The Bebop Revolution

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The Bebop Revolution
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The Bebop Revolution

• The early 1940s were a time of important change
  in jazz. Just as the Swing Era was in full
  bloom, a musical revolution was brewing in
  Harlem.

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The Bebop Revolution

• New ideas were coming together from a diverse
  cast of creative young musicians at after-hours
  jam sessions.
• In an environment of experimentation and spirited
  camaraderie, bebop, the first modern jazz style,
  was born.
• It was frenetic, difficult to play, and for many
  jazz fans, difficult to listen to.
• Most the leaders were defiant, rebellious and
  disrespectful of authority.
• The emergence of bebop was a broad reflection of
  some important changes that were beginning to
  surface in America.
• Some initially criticized bebop but it was too
  big a force to ignore.
• Bebop changed jazz from popular dance music to
  intellectual art music.
• By bringing an entirely new vocabulary to jazz,
  it washed away the musical cliches of swing.
• It opened up jazz to new artistic interpretations
  that would lead to almost limitless stylistic
  approaches in the future.

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The Bebop Revolution

• Bebops influence is pervasive to this day its
  melodies, rhythms, harmonies and repertoire are
  still studied by jazz musicians and are
  intertwined in the very fabric of nearly all
  modern jazz.

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The Bebop Revolution

• In the beginning, bebop was revolution whose
  repercussions brought turmoil to the jazz world
  some musicians stubbornly ignored it others
  embraced it still others initiated a nostalgic
  backlash against it.
• Bebop ended up being a evolution as well as a
  revolution.

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The Bebop Revolution

• With the arrival of bebop, the playing field was
  suddenly tilted in a disorienting way. Many
  musicians, like alto saxophonist Art Pepper, felt
  threatened. Upon hearing his first bop recording
  after returning from the war, Pepper said, These
  guys played fasteran they really played. Not
  only were the fast, technically, but it all had
  meaning, and they swung! They were playing notes
  I never heard of before in the chords. It was
  more intricate, more bluesy, more swinging, more
  everything.and it scared me to death.

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The American Federation of Musicians Recording Ban

• What caught many musicians off guard was the
  complete absence of bebop recording during the
  musics developmental stages. The American
  federatioin of Musicians ban on recording by its
  members from August 1, 1942 until late 1944
  neatly coincides with the new musics gestation
  period.
• Chances are if you werent in Harlem during this
  time you probably would not have heard any beboop
  until the first bebop recordings were made in
  late 1944 and early 1945.
• As author and historian Scott DeVeaux put it,
  The recording ban falls like a curtain in the
  middle of the most interesting part of a play by
  the time the curtain rises, the plot has taken an
  unexpected turn, and the characters are speaking
  a new language.

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The New Breed of Jazz Musician

• The radical inequities of the music business
  during the swing era had allowed white dance band
  musicians to earn a comfortable living while
  denying the same economic opportunities to black
  musicians.
• Black swing bands were routinely forced to play
  lesser paying gigs, had to travel farther to get
  to them, and, particularly in the South, had to
  deal with racial indignities, stereotypes,
  segregation and in some cases violence.
• It was becoming increasingly clear the many
  young, creative blacks who played in dance bands
  that they were playing a white mans game that
  was never going to recognize them for their
  talents. The world of swing simply wasnt
  working for them.
• The informal setting of the jam session allowed
  them to completely shake the notion of being
  entertainers, of playing for someone elses
  amusement here they could play only for
  themselves and their peers.

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The Bebop Counter Culture

• As the jam session scene coalesced in the early
  1940s, a counter-culture mentality set in that
  was designated to keep away outside intruders.
• Beboppers started to dress differently, wearing
  goatess, sunglasses, and berets.
• The invent their own hipster language.
• Man began to use narcotics.
• To gain entry into the bop counter-culture, one
  had to first hold your own in the late night jam
  sessions that were beginning to swirl with
  experimentation and musical exploration.
• Bebop insiders deliberately tried to embarrass
  and discourage those who sat in with them by
  playing standard tunes at frantic tempos or in
  unusual keys.
• Also used secret reharmonizations and chord
  substitutions that took unexpected twists and
  turns.
• It was ultimately trial-by-fire initiation
  process designed to identify who was hip and who
  was square.

