144 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentbebop: everyone in the band did improvisational solos. Th e
music used unexpected chord changes, oft en relying on a
chromatic scale. Th e speed of the playing demanded great
technical skill and oft en used diffi cult eighth-note runs.
As has already been mentioned, the role of the drum and
the piano changed with bebop. Pianists were more likely
to “comp” than to use a stride style of playing. Instead of
using his left hand to keep time by alternating between the
bass notes and the chords (the stride style), the bebop pia-
nist used the left hand to play chords at intermittent and
irregular times to comment on the soloist (“comping”). Th e
drummer, in addition to keeping time with the ride cym-
bal instead of the bass drum and “dropping” bombs, played
the drum as if were an instrument rather than just a time
keeper. Th e bass players became increasingly important for
keeping the beat.
Bebop was commercially popular between 1945 and- During the 1950s, variations on bebop, known as
West Coast cool jazz (a smoother, soft er version of bebop)
and hard bop (which added soul and gospel music), became
popular. Th e bebop infl uence and its innovations continue
today.
See also: Black Folk Culture; Ellington, Duke; Jazz; Parker,
Charlie
William P. TothBibliography
Joyner, David. “Jazz from 1930 to 1966.” In Th e Cambridge His-
tory of American Music. Ed. David Nicholls. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998.
Maggin, Donald L. Dizzy: Th e Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie.
New York: Harper Entertainment, 2005.
Owens, Th omas. Bebop—Th e Music and the Players. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Yanow, Scott. Bebop. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 2000.Black Atlantic
Th e term “Black Atlantic” was fi rst penned by black British/
African Caribbean sociologist Paul Gilroy. A major premise
of this concept is that black culture is global, multifaceted,
and international, particularly from a diasporic perspec-
tive. Th is presence of black people (due in part to the slave
trade) has created an intercultural space that allows parti-
cipants to connect the historical connections betweenHenry Minton opened it as a jazz club. He put former big
band leader Teddy Hill in charge of running it. It provided
an amiable place—with plenty of down-home Southern
cooking—for musicians to stretch out musically aft er per-
forming at other clubs in the New York area.
Th e house band at Minton’s included Nick Fenton on
bass, Joe Guy on trumpet, Th elonious Monk on piano, and
Kenny Clarke on drums. Aft er a few sets by the house band,
musicians would take turns sitting in, improvising and ex-
perimenting. Two of these house band members are consid-
ered founding fathers of bebop. Th elonious Monk, born in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1917 (but raised in Man-
hattan), became famous for his radical piano playing and
for his great jazz compositions, such as “Round Midnight.”
He was a musical prodigy and dropped out of high school
aft er his sophomore year to go on the road as a profes-
sional musician. Kenny Clarke, born in 1914 in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, extended the drum-playing innovations of
Jo Jones by moving the timekeeping to the ride cymbal.
He used the snare drum and the bass drum for “dropping
bombs”—rhythmic comments on the melody.
Another of the prime developers of bebop and frequent
guests at Minton’s was trumpeter, arranger, and composer
Dizzy Gillespie. Born in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina, he
attended high school in North Carolina at the private, all-
black Laurinburg Institute, where he studied music theory.
Musical historians have tagged him as the “teacher.” Aside
from his inventive, brilliant playing, he would oft en explain
the workings of bebop to younger or less experienced mu-
sicians, thus helping to disseminate bebop theory. Unlike
most of the beboppers, he enjoyed the entertainment side
of performing, and his trademark beret, goatee, and horn-
rimmed glasses became the public image of the hip bebop
musician. Many of his compositions, such as “A Night in
Tunisia” and “Salt Peanuts,” have become jazz standards.
Finally, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, nicknamed
“Bird,” jammed at Minton’s and is also considered one of
the founding fathers of bebop. Born in Kansas City, Kansas,
in 1920, he was a brilliant soloist who demonstrated with
his unsurpassed technical skill the beauty and possibilities
of bebop. A tragic fi gure, he fought most of his life against
alcohol and drug addiction and died at the age of 34.
Th is new bebop sound was in stark contrast to the sound
of big band and swing. Th e size of the band was part of the
diff erence, given that most of the bebop bands had between
four and six players. Th is facilitated one of other aspects of