The first response to this strange view of post-World War II jazz is: where is the action? As in other Ken Burns films there are photos presented amidst talking heads. The approach makes sense when dealing with the Civil War but in a documentary about events that took place long after film was invented it's mighty peculiar. An argument could be made that few of the landmarks of post-war jazz were filmed. But in this documentary, Burns chooses to truncate actual footage. There is more footage of Charlie Parker playing in a filmed sequence on Youtube than in this movie.Burns chooses to call this segment of his history of jazz, "Risk." He and his talking heads advance the idea that jazz in Charlie Parker's hands was based on incredible risk-taking - and then explains the relation of Parker's music to heroin use. Burns and his advisors - the Marsalis Brothers, Albert Murray, Jon Hendricks, Ossie Davis, Lorraine Gordon, Margo Jefferson, Phil Schaap, Gerald Early and Gary Giddins - created the thesis of bebop-as-risk and it is, at the least, worth considering. Of course, one could argue that all improvisation is a form of risk-taking.The film takes the viewer from Parker's life and music to Dizzy Gillespie and then focuses on - of all people, Louis Jordan, one of the first rhythm 'n blues musicians and by no means a jazz musician! Most of the white musicians are marginalized except for drummer Stan Levey. (In fact, Stan Levey's own documentary, entitled "The Original Original" The Jazz Bop Pioneer Tells His Own Story" presents a better history of bebop than this one.) The white musicians such as Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz come into the narrative simply as fellow junkies of Charlie Parker.But this is a huge topic and Burns makes an effort to present a narrative tying the whole thing together that we have to respect despite the errors and strange judgements.