Bebop and Beyond

Radical change in the ongoing revolution.

Just Beat It

Beatniks and bebop went together like black glasses and a beret. Coffeehouses and beat poets used bebop as background. The public was fascinated by the scene, although more to ridicule its colorful characters than to praise them. Literary figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg embraced the freedom of the music, as well as its anti-establishment attitude. Its rhythms found their way into their writings, just as their work would subsequently influence future jazz greats.

The Original Attitude Music

Bebop, personified by Dizzy Gillespie’s hipster getup of goatee, black glasses, and beret, is probably the most widely recognized aspect of jazz. It benefited from the early innovations of pianist Bud Powell and saxist Coleman Hawkins, among others, and no doubt would have existed without the team of Gillespie and Charlie Parker. But it wouldn’t have become an enduring international movement, as well as the most important stylistic advance in modern jazz, without them. That’s how strong their personalities were and how significant and substantial their contributions.

Unleashed

Gillespie and Parker first met in 1940. A year later they were regulars, along with pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie Christian, and drummer Kenny Clarke, at the late-night jams at Minton’s Playhouse that sketched out the possibilities of an energetic new jazz style less tied to melody. The new music, christened bebop, was given a trial run by the dynamic duo in Earl Hines’ big band in 1943 and then fully realized in Billy Eckstine’s orchestra, the first bebop big band, in 1944. In 1945 Parker and Gillespie went out on their own, and the bebop revolution was officially underway.

Figure 8-1: The free-wheeling, fun-loving Dizzy Gillespie became the public face of bebop.

Bebop was about musical freedom, especially in the rhythm section. Drummers, encouraged to embellish and reconfigure the beat, were finally allowed to function as more than metronomes, while bassists were given previously nonexistent latitude to creatively underpin the music. Set free from time-keeping roles, pianists became more important solo sources, and horns, now extrapolating chords instead of melody lines, could easily explore new musical areas previously off-limits to their instruments.

Musical Anarchy: Stepping-Stone to Modern Jazz

To traditional jazz ears, sweetened by years of hearing formulaic swing stylings, bebop was nothing less than musical anarchy. Bebop’s hipster cool look and anti-authority image didn’t help, and the media ripped into the sound. Jazz giants from Louis Armstrong to Tommy Dorsey joined in the condemnations. But Dizzy, Bird, and their ever-expanding group of disciples didn’t even hear them, as they were too busy putting the final touches on their creation, one that would become the core component of modern jazz.

More Potent Than Politics

Cuban music, popular in New Orleans before the turn of the 20th century, has been a major part of jazz since before the sound had a name, beginning when Jelly Roll Morton incorporated Afro-Cuban “seasonings.” But in the 1950s, politicians conspired to cut the connection between Cuban and American jazz, banning interaction for decades. Now, fortunately, Cuban stars such as spellbinding pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Chucho Valdes are perpetuating it in front of American fans.

Dizzy: The Second Satchmo

The image of the bebop revolutionary puffing out his cheeks on Sesame Street like a jazzy bullfrog was a classic and telling moment in the career of Dizzy Gillespie, an inordinately talented musician who combined innovation and entertainment better than anyone since Louis Armstrong.

Like Satchmo, Gillespie would do any and everything it took to get a laugh from his audience, all the while exposing them to some of the most seriously enlightened music of their times. Both Armstrong and Gillespie repeatedly broke through musical barriers with advanced concepts, but it was often the persuasive power of the personalities, more than the excellence of their ideas, that gave them the opportunity.

Misbehavin’

Gillespie, a virtuosic trumpeter and stylish scat singer like Armstrong, never seemed like he would be the source of the major upheaval of modern jazz. With his trademark bent trumpet and an irrepressible sense of humor, not to mention the perfectly apt nickname of Dizzy, Gillespie appeared to be more of a musical comedian than a legendary trailblazer. Being thrown out of the Cab Calloway Orchestra for misbehaving on the bandstand only reinforced the “Dizzy” persona.

But when Gillespie began to play, especially in a bebop setting, the quicksilver complexity of his trumpet work transformed the laughter into awestruck admiration. Gillespie was, quite simply, one of the top jazz trumpet players of the entire 20th century, a fact that came in handy when dueling nightly with Charlie Parker.

Gillespie followed his bebop success by turning the spotlight on Afro-Cuban jazz stylings, causing a Latin jazz craze that endures until today. His last years had a satisfying symmetry as he spent them leading his United Nation Orchestra, featuring Cuban stars Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval.

