THE DEVELOPMENT OF BEBOP

By: Daniel Whelan

Course: Jazz History

Tutor: Conor Guilfoyle

Dublin City University

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The Development of Bebop

“To understand jazz, one must understand bebop.” (DeVeaux, 1999)

Although there have been many important developments in jazz over the last century

there is one genre that has been widely credited as having some of the farthest reaching and

most fundamental influences on both the culture surrounding jazz and the structure of the

music itself. This style is known as bebop. The impact that the development of bebop had on

jazz is widely considered to be a defining moment in the music’s history. Much of what we

consider to be modern jazz and the content of jazz today is a direct result of the radical

changes that unfolded over the course of the early 1940’s. Bebop musicians revealed new

depths to the structure of jazz music that at the time had only just started to be explored. This

changed not only how the performers and audience thought about jazz but also how the music

was experienced. The drastic shift in style and complexity changed people’s perceptions of

jazz from a means of entertainment to a high art form and of the players as entertainers to

serious intellectuals at the top of their field. This essay aims to identify how bebop initially

developed and the mystique surrounding it, while acknowledging some of its key

practitioners as well as the musical and cultural impact that resulted.

To fully understand the influence that the development of bebop had on the

progression of jazz one must first understand the context of the music that preceded it. There

has long been great difficulty defining what the term jazz describes as it can be applied to

such a vast range of different music. However, it is generally accepted that jazz music’s

origins can be traced back to New Orleans during the late 19th and early 20th century as

African Americans first gained access to European instruments. (Burns, 2001).

The form that jazz took over the course of the 1920’s and 30’s was describe as swing music.

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The roots of early swing music began in America in the 1920’s, influenced by New Orleans

dixie jazz, blues and ragtime styles, while developed through stylistic experimentation from

artists like Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines and big band dance orchestras. The music was up

tempo, optimistic and consisted of strong melodic lines while emphasizing the off beat which

gave it it’s swung feel. Swing music gained popularity as a feel-good entertainment music

suited to dancehalls. The music was performed by big bands usually consisting of anywhere

from 12 to 18 players featuring large brass and reed sections comprised of trumpets,

trombones and saxophones while accompanied by a rhythm section consisting of drums,

guitar, bass and piano. Swing music was on the rise during the 20s but as the great depression

sent America into an economic crisis so too did the music industry face financial turmoil.

Overall record sales in the US fell by 90% with labels that specialized in black music

particularly effected. (Gioia, 1997). Professional musicians found it increasingly hard to find

paid work as people no longer had the money to pay to attend performances, many musicians

started to travel for work or gave up on music and moved on to other professions.

It was not until 1935 that swing truly swept the nation. The depression had ended and

the wide spread use of radios had now made the music widely accessible. Swing music

became a seemingly overnight phenomenon, heavily attributed to a Benny Goodman’s

appearance on a radio show called “Let’s Dance” which would lead to a famous performance

in Paloma Ballroom winning the favour of a largely young white audience. This was the

beginning of the swing era. (Gioia, 1997). As swing music gained popularity and moved into

the mainstream it became highly commercialized featuring in film and pop culture. It

maintained popularity for several years but by the 1940s swing began to decline. Audiences

tastes were shifting more towards vocalists while America’s wartime backdrop and wide

conscription as well as the excessive creative influence that broadcasting and recording

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industries were exercising on their artists compounded the move away from swing. (Gioia,

1997). As the 1940’s arrived many musicians had become disinterested in performing swing

as it had become repetitive and did not challenge them. Racial tensions continued to grow in

America and African America musicians disliked that the over commercialization of swing

music by white Americans had diluted and re-appropriated what had initially been a

development of predominantly black culture. The stylings of bebop would very much reflect

this rejection of mainstream culture and reclaim jazz as a “musicians’ music”.

In Harlem, New York a new sound began to emerge from a small pocket of working

jazz musicians expanding on ideas that had already begun to present themselves in swing

music through artists like Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington. Much of

Bebops early development can be traced back to after hour jam sessions at venues like

Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s Uptown House where musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud

Powell, Roy Aldridge, Tadd Dameron, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Charlie Christian,

Charlie Parker, Kenny Clark, Max Roach, Coleman Hawkins, Fats Navarro and Dexter

Gordon would play together. (Gioia 1997). These jam sessions were for high level musicians

and were notoriously challenging and complex, standards would be called at extremely fast

tempos and would often change keys in chromatic steps each time the form was repeated.

Often musicians would go head to head testing one another’s technical abilities in what

would be referred to as “cutting competitions”. Charlie Parker, although now considered one

of bebops most influential players and arguably still one of most recognizable names in jazz

music to this day, was famously expelled from one of these sessions with Jo Jones after

getting lost in changes while improvising. This ultimately inspired him to practice harder than

ever before and return to the sessions the following year where he began to play regularly.

