Dizzy & Bird: the birth of BEBOP

[EKE BBB]

Since we´re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Massey Hall concert, we could go back in the history of BOP, and start a discussion on the contribution of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to the origins, birth, development and extension of be-bop.

Which of them do you think was the principal architect of defining small group bebop and why?

As you can see with these quotes, there are opposite points of view:

"Dizzy was verbal, witty, extroverted, sunny of disposition - everything Charlie was not. Dizzy was accesible to everyone. You did not elevate such man to a hierarchy. Blowing musicians, who where in the position to know, all agree that Parker was the fountainhead of the new music. The flow of musical ideas suggested mysterious, primal forces"
Ross Russell, "Bird lives!"


" ... but his talent (Bird´s) was mainly to do with spur-of-the-moment instant creativity, albeit drawing upon some of the most sophisticated harmonic ideas to have been absorbed by any improvising musician up until that time. His partnership with Gillespie benefited not just from the trumpeter´s ability to match many aspects of Parker´s virtuoso playing, but also from the knack of placing that playing in a suitable framework or context. My perception of Gillespie is that he had an altogether more wide-ranging musical curiosity about the way such a context might be developed, and this led him to experiment with numerous possibilities for expanding and extending bebop -from moving forward the big-band ideas he had begun with Eckstine to experimenting wiht Afro-Cuban rhtyhms, and from further exploring the dissonant harmonies he had worked out with Monk and Dameron to creating even more experimental charts with Gil Fuller, eventually leading to his early modal experiments with George Russell.
Gillespie was often to define bebop not so much as a revolution but an evolution and in later life, when he had become a grand patriarchal figure in jazz, he could justifiably point to his own seminal role not just in one, but in several areas where jazz had evolved into a richer, more wide-ranging music, in the wake of his small group playing with Parker. By contrast, Parker´s contribution was less widely spread, limited both by his short life and the way in which he chose to live it. Neverthless, the profound influence of his solo playing on generations of saxophonists, including the main revolutionary figures who followed him, such as Coltrane and Ornette, should not be understimated"
Alyn Shipton "A new history of jazz"


"Unmatched among modernists as a blues player, Parker brought a human cry to bebop´s experimentalism - ultimately as crucial an element to the music´s acceptance as Gillespie´s showmanship"
Francis Davis, "Dizzy atmosphere", NY Time Book review


What do you think?

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I wouldn't want to choose between the two. I will say though that I think I can hear the stirrings of bop in Dizzy's playing with Cab Calloway more clearly than I can hear it in Bird with Jay McShann. (Cab hated it, called it "Chinese music.")

But what about Charlie Christian? Monk?

My feelings go with Shipton rather than Russell.

For one thing any writer indulging in such bullshit as "The flow of musical ideas suggested mysterious, primal forces" "

Those "mysterious, primal forces" consisted of those ocurring no doubt while on junk.
That sentence makes me cringe. It probably would have made Bird cringe too, and caused Diz to double over laughing.

Bird was more emulated by too many jazz musicians by their taking up heavy drugs. Dizzy needed no such crutches for his talent.
Dizzy was credited by most as having been a willing teacher of other musicians in music.

But the above begs the question. Most of those around at the time, the formative years of bop, are now dead, those still alive like myself were very young and mainly in the military, with limited opportunities to hear live music, while the recording ban prevented preservation of the seminal era .

Writers on that era, except when making direct quotes of those actually around at the time, are trying to create pseudo history.
The lack of recordings of the seminal "Minton" era, exceptimg some limited, poor quality, homemade recordings precludes their making independent judgements.

Maybe they are posessed by mysterious, primal forces like book sales.

[clinthopson]

Originally posted by FredC

Maybe they are posessed by mysterious, primal forces like book sales.

FredC is right on the money. This kind of argument is as absurd as whether Rembrandt or Michaelangelo was the greater artist.