Jazz

F

Interplay with Popular and Classical Music

The pioneering efforts of Armstrong, Ellington, Henderson, and others made jazz a dominant influence on American music during the 1920s and 1930s. Popular musicians such as bandleader Paul Whiteman used some of the more obvious rhythmic and melodic devices of jazz, although with less improvisational freedom and skill than were displayed in the music of the major jazz players. Attempting to fuse jazz with light classical music, Whiteman’s orchestra also premiered jazzy symphonic pieces by American composers such as George Gershwin. Closer to the authentic jazz tradition of improvisation and solo virtuosity was the music played by the bands of Benny Goodman (who used many of Henderson’s arrangements), Gene Krupa, and Harry James.

Since the days of ragtime, jazz composers had admired classical music. A number of swing-era musicians “jazzed the classics” in works such as “Bach Goes to Town” (written by Alec Wilder and recorded by Goodman) and “Ebony Rhapsody” (recorded by Ellington and others). Composers of concert music, in turn, paid tribute to jazz in works such as Contrasts (1938, commissioned by Goodman) by Hungarian Béla Bartók and Ebony Concerto (1945, commissioned by Woody Herman) by Russian-born Igor Stravinsky. Other composers, such as Aaron Copland, an American, and Darius Milhaud, a Frenchman, acknowledged the spirit of jazz in their works.

G

The 1940s and the Postwar Decades

The preeminently influential jazz musician of the 1940s was Charlie Parker, who became the leader of a new style known usually as bebop, but also as rebop or bop. Like Lester Young, Charlie Christian, and other outstanding soloists, Parker had played with big bands. During World War II (1939-1945), however, the wartime economy and changes in audience tastes had driven many big bands out of business. Their decline, combined with the radically new bebop style, amounted to a revolution in the jazz world.

Bebop was still based on the principle of improvisation over a chord progression, but the tempos were faster, the phrases longer and more complex, and the emotional range expanded to include more unpleasant feelings than before. Jazz musicians became aware of themselves as artists and made little effort to sell their wares by adding vocals, dancing, and comedy as their predecessors had.

---

---

At the center of the ferment stood Parker, who could play anything on the saxophone, in any tempo and in any key. He created beautiful melodies that were related in advanced ways to the underlying chords, and his music possessed endless rhythmic variety. Parker’s frequent collaborators were trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, known for his formidable speed and range and daring harmonic sense, and pianist Earl “Bud” Powell and drummer Max Roach, both leaders in their own right. Also highly regarded were pianist-composer Thelonious Monk and trumpeter Fats Navarro. Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was associated early in her career with bebop musicians, particularly Gillespie and Parker.

The late 1940s brought forth an explosion of experimentation in jazz. Modernized big bands led by Gillespie and Stan Kenton flourished alongside small groups with innovative musicians such as pianist Lennie Tristano. Most of these groups drew ideas from 20th-century pieces by masters such as Bartók and Stravinsky.

The most influential of the midcentury experiments with classically influenced jazz were the recordings made in 1949 and 1950 by an unusual nonet led by Charlie Parker’s protégé, a young trumpeter named Miles Davis. The written arrangements, by Davis and others, were soft in tone but highly complex. Many groups adopted this “cool” style, especially on the West Coast, and so it became known as West Coast jazz. Refined by players such as tenor saxophonists Zoot Sims and Stan Getz and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, West Coast jazz flourished throughout the 1950s. Also in the 1950s pianist Dave Brubeck (a student of Milhaud’s), with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, achieved popularity with his blend of classical music and jazz.

Most musicians, however, particularly on the East Coast, continued to expand on the hotter, more driving bebop tradition. Major exponents of the hard-bop or East Coast style included trumpeter Clifford Brown, drummer Art Blakey, and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, whose unique approach made him one of the major talents of his generation. Another derivative of the Parker style was soul jazz, played by pianist Horace Silver, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, and his brother, cornetist Nat Adderley.

H

The Late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s

Several new approaches characterized jazz in the third quarter of the century. The years around 1960 ranked with the late 1920s and the late 1940s as one of the most fertile periods in the history of jazz.

H

1

Modal Jazz

In 1955 Miles Davis organized a quintet that featured tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, whose complex approach produced a striking contrast to Davis’s rich-toned, unhurried, expressive melodic lines. Coltrane poured out streams of notes with velocity and passion, exploring every melodic idea, no matter how exotic; nevertheless, he played slow ballads with poise and serenity. In his solos he revealed an exceptional sense of form and pacing. In 1959 Coltrane appeared on a landmark Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue. Along with pianist Bill Evans, Davis devised for this album a set of pieces that remain in one key, chord, and mode for as long as 16 measures at a time. This genre, which came to be known as modal jazz, allowed much freedom for the improviser.

Coltrane, striking out on his own, first pushed the complexity of bebop to its limits in the piece “Giant Steps” (1959), then settled on the other extreme, modal jazz. The latter style dominated his repertoire after 1960, when he recorded “My Favorite Things” using an open-ended arrangement in which each soloist stayed in one mode for as long as he wished. Coltrane’s quartet included pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, two musicians who, because of their dramatic musical qualities, were widely imitated.

H

2

Third-Stream and Avant-Garde Movements

Another product of the experimentation of the late 1950s and 1960s was the attempt by composer Gunther Schuller, together with pianist John Lewis and his Modern Jazz Quartet, to combine jazz and classical music into a “third stream.” This movement brought together musicians from both worlds in a repertoire that drew heavily on the techniques of both kinds of music.

Also active during these years was composer, bassist, and bandleader Charlie Mingus, who imbued his chord-progression-based improvisations with a wild, raw excitement. Most controversial was the work of alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, whose improvisations, at times almost atonal, did away with chord progressions altogether, while retaining the steady rhythmic swing so characteristic of jazz. Although Coleman’s wailing sound and rough technique shocked many critics, others recognized the wit, sincerity, and rare sense of form that characterized his solos. He inspired a whole school of avant-garde jazz that flourished in the 1960s and included the Art Ensemble of Chicago, clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, pianist Cecil Taylor, and even Coltrane, who ventured into avant-garde improvisation before his death in 1967.