Don Byas and Slam Stewart    I Got Rhythm (1945)
Don Byas (ts); Slam Stewart (b)

In this amazing track, Hawkins-influenced tenor player Don Byas is knocking on the door of bebop. The speed and intricacy of his playing are all in the realm of bop, but the hunkiness of his tone and his rhythmic articulation place him in the realm of swing. As a first-rate performance by two fine and utterly original musicians and an improvisational tour-de-force from Byas it is, as Ellington would say, beyond category.

The Dizzy Gillespie Quintet    Hot House (1945)
Dizzy Gillespie (t); Charlie Parker (as); Al Haig (p); Curly Russell (b); Sidney Catlett (d); Tadd Dameron (comp)

This cut shows Parker and Gillespie in fine form on a medium tempo AABA piece. Jazz historians are generally careful to give both Parker and Gillespie (or, as jazz people usually put it, "Bird and Diz") joint credit for bebop, but Parker is the one who is always put at the very top of the pantheon, with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and the few other "greatest of the great." Here, though, Gillespie certainly matches, and arguably even outplays Parker. On the other hand, when they play together they seem to speak with a single voice. Gillespie, the most reliable and organized of the two, was nominally the leader of this session.

"Hot House" is based on the chord changes to "What is This Thing Called Love," a song written for the musical theater by Cole Porter. Where Cole Porter's melody is smooth and singable, Tadd Dameron's line is full of turns and twists and leaps, very hard to sing. There are quite a few "altered notes"--notes that didn't fit the swing era jazz musician's idea of how a melody and chords should go together, and that still have a certain pungency half a century later.

Charlie Parker's Re-boppers    Ko-Ko (1945)
Charlie Parker (as); Dizzy Gillespie (t, p); Curly Russell (b); Max Roach (d)

This was Parker's first recording session as a leader, and it may be his most famous recorded solo. There are a lot of great solos of his on record but it's hard to top this one.

You wouldn't know it by listening, but things did not go as planned in this recording session. A very young Miles Davis was there to play trumpet, but he wasn't able to play the trumpet parts this fast. The piano player Parker wanted couldn't be found, and the musician's union rep who was on hand wouldn't let the piano player who was brought in as a substitute play. Dizzy Gillespie, who was there just to watch, filled both of those roles, playing trumpet at the beginning and end and comping on the piano during Parker's solo in the middle.

Like many pieces Parker recorded, this one is based on a popular song (in this case it's "Cherokee," by Ray Noble) but the melody of that song isn't played. Usually Parker would compose a new head. In this case, though, he had planned to play the original tune but was stopped by the producer, who didn't want to have to pay royalties to the composer. However selfish and greedy this decision was at the time, it was good for posterity because it meant Parker had an extra chorus to improvise.

Cherokee (and thus Ko-Ko) is in AABA form but each section is 16 bars long instead of the usual 8. This was a very important piece for Charlie Parker from long before he made this recording. Both because it is played at a very fast tempo and because the chord progression of the B section is pretty difficult, this was a tune he practiced quite a lot as he was forming his style. He could play it in any key, and that was something he encouraged other musicians to learn to do, as well.

Listen to this informative story from National Public Radio about Ko-Ko and this historic recording session and Parker in general. There are some links to other versions of Cherokee here.

The Charlie Parker Sextet    Crazyology (1947)
Charlie Parker (as); Miles Davis (t); J.J. Johnson (tb); Duke Jordan (p); Tommy Potter (b); Max Roach (d)

This is bebop in it's most straightforward, classic form -- an AABA tune (based on rhythm changes, with some alterations), and a performance that starts right on the downbeat of the head (no intro), followed by 3 one-chorus horn solos and another chorus that is split among the rhythm section, and ending with the head.

The second solo is from J.J. Johnson, the first trombonist to master the intricacies of bebop on that instrument. Johnson's improvising tends to be focussed and logical -- you can sometimes follow along with his musical thinking. He was a fine composer and when his opportunities for playing dried up in the 60s and 70s he had a second career composing and scoring TV and film in Hollywood.

