Jazz in the 1950’s

I. In the fifties, the key musical problem for players of modern jazz was what to do with the legacy
of Charlie Parker how to develop what he left with them
a. How to develop a personal statement without ignoring his contributions
b. How to develop a personal statement without evading his influence

II. Older jazz styles co-existed with modern trends

a. Traditional jazz – Louis Armstrong experienced his greatest recognition during the ‘50’s,
and others like Henry “Red” Allen and Bunk Johnson.
b. Swing – a renaissance of the orchestras of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller
(fronted by Tex Beneke), Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and others. Bands such as
Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman, Fletcher Henderson, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and
Casa Loma had faded by this time.
c. Progressive Swing – Stan Kenton
d. Bebop Swing - Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn

New Styles Emerging

III. The Bebop revolution was at it’s height at 1950 but new styles emerged.
a. “The birth of the Cool” – Miles Davis
b. Third Stream – Gunther Schuller, Modern Jazz Quartet, Charles Mingus, Teo Macero
c. West Coast Jazz – Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Lennie Tristano and others.
d. Modal Jazz – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, George Russell
e. Hard Bop – Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, Cannonball & Nat
Adderly, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons and others.
f. Soul Jazz - Horace Silver, Cannonball & Nat Adderly, Jimmy Smith, Lou Donaldson,
Big John Patton and later Charles Earland and George Benson
g. Free Jazz and Avant-Garde Jazz – Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor,
Sun-Ra

*SEE SEPARATE LECTURE NOTES FOR MILES DAVIS/GIL EVANS, COOL & 3RD
STREAM

Important Hard Bop Drummers

Max Roach
 A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally
considered alongside the most important drummers in history.
 Roach’s, along with jazz drummer Kenny Clarke, is also credited with devising the new concept
of modern jazz drumming.
 As an eighteen year-old fresh out of Boys' High School in Brooklyn, NY (1942) he was called to
fill in for Sonny Greer, and play with the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing at the Paramount
Theater.
 He worked with many famous jazz musicians, throughout the Bebop era and beyond including
Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious

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 Monk, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy
and Booker Little.
 In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a
record of a May 15, 1953 concert, billed as 'the greatest concert ever', which came to be known
as Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Mingus and
Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation,
Percussion Discussion.
 In 1954, he formed a quintet featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown, tenor saxophonist Harold Land,
pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow, though Land left the
following year and Sonny Rollins soon replaced him.
 This group was considered to be the last true bebop group and a transitional group to the hard
bop style.
 Tragically, this group was to be short-lived; Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on
the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956
 Roach expanded the standard form of hard-bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957
with his album Jazz in 3/4 time.

Art Blakey
 Was an African-American Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer, bandleader and innovator of
the modern bebop style of drumming.
 He travelled to Africa during 1948 – 1949 and converted to Islam during this period taking the
name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (which led to the nickname "Bu")
 He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
 He adopted several African devices, including rapping on the side of the drum and using his
elbow on the tom-tom to alter the pitch
 Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and by the time he was a teenager, he was playing
the piano full-time, leading a commercial band.
 Reputedly because he thought he would be unable to compete with the emerging Pittsburg
pianist Erroll Garner, he taught himself to play the drums in the aggressive swing style of Chick
Webb, Sid Catlett and Ray Bauduc
 He then toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1939–1942) and became associated with
the bebop movement during his years with Billy Eckstine’s big band (1944–7), along with his
fellow band members Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro and others.
 In 1947 Blakey organized the Seventeen Messengers, a rehearsal band, and recorded with an
octet called the Jazz Messengers.
 Blakey’s association w/pianist Horace Sliver led to officially forming the 1953 cooperative
group “The Jazz Messengers” with Hank Mobley/Tenor Saxophone, Kenny Dorham/Trumpet
and Doug Watkins/Bass.
 Blakey took over the group name when Silver left after the band's first year and the band was
known as "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers" from then onwards with Blakey being the sole
leader, and he remained associated with it for the rest of his life.

