The Birth of Bebop Scott Deveaux

[Simon Weil]

In a certain sense it does seem like Dizzy and Bird "descended from the clouds" with this stuff. I don't mean, necessarily, in a technical sense (in which regard I'm hardly qualified to comment) - but in a kind of vibe way. I mean "where did all this stuff come from?" is kind of my first response to bop, in that it just feels so very different from all that came before it in Jazz.

But there is a parallel that can be made - and that's to Film Noir, also a distinctive genre within its form. It's the unease, the darkness - and, I guess, the access to strange and not terribly pleasant depths that gets me. Both of these are products of 40s (late 40s for Film Noir) America - and, because I see a parallel in them....

Well, it's kind of hard to see bop as a response to elements only occuring in black society. I know Film Noir comes about, in part, from the infusion of Expressionist elements (e.g. from 20s German cinema) and Bop also seems to involve the greater absorbion of "serious"(Like Bird liked Stravinsky) elements - and I'm just wondering if this doesn't have to do with American culture maturing (or attempting to do so) by looking at darker, deeper forces within itself.

And Black people stating their case at the forefront of that.

Simon Weil

[David Ayers]

A good book, and I don't think anyone should be put off from reading it. Good books often make you feel you know better than the author.

[Simon Weil]

Lazaro ...n the realm of sensibility, Pres' music in effect gives us a divided and often beleaguered soul -- an image of "the sensitive at the hand of society," as Terry Martin once put it -- that feeds directly into bop's world of semi-fractured obliqueness, while Hawkins' music, for all his openness to certain kinds of experimentation, was in terms of sensibility as invulnerable as a rock and perhaps was even "designed" to be that way.

I like this quote from Martin Williams:

"[Young's] temperament was not universal. Indeed one sometimes feels he was gaily gentle to the point of deliberate innocence and innocent to the point of self-delusion. Yet his musical personality is so strong that, while one is in its presence, little else exists. He did create a world in which one can believe fully, but when his personal world came in touch with the real one, we know the results might be tragic."

The Jazz Tradition 1983 ed p133

In a way, then, you can say that both Hawkins and Young kept the world at bay: Hawkins a seemingly relentless juggernaut of creation - invulnerable like that - and Young creating this special little world of his. I mean, aren't seeming invulnerability and ultra-sensitivity two parts of the same thing?

And what if they were both responses to the 30s? - after all that was what popular art was about then - keeping the world out.

Some political philosophies too.

Simon Weil

[John L]

Larry: Thanks for your (as always) very articulate and insightful comments.

Yes, I thought that the racial angle in the book was an interesting one, but I also recall feeling that he may have taken it too far, i.e. a case of trying to make everything fit into a single "black and white" thesis.

[Fer Urbina]

Larry, what airchecks of the Eckstine band exist? All I have is a single CD with 11 tracks, AIRMAIL SPECIAL on the Drive Archive label, which purports to be from February and March of 1945. Are there more?

From Jazzdisco.org

Billy Eckstine and his Orchestra

Gail Brockman, Boonie Hazel, Shorty McConnell, Fats Navarro (tp) Joe Taswell Baird, Chippy Outcalt, Howard Scott, Gerald Valentine (tb) Bill Frazier, John Jackson (as) Gene Ammons (ts) Budd Johnson (ts, arr) Leo Parker (bars) Connie Wainwright (g) Tommy Potter (b) Art Blakey (d) Billy Eckstine, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan (vo) Tadd Dameron, John Malachi, Jerry Valentine (arr)

AFRS Jubilee broadcast, Los Angeles, CA, February, March, 1945

Blue 'n' Boogie (theme) Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

Blowin' the Blues Away Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Almanac QSR 2415

'Deed I Do Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

I Wanna Talk About You Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Xanadu 207; Almanac QSR 2415

Blue 'n' Boogie (theme) Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

- -

Together Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Almanac QSR 2415

Mean to Me -

Without a Song Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Xanadu 207; Almanac QSR 2415

Mr. Chips Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Almanac QSR 2415

Blue 'n' Boogie (theme) Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

- -

Air Mail Special Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Almanac QSR 2415

Don't Blame Me -

If That's the Way You Feel Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Xanadu 207; Almanac QSR 2415

Blue 'n' Boogie (theme) Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

- -

Opus X Spotlite (E) SPJ 100; Almanac QSR 2415

Love Me or Leave Me -

One O'Clock Jump (theme) Spotlite (E) SPJ 100

All these plus three more takes of Blue'N'Boogie (theme) are included in a Japanese reissue from the mid-1990s (Somethin'else Classics TCOJ-5568). CD title is "Billy Eckstine - Together".