The third solo is from a young and still slightly green Miles Davis. You can hear his characteristic dry sound, but not the intensity and authority that he developed in the next decade.

The Charlie Parker All Stars    Parker's Mood (1948)
Charlie Parker (as, comp); John Lewis (p); Curly Russell (b); Max Roach (d)

Not all bebop tunes are blazingly fast. Bop musicians often played at medium tempos. When they played ballads they would sometimes settle into slower tempos than swing musicians would have used. Parker's Mood is not a ballad, though -- it's a medium slow blues -- but it is a beautiful illustration of the more lyrical, introspective side of Parker's playing.

There's not really a head on this tune, though the beginning of Parker's solo does give us a bit of what sounds like a theme. The pianist is John Lewis, who went on to found one of the most stable and successful of jazz bands, the Modern Jazz Quartet, which featured Milt Jackson on vibes. His light, understated playing here makes a wonderful contrast with Parker's more turbulent alto.

Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra    Manteca (1947)
Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Burns, Elman Wright, Benny Bailey, Lamar Wright (t); Ted Kelly, Bill Shepherd (tb); John Brown, Howard Johnson (as); 'Big Nick' Nicholas, Joe Gayles (ts); Cecil Payne (bars); John Lewis (p); Al McKibbon (b); Kenny Spearman (d); Chano Pozo (conga)

The bebop style that Parker and Gillespie forged together was based on swing rhythm and the swing rhythm section, especially the Kansas City version of the latter. But Gillispie was also interested in Afro-Cuban music, which has a very different rhythmic feel. In Afro-Cuban and other "Latin" music (that is, music from the Hispanic countries of the americas) the beat is divided into equal halves, instead of the long-short division used in swing. Unlike in the US, Slaves in Cuba in other parts of Latin America were allowed to play drums so the music in these countries, like the West African music it is derived from, often uses ensembles of drums that set up complex layered rhythms. Other jazz musicians (before Gillespie) had experimented with latin rhythms, but since the mid 40s and Gillespie's recordings of jazz/latin crossover music, "latin jazz" has been part of almost all jazz musician's repertoires.

Besides the even division of the beat, another feature of latin-style jazz is that the bass does not walk. In Manteca, and many other latin tunes, there is a bass vamp, meaning that the bass repeats a short figure over and over.

Gillespie formed a big band in the mid 40s to play both bebop and latin-style tunes. He hired a number of Cuban percussionists, the most famous being Chano Pozo (see the textbook for more about him). Manteca was written to show off Pozo's drumming, which you hear throughout the tune but most clearly when he is playing with only the bass vamp. Another aspect of Manteca that set the stage for many compositions that would follow (from then until the present) is the way it switches at the bridge from a latin feel to a swing feel.

The Bud Powell Trio    A Night in Tunisia (1951)
Bud Powell (p); Curly Russell (b); Max Roach (d), Dizzy Gillespie (comp)

This is one of many Dizzy Gillespie compositions that derive from his explorations of Afro-Cuban music. Except for the head, Bud Powell and his trio perform it mostly as a straight bebop piece. However, the Afro-Cuban aspects are still audible in the intro and A sections of the head. Here the bass doesn't walk but instead plays a repeated figure in eighth notes. The bell patterns of West African music have carried over almost literally into Afro-Cuban and other Latin American music, and Max Roach plays his version of one of these on a cowbell. Generically, this kind of rhythm section playing is called "latin feel," to distinguish it from "swing feel," which means a walking bass and drums playing a ride pattern. It might be more accurate to call it "bebop feel," but that's not the way the terminology has developed.

You can hear how Powell has translated Parker's bebop lines onto the piano. There are played by the right hand, while the left had only occasionally plays supporting chords, in contrast to the more continuous left-hand playing of earlier piano styles.

Max Roach is using brushes instead of sticks throughout. He uses the brushes on the snare drum to keep the beat rather than play a ride pattern on his cymbal.

The Thelonious Monk Quintet    Criss-Cross (1951)
Thelonious Monk (p, comp); Sahib Shihab (as), Milt Jackson (vib), Al McKibbon (b); Art Blakey (d)

Though Monk compositions are highly idiosyncratic, they are also very carefully and elegantly constructed. The A section of this head elaborates 2 basic musical ideas (or "motives," to use the technical word for it). The B section expands on the second of these motives.

