Hey, Phil, on Charlie Parker being the greatest saxophonist ever, whenever anyone says anyone is the greatest anything ever, I just zone out. I find such attributions meaningless.
I probably like bebop more than you, but between you and me, though I love playing "A Night in Tunisia," I've never quite gotten hold of rhythm changes and, frankly, I'd rather play a blues, even a complicated bebop blues like "Blues for Alice."
And you're right about the competitive aspect of bebop virtuosity, and its consequent appeal to music school students. If you put in the practice time, you can work up the chops. But maybe there's more interesting things to do with that time.
P.S. I've never quite seen what was such a big deal about Jazz at Massey Hall. Yeah, I get the history, and the fact that it's those five. But the greatest bebop recording it is not. Not even sure it's in the top tier, whatever that might be.
Bud Powell is my favorite "straight-up" bebopper - if there could be said to be such a thing - most for the way he is SO rhythmically focused. Some of the deepest, tightest grooves in the history of music come from his trio recordings and they are so addictive. Work your way though The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings box and you may just change your mind about Bud!
Interesting. I feel the same way about Parker on sax, but I always thought I was an oddball for it. He was no doubt influential, but for listening pleasure, I always prefer Lester Young's sax, for example.
Hi Phil, I enjoyed reading this, there's some i agree with and some i disagree with, however, with all due respect, i would pretty strongly disagree with reading bebop as a "music school thing" and being born from people just showing off and trying to burn each other with more and more skill and language. I actually think the textural, aesthetic, and conceptual aspects of bebop are under-appreciated, and there's a lot that can be related to free music and creative improvised music.
I’ve always heard the “they” in that Monk quote interpreted as “white people”. Your brackets define “they” as “fellow musicians”. I don’t think Monk was bragging about instrumental one-upsmanship so much as talking about trying to hinder cultural appropriation? In that context bebop had a political dimension as well as aesthetic.
I don't think so. The musicians who stopped by to jam MInton's, in particular, were overwhelmingly Black--it was after-hours in Harlem, after all--and the young musicians who were developing bebop there saw it as their mission to blowing older, more traditionally "seasoned" players (again, in that context, primarily Black) off the bandstand. Dizzy's big moment of truth at Minton's, for example, was outplaying Roy Eldridge. And there was nothing inherently racial about the devices they used to do it; one favorite was to play the changes from the A strain of one standard (e.g., "I Got Rhythm") with the changes from the bridge of another (e.g., "Honeysuckle Rose"). There may have been political dimensions in theory, but not really in practice.
Phil, where and how did you first encounter Charlie Parker? That context really matters.
I, for example, got into Parker's music because I was struggling to understand Ornette Coleman, and Ornette name-checked Bird so often that I thought "Well, I'll start there." So I tried Gary Giddins's trick when he was learning Louis Armstrong: picked out a compilation of the most important tracks, studied each one carefully and memorized heads and key solo passages, not moving on to the next track until I could scat-sing the previous one to myself with no mistakes. It not only made all the difference in the world when I finally got back to Ornette, but it became kinda the Rosetta Stone for understanding bebop language and conventions.
I first heard Parker in high school, in a really weirdly bastardized form — I bought the soundtrack to the Clint Eastwood movie BIRD (released in 1988), which featured Parker's original solos laid atop brand-new backing tracks:
Pretty much entirely the wrong way to hear him, but I did listen to a few more things here and there, and then years later I took the deep, deep dive of listening to the Complete Savoy & Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948:
I don't like bebop either; for the same reason I don't like Dixieland music: Everyone Playing Everything All The F$%%^ng Time gives me a headache. My ears are trained pretty well to "tune in" on layers of songs, well enough to understand some levels of jazz; but that stuff is like trying to untangle 5 million coathangers in an industrial linens-dryer. While it's running.
I strongly support the fact that bebop in general and Charlie Parker in specific don't appeal to you. Something I've learned over many decades of listening to jazz (I also play jazz and write about it), is that no matter how much an artist is interesting and worthy, I vote with my ears. Meaning: as interesting as it may be, I seldom listen to that artist or recording. I tend to say "it doesn't suit me "or "it's not for me."
Another thing I've learned to do is to nott project or psychologize where an artist is coming from or why an artist does something if the artist has not specifically said so.
