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In the wake of the pyrotechnic manifesto that ​Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Dizzy Gillespie jointly issued on their first recording together in 1945, most musicians on the New York jazz scene began fanning the flames of bebop. Tempos picked up speed, intensity increased on the bandstand and blazing virtuosity became a means to an end, in a fiery ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

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. ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

Jazz and R&B star George Benson (b. 1943) seemed destined for a respected but low-key career in cool jazz until he adopted a funky hybrid of jazz and soul for the 1976 album Breezin’. Driven by accessible instrumentals and a smash reworking of Leon Russell’s ‘This Masquerade’, the album made Benson the biggest star to cross over from jazz to pop ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

John Abercrombie (b. 1944) is a stylist who has managed to incorporate flavours of folk and rock along with world-music influences into his jazz-based repertoire. He was a highly influential fusion guitarist in the late Sixties and Seventies and has had an abundant career, working solo and with a multitude of collaborators, including Billy Cobham, Ralph Towner, ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

Considered one of modern jazz guitar’s ‘big three’ guitarists – along with Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell – John Scofield (b. 1951) is also one of the most versatile players of his generation. Conversant in fusion and hard bop as well as in the heady grooves of the jam-band scene, his stew of blues and jazz mixed with post-bop and ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

Mike Stern (b. 1953), the American jazz guitarist, emerged as a major force in the jazz guitar scene through his work with Miles Davis’ band in the early Eighties, Stern has played with stars such as Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino and David Sanborn. Stern was also a guitarist in Steps Ahead and the Brecker Brothers ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

Although his band of high-school buddies achieved international fame under the name Toto, Steve Lukather (b. 1957), session guitarist extraordinaire, has had to struggle under the same suspicion under which his bandmates have toiled: that the whole may add up to less than the sum of its parts. For Toto, despite achieving worldwide fame with singles like ‘Rosanna’ ...

Source: Rock Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

Like a great river that runs endlessly, forming numerous tributary streams as it flows, jazz continues to evolve over time. And no matter how far the River Jazz may flow from its source – whether through stylistic evolution or technological innovation – the essential spirit of the music remains intact. Granted, the more academic and esoteric extrapolations of ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

A forerunner of jazz, ragtime was derived from brass-band music and European folk melodies, African-American banjo music and spirituals, minstrel songs, military marches and European light classics. The ‘raggy’ style, or ragged-time feeling, of this jaunty, propulsive, toe-tapping piano music refers to its inherent syncopation, where loud right-hand accents fall between the ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

Jazz was the by-product of cultures coming together in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. The music, along with some of its greatest practitioners, moved north by 1917. That year Storyville, the red-light district, was forced to close and jazz musicians headed north to Chicago, where jazz matured into a fine art form. ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

The popularity of jazz hit a peak after the Depression years of 1929–33. By the end of 1934, huge numbers were tuning in to the NBC Radio series Let’s Dance, which broadcast performances by The Xavier Cugat, Kel Murray and Benny Goodman Orchestras. Goodman’s orchestra in particular caught on with the public and created a demand for live ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

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 ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

By the end of the 1930s, the Swing era was in full force, ushered in by big bands led by Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, the Dorsey brothers (Jimmy and Tommy) and Glenn Miller. New Orleans jazz and its stylistic off-shoot, Dixieland, had both largely faded from popularity. New Orleans pioneers King Oliver and Jelly Roll ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

Hard bop evolved out of bebop during the early 1950s but its rhythms were more driving and syncopated. Hard bop also tended to have a more full-bodied sound, a bluesy feel with darker textures and shorter improvised lines, and its chord progressions were usually composed rather than borrowed from popular tunes. Although Miles Davis made an early foray into ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

Free jazz is seen by many as an avant-garde art form rather than a type of jazz, with its unpredictable rhythm and chord progressions. Evolving out of bebop in the 1940s and 1950s the exponents of free jazz abandoned traditional forms to expand the music’s creative possibilities, challenging mainstream listeners and players alike. The first documented free jazz recordings ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer
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