MUSIC HISTORY: Bebop and Beyond / Part 1

Things changed forever in the world of jazz with the birth of what came to be known as “bebop.” In clubs like Minton’s Playhouse on West 118th Street in New York City, jazz grew and morphed into what would be a new and brilliant form. After the swing and big band era, the evolution of jazz would soon take a radically different course, having an immeasurable effect on music and culture the world over.

Bebop first developed in the early-to-mid 1940’s, brought to life by the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Charlie Christian, and Max Roach, who saw there was plenty of room to expand the current harmonic structure of jazz. Their work was a truly revolutionary advancement of the art form, with complexity, advanced technical skill, and improvisational prowess being three of its inherent elements that were to transform the sound of jazz. Bebop bands utilized small groups, i.e., the quartet and quintet formats, which was different than previous jazz styles; the days wherein big bands were the norm and main attraction were now numbered.

Unlike swing, which had its emphasis on specific written arrangements, bebop, or bop, emphasized soloists and improvisation. Bebop song form patterns usually revolved around a beginning opening theme, a series of improvised solos by the respective players (trumpet, saxophone, guitar, piano), and a return to the opening theme or line in closing. In some instances, soloists would play on with full intensity for thirty choruses, with the rhythm section comping (playing the opening progression as a cyclical pattern) behind them.

The roles of each instrument changed with the advent of this new music: the piano’s role became more distant from the “stride” piano style of swing music, making it more abstract and less centered on the beat (an approach almost single-handedly developed by Bud Powell). Drumming was less tied to strict timekeeping and became more vibrant and expressive. Horns in general made their point of departure from the chord progressions and paid less attention to specific melody lines. Due primarily to the exposure of early player Charlie Christian’s work with the Benny Goodman orchestra (1939-1941), the electric guitar became one of the most prominent new instruments in jazz, spawning a considerable number of players who wanted to learn to play jazz guitar. Within a surprisingly short number of years, players like Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery were assessing how brilliantly the complex new jazz concepts could be applied to the guitar.

Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker (universally known as “Bird”) is noted as the figure that spearheaded this musical revolution, playing with both unparalleled virtuosity and velocity of thought. Bird challenged convention with each solo and recording, with works such as “Ko Ko”, “Scrapple from the Apple”, “Now’s the Time,” “Parker’s Mood” and “Ornithology” becoming staples of the new movement. With considerable contributions from trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the music’s theorist and diplomat, and the incomparable pianistic stylings of both Monk and Powell, a new vocabulary of expression came into being. With swing and big band having essentially exhausted their possibilities, bebop was a natural outgrowth and extension of their conception. But while people danced to swing, they listened to bebop. In light of the previous era’s frontline of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and Count Basie, the rules and players had changed considerably. This was radical stuff indeed.

But as is the case with any developments within an art form, the roots stem from the culture in which it grows. One of art’s essential functions is as a cultural barometer, and what was being measured in this atmosphere was the degree of social exclusion African-Americans were experiencing in the United States’ post war climate and how they responded to that circumstance. With racism filling its sufferers with anger, bitterness and frustration, African-Americans were no longer seeking to be connected to what was popular with the rest of the masses. They now sought the development of their own culture within the context of modern American life, along with its accompanying music. Bebop fulfilled that role as an exclusive, specifically underground movement. Before long, the masses would take a considerable interest, culminating in at least limited acceptance of African-Americans and their culture. As a result, its main progenitors would become legends.

Over time, the term “bop” would also cover other slightly different jazz styles, including hard bop (a darker, hard-driving bebop variation with pronounced blues shadings that borrowed less from chord progressions of popular songs), West Coast jazz, soul jazz, and cool jazz, with the differences and similarities of these styles overlapping with frequency as bebop subdivided and filtered into the mainstream.

By the late 1950s, jazz was about to take another turn. Modal jazz, another new stylistic advancement, began to surface, and now players were putting the emphasis not on flurries of chords and their transitions, but on modes or specific chords and scales. Though its detractors declared it a regression, modal jazz clearly left more improvisational options for melodic invention within a solo. It also offered a wider range of possibilities with chord substitutions for an accompanist, as well as having a distinctively meditative and minimalistic quality. The work of Miles Davis on his 1959 recording, Kind of Blue set an impeccable standard for this jazz form, with “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches” being considered universal classics.