F

Edited April 20, 2006 by Fer Urbina

[AllenLowe]

yes, thanks Larry for those insightful comments, as I have not read the book in some time and must admit that not all of that had occurred to me - it does illustrate a problem of history (especially cultural history) being written so long after the fact. I have seen quotes from black musicians like Max Roach describing bebop as a taking back of the music - but ALWAYS from the perspective of 30+ years, a kind of post-era rationale that I am somewhat skeptical about. On the other hand, there was a new racial consciousness coming to the fore (hence, among other things, the adopting by a few musicians of Moslem names) , but I wish there was more contemporary documentation. Now, one might (correctly) make the argument that mass media of the time were not going to write about racial consciousness, and that few musicians would discuss such things publicly. The reality is that African Americans do not speak with white people about many things political. So we should not discount that aspect, I just wish there were more accurate ways of documenting it, WITHOUT the kind of post-1960s militant consciousness that so distorts the reality and the rhetoric -

Edited April 20, 2006 by AllenLowe

[Simon Weil]

Now, one might (correctly) make the argument that mass media of the time were not going to write about racial consciousness, and that few musicians would discuss such things publicly. The reality is that African Americans do not speak with white people about many things political. So we should not discount that aspect, I just wish there were more accurate ways of documenting it, WITHOUT the kind of post-1960s militant consciousness that so distorts the reality and the rhetoric -

Well, I don't know...This is probably BS but...Black culture hasn't historically been a written one - As I understand it. I mean much of Jazz "teaching" is word of mouth. I guess there must be newspapers, maybe recorded sermons, stuff from nascent Civil Rights type movements..But how much? I just wonder if you're not better off looking for non-written sources - I mean contemporary blues etc. (with written lyrics) which might evoke black consciousness from a different angle.

Isn't it often the case of putting your resources in the right place with research?

I'll stop sucking eggs.

Simon Weil

Edited April 20, 2006 by Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

well, yes and no - it is true that the kind of direct protest we may be looking for might manifest itself in songs within certain styles of music - but this is unlikely with bebop, uinless we can find Bird's version of "Whitey You Suck and I'm Taking My Music Back." These musicians were quite personally articulate, and I will tell you that of the beboppers I knew who were really primary sources - Curley Russell, Tommy Potter, Al Haig, Dave Schildkraut, Duke Jordan, and more - not a one, black or white, ever mentioned the possibility of bebop as protest - so I would be interest in contemporary quotes that indicated anything of the kind -

[ghost of miles]

I think it's Deveaux who quotes Mary Lou Williams quoting Monk as saying in 1941, "We're going to create something that they can't steal." But when did MLW say this?

Every generation wants to forge its own style. I have little doubt, though, that certain issues of race and alienation also played at least a subconscious role in the rise of bebop. And I doubt that many black musicians would have been willing to go on record in the mainstream jazz media of the time with any such quotes. Cultural & career considerations aside, such overt declarations in a public setting seem somewhat at odds with the coded language of bop. (What Monk might have said to Mary Lou in private is another matter.)

[AllenLowe]

exactly - though I would be a bit skeptical of that ML Williams quote - much as I admire her, her own historical recountings are fraught with "I was there" as the music went through cataclysmic changes. Still, one never knows...

[JSngry]

Well, she was there, wasn't she?

And I'd not take the lack of contemporaneous, specific quotes as an indicator of anything, really. After all, where would you find them? One thing that Deveaux does an excellent job of illuminating is how driven that Dizzy was as a businessman. And what kind of a businessman would make a quote such as you're looking for about his "product" when doing so would surely be commercial suicide.

The truth, I believe, is in-between. Namely, that African-American be-boppers were operating with a conscious intent of making a social statement, and that it was recieved as such at the time by those with ears to hear it. I can't believe that everybody's drawing these conlusions andtelling their stories purely after the fact.

But otoh, I also believe that apart from that angle, this was still music (difficult music at that), and that race was only part of the whole deal. White musicians were there almost from the beginning, and they were there because they could play the music once it had germenated to the point where it was the province of more than just a handful of innovators. You don't necessarily have to share (or even know about) the vision behind the message to participate in the dissemenation of the message once it's begun to be codified.

If we can think of music as "words", or "stories", then surely we can agree that the exact same words and stories can have different layers of meanings, all (many, anyway) valid in their own right. That's one of the keys of great art, I think - it has not one meaning, but many coexistening within.

[Fer Urbina]

I don't know how reliable is MLW as a source (have read somewhere of doubts about the famous cutting contest in KC 1933 between Hawk, Prez, et al) but that thing about "creating a music they cannot steal" has never convinced me: for starters, is it really possible to create art with that aim? And then, was there c. 1941 a collective consciousness among blacks that they were being robbed by whites? (apparently Eckstine thought along those lines re: Herman, but that was later) And then it should be considered how early George Wallington and Al Haig started playing with Dizzy (and I don't think having white people in a mainly black combo was the easiest option, even then.) Also, Dizzy seems to have been a somewhat compulsive teacher, very keen on letting musicians (including whites) know what he was doing, what the pianists and drummers should do in his musical context...

