Bebop

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Bebop
Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker was a leading performer and composer of the bebop era. He is pictured here with Tommy Potter, Max Roach and Miles Davis at the Three Deuces club in New York City.
Stylistic origins	Swing Kansas City jazz
Cultural origins	Mid-1940s, United States
Derivative forms	Avant-garde jazz hard bop post-bop wabap [fr]
Regional scenes
United States
Other topics
Jazz piano Progressive music Hipster (1940s subculture)

Bebop or bop is a style of

Bebop developed as the younger generation of jazz musicians expanded the creative possibilities of jazz beyond the popular, dance-oriented swing music-style with a new "musician's music" that was not as danceable and demanded close listening.^[1] As bebop was not intended for dancing, it enabled the musicians to play at faster tempos. Bebop musicians explored advanced harmonies, complex syncopation, altered chords, extended chords, chord substitutions, asymmetrical phrasing, and intricate melodies. Bebop groups used rhythm sections in a way that expanded their role. Whereas the key ensemble of the swing music era was the big band of up to fourteen pieces playing in an ensemble-based style, the classic bebop group was a small combo that consisted of saxophone (alto or tenor), trumpet, piano, guitar, double bass, and drums playing music in which the ensemble played a supportive role for soloists. Rather than play heavily arranged music, bebop musicians typically played the melody of a composition (called the "head") with the accompaniment of the rhythm section, followed by a section in which each of the performers improvised a solo, then returned to the melody at the end of the composition.

Some of the most influential bebop artists, who were typically composer-performers, are

The term "bebop" is derived from nonsense syllables (vocables) used in

Some researchers speculate that it was a term used by Charlie Christian because it sounded like something he hummed along with his playing.^[5] Dizzy Gillespie stated that the audiences coined the name after hearing him scat the then-nameless compositions to his players and the press ultimately picked it up, using it as an official term: "People, when they'd wanna ask for those numbers and didn't know the name, would ask for bebop."^[6] Another theory is that it derives from the cry of "Arriba! Arriba!" used by Latin American bandleaders of the period to encourage their bands.^[7] At times, the terms "bebop" and "rebop" were used interchangeably. (Although rebop differed from bebop with its more impressionist use of discordant chords.) By 1945, the use of "bebop"/"rebop" as nonsense syllables was widespread in R&B music, for instance Lionel Hampton's "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop".^{[citation needed]} The bebop musician or bopper became a stock character in jokes of the 1950s, overlapping with the beatnik.^[8]

Instrumentation

The classic bebop combo consisted of saxophone, trumpet, double bass, drums and piano. This was a format used (and popularized) by both Parker (alto sax) and Gillespie (trumpet) in their 1940s groups and recordings, sometimes augmented by an extra saxophonist or guitar (electric or acoustic), occasionally adding other horns (often a trombone) or other strings (usually violin) or dropping an instrument and leaving only a quartet. This was in stark contrast to the large ensembles favoured during the swing era.

Musical style

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers. The music itself seemed jarringly different to the ears of the public, who were used to the bouncy, organized, danceable compositions of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller during the swing era. Instead, bebop appeared to sound racing, nervous, erratic and often fragmented.

"Bebop" was a label that certain journalists later gave it, but we never labeled the music. It was just modern music, we would call it. We wouldn't call it anything, really, just music.

— Kenny Clarke^[9]

While swing music tended to feature orchestrated big band arrangements, bebop music highlighted improvisation. Typically, a theme (a "head," often the main melody of a pop or jazz standard of the swing era) would be presented together at the beginning and the end of each piece, with improvisational solos based on the chords of the compositions. Thus, the majority of a piece in bebop style would be improvisation, the only threads holding the work together being the underlying harmonies played by the rhythm section. Sometimes improvisation included references to the original melody or to other well-known melodic lines ("quotes," "licks" or "riffs"). Sometimes they were entirely original, spontaneous melodies from start to finish.

Chord progressions for bebop compositions were often taken directly from popular swing-era compositions and reused with a new and more complex melody, forming new compositions (see

Bebop musicians also employed several harmonic devices not typical of previous jazz. Complicated harmonic substitutions for more basic chords became commonplace. These substitutions often emphasized certain dissonant intervals such as the flat ninth, sharp ninth or the sharp eleventh/tritone. This unprecedented harmonic development which took place in bebop is often traced back to a transcendent moment experienced by Charlie Parker while performing "Cherokee" at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, in early 1942. As described by Parker:^[10]

I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used ... and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes. I couldn't play it.... I was working over "Cherokee", and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. It came alive.