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 Important Hard Bop Pianists

Horace Silver
 Born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva in Norwalk, Connecticut
 Silver is known for his distinctive humorous and funky playing style and for his pioneering
compositional contributions to hard bop. He was influenced by a wide range of musical styles,
notably gospel music, African music, and Latin American music and sometimes ventured into
the soul jazz genre
 Silver began his career as a tenor saxophonist but later switched to piano. His tenor saxophone
playing was highly influenced by Lester Young, and his piano style by Bud Powell, Art Tatum,
Teddy Wilson, Nat “King” Cole, and Thelonious Monk.
 Silver was discovered in the Sundown Club in Hartford, Connecticut in 1950 by saxophonist
Stan Getz. It was with Getz that Silver made his recording debut.
 He moved to New York City in 1951, where he worked at the jazz club Birdland on Monday
nights.
 During that year he met the executives of the label Blue Note while working as a sideman. He
eventually signed with them where he remained until 1980.
 It was in New York that he formed The Jazz Messengers, a co-operatively run group with Art
Blakey.
 Silver left The Jazz Messengers after the group’s first year to form a new quintet.
 Toward the mid to late fifties his quintet went on to score a number of popular hit tunes and jazz
standards including Sister Sadie, Filthy McNasty, Señor Blues, Cool Eyes, Room 608, The
Preacher, et al.
 While Silver's compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic
ideas, they caught the attention of a wide audience.
 Silver's own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within
just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word
could be used in polite company.

Bobby Timmons:
 Born Robert Henry "Bobby" Timmons in Philadelphia, PA.
 His piano style was famous for his heavy gospel and funky blues influence blended with the fluid
and innovative bebop concepts of Bud Powell.
 He is best known for his role as sideman in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1958–1961) and the
composition of "Moanin'", "Dat Dere", and "This Here", each of which are typical of his
distinctive gospel soul-jazz style
 Timmons worked with Kenny Dorham (1956), Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, the Maynard Ferguson
Big Band et al.
*He was partly responsible for the commercial success of both Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and
Cannonball Adderley's Quintet. For Blakey (who he was with during 1958-1959), Timmons wrote the
classic "Moanin'" and, after joining Cannonball Adderley in 1959, his song "This Here" (followed later
by "Dat Dere") became a big hit. "Dat Dere" particularly caught on when Oscar Brown, Jr. wrote and
recorded lyrics that colorfully depicted his curious son.

 Timmons, who was already recording as a leader for Riverside, soon formed his own trio but was
never able to gain the commercial success that his former bosses enjoyed.
 Stereotyped as a funky pianist (although an influence on many players including Les McCann,
Ramsey Lewis, and much later on Benny Green), Timmons' career gradually declined.
 He continued working until his death at age 38 from cirrhosis of the liver.

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 Important Hard Bop Saxophonists

Sonny Rollins (a.k.a. “Newk”):

 Born Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins, (born September 7, 1930 in New York City) is an
African-American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most
important and influential jazz musicians.
 A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", and "Airegin", have
become jazz standards.
 Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946.
During his high-school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean,
Kenny Drew and Art Taylor.
 Rollins began to make a name for himself in 1949 as he recorded with J.J Johnson and Bud
Powell what would later be called "Hard Bop", with Miles Davis in 1951, with the Modern Jazz
Quartet and with Thelonious Monk in 1953.
 The breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo" "Airegin"
and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis.

*His widely acclaimed album Saxophone Colossus was recorded on June 22, 1956 at Rudy Van
Gelder's studio in New Jersey, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, former Jazz Messengers bassist Doug
Watkins and his favorite drummer Max Roach. This was Rollins' sixth recording as a leader and it
included his best-known composition "St. Thomas", a Caribbean calypso based on a tune sung to him by
his mother in his childhood, as well as the fast bebop number "Strode Rode", and "Moritat.” In 1956 he
also recorded Tenor Madness, using Miles Davis' group – pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers,
Sonny Rollins cont.’

and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The title track is the only recording of Rollins with John Coltrane, who
was also in Davis' group

 In 1957 he pioneered the use of bass and drums (without piano) as accompaniment for his
saxophone solos. This texture came to be known as "strolling".
 Two early tenor/bass/drums trio recordings are Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and A
Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957).
 Rollins uses the trio format intermittently throughout his career, sometimes taking the unusual
step of using his sax as a rhythm section instrument during bass and drum solos.

