AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Bebop
• Guitar Heroes
• Jazz
• Personalities

Django Reinhardt (1910–53) overcame physical disabilities to create a unique playing style and one of the most highly influential sounds in jazz. He was born in Belgium to gypsy parents. At the age of eight his mother’s tribe settled near Paris. The French Gypsies, or Manouches, were medieval in their beliefs, and distrustful of modern science. But Django grew up exposed to Paris while living the life of the nomadic gypsy. When ...

• Bebop
• Guitar Heroes
• Jazz
• Personalities

California native Joe Pass (1929–94) developed a thoroughly precise jazz technique that propelled him to virtuoso status alongside pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, with whom he made a series of essential recordings for the Pablo label in the Seventies. Pass was raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He took up guitar after being inspired by singing cowboy Gene Autry. He received his first guitar, a $17 Harmony model on his ninth ...

• Bebop
• Jazz
• Styles & Forms

Though it was often referred to as a musical revolution, bebop was actually a natural evolution of jazz, involving innovative approaches to harmony and rhythm that advanced the music forward to a modern era. Traces of bebop began to emerge during the early 1940s, in orchestras led by Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine. Those adventurous impulses were further developed in Harlem nightspots such as Minton’s Playhouse and Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, ...