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Bebop

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What is Bebop? The term bop comes from the need to describe the energetic, nervous nature of this

new music.

Bebop is a STYLEof jazz that developed in the years from 1940-45, and it signals in theera of Modern Jazz and a clean break of the Swing Era.

What are the characteristics of Bebop?

Aesthetics of the style are based on improvisation, not melody or arrangement of themelody.

Melodies are stylistically more complex and improvisatory than melodies from theswing era.

Smaller groups become more popular than larger big bands .

Jazz clubs (small) take the place of the large Dance Halls of the 1930s.

De-emphasis on commercial success, popularity and dancing.

The pulse, or beat, is less clearly stated in bebop - making it harder to feel the beat.

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The Revolution of Bebop

Bebop is a reaction to the well-polished big band extravaganza. Even though mostof the players that created bebop had played in big bands, they led this rejection of the musical characteristics of the swing era.

Instead of dance halls, bars and clubs became the training ground for themusicians of this new style.

The music was created for listening, not for dancing. The performers were trying tocapture the impromptu spontaneity of the jam session - not the tightly organizedperformance.

While swing era arrangers skillfully inserted space for individual improvisation into

the arrangement, bebop groups avoided complex charts and arrangements. Thefocus was on the ability of each player to improvise like a virtuoso.

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Reactions to Bebop

Many older musicians did not understand the new style...

Cab Calloway called the playing of Dizzy Gillespie Chinese music.

Louis Armstrong said, All they want to do is show you up, and any old way will do

as long as its different from the way you played it before...you got no melody toremember and no beat to dance to.

A large segment of the jazz audience felt the same way and didnt enjoy the factthat their jazz music was now being called old fashioned.

This difference of opinion led to great debates on jazz in the late 1940s among theold and new school of the music as well as the audience, the critics, the dancers,the amateurs, etc. EVERYONE was talking about jazz.

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The Beginnings of Bop The music began as a music for musicians in the early 1940s. Even as many derided

the style as too modern, bebop built a loyal following.

Slowly bop became the dominant jazz style by the end of the 1940s.

A new tax on dance halls led to their decline, while small clubs and barsourished.

Younger musicians, who didnt have the constant employment that the stars of theswing era had, were interested in this new style, and intrigued by the possibilities of awholly new musical language. So, the new musicians pushed for change that led tothe rise of Bop and the demise of Swing music.

With the rise of bop, jazz ceased to be a commercially successful music. Someplayers thought that bop could still be adapted so that dancing was possible, but inthe end that didnt happen.

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The Culture of Bop Bop became a cultural phenomenon.

The followers of bebop took on the characteristics of their heroes. The beret,goatee and glasses of Dizzy Gillespie as well as the heroine addition of CharlieParker.

The music was seen as a rejection of all things conformist and mainstream. Themusicians saw the music as a political statement and declaration of independence.

Additionally, many of the same players thought that the older musicians - likeArmstrong - represented a racial stereotype of the black entertainer in America.

There to please the white population.

This social commentary in the 1940s laid the groundwork for the more deantand powerful political statements in jazz during the 1960s.

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Dizzy Gillespie and

Charlie Parker

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Characteristics of Bebop Bebop differed from swing music in four distinct ways:

Improvisational style, melodic language, tempo and harmonic language.

Classic jazz and Swing musicians improvised by Embellishing the melody . Bebopsoloists typically solo by improvising over the chord changes - trying to create acompletely new melody in their solo - not rehash the melody of each specictune.

Many melodies before Bop were hold overs from Broadway or popular music. Themelodies in bebop were crafted like a solo. Complex, disjunct at times, chromaticand jagged.

Swing era music was meant to be danced to, thus the tempos were danceable .Energetic bebop tunes were faster and crisper than swing tunes and the ballads inthe bebop era were typically played much slower than ballads from the earliereras. Remember, even ballads were to be danced to in the swing era.

The harmonic language on classic jazz and the swing era was usually a three orfour note chord - a minimum amount of dissonance in the harmonic progression.In bebop the language adds extensions to the chords - making them 5, 6 or even7 note-chords . Adding a fair amount of dissonance to the chordal progression.

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Bebop and Swing

There are some aspects of bebop that were retained in bebop:

32-bar popular song form

The blues

Improvisation based mostly on 8th note melodies

Instruments in ensembles consist of front-line & rhythm section

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Bebop Terms

Extended Chord tones - instead of focusing on the 3rd, 5th and 7thnotes of the scale to create chords and melodies bebop musicians usedthe 9th, 11th and 13th notes as well. This led to more dissonance.

Re-harmonization - Changing some (or all) of the chords in a well-known song to freshen and modernize the sound.

Dropping bombs - Used to describe the drummer placing sharp,irregular accents into the accompaniment. The drummer is no longer

just keeping time, he/she is an important contributor to thesyncopation and rhythmic vitality of the music.

Comping - The syncopated accompaniment supplied by guitarists andpianists. It is a contraction of the term complement .

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Recomposition in the Bop Era

AABA and 12-bar blues were still popular, but to modernize the result,musicians would recompose a standard tune.

Recomposition would entail the following:

keeping the original chord progression, but adding extensions to thechords.

composing a new, more complex and improvisatory melody overthe newly altered chords.

This allowed for the performers to not pay royalties and play the chordprogression of a song that they found interesting and fertile ground forimprovisation.

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Groovin High vs. Whispering

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Recomposition in the Bop EraWhispering vs. Groovin High

Bing Crosby singing Whispering

Dizzy Gillespie w/ Charlie Parker playing Groovin High

Notice the differences in:

Tempo

Melody

Harmony

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The Origins of Bop Informal jam sessions in Harlem were the rst forays into bebop.