Hank Mobley:
 Born Henry (Hank) Mobley (July 7, 1930 – May 30, 1986) in Eastman, Georgia, but was raised
in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was an African-American hard bop and soul jazz tenor saxophonist
and composer.
 Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor
saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane
nor as mellow as Stan Getz.
 When he was 16, an illness kept him in the house for several months. His uncle thought of
buying a saxophone to help him occupy his time.
 He tried to enter a music school in Newark, but couldn't, since he was not a resident of that city,
so he kept studying through books at home.
 At 19, he started to play with local bands and, months later, worked for the first time with
musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach.

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  He took part in one of the earliest hard bop sessions, alongside Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Doug
Watkins and trumpeter Kenny Dorham. The results of these sessions were released as Horace
Silver and the Jazz Messengers.
 During the 1960s, he worked chiefly as a leader, recording over 20 albums for Blue Note
Records between 1955 and 1970, including Soul Station (1960), generally considered to be his
finest recording and Roll Call (1960)
 He performed with many of the other important hard bop players, such as Grant Green, Freddie
Hubbard, Sonny Clark, Wynton Kelly and Philly Joe Jones, and formed a particularly productive
partnership with trumpeter Lee Morgan.
 Mobley is widely recognized as one of the great composers of originals in the hard-bop era, with
interesting chord changes and room for soloists to stretch out.

Important Hard Bop Trumpeters

Clifford “Brownie” Brown:

 He was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter.
 He died aged 25, June 26, 1956 leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings.
 Nonetheless, he had a considerable influence on later jazz trumpet players, including Donald
Byrd, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Wynton Marsalis, and many
others.
 He won the Down Beat critics' poll for the "New Star of the Year" in 1954; he was inducted into
the Down Beat "Jazz Hall of Fame" in 1972 in the critics' poll.
Clifford Brown cont.’

 Brown was born in Wilmington, Delaware, October 30, 1930

 After briefly attending Delaware State University and Maryland State College, he was seriously
injured in a car accident in June 1950.
 During his year-long hospitalization, Dizzy Gillespie visited the younger trumpeter and pushed
him to pursue his musical career.
 He was influenced and encouraged by Fats Navarro, sharing Navarro's virtuosic technique and
brilliance of invention.
 He performed with R&B bandleader Chris Powell, Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, and Art
Blakey before forming his own group with Max Roach.
 In the hands of Brown and Roach, the bebop vernacular reached a peak of inventiveness as their
group was considered to be transitional to the hard bop style.
 The clean-living Brown has been cited as perhaps breaking the influence of heroin on the jazz
world, a model established by Charlie Parker.
 Clifford stayed away from drugs and was not fond of alcohol.

Lee Morgan:
 Edward Lee Morgan was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1938
 He was a leading trumpeter and composer, recorded prolifically from 1956 until a day before his
death on February 19, 1972.
 Originally interested in the vibraphone, he soon showed a growing enthusiasm for the trumpet.
Morgan also knew how to play the alto saxophone.
 His primary stylistic influence was Clifford Brown, who gave the teenager a few lessons before
he joined the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at 18, and remained a member for a year and a half.

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  He began recording for Blue Note Records in 1956, eventually recording 25 albums as a leader
for the company, with more than 250 musicians. He also recorded on the Vee-Jay label.
 He was a featured sideman on several early Hank Mobley records, as well as on John Coltrane's
Blue Train (1957), on which he played a trumpet with an angled bell (given to him by Gillespie)
and delivered one of his most celebrated solos on the title track.
 Joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1958 further developed his talent as a soloist and
composer.
 He toured with Blakey until 1961 until his heroin addiction forced him to leave the group.
 He was featured on numerous albums by the Messengers, including Moanin', which is one of the
band's best-known recordings.
 On returning to New York in 1963, he recorded The Sidewinder, which became his greatest
commercial success.
 The title track cracked the pop charts in 1964, and served as the background theme for Chrysler
television commercials during the World Series.

Lee Morgan’s death

Morgan was murdered in the early hours of February 19, 1972, at Slugs', a jazz club in New York City's
East Village where his band was performing. Following an altercation between sets, Morgan's common-
law wife Helen More (a.k.a. Morgan), shot him in the chest onstage, killing him within moments. He was
33 years old. According to an eye witness, Miss More (13 years his senior) walked out of the club just
before the last set. She returned and the band was already on stage. Lee was trying to get up there, but
was talking with some people. He just started to get up the stage, when she entered and called his name.
He turned around and she shot him in the heart. She then turned the gun on the
Lee Morgan cont.’

club's doorman Ernie Holman, who grabbed her wrist and took the gun away from her. She started to
scream "Baby, what have I done?" and ran to him. She was later arrested, tried, sentenced, and paroled
by 1978. Soon after, Helen Morgan returned to her native North Carolina. Reportedly she never spoke
publicly of the incident, until she granted an interview a month before her death. She died in
Wilmington, NC, from a heart condition, in March 1996.

