Dizzy, Bird, and the Birth of BEBOP

[EKE BBB]

I posted this at AAJ, but I got NO REPLIES

Dizzy&Bird: the birth of BEBOP

Since we´re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Massey Hall concert, we could go back in the history of BOP, and start a discussion on the contribution of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to the origins, birth, development and extension of be-bop.

Which of them do you think was the principal architect of defining small group bebop and why?

As you can see with these quotes, there are opposite points of view:

"Dizzy was verbal, witty, extroverted, sunny of disposition - everything Charlie was not. Dizzy was accesible to everyone. You did not elevate such man to a hierarchy. Blowing musicians, who where in the position to know, all agree that Parker was the fountainhead of the new music. The flow of musical ideas suggested mysterious, primal forces"

Ross Russell, "Bird lives!"

" ... but his talent (Bird´s) was mainly to do with spur-of-the-moment instant creativity, albeit drawing upon some of the most sophisticated harmonic ideas to have been absorbed by any improvising musician up until that time. His partnership with Gillespie benefited not just from the trumpeter´s ability to match many aspects of Parker´s virtuoso playing, but also from the knack of placing that playing in a suitable framework or context. My perception of Gillespie is that he had an altogether more wide-ranging musical curiosity about the way such a context might be developed, and this led him to experiment with numerous possibilities for expanding and extending bebop -from moving forward the big-band ideas he had begun with Eckstine to experimenting wiht Afro-Cuban rhtyhms, and from further exploring the dissonant harmonies he had worked out with Monk and Dameron to creating even more experimental charts with Gil Fuller, eventually leading to his early modal experiments with George Russell.

Gillespie was often to define bebop not so much as a revolution but an evolution and in later life, when he had become a grand patriarchal figure in jazz, he could justifiably point to his own seminal role not just in one, but in several areas where jazz had evolved into a richer, more wide-ranging music, in the wake of his small group playing with Parker. By contrast, Parker´s contribution was less widely spread, limited both by his short life and the way in which he chose to live it. Neverthless, the profound influence of his solo playing on generations of saxophonists, including the main revolutionary figures who followed him, such as Coltrane and Ornette, should not be understimated"

Alyn Shipton "A new history of jazz"

"Unmatched among modernists as a blues player, Parker brought a human cry to bebop´s experimentalism - ultimately as crucial an element to the music´s acceptance as Gillespie´s showmanship

Francis Davis, "Dizzy atmosphere", NY Time Book review

What do you think?

[Soul Stream]

This seems like a job for...Jsngry. However, I'll just jump in and say in the face of all common sense (you know, it was a coming together of many people (bud, diz, monk, kenny clarke, ect). I'm just going to say it was BIRD!

Bird man, his phrasing, his bad-assness, his rhythmic command. As Dizzy once said about bebop before Bird..."We had the Music....We just didn't have the...PYROTECHNICS (til Bird showed up!).

[kenny weir]

I'm just reading - and enjoying - "The Birth of Be Bop" for the second time. The author actually makes a good case for a few others besides Bird and Dizzy, most intriguingly Kenny Clarke - at least in a rhythmic sense.

[Guest Mnytime]

As Dizzy once said about bebop before Bird..."We had the Music....We just didn't have the...PYROTECHNICS (til Bird showed up!).

I don't know about that. Satchmo was producing Pyrotechnics a good 20 years before Bird and Dizzy. It was Satchmo's Pyrotechnics that changed Jazz from the group ensemble to the solo lead.

Edited May 30, 2003 by Mnytime

[Alexander Hawkins]

I remember reading a review of that Scott DeVaux (sp? sorry!) book in the paper, and he listed those great inventors of bop, 'Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Trummy Young.'

Trummy Young?

Perhaps I don't know enough Trummy Young. I'm certainly not doing him down - I enjoy his playing a lot - but is this a simple typo by the article's author? Or does DeVaux make his case?

[jazzbo]

I think there were many fathers to the bebop litter. Pres should be mentioned, I'm not sure I could articulate specifically why, but he's in there. Dameron and McGhee. Byas. Coulson OP. . . . Maybe I'm stretching the term "father" here, maybe not. . . ?

[White Lightning]

Klook? Monk?

[Sundog]

Pres should be mentioned, I'm not sure I could articulate specifically why, but he's in there

Bird did spend his formative years prowling the streets of Kansas City soaking up the the Blues and Jazz traditions. It's pretty well documented that Bird worshiped Lester and saw him play live many times. Even going so far as to play "air sax"along with him as he performed. Some of that, had to of rubbed off and been incorporated into his style.

There was a guitarist that Bird hung around with in Kansas City that intoduced him to the use of upper extensions of chords. Can't remember his name at the moment. They sat around for hours, day in day out and worked out all the different ways to solo using these "new" chord scales. This as much as anything else may have been the spark that started bebop. IMHO Bird's phrasing (at least on ballads) and blues sensibilities come directly from Lester. Lester may just the grandpop of "BOP"

[jazzbo]

In some ways I think Tatum should be allowed some parentage as well! (If for no reason other than Bird soaked him up and learned, but for other reasons as well.)