All that said, it'd be fair to say that Monk himself did create a music that nobody can steal. But regardless of race, class or gender.

F

Edited April 21, 2006 by Fer Urbina

[jazzbo]

was there c. 1941 a collective consciousness among blacks that they were being robbed by whites?

I'd say there was probably a sentiment along these lines shared by more than a few.

Edited April 21, 2006 by jazzbo

[AllenLowe]

I don't doubt that African Americans (musicians and non-musicians) had an active consciousness of racial issues and of being exploited/cheated by whites - I just do not believe all of ML Williams statements - they are just too prescient, too prophetic, she is just always in the right place at the right time, steering the music and musicians in historically correct directions. It's just too convenient. And I do not think musicians were, at the time, making any kind of conscious social statement, though one can, certainly, in retrospect, see the social connections (on the other hand one might make the argument that artistic changes/modernist movements ARE social movements, though in a different way than Deveaux represents). The truth is that we have no primary-source proof of these intentions, and people like Max Roach spoke of the idea of taking back the music too many years later for us to know the veracity of the statements - and, as I said, they were too couched in post-1960s rhetoric for me to believe them -

[Simon Weil]

well, yes and no - it is true that the kind of direct protest we may be looking for might manifest itself in songs within certain styles of music - but this is unlikely with bebop, uinless we can find Bird's version of "Whitey You Suck and I'm Taking My Music Back." These musicians were quite personally articulate, and I will tell you that of the beboppers I knew who were really primary sources - Curley Russell, Tommy Potter, Al Haig, Dave Schildkraut, Duke Jordan, and more - not a one, black or white, ever mentioned the possibility of bebop as protest - so I would be interest in contemporary quotes that indicated anything of the kind -

Well, I mean, I don't think it's directly protest. But related....on the question of protest. This is from Invisible Man, which is later, but not much later:

"I am an invisible man...I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me...I am not complaining, nor am I protesting (underlining added) either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist...It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time..."

The Invisible (Black) Man chooses not to protest, but instead chooses to "live in a hole...in a state of hibernation." And:

"My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light....Perhaps you think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form.."

To interpret this (validly or otherwise), a man who is told by society he has no value - as blacks were told - and who is unable to protest because it is ineexpedient, needs something to convince him he is still alive - light in the darkness. In that sense, maybe, producing a new form of culture - bop - might have convinced those blacks that produced it that they were still alive, did exist, despite what the world told them.

In that sense, bop might have been produced as an alternative to protesting - but, because it was produced thus, it could later have been, legitimately, picked up on as a source of Black identity.

Like whites could take everything from blacks but not that.

Simon Weil

Edited April 21, 2006 by Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

I agree that the end result may certainly have been to develop a musical form, bebop, whose origins were uncontestably African American (as earlier jazz was) - I just think that the imperative to create this was artistic and not racial/social -

[David Ayers]

Ellison regarded bebop as a betrayal of black music, rejecting the cult of Charlie Parker's music as romantically identified with his suffering as an addict.

[JSngry]

I agree that the end result may certainly have been to develop a musical form, bebop, whose origins were uncontestably African American (as earlier jazz was) - I just think that the imperative to create this was artistic and not racial/social -

Seems to me that any creative process is inextricably tied to the process of self-definition (have you read Graham Locke's Blutopia? His chapter on Ellington speaks directly to what we're talking about here. And I can't believe that Ellington had a level of racial/social awareness that was unique only to himself). So how can anybody but an idiot savant (of sorts) "define" themselves apart from a social context w/o being at least partially conscious of it? I don't see it...

And along those same lines, the white musicians who participated in the early formation/codification of bop were surely aware at some level of what they were doing, which was, among other things, rejecting the notion of the jazz musician as "pure" entertainer. Which is not to say that they were trying to not be "entertaining", just that they were standing up to offer a music that demanded an engagement from the audience that went beyond the quick & easy spoonfeeding of the familiar. For a white cat, this notion of "artist" might well have come more "naturally", since the "European" concept of being an "artist" was already part of the "white mindset" to one degree or another.

The image of Bird & Dizzy cribbing out of exercise and etude books between sets while with the Eckstine band certainly is that of a "purely musical" process. The image of performing this new music in public and having to deal with white agents, writers, club owners, etc. in order to "get over" certainly makes me think that even if the very first impulse to create this new music was totally without a racial/social element (and I don't ahve too much of a problem at all with believing that) , it didn't take very long for one to come out. And I do mean to come out, not to be created.