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Mintons, Clark Monroes, and The Street

• The most celebrated early bebop sessions took
  place at Mintons Playhouse, opened in 1938. The
  house band included pianist Thelonious Monk and
  drummer Kenny Clarke.
• Although Mintons became the place for the bebop
  crowd, other Harlem clubs like Clark Monroes
  Uptown House and The Heatwave also held jam
  sessions on a regular basis.
• Racial tension in Harlem were compounded, The
  Savoy Ballroom was shut down for six months
  because servicemen were supposedly picking up
  venereal diseases there. The Street as it
  became known, was home to a cluster of clubs
  situated in the tiny, narrow basements of the
  brownstones that lined both sides of the street.
• On The Street, these clubs had been speakeasies
  during Prohibition, and as the 1930s gave way to
  the 1940s, more and more of them converted to
  jazz venues.

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The Street - a list of some of the clubs

• The Onyx - were Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar
  Pettiford led the first bebop group to play
  outside of Harlem in November 1943.
• The Downbeat - were Coleman Hawkins had a
  memorable sty in 1944.
• The Famous Door - where Count Basie appeared in
  the summer of 1938.
• Kellys Stables, actually located on 51st street,
  where Billie holiday held a long residency in the
  mid 1940s.
• Jimmy Ryans - noted for programming Dixieland
• The Yacht Club, the Spotlight, the Tree Deuces
  and the Flamingo Club.

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By design , bebop is dramatically different than
swing.

• One of the most obvious differences is the size
  of the ensemble the standard group is five
  pieces, with the trumpet, sax, piano, bass, and
  drums.
• Another important difference is in the
  arrangements bebop charts usually are nothing
  more than the melody played in unison by the
  horns, followed by the usual succession of solos.
• Tempos were purposely undanceable usually
  extremely fast, but also occasionally very slow
  as well.
• Despite the disaffected demeanor of the players,
  most bebop is generally high spirited and joyous
  music.

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Radical elements of bebop become apparent.

• Bebop Rhythm - much more syncopated and
  rhythmically unpredictable than previous jazz
  styles. Bebop drummers used the bass drum for
  syncopated accents called dropping bombs.
• Bebop Harmony - Reharmonization or chord
  substitution
• Bebop Melody - bebop melodies are more complex
  and challenging to play. Even tunes based on
  riffs tend to repeat themselves in unpredictable
  ways.
• Bebop Repertoire - By creating their own
  publishing companies and making their artists
  record only original compositions, the label was
  able to keep all the royalties to themselves.
  Because f this, many bop original compositions
  are merely jazz standards with new melodies
  slapped onto the existing chord changes.

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Characteristics of Bebop

• Usually high-spirited, positive and joyful music
• Small combo, usually five pieces.
• Simple arrangements horns play melody in unison
• Emphasis on lengthy, improvised solos
• Extreme tempos - fast or slow
• Reharmonization and chord substitution common
• Unpredictable melodies, flatted 5th common
• New repertoire created from jazz standards using
  new melodies.

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Dizzy, Bird, and Monk
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Dizzy, Bird, and Monk
The most import and influential architect of
bebop were Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and
Thelonious Monk. Born within thre years of each
other (1917-20) in North Carolina (Gillespie and
Monk) and Kansas City (Parker), the three shared
similarities, yet were radically different in
temperament, career path and talents. As there
exploratory musical paths led them to each other,
they became friends and worked together, but
utimately they went their own separate ways. In
the retrospect of history we now think of them as
icons Gillespie, the schoolmaster who hid
behind a clowns mask Parker, the tormented
genius who represented everything right and wrong
about bebop and Monk, the mysterious and
misunderstood high priest. These three men were
at the forefront of a new revolutionary spirit of
innovation and creativity that forever changed
jazz from dance music into an art form.
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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie

• 1917-1993
• First to make an impression on the New York
  scene.
• Heard Roy Eldridge on radio broadcasts and began
  to emulate his style.
• 1937 replace Eldridge in the Teddy Hill band.
• 1939 he became one of the featured soloists in
  Cab Calloway Orchestra.
• Began to break away from Eldridge style -
  Calloway called it Chinese music.

