Charlie Parker

[Jazzmoose]

Wow...I can't believe there isn't a thread for this box already, but I swear: I looked!

Anyway, I remember hearing from all kinds of people that one of the reasons bebop came about was because jazz musicians were tired of just being background music for dancing and instead wanted to create art (with apologies to Bev!), if you know what I mean. But what's kicking me in the head about this set is how hard it is to keep your feet still with this set! This music is absolutely perfect for dancing; what's the deal??

[mmilovan]

Yes, it is usual story.

But, the reality probably was a bit different - they didn't dance to be-bop because of high tax for dancing in clubs.

And that whole thing about creating art instead of pop music I dislike. What musicians before be-bop played? Was that music bad because of no art component in it?

[Jazzmoose]

Yeah, it sounds like a story concocted by an instructor after the fact, doesn't it?

[Harold_Z]

IMHO , the transition from "small band swing" to "bebop" was a lot smoother than the view that most books give us. I think BEBOP was primarily a marketing term.

Yes - Bird and Diz were innovators of the highest order, but the music was firmly rooted in what went before. Listening to many things from the late 30s through to the mid 40s, it's difficult for me to really find a definitive line separating the two. I'm speaking of things like Coleman Hawkins small group stuff, the Red Norvo date with Bird and Diz, some of the things on the HRS label, etc.

[Brad]

Harold alludes to this but jazz being so young then, people were constantly innovating trying out different things, especially the younger musicians, like Dizzy, usually after hours in famed places like Minton's. But I'm sure this was happening in many of the big cities. Another factor was that for the younger players, swing had become formulaic; a lot of bands were copying other bands and in some views it was probably getting boring and musicians wanted to extend the music to try certain things. In Bird's case, after hearing Cherokee, he said that he kept hearing things in his head that he couldn't get out; you can hear it coming out in certain of his solos with Jay McShann (look for the cd, Blues from Kansas City, originally on Decca, re-issued on GRD; Spotlite also did one called Early Bird, equally amazing). The culmination was Koko, set to Cherokee changes. When Bird and Diz got together, the rest is history.

Edited October 12, 2003 by Brad

[ghost of miles]

I think it was Leroi Jones who wrote that when he & his friends heard white people complain that they couldn't dance to bebop, they would say, "You mean you can't dance to it."

I've got almost all of the material on the Dial/Savoy box but keep thinking that I should get it anyway... I'll have to look around for a decent used set.

[Soul Stream]

I found this box the other day at a used CD store and picked it up. Glad I did. This is such compelling music. To have it laid out in the chronological fashion that they've done is nice. The sound is WONDERFUL. Bird's horn sounds full of life.

I've only recently, in the last 2-3 years, been able to appreciate the depth of genius Bird's music has.

To have this library of knowledge sitting on my shelf.... It makes me feel guilty I don't play it all day, everyday.

[ghost of miles]

Well, when it comes to the question of, "If you could listen only to one set/era of one artist's music for the rest of your life, what would it be?", the Parker Dial/Savoys give Ellington's Blanton-Webster band some pretty stiff competition as far as I'm concerned, since they'd also top my "most listened to" poll.

[JSngry]

If there was a revolution (and there was), it wasn't about "we don't want anybody to dance to and otherwise enjoy this music", it was about "we are most assuredly NOT the grinning, subservient Negroes you've gotten accustomed to seeing on stage who are there to cater to your every inane whim. We are serious musicians making serious music." In other worfds - we are fully adult MEN & WOMEN functioning as such. Deal with it, because that's the way it's gonna be.

Big difference, I think. Hell, MONK danced like a motherf---er!

The only time you don't dance is when you're afraid, or otherwise crippled. The actual music of bebop might have scared some people (mostly musicians, I'd guess), but I'd imagine that the IMPLICATIONS of it scared even more. I mean, if you were into the "comfort zone" of "Swing" and weren't really paying attention to the world around you (including the musical rumblings, a lot of which were missed due to the recording ban), a record like "Shaw 'Nuff" or "KoKo" must have sounded like a cattle prod up the ass, and not TOO many people are going to feel comforted by that (unless they had requested it...). "These Crazy Colored Folk! What the hell are they DOING? I CAN'T DANCE TO IT!"

No, mutthaphukka, you don't WANT to dance to it, because it's not all about YOU anymore. It's not gonna be all YOUR world anymore. Make room for Daddy. Who plays the horn. In a Caddy, no less.

"Things To Come", indeed!

And yeah, GOM, that is Jones' quote. One of my favorites, along with Cecil's "I don't play for the people who leave, I play for the people who STAY."

[Chuck Nessa]

You go Jim!

[jazzbo]

That's all nicely said, but I'm not sure that was what it was all about.

But no matter. It happened. Thank God. We have this music to enjoy for as long as we want to.

