSES THE HYPE.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

In recent years, jazz music has careened off into two disparate directions. It has earned a reputation for being ``difficult'' music, with tricky time changes, angular melodies (if there's a melody at all) and performers who wear their erudite sophistication on their sleeve as a ``keep-out'' sign for uncool folks. Or it's associated with the kind of cheesy, pop-tinged sap that Kenny G and his ilk churn out.

With PBS' ``Jazz,'' a monumental 10-part series airing on KCET through the remainder of January, documentarian nonpareil Ken Burns wrests the music from both the eggheads and the hacks and presents it in its classic, swinging form in all its glory. Tracing the roots of the music from the cotton fields in the enslaved South to its late-night, Big Apple sophistication, with surprising twists along the way, Burns and his collaborators seamlessly blend narration and text with gorgeous archival films and photos to bring this history and its participants to vivid life. That they showcase the music up front throughout, ingeniously editing the film so that you hear the musical passages being played while experts explain their significance, turns ``Jazz'' into a wonderfully entertaining and accessible music-appreciation course, as well.

Credit also goes to narrator Keith David, who brings an authoritative gravitas to the proceedings, and interview subjects such as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, critic Gary Giddins and swing dancer Norma Miller, who enthusiastically convey their knowledge of and love for the music, for helping to imbue this documentary with its singular vitality.

Condensing nearly 19 hours of material filled with colorful characters and events and tinged with tragedy and a nation's sometimes shameful behavior into one review is a fool's task, so here goes:

Tonight's first episode, ``Gumbo,'' delineates up front a recurring theme in the documentary: Jazz originated as a music celebrating freedom by musicians frequently shackled by society. The name itself comes from ``jass,'' from the jasmine perfume New Orleans' Storyville prostitutes favored. From the very beginning the music came under fire from moralists. One minister opined, ``The Negro race is dancing itself to death.''

Episode 2, ``The Gift,'' focuses on the arrival of Louis Armstrong on the scene - ``the moment it becomes an art form,'' Giddins declares - as well as Duke Ellington, the two giants of the genre. Armstrong made it a soloist's art, while Ellington's compositions gave it a near-classical tinge. Prohibition, called ``the best thing that could happen to jazz,'' opens speakeasies that ensure work for thousands of musicians.

In episode 3, ``Our Language,'' Armstrong introduces scatting to the music, thereby changing not only the way jazz is played but the way it is sung. As one of Armstrong's contemporaries in Chicago noted, ``Scatting almost drove the English language out of the Windy City for good.''

Next week, episode 4, ``The True Welcome,'' deals with the fallout of the Great Depression, the influence of Duke Ellington's elegant performing style on African-Americans and the sensuality of his music: As Marsalis discreetly puts it, ``He takes you to a room where something of interest is about to take place.''

``Swing: Pure Pleasure'' and ``Swing: The Velocity of Celebration'' describe how America danced its Depression woes away, how Armstrong dealt with mobsters and how white bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey helped the music cross over to white audiences, and how Billie Holiday's performance of ``Strange Fruit,'' about lynchings in the South, politicized the music more directly than it had ever been.

``Dedicated to Chaos'' covers the years of World War II, when Nazis dismissed jazz as the ``art of the subhuman'' and pianist/soldier Dave Brubeck toured Europe with an integrated band, only to return to a still- segregated America; the long-integrated Savoy Ballroom in Harlem was padlocked. ``Risk'' charts the rise of be-bop in the hands of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, as well as the demons that plagued Parker in his tragically brief career.

In ``The Adventure,'' Miles Davis and John Coltrane both kick junk to create masterpieces - ``Kind of Blue'' and ``A Love Supreme,'' respectively, and in the series' conclusion, ``A Masterpiece by Midnight,'' jazz splinters into fractious sub-genres and loses its commercial force.

Two episodes on swing might be more of a commercial consideration to the music's recent upturn in popularity than its true historic impact. And even as someone who thinks classic jazz leaves its contemporary counterpoint in the dust, I was a little surprised at the haste with which the film wraps things up. As the series reaches its conclusion, its tapestry seems a little less rich; it becomes more elliptic and anecdotal rather than sweeping in its social overviews. (The companion book, written by Geoffrey Ward with Burns' input, is invaluable for sinuously wrapping the rich stories into an overall historical context.)

