In 1990, Texas bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan was just emerging from a long period in which drugs had taken their toll: the previous year's In Step album was the first he had made "clean", and the results were a marvel. But then, after sharing a stage with Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Eric Clapton, he boarded a helicopter to Chicago. It crashed and the career of one of the great blues ...
The BBC, sceptical about the British appetite for extended documentary programmes, edited Ken Burns' epic 17-hour history Jazz back to around 12 hours. That's what's presented in this box set of the series, and while the flow of the original is preserved, so are its idiosyncrasies. The film dwells at length on early jazz, particularly on its origins in New Orleans, and there's a good deal ...