You write that bebop:
was kind of a music-school thing. It’s the kind of music you get when a bunch of young, talented men get together in a room, night after night, and start showing off for each other. "Listen to what I came up with!” “Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?” And on and on, at lightning speed. Which is exactly why it continues to appeal to many young jazz musicians.
That does not strongly describe bebop to me. I know that some of the young musicians are who participated in the jam sessions at Minton's were competitive, but many were not, and that competitiveness was strongly in place during the swing era, according to some accounts a musicians of that era. (I'm referring to the tradition of "cutting contests.")
Ironically, what you describe at the end of that passage describes prevalent attitudes in today's musicians who come out of jazz studies programs at universities and conservatories! I taught at the University Of Oregon school of music for many years, and I've seen that unfortunate attitude from a fair number of young jazz students very often, and they're playing exemplifies that. And, speaking of Parker, they may have learned some Charlie Parker licks and solos, but they miss the whole emotional side of his music! And, bebop does not really appeal to those young players – – saxophonist would rather sound like Mark Turner than Charlie Parker.
What you're noting is a disconnect between the idea of the Massey Hall concert and the reality. In fact, it was not such a great concert, event though it was made up of a kind of bebop supergroup. By that time Bird and Diz were not friendly to each other. As you wrote, the sound was bad. Bird was playing on a borrowed plastic saxophone, and in general the atmosphere lacked the collegiality and warmth that typified the ensembles of a decade prior. In short, reacting coldly to the Massey Hall concert isn't much of a reason to dislike bebop on it's own, as the concert wasn't a particularly good example of it.
Also a bit of a straw man here - who is saying that bebop is the only way to play jazz? Not even the players that play it.
I think the competitive attitude between musicians, mainly young, is so common, in jazz and classical music, that I don't think in bebop is different from other genres or sub-genres. But of course, not every jazz fan must love Charlie Parker, so many new flavours came after him in the jazz world.
Hey, Phil, on Charlie Parker being the greatest saxophonist ever, whenever anyone says anyone is the greatest anything ever, I just zone out. I find such attributions meaningless.
I probably like bebop more than you, but between you and me, though I love playing "A Night in Tunisia," I've never quite gotten hold of rhythm changes and, frankly, I'd rather play a blues, even a complicated bebop blues like "Blues for Alice."
And you're right about the competitive aspect of bebop virtuosity, and its consequent appeal to music school students. If you put in the practice time, you can work up the chops. But maybe there's more interesting things to do with that time.
P.S. I've never quite seen what was such a big deal about Jazz at Massey Hall. Yeah, I get the history, and the fact that it's those five. But the greatest bebop recording it is not. Not even sure it's in the top tier, whatever that might be.
Bud Powell is my favorite "straight-up" bebopper - if there could be said to be such a thing - most for the way he is SO rhythmically focused. Some of the deepest, tightest grooves in the history of music come from his trio recordings and they are so addictive. Work your way though The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings box and you may just change your mind about Bud!
Interesting. I feel the same way about Parker on sax, but I always thought I was an oddball for it. He was no doubt influential, but for listening pleasure, I always prefer Lester Young's sax, for example.
Hi Phil, I enjoyed reading this, there's some i agree with and some i disagree with, however, with all due respect, i would pretty strongly disagree with reading bebop as a "music school thing" and being born from people just showing off and trying to burn each other with more and more skill and language. I actually think the textural, aesthetic, and conceptual aspects of bebop are under-appreciated, and there's a lot that can be related to free music and creative improvised music.
I’ve always heard the “they” in that Monk quote interpreted as “white people”. Your brackets define “they” as “fellow musicians”. I don’t think Monk was bragging about instrumental one-upsmanship so much as talking about trying to hinder cultural appropriation? In that context bebop had a political dimension as well as aesthetic.
I don't think so. The musicians who stopped by to jam MInton's, in particular, were overwhelmingly Black--it was after-hours in Harlem, after all--and the young musicians who were developing bebop there saw it as their mission to blowing older, more traditionally "seasoned" players (again, in that context, primarily Black) off the bandstand. Dizzy's big moment of truth at Minton's, for example, was outplaying Roy Eldridge. And there was nothing inherently racial about the devices they used to do it; one favorite was to play the changes from the A strain of one standard (e.g., "I Got Rhythm") with the changes from the bridge of another (e.g., "Honeysuckle Rose"). There may have been political dimensions in theory, but not really in practice.
