The JAZZ Story

     BOP VS. NEW ORLEANS 

     Ironically, the coming of bop coincided with a revival of interest in New

     Orleans and other traditional Jazz. This served to polarize audiences and

     musicians and point up differences rather than common ground. The

     needless harm done by partisan journalists and critics on both sides

     lingered on for years.

     Parker's greatest disciples were not alto saxophonists, except for Sonny

     Stitt. Parker dominated on that instrument. Pianist Bud Powell

     (1924-1966) translated Bird's mode to the keyboard; drummers Max

     Roach and Art Blakey (1919-1990) adapted it to the percussion

     instruments. A unique figure was pianist-composer Thelonious Monk,

     (1917-1982). With roots in the stride piano tradition, Monk was a

     forerunner of bop--in it but not of it. 

     JAZZ-ROCK FUSION 

    In the wake of Miles Davis' successful experiments, rock had an

increasing impact on  Jazz. The notable Davis alumni Herbie

Hancock (b. 1940) and Chick Corea (b.1941) explored what soon

became known as fusion style in various ways, though neither cut

himself off from the jazz tradition. Thus   Hancock's V.S.O.P., made

up of `60s Davis  alumni plus trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pursued

Miles´ pre-electronic style, while  Corea continued to play acoustic

jazz in various settings. Keith Jarrett(b. 1945), who also briefly

played with Davis, never adopted  the electronic keyboards but flirted

 with rock rhythms before embarking on lengthy, spontaneously

conceived piano recitals. The most successful fusion band was

Weather Report, co-founded in 1970 by the Austrian-born pianist

Joe Zawinul (b. 1932) and Wayne Shorter; the partnership lasted

until 1986. The commercial orientation of much fusion Jazz offers

little incentive to creative players, but it has served to introduce

new young listeners to Jazz, and electronic instruments have been

absorbed into the Jazz mainstream. 

New York - The Jazz Mecca 

     New York City is the Jazz capital of the world. Jazz musicians can be found playing at jam sessions, smoky bistros, stately concert halls, on street corners and crowded subway platforms. Although the music was born in New Orleans and nurtured in Kansas City, the Big Apple has long been a Mecca for great Jazz. From the big band romps of Duke Ellington and Count Basie at The Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to the Acid Jazz jam sessions downtown at Giant Step, New York continues to serve as the proving grounds for each major Jazz innovator.  

     52nd Street - The Street That Never Slept 

     Between 1934 and 1950, 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was the place for music. The block was jam-packed with monochromatic five-story brownstone buildings in whose drab and cramped street-level interiors there were more clubs, bars and bistros than crates in an overstocked warehouse.  52nd Street started as a showcase for the small-combo Dixieland Jazz of the speakeasy era  then added the big-band swing of the New Deal 30s. Before its untimely demise, hastened by changing real estate values, The Street adopted the innovations of bop and cool. So in just a few hours of club hopping, a listener could walk through the history of Jazz on 52nd Street. Favorites included pianist Art Tatum, singer Billie Holiday, tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie and his Big Band, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, pianist Errol Garner,     trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. 

     Minton's Playhouse - Birthplace of Bebop 

     In the early 1940s, a group of Jazz revolutionaries gathered at an uptown club called Minton's Playhouse. Through a series of small group jam sessions frequented by musicians  in their teens and early twenties, a new music called Bebop was born, sired by alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianist Thelonious Monk. Bird was generally regarded as the intuitive genius and improviser of the group, his magic sound and awesome technique changing the face of Jazz. Diz was the conscious thinker and showman, a man who spent a lifetime charming audiences worldwide. Monk was the creative clearinghouse and refiner, a musical iconoclast whose compositions became legendary.

      At first, Bebop's eccentric starts and stops, and torrents of notes played at machine-gun tempos jarred listeners and proved devilishly difficult to play. But by the late 1940s, when big-band swing had declined, bop matured and became the Jazz standard.