Parker and Gillespie would form a partnership here and continue to play and record together

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up until the early 1950’s. Despite Parkers virtuosic playing he had battled with heroin

addiction from the age of 17 which presented increasingly difficult challenges to touring and

functioning in the music industry and in society at large. Parker died in 1955 at the age of 34.

Many believe that Parker he had yea to reach his full musical potential before he passed.

Bebop was forward thinking progressive music and although it still maintained many

features of swing like the emphasis of the off beat, much of the instrumentation began to
serve

different functions. The piano no longer played in stride but instead became a soloing

instrument while expanding on rhythmic comping ideas. The drums which had previously
kept

a 4-beat pulse on the kick drum now used the kick to create accents and relied on the ride

cymbal as well as the hi hat to keep time. Where previously swing music had mostly been

arranged bebop was now putting the focus on improvisation. Improvisation began to use
upper

extension arpeggios and chromaticism which gave the music new colour, while also

incorporating complex harmonic structures and rhythmic phrasing as well as intricate melody

lines. The rhythmic and harmonic complexities of the music turned jazz from a music played

by big bands for large audiences with the purpose of dancing to one of smaller ensembles that

played in nightclubs for niche audiences that would come to listen to the music. (Gioia, 2016)

Bebops practitioners didn’t look for a place in the mainstream, it deliberately cultivated a
sense

of exclusivity in order to only allow players with a high level of technical skill to participate.

It also required more from the listener than popular music preceding it and consequently

became far less accessible to a wider audience. (Gioia, 2016)

Much of the mystique initially surrounding bebop was largely due to the fact that

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although the music was already developing throughout the first half of the 1940’s the first

formal recordings of the style only appeared in late 1944 and early 1945. This was due to a

unionized musician strike in the US which occurred as a reaction to disputes over royalties
with

recording companies. When the first recordings of bebop were released the new sound

appeared to have materialized fully formed. Bebop did not venture fully outside of the club

scene until Parker and Gillespie began playing bebop styles with Bill Eckstein’s Orchestra in

1944. This experience would later influence Gillespie to form his own big band in 1947
which

combined with the release of musical film starring his band called “Jivin’ in the Bop” would
go

on to help popularize bebop music in the mainstream. Gillespie is widely recognized as one
of

the most influential teachers in the bebop community and would explain the music to those

who wanted to play it which was an unusual trait within the scene. He would later spend
much

time heavily involved with the development of Latin jazz and Afro Cuban styles. By 1946 the

influence of bebop had begun to reach beyond what had become a well-established scene

amongst aspiring musicians in New York and had started in influence musicians on the west

coast. Moving into the late 1940’s a young Miles Davis who gained much early experience

playing with both Parker and Gillespie began to hone his own sound. This was the birth of
cool

jazz. Davis had moved away from the fast-paced momentum of bebop but used much of what

he had learned harmonically to develop his own more nuanced sound.

Today much of how we think about the format of jazz in a contemporary sense is

heavily influenced by the traits of bebop. It had traded the big bang format for small combos

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still consisting of a rhythm section and brass sections but completely changing the intent of
the

music being played. Bebop in many ways set a new standard of playing for jazz moving

forward. With swing music it was possible to follow the music by ear but with bebop, players

had to truly understand the complex harmonic theory to be able to participate. Bebop revived

jazz from what had become a stagnating and over commercialized form of entertainment and

gave young musicians a whole new frame work to explore and expand on. It allowed black

musicians to reclaim jazz music and express a unique identity that resonated with the original
culture.

This can be seen clearly in much of the work that was produced over the course of the 1950’s

and 60’s. Hard bop and post-bop were directly influenced by the bebop era and the new
format

of how jazz music was performed as well as its new appreciation as a high art form
influenced

generations of musicians to follow. For all aspiring jazz musicians, bebop is a fundamental

style and rite of passage.

Ask any member of the current generation of jazz musicians to play Charlie Parker's
"Anthropology," or Gillespie's " A Night in Tunisia," or Monk's "'Round Midnight.".
It may not be their preferred avenue of expression, but they will know the music and
how to play it." - (DeVeaux, 1999)

When people speak of jazz today it is rare that one associates directly with swing but far
more

often conjure up images of small groups in clubs playing highly technical music. Although
the

bebop era was short lived its development has had a far reaching and lasting impact on the

culture and music of jazz to this day.

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Bibliography:

Burns, Ken., Novick, Lynn. (Producers), Burns, K. (Director). (2001). Jazz [Motion picture].
United States, PBS.
DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. (1999) Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Gioia, Ted. How to Listen to Jazz. (2016). New York, United States: Basic Books, Ingram
Publisher Services.
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. (1997). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.