Phil, where and how did you first encounter Charlie Parker? That context really matters.
I, for example, got into Parker's music because I was struggling to understand Ornette Coleman, and Ornette name-checked Bird so often that I thought "Well, I'll start there." So I tried Gary Giddins's trick when he was learning Louis Armstrong: picked out a compilation of the most important tracks, studied each one carefully and memorized heads and key solo passages, not moving on to the next track until I could scat-sing the previous one to myself with no mistakes. It not only made all the difference in the world when I finally got back to Ornette, but it became kinda the Rosetta Stone for understanding bebop language and conventions.
I first heard Parker in high school, in a really weirdly bastardized form — I bought the soundtrack to the Clint Eastwood movie BIRD (released in 1988), which featured Parker's original solos laid atop brand-new backing tracks:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1878403-Bird-Bird-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack
Pretty much entirely the wrong way to hear him, but I did listen to a few more things here and there, and then years later I took the deep, deep dive of listening to the Complete Savoy & Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948:
https://www.discogs.com/release/5755089-Charlie-Parker-The-Complete-Savoy-And-Dial-Studio-Recordings-1944-1948
Oh wow i agree 100%, you just wrote very well what i've always thought but couldn't elaborate! Thank you
I don't like bebop either; for the same reason I don't like Dixieland music: Everyone Playing Everything All The F$%%^ng Time gives me a headache. My ears are trained pretty well to "tune in" on layers of songs, well enough to understand some levels of jazz; but that stuff is like trying to untangle 5 million coathangers in an industrial linens-dryer. While it's running.
I strongly support the fact that bebop in general and Charlie Parker in specific don't appeal to you. Something I've learned over many decades of listening to jazz (I also play jazz and write about it), is that no matter how much an artist is interesting and worthy, I vote with my ears. Meaning: as interesting as it may be, I seldom listen to that artist or recording. I tend to say "it doesn't suit me "or "it's not for me."
Another thing I've learned to do is to nott project or psychologize where an artist is coming from or why an artist does something if the artist has not specifically said so.
You write that bebop:
was kind of a music-school thing. It’s the kind of music you get when a bunch of young, talented men get together in a room, night after night, and start showing off for each other. "Listen to what I came up with!” “Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?” And on and on, at lightning speed. Which is exactly why it continues to appeal to many young jazz musicians.
That does not strongly describe bebop to me. I know that some of the young musicians are who participated in the jam sessions at Minton's were competitive, but many were not, and that competitiveness was strongly in place during the swing era, according to some accounts a musicians of that era. (I'm referring to the tradition of "cutting contests.")
Ironically, what you describe at the end of that passage describes prevalent attitudes in today's musicians who come out of jazz studies programs at universities and conservatories! I taught at the University Of Oregon school of music for many years, and I've seen that unfortunate attitude from a fair number of young jazz students very often, and they're playing exemplifies that. And, speaking of Parker, they may have learned some Charlie Parker licks and solos, but they miss the whole emotional side of his music! And, bebop does not really appeal to those young players – – saxophonist would rather sound like Mark Turner than Charlie Parker.
Thank you for your posting!
Pardon a few typos!
What you're noting is a disconnect between the idea of the Massey Hall concert and the reality. In fact, it was not such a great concert, event though it was made up of a kind of bebop supergroup. By that time Bird and Diz were not friendly to each other. As you wrote, the sound was bad. Bird was playing on a borrowed plastic saxophone, and in general the atmosphere lacked the collegiality and warmth that typified the ensembles of a decade prior. In short, reacting coldly to the Massey Hall concert isn't much of a reason to dislike bebop on it's own, as the concert wasn't a particularly good example of it.
Also a bit of a straw man here - who is saying that bebop is the only way to play jazz? Not even the players that play it.
I think the competitive attitude between musicians, mainly young, is so common, in jazz and classical music, that I don't think in bebop is different from other genres or sub-genres. But of course, not every jazz fan must love Charlie Parker, so many new flavours came after him in the jazz world.