   

    Birdland - Jazz Corner of the World 

     Miraculously, just as 52nd caved in, Birdland opened on Broadway. For more than a decade, from 1949-1962, the survival formula was memorable double and triple bills, commencing at 9pm and sometimes lasting untill dawn. Descending the stairs to the jammed basement nitery, a listener would encounter a racially mixed throng, primed for an evening of high octane musical invigoration. To add to the excitement, Birdland's colorful host was Pee Wee Marquette, a uniformed midget. Riding the final crest of the Bebop wave, Birdland was a musical oasis for accomplished     improvisors where the finest jazz on planet earth was presented with a minimum of pretense. The club has let it all hang out ambiance encouraged musicians to stretch the  boundaries with spirited audience encouragement. Live radio broadcasts from the club, hosted by Symphony Sid, compounded the excitement. 

     JAZZ TODAY 

     Diversity is the word for today's Jazz. Various aspects of freedom have

     been pursued by the many gifted musicians connected with the AACM

     (American Association for Creative Musicians), a collective formed in

     1965 under the guidance of the pianist-composer Richard Muhal Abrams

     (b. 1930). Among the groups that have emerged, directly and indirectly,

     from the AACM are the Art Ensemble of Chicago and The World

     Saxophone Quartet, and notable musicians of this lineage include

     trumpeter Lester Bowie (b. 1941), reedmen Anthony Braxton (b.1945),

     Joseph Jarman, Julius Hemphill, Roscoe Mitchell and David Murray,

     and violinist Leroy Jenkins, Ornette Coleman has continued to go his own

     way, introducing a unique fusion band, Prime Time, collaborating with

     guitarist Pat Metheny (b. 1954), and celebrating occasional reunions with

     his original quartet.

     Quite unexpectedly, but with neat historical symmetry, a new wave of

     gifted young jazz players has emerged from New Orleans, spearheaded by

     the brilliant trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961), who joined Art Blakey's

     Jazz Messengers--a bastion of the bebop tradition--in 1979. Also an

     accomplished classical virtuoso, Marsalis was soon signed by Columbia

     Records and became the most visible new Jazz artist in many years.

     Articulate and outspoken, he has rejected fusion and stressed the

     continuity of the Jazz tradition. His slightly older brother, Branford

     Marsalis (b. 1960), who plays tenor and soprano sax, was a member of

     Wynton's quintet until he joined with rock icon Sting's band for a year. He

     has since led his own straight-ahead jazz quartet. As his replacement with

     Blakey, Wynton recommended fellow New Orleanian Terence Blanchard

     (b. 1962), who later formed a group with altoist Donald Harrison also

     from New Orleans, as co-leader.

     Many other gifted players have emerged during the present decade -- too

     many to list here. Many have affirmed their roots in bebop, and some have

     reached even further back to mainstream swing (such as tenorist Scott

     Hamilton (b. 1954), and trumpeter Warren Vache, Jr. [b. 1951]), but

     almost all, even when choosing experimentation and innovation, operate

     within the established language of jazz. As in the other arts, Jazz seems to

     have arrived at a postmodern stage.

     We ought not to overlook the increasingly important role being played by

     women instrumentalists, among them Carla Bley, JoAnne Brackeen, Jane

     Ira Bloom, Amina Claudine Myers, Emely Remler and Janice Robinson.

     The durability of the Jazz tradition has been symbolically affirmed by two

     events: the Academy Award nomination of Dexter Gordon, the seminal

     bebop tenor saxophonist, for his leading role in the film Round Midnight,

     and the widely acclaimed appearances of Benny Carter, approaching his

     90th birthday, at the helm of the American Jazz Orchestra (an ensemble

     formed in 1986 to perform the best in Jazz, past and present) both as a

     player and composer.

     And one may also take heart at the qualitative as well as quantitative

     growth of Jazz education in this country, and the active involvement of so

     many fine performing artist in this process. 

     SUMMING UP 

     No one can presume to guess what form the next development in Jazz will

     take. What we do know is that the music today presents a rich panorama

     of sounds and styles. 