• Calloway years helped Gillespie develop his
  arranging skills, he met his musical soul mate
  Charlie Parker, and he began to develop a
  lifelong interest in Cuban music and Latin
  rhythms after meeting Cuban arranger Mario Bauza.
  
• Became a regular at Mintons, where he would
  often share the stage with Monk and Parker.
• Accomplished pianist. Taught chord substitutions
  and reharmonizations to band members.
• On many occasions, musicians ended up at
  Gillespies apartment on 7th with Diz at the
  piano and his wife Lorraine, in the kitchen
  cooking meals.
• In the developmental years, he was the
  professor.

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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie

• Between 1942-44, both Gillespie and Parker played
  in the Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine big bands.
• 1943 at the Onyx club, Dizzy and bassist Oscar
  Pettiford put together the first bebop combo to
  appear outside Harlem. It was this group that
  established the two-horn-lay-the-head-in-unison
  format that subsequent bop groups would us.
• February 1944 - Dizzy participated in what is
  often called the first bebop recording session
  with Coleman Hawkins, recording his composition
  Woodyn You.
• In April 1944 , Gillespie and Parker captivated
  the jazz world when they co-led a combo at the
  Three Deuces.

• 1945 Gillespie began spending less time with
  Parker and focusing his attention on his first
  love, big band music.
• 1947 he co-led a band with percussionist Chano
  Pozo that introduced a new jazz style
  incorporating Latin rhythms and percussion called
  AFRO CUBAN. At their first gig in Carnegie Hall
  in September, Gillespie not only introduced Pozo
  to the world, but the innovative George Russell
  composition Cubana Be-Cubana Bop. Although
  Gillespie had combined Latin music and jazz prior
  to this with his famous 1942 composition A Night
  In Tunisia.
• December 1947 - Together with Gil Fuller,
  Gillespie and Pozo wrote and recorded Manteca
  and it is arguably his most famous Afro-Cuban
  composition
• By 1950s universally regarded as the top
  trumpeter in jazz
• He went on to become the most commercially
  successful of the original bebop musicians and
  spent much of his later years involved in Music
  Education.

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Charlie Parker - Alto Sax (1920-1955)
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Charlie Parker

• Born in Kansas City on August 29th, 1920.
• His father deserted the family and his mother
  worked nights.
• Young Parker was free to roam Kansas City of the
  Pendergast era and began to sneak into the Reno
  and other clubs to hear Lester Young and other
  great tenor players.
• Started playing alto saxophone as a freshman in
  high school and started gigging by age 15.
• Those who played with him often said he was the
  worst musician in the band.

• One night in the Spring of 1937, 17-year-old
  Parker went to a jam session at the Reno Club
  where Count Basie drummer Jo Jones was playing.
  As Charlie began to play, Jones was so appalled
  that he stopped playing and threw a cymbal across
  the dance floor. The deafening crash left Charlie
  humiliated, but determined to improve. That
  summer, playing the George E. Lee band in Ozarks,
  Charlie spent all his free time wood-shedding
  (a term used for intense practice) and learning
  about harmony. When he returned to Kansas City
  that fall, he was musically a new man, showing
  phenomenal development and musical growth. By
  this time (17), Parker had already been married,
  fathered a son, and divorced.

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Charlie Parker

• He had now been introduced to heroin, an
  addiction that would cause him to become a loner
  for much of his life.
• 1938 - began working with bandleader Jay McShann.
• One day on the way to a gig at the University of
  Nebraska, the car Charlie Parker was in, struck
  and killed a chicken in the road. Charlie
  stopped the car, retrieved the bird, and had it
  cooked for McShann when the band arrived. Amused
  fellow band members started calling him Bird (or
  Yardbird), a nickname that stuck for life.
• 1938 - Quits McShann band and heads his way east,
  first to Chicago and then to New York.

• When he arrived in New York, he took a job as a
  dishwasher at Jimmys Chicken Shack, where Art
  Tatum played the piano nightly. While listening
  to the pianist every night for three months, Bird
  absorbed Tatums astonishing harmonic
  restructuring, virtuoso phrasing, and breakneck
  tempos. Challenging himself to adopt these
  innovations into his own playing, Bird worked
  tirelessly, finally achieving a breakthrough
  while working on the song Cherokee at a Harlem
  jam session.
• 1939 - returns to Kansas City to rejoin McShann
  until 1942. It was during 1940 and 1941
  (regarding his first recording and national
  broadcasts with the McShann band) that the jazz
  world outside New York got its first glimpse of
  Parkers genius.