Kenny Dorham:
 McKinley Howard (Kenny) Dorham (August 30, 1924 – December 5, 1972) was an African-
American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer born in Fairfield, Texas
 Critics and other musicians frequently laud Dorham’s talent, but he never received the kind of
attention from the jazz establishment that many of his peers did.
 Dorham was one of the most active bebop trumpeters of the era whose transitional style of
playing crossed over into the Hard Bop genre.
 He played in the big bands of Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Mercer
Ellington and the quintet of Charlie Parker.
 He was a charter member of the original cooperative Jazz Messengers in 1953.
 He also recorded as a sideman with Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, and he replaced
Clifford Brown in the Max Roach Quintet after Brown's death in 1956.
 In addition to sideman work, he led his own groups, including the Jazz Prophets (formed shortly
after Art Blakey took over the Jazz Messengers name).
 The Jazz Prophets, featuring a young Bobby Timmons on piano, bassist Sam Jones and tenorman
J. R. Monterose with guest Kenny Burrell on guitar, recorded a live album 'Round About
Midnight at the Cafe Bohemia in 1956 for Blue Note.

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  He was a magnificent composer, penning some of the most well known tunes of the Hard Bop
genre, namely Lotus Blossom, Philly Twist, Escapade, Windmill, Una Mas, Short Story,
Afrodisia, Sao Paolo, Blue Bossa, et al
 During his final years Dorham suffered from kidney disease, from which he died on December 5,
1972, aged 48.

Donald Byrd:
 Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II, (born December 9, 1932) is an African-American
jazz and rhythm and blues trumpeter.
 A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd is best known as one of the
only Bebop/Hardbop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while
simultaneously remaining a pop artist.
 Byrd attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan (a school known for producing
many great jazz musicians).
 He performed with Lionel Hampton before finishing high school.
 After playing in a military band during a term in the United States Air Force, he obtained a
bachelor's degree in music from Wayne State University and a master's degree from Manhattan
School of Music.
 While still at the Manhattan School, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, as replacement for
Clifford Brown.
 In 1955, he recorded with Jackie McLean and Mal Waldron.
 After leaving the Jazz Messengers in 1956, he performed with many leading jazz musicians of
the day, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and later Herbie Hancock.
 Byrd's first regular group was a quintet that he co-led from 1958-61 with baritone saxophonist
Pepper Adams, an ensemble whose hard driving performances are captured "live" on At the Half
Note Cafe.
 In the 1970s, Byrd moved away from the hard-bop jazz idiom and began to record jazz fusion
and rhythm and blues.
 He teamed up with the Mizell Brothers (producer-writers Larry and Fonce) for Black Byrd in
1972.
 It was highly successful and became Blue Note Records' highest-ever selling album.
 He is one of the few jazz musicians of the 1950’s and ‘60’s to earn multiple advanced college
degrees.
 In addition to his master's from Manhattan School of Music, Byrd has two master's degrees from
Columbia University. He received a law degree in 1976, and his doctorate from Columbia
University Teachers College in 1982.
 He has taught music at Rutgers University, Hampton University, New York University, Howard
University, Queens College, Oberlin College, Cornell University and Delaware State University.
 In September 2009, he was named an artist-in-residence at Delaware State University in Dover,
Delaware

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 Important Hard Bop Trombonist