     Thelonious Monk, that uncompromising original who went from the

     obscurity of the pre-bop jam sessions in Harlem to the cover of TIME and

     worldwide acclaim without ever diluting his music, once defined jazz in his

     unique way:  

     "Jazz and freedom," Monk said, "go hand in hand. That explains it. There

     isn't anymore to add to it. If I do add to it, it gets complicated. That's

     something for you to think about. You think about it and dig it. You dig it." 

     Jazz, a music born in slavery, has become the universal song of freedom.

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Jazz History - Periods, Styles 

             Batchelor, Christian: This thing called Swing ; a study of Swing music and the Lindy Hop, the original Swing dance. London 1997.

             Belaire, David C. G.: A guide to the big band era. 1997.

Bergerot, Franck & Arnaud Merlin: The story of jazz ; bop and beyond. New York 1993.

      Berlin, Edward A.: Ragtime ; a musical and cultural history. Reprint (1980). Berkeley, Calif. [etc.] 1984.

             Boyd, Jean A.: The jazz of the southwest;an oral history of Western Swing. Austin, Tex.1998.

Budds, Michael J.: Jazz in the 60s ; the expansion of musical resources and techniques. Expanded ed. Iowa City, Ia. 1990.

             Carver, Reginald & Lenny Bernstein: Jazz profiles ; the spirit of the nineties. New York 1998.

             Cockrell, Dale: Demons of disorder ; early blackface minstrels and their world. Cambridge 1997.

Collins, R.: New Orleans jazz ; a revised history ; the development of American music from the origin to the big bands. New York 1996.

             Corbett, John: Extended play ; sounding off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein.Durham, N.C. 1994.

              Dean, Roger T.: New structures in jazz and improvised music since 1960. Milton Keynes 1991

             Deffaa, Chip: Swing legacy  foreword by George T. Simon. Metuchen, N.J. [etc.] 1989.

             Deffaa, Chip: Voices of the jazz age ; profiles of 8 vintage jazzmen. Wheatley 1990.

             DeVeaux, Scott: The birth of Bebop ; a social and musical history. Berkeley, Cal. [etc.] 1997.

             Erenberg, Lewis A.: Swingin' the dream ; big band jazz and the rebirth of American culture. Chicago, Ill. [etc.] 1998.

             Feather, Leonard: The encyclopedia yearbooks of Jazz. Reprint (1956 & 1958). New York 1993.

             Feather, Leonard: The passion for jazz. Reprint (1980). New York 1990.

             Fernett, Gene: Swing out ; great Negro dance bands. Reprint (1970). New York 1993.

             Goldberg, Joe: Jazz masters of the 50s. Reprint (1965). New York [1983].

             Gottlieb, William P.: The golden age of jazz. New & revised ed. San Francisco, Cal. 1995.

             Griffiths, David: Hot jazz ; from Harlem to Storyville. Lanham, Md. [etc.] 1998.

             Grudens, Richard: The best damn trumpet player ; memories of the big band era & beyond. Stony Brook, N.Y. 1996.

             Grudens, Richard: The music men ; the guys who sang with the bands and beyond. Stony Brook, N.Y. 1998.

             Grudens, Richard: The song stars ; the ladies who sang with the bands and beyond. Stony Brook, N.Y. 1997.

            Hadlock, Richard: Jazz masters of the 20s. Reprint (1965). New York 1988.

             Hall, Fred: Dialogues in Swing ; intimate conversations with the stars of the Big Band era. Ventura, Cal. 1989.

Harrison, Daphne Duval: Black pearls ; blues queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick, N.J. [etc.] 1990.

             Hennessey, Thomas J.: From jazz to swing ; Afro-American jazz musicians and their music, 1890-1935. Detroit, Mich. 1994.

Jasen, David A. & Gene Jones: Spreadin' rhythm around ; black popular songwriters, 1880-1930. New York 1998.

             Jones, Leroi: Black music. Reprint (1967). New York 1998.

Jost, Ekkehard: Europas Jazz 1960-1980. Frankfurt 1987.

Kennedy, Don: Big Band Jump personality interviews. Atlanta, Ga. 1993.

Kennedy, Rick: Jelly Roll, Bix and Hoagy ; Gennett studios and the birth of  recorded jazz. Bloomington, Ind. [etc.] 1994.