[jazzbo]

Well then as to whether Bird or Diz was more important. . . I think Bird was a bit more important for the musical content. . . he'd soaked up the KC innovations of Pres and he'd also soaked up the harmonic inventiveness of Tatum and others. . . he was all about the music, and his dedication to his art and the virtuosity that both came from that and was a deep part of him regardless were a very important force in the new music.

Not that Diz didn't contribute musically as well (and he was also a virtuoso, and both he and Bird helped to introduce important--different---rhythmic changes, among other musical matters), but most important was Diz's contribution as a showman, as a catalyst, as a spokesperson and trendmonger in my opinion. He visually became bebop to the masses, and he had the big band and the film shorts and the jive to promote the music as "the hip new thing."

Edited May 30, 2003 by jazzbo

[jazzbo]

Monk was certainly WEIRD, but I don't think he had enough exposure to be much of an influence on public perception outside of the fanatical followers of the movement and the musicians (when these weren't one and the same!)

[Clunky]

If Bird and Diz were Bebops parents then surely Klook was the midwife. I can't

imagine bebop without Clarke. He seems to overlooked , probably because he emigrated.

Edited May 30, 2003 by Clunky

[Brad]

I think it's a mistake to try to say one or the other was more important. What was happening was that both Diz and Bird were working on the same things independent of one another for a while. It wasn't until Dizzy came through Kansas City with the band he was playing with that they realized they'd been moving along parallel paths. You can hear the styles somewhat converge on the Stash recording The Birth of Bebop, especially in Red Cross, although for your purists the sound's not that great.

Bird seems to get a little more credit than Bird but it wasn't for nothing that Bird called Dizzy "the other half of my heart." One of the reasons may be that Dizzy was exploring other things such as afrocuban rhythms and trying to maintain a big band. But in my mind, he deserves just as much credit as Bird.

[jazzbo]

You know it's funny, I've seen that "half of my heartbeat" quote attributed to Bird re: Diz, and Dix re: Bird!

[JSngry]

I think what Diz actually said was that they had the harmony, but Bird brought the phrasing. Listening to early Diz, that seems right - he's got the harmonic stuff going on, but is still phrasing very much in an Eldridgeian manner. Even on the Minton's recordings. 'Twasn't till after he hooked up w/Bird that he became the Dizzy that we know today.

I think the KC guitarist mentioned above was named Efferge Ware, but the guitarist Bid was working with in a chilli parlor (!) when he had his harmonic "breakthrough" was Biddy Fleet. Bird also credited Buster Smith quite a bit for giving him some ideas, as well as KC saxophonist Tommy Douglas, who, I think, Bird credited with hipping him to the upper extensions of chords. And of course there's Prez. There's ALWAYS Prez, thank God.

I DO think that Dizzy had a significant musical role in that he took what was essentially a jam session music and gave it viable structures that could be recorded and performed in a manner suitable for "public" consumption. DeVeaux goes into this, and it's no small feat - consider the problems that post-Ornette jazz has had finding a "general" audience, at least partially to it not having recognizable frameworks to put around the improvisations (just an observation, definitely NOT a value judgement).

Dizzy, however, credits Monk quite heavily as being one of, if not THE main cat to come up with new changes and substitutions. But Monk was never in the public eye until the Riverside years. Before that, he was less than a rumor to the jazz public at large.

You want to throw out another name that made a contribution early one? Ok, here's one - Budd Johnson.

Trummy Young shows up on a lot of those "swing-to-bop" dates, those fascinating documents where you can hear the music's evolution in progress. Also heard on more than a few of those dates - Billy Kyle and Don Byas.

Tatum, Hawk, Roy, any of the Swing Era musicians who were dealing with harmonic complexities beyond the norms of the day, ALL deserve credit as formative influences (as does Duke, for both his music AND perhaps even more importantly, his ATTITUDE). The music WAS going to change, WAS going to get more "complicated", WAS going to become more "purely musical and less "functional". The indicators, musical and social alike, are all there to be seen by the historical eye. And the music actually took several different routes in this direction apart from bebop. But in my opinion, it is Bird who was the figure who crossed all the "T"s and dotted all the "I's about what the music that came to be known as bebop would be at its core, simply because he defined the rhythm, the phrasing. You can, and DID, have cats doing all kinds of harmonic and structural voodoo, but it ain't "bebop" if it ain't got that bob-and-weave phrasology to it, and by all acounts, that came purely from Bird.

But really, this is the kind of "bar talk" that is fun to engage in, but ultimately proves nothing - all jazz, including "bebop", is really a collective tale, told in a collective tongue spoken in an infinite number of dialects. Anybody, ANYBODY, who told a personal tale that was heard positively by other musicians deserves credit as an influence, and I'm willing to wager dollars to doughnuts that there's more than a few who never recorded, and even some whose names are TOTALLY lost to history. So if I name Bird as the "main" formulator of "bebop", that in actuality has about as much meaning as if I say that the tree on the east side of my front yard is more "important" than the one on the west, if you know what I mean.

