Accelerating Past Bebop Music

¶ … Evolution of Jazz Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz musician and composer who mostly known for his work on the trumpet. He also played several other instruments, including the piano and alternative horns. His tenure in jazz was fairly lengthy, and spanned several eras including big band and bebop, the latter of which he helped to popularize. He also played swing music on more than one occasion and performed vocals on both recordings and during live sets.

Count Basie was mostly known for his work on the piano and his compositional skills. He was one of the most noted jazz musicians during the time in which this art form initially became popular. Basie was a part of the big band movement in jazz, and led expansive jazz orchestras for the vast majority of his career.

Chet Baker was a jazz musician who was largely renowned for his work on the trumpet, although he also did a fair amount of composing and singing -- both for recordings and live performances -- during his career. He is mostly remembered as a part of the West Coast jazz variety of this music (Pekar, 2001), which is somewhat of an extension of cool jazz. Teddy Wilson is largely remembered as a jazz musician who played the piano.

He specialized in what was arguably the most popular (or perhaps simply lucrative) form of jazz during its early stages: swing music. Wilson backed some of the major jazz vocalists during his day and was a fixture on the scene. Gerry Mulligan is a jazz musician mostly known for his work on the saxophone, although he composed music and played other instruments as well. He was influential in developing the sound of cool jazz alongside Miles Davis (Owens, 2015).

Eventually, Mulligan's innovations in this area of jazz became known as West Coast jazz. Albert Ayler was a saxophonist and composer of jazz music who was heavily influenced by spirituality (as a look of the titles of his recordings reveals). His style was undeniably avante garde, and is loosely considered as part of the era of free jazz. The period of importance that involves all of these different jazz artists in the 20th century.

Some of these artists, such as Count Basie, were born in the earliest years of this century. All of these artists, however, were born in the first third of the 20th century. Thus, they went on to have a significant degree of influence in the playing of jazz in the 20th century.

Artists such as Count Basie were influential in the transition of jazz from blues music, which was prevalent in this country since before the 20th century (and which was arguably created with the importation of the first African slaves in America). Nonetheless, one can argue that the period of importance that signified the moment in jazz in which all six of these artists were influential was the late 1950s through the 1960's. Obviously, some of the older musicians were making jazz music prior to the 1950's.

Still, some of the younger ones, such as Albert Ayler (who was only 34 when he died) made their most significant contributions during this time period. One thing about this time period is certain. Although jazz music has continued into the 21st century, it garnered most of its critical acclaim for the music produced from the early point of the 20th century through the 1960's. The music that was created since then and which typifies the 1970's was predominantly made for commercial consumption.

Disco is a good example of this fact, as is the smooth, easy listening of contemporary jazz artists such as Kenny G. In this sense one can argue that the music peaked in the 1960's. Again, this topic is important to the history of jazz because it largely serves as the epoch in which jazz was still in its quintessential essence.

That essence is important to identify and largely does characterize the music from the 1960's -- which was still mostly acoustic and not created for massive commercial consumption -- the way most music that is popular today readily is. If one were to ask any person under the age of 15 -- who is not expressly a music student -- what jazz music is, they would tell you that it is something mellow, perhaps played in elevators, that is music for old people.

This topic is so important because very few other perceptions about jazz music in its quintessential essence could be further from the truth. The core of jazz is countercultural, raucous, wild, expansive, revolutionary (Bourne, 1972) and progressive. The various artists identified in this topic attest to that fact in a variety of ways. Ayler did so by embracing an unconventional degree of spirituality in his music -- which helped to expand it with his even more unconventional vocal style.

Mulligan helped to pioneer the cool jazz movement alongside Miles Davis, who was an innovative as any musician can be in any form of music. Gillespie was another innovative pioneer who was helped to create and popularize the form of bebop. Thus, this topic helps to express the fact that jazz music is constantly evolving to find uncharted territory. It has stagnated as of late and is no long quite as evolutionary or revolutionary.

Still, this topic is important to the history of this music as a whole because it is emblematic of a time frame when it was. This topic and the people who comprised the various groups that these musicians were involved in predominantly worked in the United States. Many of them, however, traversed other parts of Western civilization while refining their music. Baker, for instance, spent a good percentage of his time in and out of various countries in Europe in which he performed music (Pekar, 2012).

At the same time, these musicians also were noted for playing and recording music domestically. New York has always been a hub for avante garde music. Some of the older jazz musicians in this topic such as Basie and Gillespie certainly spent a fair amount of time working in New York. However, others made the West Coast popular for jazz music. Perhaps most prominent among these musicians is Mulligan, who helped to innovate the style that soon became known as West Coast jazz.

Yet Baker also has become renowned for the role he played in the West Coast jazz sound, which grew from the cool jazz that Miles Davis helped to pioneer. Many of these musicians travelled quite a bit within the continental U.S. while working; Basie and his band are good examples of this fact (Brady, 2011). Such travel was related to performance dates as well as dates for studio recording sessions.

Travel has long been associated with the work of musicians, for the simple fact that they must visit different places and differ types of people in order to popularize their sounds. The people who formed the various groups in this topic were able to accomplish their important deeds primarily through playing music. Going into this subject deeper, many of them were able to contribute to the success of jazz music during this influential period by composing songs that they then played.

Others were able to create a significant impact by merely functioning as session layers for other composers. For instance, much of Mulligan's work with Miles Davis during the formulation of what came to be known as cool jazz was as a session player. Granted, he likely improvised many of his performances as improvisation is an integral part of jazz. Still, Davis is regarded as the writer of those tunes that would foster this branch of music.

In fact, many of the musicians that are part of this topic were able to accomplish their deeds in supporting roles.