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[QUOTE=Moonray;746790]OK ....here's a reading list for you:
"To Be, Or Not To Bop" ......Dizzy Gillespie .....the real thang.....from the man himself!
[Highly recommended]
"Bebop: The Music and Its Players"......Thomas Owens.
Good read.
/QUOTE]
I've read the Owens book a few times now. It taught me a lot. Haven't read Diz's book---have to look that one up. The Gitler book too. Thanks!
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02-27-2017 01:07 PM
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One classic source on this topic is a book written by a German musicologist: Ekkehard Jost's "Sozialgeschichte des Jazz" (1982 and 2003). You know that it basically can help when a pundit outside the system is looking over facts - just to weed out any intrinsic 'alternative facts'.
Bebop as the reaction of the African-American jazz musicians to the swing "industry" largely dominated by white band leaders, concert agents, label and labor union bosses and bankrollers? The early beboppers as the predecessors of the Black Power movement?
It's not that easy to read, like even Wikipedia points out. Presumably a chain of different factors led to the emergence of this new style. By the end of the 1930s Swing had become a big business. The creative zenith of many swing orchestras was over, and the music was threatening to solidify. Bored with routine as a "orchestra worker" many musicians - often "after hours" after finishing their job in the big band - began to meet in informal jam sessions. There they were able to play and search for musical forms beyond the big bands. One point of crystallization of this development was Minton's Playhouse in Harlem (far less the 52nd Street in Manhattan, as is often mistakenly claimed). Among the most important musicians of this circle were Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, and Kenny Clarke.
It is also assumed that the increase in taxation on dance events due to the US entry into the war in 1941 gradually undermined the economics of the big bands, thus accelerating the decline of the swing and fostering the development of the new style in the form of an autonomous art music.
The small bands who developed the new jazz style were not regarded as dance and entertainment ensembles, nor were they in their own self-understanding, so the owners of the nightclubs were not covered with special war charges when they engaged young bebop musicians with their combos. Because of the recording ban, there are no studio recordings from the early genre of this style; there are only some private, technically very inadequate live recordings from Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House.
Musically speaking, the bebop was, above all, the newly formed self-consciousness of the Afro-Americans - contrary to all interpretations that emphasize its allegedly European components. The emphasis was placed on the African elements of jazz, which had largely been suppressed in the swing: rhythmic complexity and blues feeling.
The consciousness, which prevailed among the musicians who set the new style in motion, unmistakably corresponded to the changed attitude of the Afro-Americans during and after the Second World War. The ambivalent character of this period, which included anger and anxiety, determination, and uncertainty for the black Americans, was reflected in the ego of the bop musician, characterized by artistic self-assurance and psycho-social instability.
Certainly the beboppers were quite conscious of the particular ethnic connections of their music; it may be illustrated by an episode portrayed by Dizzy Gillespie. In 1944, the Gillespie Quintet played at the Onyx in the 52nd Street; they were the first bebop group to go out of the Harlem black ghetto. One evening the renowned (white) saxophonist and swing bandleader Jimmy Dorsey came to the club to listen to the music of the beboppers. This led to the following word change (retranslated):
Dorsey: "Boy! That stuff you're playing! I'd really like to get you for my band, but you're so dark!"
Gillespie: "Well, if I were not, I would not be able to play this way. Do you know anyone who plays our stuff and has your color?"
Dorsey: "No, I'm afraid, I don't."
There are only isolated, not easily brought together statements by jazzmen of the 1940s on political or social problems. One example is the traditional response of a jazz musician who, after the end of the Second World War, responded: "Man, just let me blow!"
It is therefore questionable whether the first bebop musicians so consciously and purposefully reacted to the social and political conditions of their time, that one could assume they themselves had been establishing their music as the "manifesto of a revolt against capitalism or commercial discrimination of culture and race" (Francis Newton).
