216 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentClarke, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus; but it was Charlie
Parker (nicknamed “Yardbird” or “Bird”), with his dazzling
musicianship and astounding technical virtuosity, who
basked in the limelight.
Th e postwar era saw the rise of two new styles: cool
jazz and hard bop. Blending the scored principles of swing
and rhythmic progress of bebop, cool jazz was mute, light,
and sometimes emotionally detached. Infl uenced by Strav-
insky and Debussy, cool jazz disdained innovations in favor
of closeted solo style and subtle rhythms. Th e trumpeter
Miles Davis and the pianist John Lewis were of paramount
importance in infl uencing the harmonic and rhythmic di-
rection of bop. Th e fi rst cool jazz album was by a nonet (or
nine-piece) group led by Miles Davis and came to be known
as “Th e Birth of the Cool.” Th e ensembles of cool jazz, be-
sides involving typical jazz instruments, also experimented
with new musical instruments such as baritone saxophone,
fl ugelhorn, and French horn. Furthermore, modal music
(the unchanging harmony played over a period of time) de-
veloped and popularized by Miles Davis eventually paved
way for the fusion of jazz with rock music, referred to as
jazz-rock.
If cool jazz revealed the unusual melodic aspect of jazz
music, hard bop diverged from the funkier side of it. In
fact, hard bop, with its emphasis on phrases and rhythms,
can be described as an extension of bebop and the oppo-
site of cool jazz. With an unmistakable infl uence of gospel
and blues music, predominantly in the persons of Horace
Silver and Donald Byrd, the hard bop was characterized
by aggressive and explosive music. Particularly, this strand
of jazz refracted the black experience in eastern cities, in-
cluding New York, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Such diver-
sity led to the development of such classic songs as Cliff ord
Brown’s “Joy Spring,” Benny Golson’s “Blues March,” and
Cannonball Adderley’s “Work Song.” Th e hard bop artists
Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, and Philly Jo Jones, among others,
were quite successful. But what dominated the attention
of the black audience in this era was a danceable style of
jazz called rhythm and blues (R&B) and its later version,
rock and roll. Eff ervescent black saxophonist Louis Jordan
was the chief architect of rhythm and blues, and the white
Southerner Elvis Presley, with his sophisticated dance steps
and strong dose of country and gospel music, was the most
infl uential performer of rock and roll. Other important
black rock and roll musicians include Ray Charles, Chuck
Berry, and Clyde McPhatter.Seven, blues singers such as Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bes-
sie Smith, and the big musical bands of Duke Ellington,
together with the rise of new electronic mass media (phono-
graphs, jukeboxes, and radio) and jazz clubs, consolidated
and brought jazz to greater visibility and immense popular-
ity. Dominated by the big bands (constituting of 12 to 16
members), the 1930s witnessed an invigorating and bois-
terous variety of jazz called swing. Used mostly for dancing,
swing, though less complex than the later forms of jazz, ex-
panded the rhythmic patterns of ragtime and emphasized
strong rhythmic section. Bandleaders such as Benny Good-
man (“Th e King of Swing”), Count Basie, Benny Carter, Earl
Hines, Artie Shaw, Chick Webb, and Charlie Barnet and the
famous black swing bands the Savoy Sultans (Count Basie’s
band), the Chick Webb band, and the Jay McShann band
upheld and popularized swing tradition. It was during this
time that Billie Holiday (“Lady Day”), with her husky and
buoyant voice, impressed the jazz lovers, later on becoming
one of the prominent fi gures in the history of jazz. Beyond
its genuine expression of the experiential realities of black
life, jazz and its variants increasingly became a vital cultural
and social force of this period. It is this all-pervasiveness of
jazz in the early decades of the 20th century that provoked
F. Scott Fitzgerald to christen the twenties as “the Jazz Age”
(also referred to as “the Roaring Twenties”). Today the ex-
pression refers to the years between the end of World War I
(1918) and the Stock Market crash (1929) and is related to
the Harlem Renaissance.
Th e Great Crash (1929) and general worsening of
American condition, together with the closure of many
jazz clubs, dramatically declined the appreciation of jazz
music. Th e big bands of the swing era eventually gave way
to an acerbic and fi ery style of jazz called bebop (shortened
form “bop”). Performed primarily in small groups, bebop
captivated audiences with its rhythmic intricacies and long
melodies and through an emphasis on new musical idi-
oms. Th ough this progressivistic desire of bebop met with
fi ery criticism from the purists of jazz music, who favored
a revival of Dixieland jazz, it was bebop with its exacting
repertoire of music that elevated jazz into classical status.
Th e trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the alto saxophonist Char-
lie Parker, and pianists Th elonius Monk and Bud Powell—
along with swing-era artists, notably the tenor saxophonist
Lester Young and the trumpeter Roy Eldridge—were in-
strumental in developing this dialect. Other practitioners
include Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Kenny