London Calling

British saxist Evan Parker’s commercial profile in America is minuscule. His influence, however, is considerable because his fan base is made up of some of jazz’s most progressive players and listeners. Parker, who utilizes circular breathing techniques to produce a seamless sound, is a fearless and exciting improviser. His unbroken solos explore the full range of his horn’s sonic possibilities, unpleasant tones included, recalling John Coltrane’s final experimentations while displaying a personalized, unorthodox creative vision.

The Truth Squad

They don’t do it to draw crowds or sell CDs. They do it because they are driven to do so. And the fact they continue to do it with unflinching honesty in the face of an often uninterested audience is what makes jazz an art form like no other.

The iconoclasts who make up the avant garde wing of jazz take pride in coloring outside the lines, knowing they’re venturing into uncharted musical territory while their fellow musicians stick to the tried-and-tested. They take almost perverse pride in their noncommercial nature, rarely acknowledging popular tastes and never pandering to them. It’s a lonely job but the avant garders believe someone has to do it. And they’re right, because by exploring the extremes they move the middle of the mainstream ever onward and upward.

Lunatic Fringe

Many musicians have been involved in the creation of new styles at one point in their careers, but it’s a special breed that devotes its entire professional life to expanding the parameters of jazz. Pianist Cecil Taylor, whose violent assaults on the keyboard have been known to frighten fans, has spent more than four decades playing intensely adventurous music few understand. Saxist Ornette Coleman’s free jazz experiments and cryptic compositional method made him an outcast in his own profession for years, while cosmic bandleader Sun Ra coped with such criticism by inventing his own universe.

Figure 8-2: Ornette Coleman’s music wasn’t designed to please the crowd. He baffled and intrigued critics and fans alike.

Kindred spirits such as reedman Anthony Braxton, violinist Leroy Jenkins, pianist Paul Bley, and saxist Henry Threadgill continue the tradition, devoting their musical lives to a creative quest that, by its simple existence, forces jazz forward. Some of their advances will be assimilated into the mainstream, some will remain outside the lines even as time goes by. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, just as long as they keep the jazz scene from complacency by challenging its conventions with unflinching artistic honesty.

Down the Drain

Chet Baker had it all: looks, talent, and opportunity. He also had a heroin habit; to paraphrase singer/songwriter John Prine, everything else disappeared down the hole in his arm. Baker’s evocative trumpet work, and the bruised beauty of his fragile singing style, made him a star at an early age. Lifelong heroin addiction made him a sad and unfulfilled figure who lived a lonely, nomadic life before finally falling to his death from a second-floor window.

The Damage Done

In the 20th century all entertainment and art forms seemed to have to deal with periods of chemical misadventure. Few, however, have ever endured the wholesale ravages of the heroin plague that nearly stopped jazz in its tracks in the early 1950s.

Jazz, brought into being as a rebel music, had an affinity for illicit substances from its beginning. Louis Armstrong proudly admitted to being a “viper,” as pot smokers were known in his younger days. And he certainly wasn’t alone, either on the bandstand or in the audience. The mob-controlled nightclubs where jazz bands played during the Prohibition era were oblivious to the liquor laws governing the rest of the country. Narcotics, however, were a different, and much more deadly, matter.

Heroin Halts Creativity

In the early 1950s, heroin usage — romantically regarded as a sort of initiation into a secret society — was epidemic in the jazz world. And before the tragic mistake was caught, heroin poisoned the entire jazz scene, not only derailing and diminishing careers, but also snuffing out the creative spark, and often the life itself, of a litany of jazz legends.

Charlie Parker, through little fault of his own, was a major part of the problem, as aspiring young musicians sought the secret to his stunning virtuosity. Parker was passionate in dissuading fellow musicians from developing such a drug dependency, but with his own obvious debilitating addiction he wasn’t too convincing.

Recovery Saves Lives — and Jazz

Dying a junkie sealed Parker’s tragic legend and added an element of perverse mystique to his career, one that was undeniably brilliant, if brief. It’s impossible, however, not to regard Parker contemporaries Miles Davis and John Coltrane, who recognized the dead end of dependency and kicked the habit, as greater musicians if for no other reason than the fact they put jazz above junk.

Assignment: Bebop and Beyond

Reading: Read Chapter 8 of Jazz: A History of America’s Music, observing the single-minded artistic dedication that has led to most jazz advances, bebop included.

Listening: If you’re feeling adventurous, explore the music of an avant garde figure or two, just to get a glimpse of where jazz might go in the future.