"I suspect that the beboppers have been absorbed too much by their musical activities and by the 'kicks' to which they adhered, rather than being able to deal with political and social problems. Certainly they protested. But their protests were vague, partly self-destructive, and were mediated by their aesthetic medium in which they unconsciously expressed the disturbance of the period through which they themselves had been impelled." (Ekkehard Jost)
It took about twenty years after the introduction of bebop, until (black) jazz musicians began not only to articulate their attitude to the surrounding social conditions, but also to put their protest into action.
EDIT:
Just keep the possibility in mind that if beboppers, even the originators, were interviewed on this topic in the 1960s or later, their answers might not reflect the truth about what they had really experienced or created in the 40s. In this regard, personally, I'd much more rely on the concise statements of Thelonious Monk than on the ones of Dizzy Gillespie; Parker and Christian died too soon... stoned were all... The reason for any 'falsification' of history could be both new aspects or the changed zeitgeist and the general human tending to self-aggrandizement ('the past has always a rosy ass').Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-27-2017 at 02:42 PM.
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Good point. Also, that ban made early bebop records sound more jarring than they otherwise would have. Little of the transitional playing was heard by the general public.
Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
Also, when the war was over, most people felt like they (or their husband / brother / father) were lucky to be alive and weren't looking to music for proof they were real or alive or authentic. ;o)Last edited by MarkRhodes; 01-22-2020 at 12:01 PM.
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Scott DeVeaux's book is all about that transitional period. Well worth checking out. Originally Posted by christianm77
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Nice! Originally Posted by PMB
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Yes, Christian, check out DeVeaux. As I recall, the whole first chapter is on Hawkins as a transitional figure--right up your alley. Originally Posted by christianm77
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There are many interviews with Max Roach (and many others) in the archives of WKCR on the beginnings of bebop and its race components. Trouble is, Mr. Roach often contradicted himself (for example, saying everything else in jazz 'paled' compared to the music of Charlie Parker, et. al---then turning around and praising Dave Brubeck). I don't know if these interviews are ever made available to the public, but perhaps if you humbly made a student's request? Originally Posted by TM25
There IS an illuminating interview in Dizzy Gillespie's autobiog (To Be or Not to Bop) with John Carisi. He says that one night outside Minton's Joe Guy took him aside and said 'you (white) guys come up here and learn (maybe he said 'take') our stuff'. Carisi's interpretation was that 'he was saying "you're doing what WE'RE doing"'---a compliment.
There's also a mildly interesting book, Jazz in Black and White. Sorry to say, I don't remember the author's name or what periods were covered.
An earlier suggestion to take a trip to the archives at Rutgers was a good one. Mr. Morgenstern (if he hasn't retired) is a nice, knowledgeable and helpful man. If Ed Berger is still there he is a fount of information.
Hope some of this helps...
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An interesting and, as has been pointed out, potentially volatile topic. Not least when one considers the influence of a third party in the mix.
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Try to locate the December 20th, 1948 issue of Time Magazine: in the Music section is an article about Bebop. The article mentions the Royal Chicken Roost: "Bebop has been around for 7 to 8 years, and something of a fad for two, but experts still disagree over what it is, and whether it will last. Gutsy, oldtimes Blues Singer Chippie Hills says flatly and hopefully that "It won't last, my 16 year old niece does it when she drinks beer and does it better than any of them!". To the naked ear its shrill cacophony seems anarchistic; on repeated hearing it becomes clear that the players planned it that way. Duke Ellington, now a disc jockey, has been kind; old Satchmo, critical". Originally Posted by TM25
"Dizzy Gillespie, the high cockalorum of bop, was getting top billing at the Strand Theater".
There is much more that you may find very interesting. E.g. Sarah Vaughan; "a velvet-skinned Negro squeezed her toothpaste-smooth voice, singing like a kazoo".
PS: I purchased the mag as part of my movie collection since Olivia De Havilland is on the cover for the film The Snake Pit.
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OP asked this question THREE years ago.......and never came back to the forum, ever again. Grave robbers at work....
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Thanks for pointing that out. I assume he already submitted that paper! (ha ha). Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
I had just re-read that magazine (the ads are a hoot), and when I saw this thread as "unread" I made that reference.
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