The JAZZ Story

(1920-1955), an alto saxophonist born and reared in Kansas City.

After apprenticeship with big bands (including Earl Hines'), Parker

settled

in New York. From 1944 on, he began to attract attention on

Manhattan's

52nd Street, a midtown block known as "Swing Street" which featured a

concentration of Jazz clubs and Jazz talent not equaled before or

since.

BIRD

Bird, as Parker was called by his fans, was a fantastic improviser

whose

imagination was matched by his technique. His way of playing (though

influenced by Lester Young and guitarist Charlie Christian (1916-

1942), a

remarkable musician who was featured with Benny Goodman's sextet

between 1939-41), was something new in the world of Jazz. His

influence

on musicians can be compared in scope only to that of Louis Armstrong.

Parker's principal early companions were Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpeter

of

abilities that almost matched Bird's, and drummer Kenny Clarke

(1914-1985). Dizzy and Bird worked together in Hines' band and then in

the one formed by Hines vocalist Billy Eckstine (1914-1993), the key

developer of bop talent. Among those who passed through the Eckstine

ranks were trumpeters Miles Davis (1927-1991), Fats Navarro

(1923-1950), and Kenny Dorham (1924-1972); saxophonists Sonny Stitt

(1924-1982), Dexter Gordon (1923-1990), and Gene Ammons

(1925-1974); and pianist-arranger-bandleader Tadd Dameron (1917-1965).

Bop, of course, was basically small-group music, meant for listening,

not

dancing. Still, there were big bands featuring bop--among them those

led

by Dizzy Gillespie, who had several good crews in the late `40s and

early

to mid-50's; and Woody Herman's so-called Second Herd, which included

the cream of white bop--trumpeter Red Rodney (b. 1927), and

saxophonists Stan Getz (1927-1993), Al Cohn (1925-1988) and Zoot Sims

(1925-1985), and Serge Chaloff (1923-1957).

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.

Koerner, Julie: Big bands. New York 1992.

Koerner, Julie: Swing kings. New York 1994.

Kofsky, Frank: John Coltrane and the jazz revolution

of the 1960s. New York 1998.

Korall, Burt: Drummin' men ; the heartbeat of jazz ;

the Swing years. New York 1990.

Litweiler, John: The freedom principle ; jazz after

1958. Reprint (1984).New York 1990.

Lock, Graham: Chasing the vibration ; meetings with

creative musicians. Exeter 1994.

Morgan, Thomas L. & William Barlow: From Cakewalks to

concert halls; an illustrated history of African American popular

music from 1895 to 1930. Washington, D.C. 1993.

Nicholson, Stuart: Jazz, the 1980s resurgence.

Reprint (1990) of: Jazz, the modern resurgence. New York 1995.

Nicholson, Stuart: Jazz-Rock, a history. New York

1998.

Owens, Thomas: Bebop ; the music and its players. Reprint (1995). New

York [etc.] 1996.

Piazza, Tom: Blues up and down ; jazz in our time. New York 1997.

Rosenthal, David H.: Hard bop ; jazz and black music 1955-1965.

Reprint (1992).New York 1993.

Russell, Bill: New Orleans style compiled & ed. by

Barry Martyn & Mike Hazeldine. New Orleans, La. 1994.

Scanlan, Tom: The joy of jazz : Swing era, 1935-1947.

Golden, Col. 1996.

Schuller, Gunther: Early jazz ; its roots and musical development.

Reprint (1968). New York [etc.] 1986.

Spellman, A: B.: Four lives in the bebop business.

Reprint (1966). New York 1985.

Stewart, Rex: Jazz masters of the 30s. Reprint

(1972). New York [1982].

Stowe, David W.: Swing changes ; Big Band jazz in New

Deal America. Reprint (1994). Cambridge, Mass. 1996.

Tracy, Sheila: Bands, booze and broads. Reprint

(1995). Edinburgh (etc) 1996.

Van der Merwe, Peter: Origins of the popular style ; the antecedents

of twentieth-century popular music. Reprint (1989) Oxford 1992.

Vincent, Ted: Keep cool ; the black activists who

built the jazz age.London [etc.] 1995.

Waldo, Terry: This is Ragtime. Reprint (1976). New York

1991.

Walker, Leo: The wonderful era of the great dance

bands. Reprint (1964). New York 1990.

Wilmer, Valerie: As serious as your life; the story

of the New Jazz. Reprint (1987).London 1998.

Wyndham, Tex: Texas shout ; how Dixieland Jazz works. Seattle, Wash.

1997.

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