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Charlie Parker

• 1942 - quits McShann band to stay in New York and
  started to make regular appearances at the
  Mintons sessions with Dizzy Gillespie (by then a
  close friend) and Thelonious Monk. Everyone was
  experimenting by then.
• Parker played lightening fast runs that, despite
  being filled with all kinds of unexpected twists
  and harmonic complexity, made perfect sense. His
  tone was cutting and dry, unlike the creamy sound
  of the swing saxophonists. And his imagination
  never ran out of musical ideas.
• 1942-1944 - Bird and Diz both played in the Earl
  Hines and Billy Eckstine big band.
• 1944 - Parker and Diz co-led a quintet that
  opened at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street. The
  landmark recordings that this group made in
  November 1945 made a stunning and profound
  impression on the jazz world - the bop revolution
  was finally unveiled on vinyl for all to hear.

• 1945 - Drug problem gets worse.
• 1946 - plays with Diz at Billys Berg in Los
  Angeles. This was the first time anyone on the
  West Coast had heard bebop, and the reaction to
  the new music was mixed. Parker was depressed
  that the music was not well received and started
  drinking heavily.
• 1947 - Parker returned to New York recovered (he
  had a total break down in LA and was committed to
  six-month at Camarillo State Hospital for his
  heroin addiction).
• 1947 - Lead a quintet that included Miles Davis
  on trumpet and Max Roach on drums. By then he
  was the leading figure of the bebop movement.
  The jazz world became a sort of house of mirrors
  for Bird, as alto saxophonist everywhere were
  trying to copy everything he played.
• Many young jazz musicians looked at him as a role
  model and began to experiment with heroin.

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Charlie Parker

• 1949 (December) - a live radio broadcast and
  Parker himself performing, BIRDLAND, the Jazz
  Corner of the World opened at the corner of 53rd
  and Broadway. Never before had a club been named
  after a jazz musician, living or dead. It was an
  unmistakable sign of Charlie Parkers status as a
  living legend.
• 1950 - release of Charlie Parker with Strings,
  Bird became the first jazz artist to make a
  recording with orchestral accompaniment.
• 1950 - so ill from drug complications that he has
  to cut back on his playing and recording.

• 1953 - at a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto
  that was to feature the greats of the bebop
  period, he had to borrow a plastic saxophone - he
  had pawned his own to pay off a drug debt.
• 1954 - attempted suicide
• 1955 - March 12 - he died while watching Tommy
  Dorseys TV show at the 5th Avenue apartment of
  Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a wealthy
  jazz patron.
• After viewing Parkers broken down body the
  coroner estimated Parkers age to be 55. Charlie
  Parker was 34.

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Charlie Parkers Legacy

• Birds legacy continues to shape jazz today, and
  it is almost impossible to escape his influence.
  Young jazz musicians routinely learn to play
  bebop by learning Parkers transcribed solos. His
  virtuosity and technique are still standards of
  achievement that are matched by few. His
  compositions have become the repertoire of modern
  jazz. Like Louis Armstrong, Parker redefined how
  jazz was to be played and installed a new jazz
  vocabulary. And, like Armstrong, in the process
  he exerted a tremendous influence on American
  music and culture.

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Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982)
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Thelonious Monk

• When around 6 years old moved with his family
  from North Carolina to New York.
• Self taught at piano, by the time he was sixteen
  he was playing at church and professionally at
  parties.
• His early influences were the Harlem stride
  players and especially Duke Ellington, who was
  himself a fine stride player.
• 1940 - Monk became the pianist in the house band
  at Mintons Playhouse. By this time, he had
  already developed a completely unorthodox style
  and was experimenting with chord substitutions
  and reharmonization.

• His influence in the formative years of bebop was
  powerful, but is one that cannot be realistically
  documented because of the reclusive nature of his
  personality.
• Dizzy Gillespie was one who credited Monk with
  inventing many of the harmonic principles of
  bebop.
• Monks playing was misunderstood by so many. Jazz
  fans were accustomed to hearing nimble fingered
  pianists such as Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson.