And hey - shouldn't the material (either the LP or, ideally, the more complete CD version) on Stash's BIRTH OF THE BEBOP be made available in perpetuity?

[jazzbo]

I certainly agree with your words Jim. Also agree that the Stash cd, or the Master of Jazz first three or four volumes of Charlie Parker, should be available in JRG remasterings of the source material using DigitalK2 in perpetuity!

[montg]

I think it's a mistake to try to say one or the other was more important

This is probably a case where the sum is greater than the parts. Diz's contribution is enhanced by Bird's and vice versa.

"Woody 'n you" is sometimes referred to as the first bebop recording for a record label. Dizzy bursts out for his solo like a supernova. The speed, harmony, and control in the upper register are beautiful. Hawk almost sounds flustered or angry when he returns for a final bar or two.

[Sundog]

Where do you all think Charlie Christian fits into the equation? He certainly is regarded in some circles as one of the first bebop musicians.

Also wondering if anyone thinks "western swing" musicians had any influence on bebop? I hear western swing elements in Charlie's playing. I imagine that Charlie must have been exposed to a lot of good W.S. growing up. To bring it back full circle, I've always found it interesting that Bird really enjoyed western swing music. But then again, what's not to like? Good music is good music.

P.S. "Bob Wills is Still The King"

[Brad]

As a further elaboration and not to diminish Dizzy's role here, in Ira Gitler's Masters of Bebop, by 1939 Dizzy was moving away from the Eldridge school and between 1939 and 1943 was, according to Milt Hinton, trying for harmonic evolution and setting the basis for modern jazz, a/k/a bebop. On the Jerry Newman recordings on Esoteric, on Stardust, Dizzy was making the "harmonic evolution" and although the Eldridge presence was still there, he was injecting nuances that were soon to be widely imitated. According to Gitler, during this period Kenny Clarke felt that Dizzy was the most advanced harmonically of the Minton regulars (which included Monk) and pointed out Dizzy was the first to play How High the Moon in other than its regular form (which latter became the anthem of 52nd Street).

When Dizzy and Bird finally did meet (the date is open to speculation but now believed by some to be in 1940), Dizzy said that he was astounded by what Bird could do, the way he assembled notes together. Dizzy had been an Eldridge fan until then but was moving on. He said that he and Bird were moving in practically the same direction.

Gitler goes on to quote Leonard Feather to say that Dizzy's half chorus on Jersey Bounce when he was with the Les Hite band in 1942 was probably the first example of pure bebop on record.

When Bird said that Dizzy was the other half of his heartbeat, he was probably referring to, among other things, their co-inventorship of modern jazz (without any slight to Klook, Monk and others who pushed it along).

Edited May 31, 2003 by Brad

[Jazzmoose]

P.S. "Bob Wills is Still The King"

Amen, brother!!

[Jazz]

Okay, a quick question for those in the know: wasn't it Bird that thought of playing his solos based off the extensions rather than the primary harmonic notes? I remember reading that somewhere, but I know there's alot of inaccurate jazz history out there...

[Sundog]

Okay, a quick question for those in the know: wasn't it Bird that thought of playing his solos based off the extensions rather than the primary harmonic notes?

I think that was one of his many improvisional strategies. Next time your bored write out all the notes in a 13th chord, include all the upper extensions 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Sit back and take a good look at all those notes. There are lot's of other wonderful sounds available in the upper extensions. If your really bored write out all the inversions of that same 13th chord. Look for all the other chords/scales that are buried in that 13th chord. That might start to give you some insight into what Bird was doing.

[EKE BBB]

I would emphasize Coleman Hawkins as an influential musician. Do you remember the session with "Disorder at the border"?. Alyn Shipton adduces that though it was a recording released as Coleman Hawkins´, the real leader (and arranger) of the session was Dizzy. But Hawk was always there, with the young lions, and his advanced harmonic concepts DID FIT well with the new music!

[EKE BBB]

...and talking about tenor boppers, Wardell Gray must be included here IMHO!

He was very influenced by Bird (and by Prez), but he got his own phrasing and was one of greatest bebop innovators on tenor till his death in 1955

[EKE BBB]

On the other hand....let´s talk about Charlie Parker

Bird conceived every solo as a narrative thing, as he said: "Ever since I´ve heard music, I´ve always thought it should be very clean, very precise...as clean as possible, anyway...and more or less to the people, something they could understand, something that was beautiful....there´s definitely stories and stories and stories that can be told in the musical idiom...It can be very descriptive in all kinds of ways, you know, all walks of life"

I´ve always been impressed by his technique and his speed and his creativeness in every solo he played! I´ve read his technique has the technical name of "cento" in musicology. Thomas Owens has identified over 100 of the different motifs that Bird most commonly used in creating his solos, and he put them together in a new and completely different way for every performance

Some may say Bird was kind of mystified: his early death, his drug abuse, his chaotic character...

But I think he was one of the greatest genius of 20th century music. Phil Woods said Bird "was the Beethoven of our time". I don´t know, Duke and Satchmo were there too!