Miles managed to have considerable impact on nearly every phase of modern jazz’ evolution, with his work in the 50’s being particularly celebrated. In late 1955, Davis assembled what many felt was the greatest quintet in the history of jazz, with John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Their recordings and performances defined the highest standards of any working jazz group, and their legacy is still reviewed with a sense of awe.

Through the years, a whole succession of players passed through the bands of Miles Davis, each going on to do notably influential work of their own. Clearly Miles had a knack for finding outstanding players and getting the best out of them. The talents of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley (alto saxophone) and Bill Evans (piano) were utilized to great effect by Miles, particularly on Kind of Blue, with Evans becoming one of jazz’ most important pianists after Monk and Powell. The Davis quintet from the 1960’s (which included saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams) also garnered considerable praise. From Cookin’ (1956) to E.S.P. (1965) to In A Silent Way (1969), Miles Davis was always moving forward.

After his work with Davis, John Coltrane went on to incredible heights and continued to experiment with a number of different types of jazz, including modal, creating such notable compositions as “Impressions,” his interpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” and his staggering 1964 recording, A Love Supreme. Coltrane continued to search and explore the far corners of improvisation throughout his career, as can be heard on his releases Blue Train (1957), Giant Steps (1960), Africa/Brass (1961), and Ascension (1965), proving with little doubt that he was surely the one to be considered as the greatest saxophonist since Parker.

Sonny Rollins of course, is the next name mentioned as heir to the Parker throne. Until ‘Trane’s arrival on the club circuit, few would disagree that Rollins had cornered the market on the saxophone. A string of resoundingly impressive albums (1956’s Saxophone Colossus, 1958’s Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders, 1962’s The Bridge) solidified his position as an improv master. His consistent level of top notch playing can still be experienced to this day as he continues to perform and record.

Though he’d been on the scene since the birth of bebop, it seemed to take until the late fifties/early sixties for everyone but his fellow players to catch up with Thelonious Sphere Monk. Though widespread acceptance eluded him initially, both his approach to composition and piano were unlike anything anyone had ever heard before. Melodies that managed to be simultaneously deranged and beautiful were crossed with jagged rhythms and a dissonant, off-kilter harmonic sense to create works which were the essence of Monk. His entire body of work still challenges and inspires, and is indisputably considered as unique as his name.

The early 1960s saw the continued development of modal jazz as well as the amalgamation of earlier jazz styles, with explorations covering everything between abstraction and the blues. But it was also in the sixties that “free jazz” developed, with its main protagonists being saxophonists Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. Free jazz or avant-garde, as it is also known, again altered the popular approach to jazz. It abandoned predetermined chord changes, ignored standard time keeping patterns, took its form from defined “signals” instead of typical verse/chorus song patterns, and generally averted any sense of a tonal center. Many felt it was a reiteration of concepts developed by Parker, but regardless, it found an audience. Its overall influence had more of an effect on the music itself than its commerce, but it did succeed in expanding the musical vocabulary further into dissonance and other elements of sound that were previously considered unacceptable.

In the latter half of the sixties, jazz artists (particularly the concomitant Davis) began to incorporate rock elements into their own expression, including electric instrumentation, amplification, and an assortment of electronic modifications. Due to rock’s unprecedented commercial popularity at that particular time, many regarded this fusion of jazz and rock styles to be a “sell out” on the part of the previously revered jazz players who brought these styles together, suggesting the prevailing reason for their experiments with rock being it’s commercial appeal.

But generally, this assessment was off the mark. There was certainly nothing commercial about any of the dense, dark music on Miles Davis’ seminal 1969 recording Bitches Brew, which was rhythmically and not melodically or harmonically oriented. And with most of the tracks being of considerable length, it had little chance of airplay on the three-minute-single radio format of the day. There could hardly have been more of a death knell for commercial aspirations. Regardless, both rock and jazz fans gravitated to it, pushing it to sales levels of approximately 400,000 copies, far beyond most jazz recordings and very respectable within rock’s regular sales numbers.