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Thelonious Monk

• Instead of the cool demeanor of most bebop
  players, Monk was agitated when he played,
  appearing to be in a wrestling match with the
  piano.
• In spite of criticism, Monk stubbornly did not
  change his playing or his stage presence,
  believing that the world would someday meet him
  on his own terms. (And we did and he was right).
• 1947 - finally signs a recording contract. It
  was upstart Blue Note label, whose publicity
  department labeled him the High Priest.

• Among the recordings from the first wo Blue Note
  albums, Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music
  Vols. 1 and 2 were his compositions that he had
  written years earlier, Straight, No Chaser,
  Epistrophy, Off Minor, Round Midnight and
  others that have since become jazz standards.
• Monks tunes were uniquely original in his
  rhythmic phrasing, off-beat sparseness, and
  dissonance.
• Monk, the eccentric genius, is considered to be
  one of the greatest composers in jazz history.

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Thelonious Monk

• Monks Blue Note albums didnt do well as first
  and he was dropped from the label. He then lost
  his cabaret card for 5 years when he took the rap
  for his mentor Bud Powell (Powell had drugs on
  him in the car and Monk claimed they were his to
  protect him from the police).
• 1957 - triumphant return at the Five Spot, a
  Greenwich Village nightspot with a new quartet
  that included the young, experimental tenor
  saxophonist John Coltrane. Their six-month
  engagement, along with a new critically acclaimed
  album release Brilliant Corners finally put Monk
  in a position to attain the fame and respect that
  had eluded him for so long.
• Monk performed most often in a quartet setting
  with drums, bass, and tenor sax. He was known to
  be very animated onstage, often leaving the
  bandstand during sax solos and working through
  the audience, waving his arms as he shuffled
  around. He also had a fetish for exotic hats.
  Monks offbeat personality and music made him a
  favorite among young hip audiences in the 60s,
  and was even featured in a 1964 story in Time
  magazine.

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Other Important Bebop Figure

• Bud Powell - influence nearly all jazz pianist
  that followed him. He was among the first of the
  jazz pianist to incorporate a minimal use of the
  left hand while concentrating on hornlike lines
  in the right hand.
• Kenny Clarke - Founder of modern jazz drumming.
  Was the founding member of the Modern Jazz
  Quartet from 1952 until 1956, when he moved to
  Paris.
• Charlie Christian - was the first great electric
  guitarist and the first to exploit the melodic
  potential of single-note runs on the electric
  guitar, which took it past its role as a purely
  rhythm instrument. Died at 25 of tuberculosis.
• Max Roach - is considered to be the greatest
  bebop drummer. Made drumming more melodic and
  more polyrhythmic. Co-led the Clifford Brown/Max
  Roach quintet, one of the first and foremost hard
  bop groups of the decade that included Sonny
  Rollins on tenor and Sunny Stitt on alto.
• Dexter Gordan - his playing was a unique blend of
  the laid-back rhythmic style of Lester Young and
  the dark, biting tone of Coleman Hawkins. Much of
  the bebop history and language can be heard very
  clearly in Dexter Gordan.

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Other Important Bebop Figure

• Theodore Fats Navarro - was another major
  trumpet stylist of the bebop era, with a more
  lyrical style than Gillespie. He became a heroin
  addict, which prevented him from reaching his
  full potential and contributed to his early death
  at age 26.
• Todd Dameron - Prolific composer of many bebop
  standards. Was one of the first arrangers in the
  bebop style and was also a fine pianist. His life
  was also beset by constant drug-related problems.
• Oscar Peterson - One of the most technically
  virtuostic pianists in jazz history with
  incredible technique that is often compared to
  that of Art Tatum. Peterson has been active in
  jazz since his teens in his hometown of Montreal.
  His style is somewhat transitional, falling
  between stride, swing, and bebop.
• J.J. Johnson - was the one of the first
  trombonists to adapt the unwieldy nature of the
  instrument to bebop.

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The Backlash of Bebop

• A new emerging sound, Rhythm and Blues gained
  popularity and jazz slipped into the corners.
• The New Orleans Revival. Musicians from the
  1920s who had ended their music careers suddenly
  found they were in demand for concerts and club
  appearances.