Earlier this month, a documentary went up at YouTube produced by the BBC as part of its Jazz Britannia series. The documentary tracks the rise of post-war British jazz and helps explain why trad jazz lingered so long there in the 1950s, how skiffle emerged mid-decade, why bop came late to London, why American jazz musicians didn't tour in the U.K. until the 1960s, the emergence of free jazz there at the same time as Ornette Coleman's music here, and the album that helped identify a distinctly British jazz scene in London in 1965, just as rock's British invasion of the U.S. market was pulling large numbers of young musicians away from jazz careers.
Here's Part 1 of the BBC documentary Jazz Britannia, covering the years from 1945 to 1965...