• A new harmonic conception, using extended chord structures that led to unprecedented harmonic and melodic variety.
• A developed and even more highly syncopated, linear rhythmic complexity and a melodic angularity in which the blue note of the fifth degree was established as an important melodic-harmonic device.
• The reestablishment of the blues as the music's primary organizing and functional principle.^[11]

Some of the harmonic innovations in bebop appear similar to innovations in Western "serious" music, from

Bebop grew out of the culmination of trends that had been occurring within

One young admirer of the Basie orchestra in Kansas City was a teenage alto saxophone player named

The brilliant technique and harmonic sophistication of pianist Art Tatum inspired young musicians including Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. In his early days in New York, Parker held a job washing dishes at an establishment where Tatum had a regular gig.^[14]

One of the divergent trends of the swing era was a resurgence of small ensembles playing "head" arrangements, following the approach used with Basie's big band. The small band format lent itself to more impromptu experimentation and more extended solos than did the bigger, more highly arranged bands. The 1939 recording of "

As the 1930s turned to the 1940s, Parker went to New York as a featured player in the Jay McShann Orchestra. In New York he found other musicians who were exploring the harmonic and melodic limits of their music, including Dizzy Gillespie, a Roy Eldridge-influenced trumpet player who, like Parker, was exploring ideas based on upper chord intervals, beyond the seventh chords that had traditionally defined jazz harmony. While Gillespie was with Cab Calloway, he practiced with bassist Milt Hinton and developed some of the key harmonic and chordal innovations that would be the cornerstones of the new music; Parker did the same with bassist Gene Ramey while with McShann's group. Guitarist Charlie Christian, who had arrived in New York in 1939 was, like Parker, an innovator extending a southwestern style. Christian's major influence was in the realm of rhythmic phrasing. Christian commonly emphasized weak beats and off beats and often ended his phrases on the second half of the fourth beat. Christian experimented with asymmetrical phrasing, which was to become a core element of the new bop style.^{[citation needed]}

Bud Powell was pushing forward with a rhythmically streamlined, harmonically sophisticated, virtuosic piano style and

Drummers such as Kenny Clarke and Max Roach were extending the path set by Jo Jones, adding the ride cymbal to the high hat cymbal as a primary timekeeper and reserving the bass drum for accents. Bass drum accents were colloquially termed "bombs", which referenced events in the world outside of New York as the new music was being developed. The new style of drumming supported and responded to soloists with accents and fills, almost like a shifting call and response. This change increased the importance of the string bass. Now, the bass not only maintained the music's harmonic foundation, but also became responsible for establishing a metronomic rhythmic foundation by playing a "walking" bass line of four quarter notes to the bar. While small swing ensembles commonly functioned without a bassist, the new bop style required a bass in every small ensemble.^{[citation needed]}

The kindred spirits developing the new music gravitated to sessions at

Bebop originated as "musicians' music," played by musicians with other money-making gigs who did not care about the commercial potential of the new music. It did not attract the attention of major record labels nor was it intended to. Some of the early bebop was recorded informally. Some sessions at Minton's in 1941 were recorded, with Thelonious Monk alongside an assortment of musicians including Joe Guy, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, Don Byas, and Charlie Christian. Christian is featured in recordings from May 12, 1941 (Esoteric ES 548). Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were both participants at a recorded jam session hosted by Billy Eckstine on February 15, 1943, and Parker at another Eckstine jam session on February 28, 1943 (Stash ST-260; ST-CD-535).

Formal recording of bebop was first performed for small specialty labels, who were less concerned with mass-market appeal than the major labels, in 1944. On February 16, 1944, Coleman Hawkins led a session including Dizzy Gillespie and Don Byas, with a rhythm section consisting of Clyde Hart (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Max Roach (drums) that recorded "Woody'n You" (Apollo 751), the first formal recording of bebop. Charlie Parker and Clyde Hart were recorded in a quintet led by guitarist Tiny Grimes for the Savoy label on September 15, 1944 (Tiny's Tempo, I'll Always Love You Just the Same, Romance Without Finance, Red Cross). Hawkins led another bebop-influenced recording session on October 19, 1944, this time with Thelonious Monk on piano, Edward Robinson on bass, and Denzil Best on drums (On the Bean, Recollections, Flyin' Hawk, Driftin' on a Reed; reissue, Prestige PRCD-24124-2).

Parker, Gillespie, and others working the bebop idiom joined the

With the imminent demise of the big swing bands, bebop had become the dynamic focus of the jazz world, with a broad-based "progressive jazz" movement seeking to emulate and adapt its devices. It was to be the most influential foundation of jazz for a generation of jazz musicians.^[citation needed]

Beyond

By 1950, bebop musicians such as Clifford Brown and Sonny Stitt began to smooth out the rhythmic eccentricities of early bebop. Instead of using jagged phrasing to create rhythmic interest, as the early boppers had, these musicians constructed their improvised lines out of long strings of eighth notes and simply accented certain notes in the line to create rhythmic variety. The early 1950s also saw some smoothing in Charlie Parker's style.

During the early 1950s bebop remained at the top of awareness of jazz, while its harmonic devices were adapted to the new "cool" school of jazz led by Miles Davis and others. It continued to attract young musicians such as Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane. As musicians and composers began to work with expanded music theory during the mid-1950s, its adaptation by musicians who worked it into the basic dynamic approach of bebop would lead to the development of post-bop. Around that same time, a move towards structural simplification of bebop occurred among musicians such as Horace Silver and Art Blakey, leading to the movement known as hard bop. Development of jazz would occur through the interplay of bebop, cool, post-bop, and hard bop styles through the 1950s.

Influence

The musical devices developed with bebop were influential far beyond the bebop movement itself. "

By the mid-1950s musicians began to be influenced by music theory proposed by George Russell. Those who incorporated Russell's ideas into the bebop foundation defined the post-bop movement that later incorporated modal jazz into its musical language.

The neo-bop movement of the 1980s and 1990s revived the influence of bebop, post-bop, and hard bop styles after the free jazz and fusion eras.

Bebop style also influenced the

More recently,

See also

•  Jazz portal

References