But those who criticize ``Jazz'' for what it isn't overlook what it is. It's as entertaining as it is insightful, offering a fittingly elegant showcase for a neglected music that deserves such a loving resurrection in popular culture. ``Jazz,'' virtually single-handedly, redeems the embarrassment that this past TV season has been.

``JAZZ''

What: Ken Burns' 10-part documentary on the history of how music and social and cultural issues affected each other and the country at large during the 20th century.

Where: KCET.

When: 9 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 17, 22, 23, 24, 29 and 31.

Our rating: Four stars

Making some sense of 'The Clinton Years'

``The Clinton Years,'' a co-production of PBS' ``Frontline'' series and ABC's newsmagazine ``Nightline,'' features much of the same material and many of the same interviews. Both clock in at just under two hours of air time.

Yet ``Frontline's'' report feels more thorough - there's more context provided; there's more ``inside baseball,'' giving the viewer insight into the arcane politics, in all senses of the word, of Washington.

``Nightline'' by contrast is constricted to packaging the information in five 21-minute episodes, stripping the saga of intrigue, failed idealism and ruthless back-stabbing of perspective, reducing it to the sum of its scandals and sound bites.

Hosted by Ted Koppel, ``Nightline: The Clinton Years'' airs all week in the newsmagazine's brief, late-night time slot, offering a tissue-thin take on a subject that has filled books and in-depth print articles both nuanced and rabid alike. ``Nightline'' suggests little more than that Bill Clinton's administration was a rudderless behemoth, the wackiest ship in the Navy that somehow - no one here can figure how - survived snafu after fiasco and improbably resulted in an unprecedentedly popular president.

Clinton's empathetic reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing and his asserting some spine against the Republicans in the budget impasse that shut the government down temporarily are seen as the moments that kept his head above Washington's shark-infested waters. His cynical political maneuvering at the behest of strategist Dick Morris - memorably described by Secretary of Labor Robert Reich as ``a whirling dervish of egocentric obnoxion'' - is likewise cited.

Of course, there were certain initiatives that only policy wonks might find sexy that aren't included in the ``Nightline'' report (unless they're all mentioned in the fifth and final episode, which wasn't available for screening) that might account for the nation's strong peacetime economy and, consequently, Clinton's popularity with voters.

Instead, we get a huge chunk of time devoted to the Gennifer Flowers scandal and a whole episode of the Lewinsky scandal, with much tsk-tsking and only a nodding aside to the virulence with which some Clinton-haters attacked the president. We're reminded that Hillary Clinton's ambitious health-care initiative failed miserably, but there's nary a sentence that describes what she sought to achieve or why it so threatened insurance companies. Some of the same problems affect ``Frontline's'' documentary as well, but as hosted by Chris Bury, who conducted the interviews for both reports, the story is presented more fluidly and compellingly.

Certainly, Clinton's presidency may ultimately be remembered as one of promise failed by many factors, undone by the man's own lack of discipline and breathtaking partisanship on Capitol Hill. But ``The Clinton Years'' doesn't dig deep enough even to locate his achievements, let alone suggest what he might have been able to accomplish had good fortune, and not simply shifty politics and dumb luck, smiled upon him.

``NIGHTLINE: THE CLINTON YEARS''

What: The newsmagazine's postmortem on Bill Clinton's presidency.

Where: ABC (Channel 7).

When: 11:35 tonight through Friday.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

``FRONTLINE: THE CLINTON YEARS''

What: The news magazine's postmortem on Bill Clinton's presidency.

Where: KCET.

When: 9 p.m. Jan. 16.

Our rating: Three stars

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) ``Swing: Pure Pleasure'' features Benny Goodman and his racially mixed jazz ensemble, above, including drummer Gene Krupa and pianist Teddy Wilson. ``The Gift'' focuses on the arrival of trumpeter Louis Armstrong on the scene - ``the moment it becomes an art form.''

(3) President Clinton, right, sits with ABC ``Nightline'' host Ted Koppel during a nationally broadcast town meeting in Tampa, Fla., in 1993.