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 ...
Bugle Best known in its military guise, the bugle is one of the simplest of brass instruments in terms of construction, but it is very difficult to play. The single tube of metal has no valves to help create different notes, so players have to do all the work by changing their embouchure – a combination of the ...
of playing without premeditation – or, in the parlance of Louis Armstrong, ‘taking a scale and making it wail’. Cool jazz or fusion, swing-era big bands or bebop quintets, Dixieland or the avant-garde: the music thrives on a collective spirit of interplay and the daring chances taken by the participants individually or as a group, and ...
New Generation (2002), featured jazz arrangements of classic metal songs. Subsequent releases Transformation (2004) and Last Day In Paradise (2007) featured similar arrangements of metal tunes, accompanied by original bebop compositions. In recent years, Skolnick has toured as a member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a classical-rock odyssey that performs technically demanding arrangements of Christmas songs to sold-out arenas. ...
first used the Jazz Messengers’ name in collaboration with Horace Silver from 1956. The band had a horns-plus-rhythm set-up in quintet and sextet forms and defined hard bop, spicing bebop with the earthy urgency of blues, gospel and R&B. Blakey’s propulsive drumming drove a band whose changing personnel – including trumpeters Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Wynton Marsalis ...
and Cootie Williams, innovative new charts by Eddie Sauter and Mel Powell, and the late-wartime sextet with Red Norvo. After the Second World War Goodman attempted to embrace bebop and performed a clarinet concerto written for him by Aaron Copeland, before wisely returning to the style in which he was most comfortable. From the 1950s into the 1980s ...
, before going on to join Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. Catlett’s remarkable adaptability enabled him to play in a wide range of styles and he also successfully bridged the gap into bebop, contributing to an early Charlie Parker–Dizzy Gillespie session. Styles & Forms | Forties | Jazz & Blues Personalities | George Chisholm | Forties | Jazz & Blues ...
his music to a wide audience. He joined pianist Earl Hines in Chicago in 1939 and then led a big band from 1944–47 that many see as the cradle of bebop, although few recordings survive. He was one of the few black singers to be featured on national radio, largely thanks to his beguiling romantic ballads. He remained a ...
(Piano, 1924–66) Bud Powell was the pre-eminent bebop pianist. His spare chords and asymmetric accents in the left hand combined with fluid linear inventions in the right hand to establish the foundation of the standard approach to bop piano playing. The mental instability and introverted character that dogged his life are often ascribed to a beating by the police in ...
, b. 1923) Buddy DeFranco (Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo) became the leading clarinet player of the post-swing era. His liquid sonority and flowing improvisations drew on elements from both swing and bebop, but without settling fully in either camp. He served a big-band apprenticeship with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey in the mid-1940s, but is best known ...
Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Carter and – as a deputy for Jo Jones – Count Basie. He formed his own band in 1945 and also recorded with major bebop artists Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell. He worked with James again in the 1950s and 1960s, led a small group, and tried unsuccessfully to establish ...
players had adopted electric guitar, but Christian was the first great soloist on the amplified instrument. Christian’s frequent participation in after-hours jam sessions helped spur the developing form of bebop, while he performed more accessible swing during his ‘day job’ with Goodman. Often jamming late-night at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem in New York City, Christian created flights of ...
, despite his frequent warnings to stay away from drugs. Louis Armstrong had begun the evolution of jazz from an ensemble’s to a soloist’s music two decades earlier, but bebop brought that process to fruition and Parker was its supreme exponent. His influence was all-pervasive and continues to be so on contemporary musicians, affecting not only saxophonists, but ...
(Various saxophones, b. 1971) A Chicago native, Chris Potter emerged professionally in bebop trumpeter Red Rodney’s combo, before moving on to featured roles in the Mingus Big Band and bassist Dave Holland’s quintet and big band. Potter became the youngest musician to win Denmark’s prestigious and financially valuable Jazzpar Prize in 2000. Personally self-effacing, Potter is a ...
his truncated legacy has established his standing as a major figure and profound influence. He took up the trumpet at the age of 13, drawing on the influence of bebop stars Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro. The latter’s rich sonority and melodic lyricism made a particularly telling impact on the development of Brown’s own style. He recorded with Lou Donaldson ...
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