Context of bebop for early listeners

[Vince Kargatis]

I was listening to the new Town Hall 1945 Dizzy/Bird concert (which is fantastic, btw), and wondered what the context of this performance (and others) was for the listeners. This was effectively the first year that most people heard this stuff, and I'm unfamiliar with much music available during wartime, due to the, uh, war and related recording/release bans. What new music were people listening to in the early 40s? Did radio do a good job of disseminating the new music, or was this stuff a big shock for many jazz fans?

Certainly Dizzy and Bird were all-guns-blazing by this time, this concert really burns. So it seems like there wasn't much lead-time for extant swing listeners, but I'm really not sure how it all played out to the public.

Any ideas or comments?

[kenny weir]

Vince, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History by Scott Deveaux is one of the best jazz book's I've read (several times), and covers the music up to but not including the first commercial recordings. Have you read it?

[John L]

Vince: The handful of discs that Bird and Diz recorded in 45 did set the jazz world on fire. Especially outside of New York, it must have sounded like a revolution. Reactions varied from huge excitement to condemnation. You can read about that in the excellent Scott Deveaux book cited above. There are also a number of jazz "readers" that document the (now quite entertaining) predominantly negative first reactions of famous critics and established Swing musicians to Bop.

Probably, a lot of people at Town Hall were not hearing Bop for the first time. Bop had been in the air in New York for several years before that time. Unfortunately, the recording ban of 42-44 limited the documentation of Bop's incubation. That also most likely increased the shock from suddenly hearing Bird and Diz's mature art on the 1945 records outside of New York.

Still, there are a few important earlier recordings, beginning with the precious material that Jerry Newman documented from Minton's Playhouse in the early 1940s with Diz, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Christian (who arguably contributed a lot to the development of Bop before he died), Thelonious Monk, and others. There are some live snipits of Bird and Diz from 1942-1943. (The search goes on for any sort of recording of the Earl Hines or Billy Eckstine bands during the time that Bird and Diz were both members.) There is also the famous Coleman Hawkins/Dizzy Gillespie/Max Roach session from 1944 on "Rainbow Mist."