[JSngry]

No, that's definitely not what it was ALL about, but that was a part of it. Not the actual musical developments, but the actual presentation and "attitude" that created the popular perception (check out the Life magazine spread, preferably in its original context for maximum "flavor". Time also had a piece that was similar in message, but w/o all the photos. Guess the Luce folks couldn't dance to it either, which wouldn't surprise me in the least) that this was some kind of "exotic" "cult" music that could not be enjoyed by "regular" people. Too many first hand accounts (and that video clip of Earl Wilson w/Bird and Diz) to deny that. "Mainstream America" was getting it's first postwar look at the "New Negro", and THIS time, the attitude stuck, gained momentum, and changed a nation. The resistance to that change and the resistance to early Bebop is linked, I believe, although it would be a huge oversimplification, an outright error even, to say that they were one and the same. Bubbles Whitman was no longer needed, shut my mouf, and for that we should all, especially "Diddy Galippy", be glad! :D

The music itself, of course, wasn't really "about" this, it was "about" a natural evolution as the musicians gained greater tools and knowledge, and a similar music to bebop was going to happen, inevitably. Living music always evolves. But I do think that the socially aware (perhaps even at times "militant") attitude of the early bebop musicians, and their unwillingness to mute it TOO much for consumption by the extant entertainment machine gave the music a character that a lot of people on both sides of the fence picked up on. How that attitude was recieved very often seemed to depend on what side of the fence you were on. We as a culture saw it again with the free jazz of the 1960s, as well as with the rock-and-roll of the 50s. Maybe even again, although from a totally 180-degree different perspective, in the Punk of the 70s. Music rarely evolves in a social vaccuum. I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that music is first and foremost a weapon of social change, but I do believe that any music that exists in a social environment cannot help but be affected by that environment to some degree, and can sometimes even serve as a catalyst within that environment. I think that the full reality of bebop is one such instance. Developing the music is just part of it. After you got it, what do you do with it, and how? Do you function within the status quo, do you go counter to it, do you seek to subvert or to overthrow, what DO you do? If you percieve yourself and your music as STRICTLY a product for disposable consumption, well, the world's pretty much your oyster if you get the right hookup. Otherwise...

Not that the boppers were the first to take such a stance of self-respect, FAR from it. But I do beleive that they were considerably less subversive and more directly revolutionary than nearly all their predecessors as it came to seeing their "place", and proceeded accordingly. Some, like Dizzy, were superb manipulators of the system. Others, like Monk, jsut didn't give a rat's ass and figured the the truth would win in the end. Most didn't have all the tools to function as independent businesspeople and ended up as revolutionaries in search of a gig. And some just said "fuck it" and killed themselves one way or the other at various paces. None of that has anything to do with the music, but it has everything to do with the musicians, and if it's wrong to make those things out to be one and the same all the time, it's also wrong to attempt to disregard the various overlapa. Lots of grey in this picture, LOTS of grey.

So what was it ALL about? Life, I guess. Nothing more than that.

But that's enough, ain't it?

[Soul Stream]

I'm not so sure it was about anything other than some genius musicians creating. I don't put their strides above those of Louis Amrstrong or Prez. Just like I don't put added value on Miles' or Shorter's or Andrew Hill's contribution.

It all seems like a coherent timeline. Putting added value on extra-musical events or social pressures for the birth of Bebop seems after-the-fact and objectifying. I don't think Parker had anything more to say socially than Coleman Hawkins or Lee Morgan for that matter.

It's all expression. Because rap, on the surface, is angrier and more politically aware than R&B or Rock doesn't make it so. Just like the rapid-fire musicality of Bebop doesn't make it more politiclaly relevant than the music of other time periods.

...as I look down, Jim has alread redressed his post. So he's already said much of the same thing.

[JSngry]

Well hey, the gist of the original post seemed to be "why did people say that you couldn't dance to bebop?", a question that seemed more about public perception of the music than the music itself, so my comments were made in that context. If anybody wants to think that there was not a xocially relevant "angle" to early bebop, not necessarily the music itself, but to the overall "culture" surrounding it, the extra-musical environment from which it sprang (and by extension crept into the music at least, AT LEAST, subliminally), they can be my guest, but I don't think the evidence supports such a position.

[Harold_Z]

>>"why did people say that you couldn't dance to bebop?<<

I'm not quite old enough to say that this is the way I remember it, but I think this a possible and probable scenario. Maybe somebody just a little older can put their two cents in and verify or dispute my point.

When Bebop came along the chief competitor (espescially in the black community) was what we now call R&B, but at the time was called ROCK AND ROLL. The R&B, with the drummer hitting 2 & 4 on the snare all the way through, spelled out the groove for the dancers. Obviously, to the musically astute, the groove was there with Bop also, but for the less astute, the BIG BEAT, as it was then called, was easier to dance and more acsesssible - the backbeat spelled it all out. To us Jazzers, Swing progressed to Bebop and Diz, Bird, Fats Navarro, etc. For Black America Swing morphed to Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, etc - for White America it morphed to Pattie Page, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, etc. Again - the foregoing is as far as the general public was concerned. True Jazzers then, as now, were a minority. Maybe not as much of a minority as now, but a minority none the less.