The drummer here is Art Blakey, one of the greatest drummers of his generation and a tremendously important bandleader. The basic technique of his drumming is the same as Max Roach's -- the ride pattern on the cymbal, the hi-hat snapping on beats 2 and 4, and the improvised "chatter" on the drums. But (as with all good bop drummers) his drumming has a sound and style and personality all it's own. The vibraphone player is Milt Jackson, arguably the greatest of all bop vibraphonists. Most of his career was spent as the star soloist of the Modern Jazz Quartet, playing alongside pianist John Lewis.

The Thelonious Monk Quartet    Trinkle Tinkle (1957)
Thelonious Monk (p, comp); John Coltrane (ts), Wilbur Ware (b); Shadow Wilson (d)

Like many of Monk's tunes this one has a playful, whimsical nature (and a title to match). It shows how unconventional he is both as a composer, as a pianist, and as an improviser.

Even more than "Oleo," which was recorded about a year earlier, this shows the kind of playing from Coltrane that one critic described as "sheets of sound." Coltrane was with Monk for a few months after he left the Miles Davis Quintet (he later went back with Miles before forming his own band). It was a important time for Coltrane, since Monk was a tremendous (but completely unconventional) teacher. Monk's gift as a teacher certainly wasn't to get other players to play like he (Monk) did -- it's hard to imagine more different approaches to improvising jazz than Monk's and Coltrane's here -- but what he could do is help players work out there own style and sound, and guide them to a deeper understanding of harmony.

Sonny Rollins Plus Four    Pent-Up House (1956)
Sonny Rollins (ts, comp); Clifford Brown (t), Richie Powell (p); George Morrow (b); Max Roach (d)

A sample of one of the finest bebop bands, staring three of the greatest players to come along after Parker--the superb trumpet player Clifford Brown (recorded shortly before his untimely death in a car accident), the peerless (and fortunately much longer lived) tenor player Sonny Rollins, and drummer Max Roach, a pioneer of bebop drumming who managed to stay at the forefront of the music for many years.

The tune has an unusual but simple form, consisting of an 8 bar A section that is followed by 8 bars that present a variation of the same idea (A'). These 16 bars could be considered an entire chorus, but the players here treat it as half a chorus (I think just because they're so used to 32 bar choruses), so a full chorus is AA'AA'.

At the end of this tune there is a great example of trading. In this case, it is trading twos between the two horns and the drums. There is often a chorus or so of trading at the end of a bebop piece. Usually that trading is done in units of four bars ("trading fours"), but it can be eights or, as in this case, twos, and it can be trading between horn (and/or piano) players or, as it is here, between horn players and the drummer.

The Miles Davis Quintet    Oleo (1956)
Miles Davis (t), John Coltrane (ts), Red Garland (p); Paul Chambers (b); Philly Joe Jones (d), Sonny Rollins (comp)

This is one of the greatest of all bebop bands, and is fronted by two of the most (arguably the two most) influential horn players of the later 50s and the 60s. The rhythm section players are slightly less distinguished, but they are all very strong players and they cohere as a team. Good as all of the players were, the whole is still significantly greater than the sum of the parts.

Oleo is a rhythm-changes tune written by saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Like many AABA bebop tunes, there is no line for the B section -- it is always improvised, even during the head. The version of Oleo that this quintet developed makes it quite easy to hear the AABA form. Up until the middle of Coltrane's solo, and then again at the end, the piano and drums mostly lay out during the A sections (so bass alone carries the rhythm section role), while the whole rhythm section plays during the B sections. In the final A sections the piano and/or drums play a "chime" figure in measures 2 and 3 but they don't comp or keep time.

One of the great joys of listening to this band is the contrasting personalities of the two horn players. Unlike on some of the recordings with Charlie Parker (like "Crazeology"), there's no question that Davis is in complete command of his instrument here. By this time he had become a master of understatement. Coltrane, on the other hand, sometimes seems to have so much to say that he can't fit it all in.