Like I said, many layers at once, and the existence of one doen't rule out the existence of another one.

[AllenLowe]

I agree in almost ever aspect of that - the only thing I would add is that every great musician I have known appeared to me to operate, in terms of initial inspiration, from a part of the self that was not socially defined but more from a very deep and complicated but inter-connected series of intellectual/intuitive impulses - I believe that that is where it starts - once it surfaces, however, social context immediately mixes and interacts - of course, all of this is like trying to separate intellect and emotion, idea and feeling, etc etc, a largely futile exercise in which we (meaning I) end up trying to prove the unproveable, which is where creativity comes from-

Edited April 21, 2006 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Exactly, and to that end, the question of when "social significance" began to enter into the "bebop consciousness" would probably have to be "as soon as it started to be played as anything other than a wholly private music", which was pretty early on, since Monroe's & Minton's were only "semi-private".

Now the form that that "social significance" took no doubt varied widely from person to person, but I ahve to think that it was there in some form in darn near everybody who was involved, even the white cats. Don't see how it couldn't be.

That's what I think anyway.

[Simon Weil]

Ellison regarded bebop as a betrayal of black music, rejecting the cult of Charlie Parker's music as romantically identified with his suffering as an addict.

Yeah, but the point is not that Ellison like the result but that he identified a possible mindset from which the music might have been created - and identified it as existing amongst blacks at this time.

Or not.

Simon Weil

Edited April 21, 2006 by Simon Weil

[Larry Kart]

I've always liked the point made by the late British saxophonist Bruce Turner at the end of this passage from a piece I wrote back in the '80s:

One doesn't want to describe bebop as more of a social than a musical event. But no matter how striking the music that emerged in the 1940s, and despite its roots in previous jazz styles, the emotional tone of the music had changed. The forthright quest for freedom that [Ralph] Ellison had found in the jazz of the twenties and thirties was transformed into a rebellion of romantic despair, an attempt to evade or tune out the “honking” of the world. And when that need to escape was combined with drugs, a great many players destroyed themselves. “We were pilgrims,” said pianist Hampton Hawes, “the freaks of the forties and fifties--playing bebop, going through a lot of changes and getting strung out in the process. And our rebellion was a lonely thing.”

Obviously there had been a shift in values--in the music and in the society, too. And among those who prefer the orderliness and optimism of older jazz styles to the hectic beauties of bebop, one often hears the complaint that none of this need to have occurred. At one time, so the argument goes, jazz musicians were content to think of themselves as entertainers, not self-conscious artists. If the practitioner of modern jazz wants to please himself and his peers first and the audience second, if at all, he must endure the consequences of this unrealistic, willful act.

The problem with that argument, though, as British saxophonist Bruce Turner says in his whimsically titled autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music, “is that scarcely any jazz musicians are able to recognize this picture of themselves. There are some jazzmen who are great entertainers. Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Lionel Hampton come immediately to mind. But they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part those of us who play jazz for a living do not know any way of entertaining an audience other than by making the best music we are capable of…. The ‘jazz is entertainment’ theory is only about money, when you boil it down. Jazz finds itself sponsored by the entertainment industry, and in return the latter feels entitled to demand its pound of flesh. Fair enough, but why in heaven's name confuse the issue? The distinction between what is done for love and what is done for quick cash is an obvious one.”

[montg]

And in the realm of sensibility, Pres' music in effect gives us a divided and often beleaguered soul -- an image of "the sensitive at the hand of society," as Terry Martin once put it -- that feeds directly into bop's world of semi-fractured obliqueness

This analysis makes so much sense to me! It opens up for me a completely new way of seeing the link between Pres and modern jazz.

[Larry Kart]

Glad to be of service, as they say. And I'm sure Terry Martin would agree.

[Lazaro Vega]

Yeah, Bijou is a classic.

So for comparison's sake the way Eckstine's trumpet section dives in and out of the ensemble on "Blowin' The Blues Away" with the way the First Herd's trumpet section take it up stairs on "Caldonia" are both, in their own way, out of Gillespie.

That both the first Herd and Gillespie's big bands had vibes players in them, Norvo and Jackson, is kind of odd.

I LOVE that Spotlight reissue of the Eckstine Jubilee broadcasts. In fact need a new lp as the one in hand is worn white (from toting it back and forth to work). The fidelity on those broadcasts gives a clearer picture of the band's tremendous dynamics. Though the Savoy re-issues are full of great solos by Ammons and Gordon, two leading tenors of the era coming out of Pres (sound-wise, anyway, don't know about extra-musical influences). And the occasional Fats Navarro turn lights up those muddy, cheap sounding 78's.