Mintons Playhouse hired drummer Kenny Clarke as the band leader. Clarke then hiredthe other players, including a quirky pianist named Thelonious Sphere Monk.

This was an informal setting - allowing musicians to sit in, and the late night sessionswere rife with experimentation. This was a low-stress gig - therefore there was no

pressure to please anyone. Basically, they were developing a new music amongstthemselves.

At Monroes Uptown House (another club) drummer Max Roach led a band of experimental players as well. It was a 3 AM session at this club that inspired CharlieParker to quit the touring band he was in and stay in New York.

These sessions, and the development of Bop are not recorded for two reasons: 1) amusicians strike that started in 1942 because of a lack of royalties being paid tomusicians for records playing on the radio and 2) a shortage of: rubber, gasoline andshellac. These shortages led to diminished opportunities for touring (tires and cars...) andless shellac to create the albums.

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Charlie Parker - alto sax Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920.

A hugely inuential alto saxophonist - similar to Armstrong in scope, ability andinuence. The rst important saxophonist of the modern style.

At 15 was playing in a territory band led by Lawrence 88 Keyes. Parker was called,the saddest thing in the Keyes band.

Did not ourish at rst - his earliest attempts at performance at jam sessions led to himbeing laughed off the bandstand.

He worked hard to become a better player - he began learning Lester Young solos (CountBasies band) note-for-note and studying harmony with local guitarists and keyboardplayers.

In 1938 - at 18 years of age - he joined the band of Jay McShann and began touring withthis group.

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Charlie Parker - alto sax In 1939 the McShann band was in NY for a series

of gigs and Parker went to Monroes to hear localplayers. After hearing the caliber of player thereParker quit the McShann band and moved toNYC.

He played at Monroes nightly, washed dishes at aBar & Grille so he could hear Art Tatum play therea few times a week. He immersed himself in theNYC music scene.

Parker went back to McShann in 1940 to makehis rst recordings, then returned to NY in 1941or1942 for good.

Kenny Clarke said: Bird was playing stuff wednever heard before. He was twice as fast asLester Young and into harmony Lester hadnttouched. Bird was running the same way wewere, but he was way out ahead of us.

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Charlie Parker - His playing

He had an edgy tone - almost abrasive.

Use of the blues inections

Double-time 16th note runs

Angular, irregular melodic lines

Emphasis on the middle and upper registers of the instrument

Irregular phrase length

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Listening Example: Shaw Nuff CD #3, Track #1

AABA form with extended introduction. The main melody starts after the descending,fast run in the piano.

Melody presented in unison - both Parker and Gillespie playing same notes.

Parker takes rst solo - notice the long lines, irregular phrasing.

Gillespie erupts into his solo - focuses on the high register of the trumpet with very longlines

Piano solo - Al Haig - is advanced, and similar is scope to Gillespie and Parker, but alittle less polished in the bebop tradition.

Return of the melody - and the tune ends with a restatement of the introduction.

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Listening Example: KokoCD #3, Track #3

Features Parker (alto sax); Gillespie (trumpet and piano) and Max Roach (drums).

The introduction is serving as a makeshift melody - not really memorable - but serves thepurpose to get to the solos, which is what intrigued these players.

Parkers solo is impressive on many levels - speed, dexterity, irregular phrase lengths,

memorable melodic motions.

Notice Max Roach dropping bombs on the bass drum to add syncopation and accent tokeep it fresh and different.

The bass player is the primary time-keeper - the drummer now is adding to the interest of the song, not just providing the basic beat. This is a BIG development.

Roachs drum solo - frenetic, energetic, chaotic - looking forward.

Introduction returns as an ending. Muted trumpet and alto saxophone end the tune.

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Charlie Parker - continued Parker, a heroine addict, ended up in a mental

hospital for 6-months in 1946 following a tour inCalifornia.

The period from 1947 to 1951 was a very successfulperiod in his career. He recorded some of his bestwork, went on his successful tours and evolvedfurther as an improviser.

His nal years were unfortunate. He gained weight,drank heavily and suffered from ulcers. A daughterof his, Pree, died of pneumonia, he fell into a deepdepression, attempted suicide, and committedhimself into Bellevue hospital.

Parker died in 1955, after being released from thehospital. His body was so ravaged by years of substance abuse, the doctor assumed he was 53years old - Parker was actually 34.

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John Birks (Dizzy) Gillespie - trumpet The consummate musician. A composer, arranger, pianist, trumpeter

and clown - which earned him the nickname Dizzy.

His most important contributions are the many compositions and re-compositions he created during the development of bebop.

Groovin High, Woody n You, Salt Peanuts, A Night in Tunisia etc.Many tunes that are now standards.

Born in South Carolina, Gillespie moved to NYC in 1937 at the age of 20 and quickly began working in the best bands in NY, including The

band or Cab Calloway.

He routinely participated in the after-hours jam sessions at Mintons.Gillespie was becoming well-known in NY, but his recordings andtours with Parker thrust him into the national spotlight.

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Gillespie - continued

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Gillespie - continued

Gillespie split with Parker after the west coast trip that resulted inParker going into a mental hospital.

Gillespie, a more commercial element of bebop, went to the largergroup format in the late 1940s and had successfully migrated bebopfrom the small group to the big band.

Gillespie embraced the Afro-Cuban element of jazz and hired thebest and brightest latin jazz pioneers including Chano Pozo, a congaplayer.

Gillespie always wanted bebop to be entertaining - he bemoaned theleaving behind of the audience. His later career was as a championof the music that he helped to create in NY in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Gillespies solo on Anthropology

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Gillespie