J. J. Johnson:
 James Louis Johnson (b. January 22, 1924, Indianapolis, IN – d. February 4, 2001) an
African-American jazz trombonist, composer/arranger.
 One of the first trombonists to embrace bebop music.
 He has long been regarded as one of the leading trombonists of the post-swing era
exerting a pervasive influence on other jazz musicians.
 His improvisational style on trombone is transitional between Bebop and Hardbop
genres
 He started his professional career with Clarence Love, and then played with Snookum
Russell’s band in 1942.
 In Russell's band he met the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who influenced him to play in the
style of the tenor saxophonist Lester Young.
 Played in Benny Carter’s orchestra between 1942 and 1945, and made his first
recordings in 1942 under Carter's leadership, recording his first solo (on Love for Sale)
in October, 1943.
 In 1944, he took part in the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, presented in Los
Angeles and organized by Norman Granz.
 In 1945 he joined the big band of Count Basie, touring and recording with him until
1946.
 After leaving Count Basie in 1946 to play in small bebop bands in New York clubs,
Johnson toured in 1947 with Illinois Jacquet.
 During this period he also began recording as a leader of small groups featuring Max
Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell.
 He performed with Charlie Parkerat the 17 December 1947 Dail Records session
following Parker's release from Camarillo State Mental Hospital
 In 1954 he co-led a quintet with trombonist Kai Winding “The Jay and Kai Quintet,”
was a huge success both musically and commercially and lasted until 1956.
 From the mid-1950s, but especially the early 1960s on, J. J. Johnson dedicated more and more
time to composition, being an active contributor to the Third Stream movement in jazz music.
 In 1970, Quincy Jones convinced Johnson to move from New York to California to compose for
cinema and television, where he eventually scored movies such as Across 110th Street,
Cleopatra Jones, Top of the Heap and Willie Dynamite, as well as TV series such as Starsky &
Hutch, Mike Hammer and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Curtis Fuller:
 Curtis DuBois Fuller (born December 15, 1934, Detroit) is an African-American jazz
trombonist, known as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and contributor to many classic
jazz recordings of the Hard Bop genre and beyond.
 Fuller's Jamaican-born parents died when he was young; he was raised in an orphanage.
 After army service between 1953 and 1955 (when he played in a band with Chambers and
brothers Cannonball and Nat Adderley) Fuller joined the quintet of Yusef Lateef, another Detroit
musician.
 In 1957 the quintet moved to New York, and Fuller recorded his first sessions as a leader for
Prestige Records.
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 Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records first heard him playing with Miles Davis in the late 1950s, and
featured him as a sideman on record dates led by Sonny Clark and John Coltrane.
 Fuller led four dates for Blue Note, though one of these, an album with Slide Hampton, was not
issued for many years.
 Fuller was also the first trombonist to be a member of the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet,
later becoming the sixth man in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1961, staying with Blakey until
1965.

The state of jazz from the mid to late 1950’s

 By the end of the 1950’s, jazz was ready for something new again.
 Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck and others were recording in meters other than 4/4.
 The birth of the outdoor jazz festival in 1954 in Newport, Rhode Island by George Wein
revitalized the careers of Miles Davis in 1955 and Duke Ellington in 1956
 Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, produced by Norman Granz” were still in full activity having first
started in 1944 touring the US and by the late 1950’s expanding the tours to Europe.
 Thelonious Monk was enjoying a resurgence in his career in 1957 with his cabaret card restored,
and new quartet with tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, a recording contract with Riverside
Records, and a landmark six-month residency at the Five Spot Cafe in New York.
 John Coltrane was laying down “sheets of sound” as a result of his growth period while with
Thelonious Monk.
 Pianist Cecil Taylor was improvising atonal music featuring tone clusters, percussive touch, and
classical forms.
 Third Stream music, which appeared late in the decade, resulted from the efforts of composers
who wished to infuse improvisation and jazz techniques into notated works of the contemporary
Western art tradition
 Colleges were especially receptive to jazz concerts during the ‘50’s with concerts often
sponsored by student groups rather than departments/schools of music.
 The US State Department saw jazz as a valuable propaganda tool, sponsoring tours of the Middle
East and Latin America with Dizzy Gillespie’s band and overseas tours with Benny Goodman’s
band.
 Television offered a new performance venue for jazz musicians, with many famous names of the
day performing on various TV programs.
 The 1950’s saw the tragic death’s of many of jazz’ heroes due to drugs and alcohol, namely:
• Fats Navarro, 1950 – age 26
• Wardell Gray, 1955 – age 34
• Charlie Parker, 1955 – age 34
• Clifford Brown, 1955 – age 25 *he didn’t use drugs or alcohol, died in a car crash
• Billie Holiday, 1959 – age 44
• Lester Young, 1959 – age 49