The Development of Jazz - Part Four

Written by David Hills – Edited by Denis Wall

Swing was the thing from 1933 to the end of the war in 1945, but in jazz, the musicans were tired of playing the same things night after night. As early as 1939, John Birks Dizzy Gillespie worked to create more interesting music, and influenced his big band friends with it. To create a lighter more flowing basis for the music, drummer Jo Jones moved his music from the actual drums to the hi hat cymbals - and later, drummer Kenny Clarke moved his music to the big ride cymbal – like most drummers do today. This music, instead of thumping on the beat, had different accents. One of the early big bands playing with the more modern sound and feel, featuring three tenors and a baritone sax was Woody Herman’s Four Brothers.

Now we get to another real change in jazz. Some things stayed the same – the 4/4 beat for dancing, the French influences, the format of the blues and playing on popular songs of the day. But jazz had changes - from New Orleans to Chicago and New York, to the advent of records that spread the music around the world, from small bands to big bands, to the arrival of electricity, and to the swing era of the big bands – a forerunner of the rock and roll enthusiasm of the 1960s. Two musicians leading the modern jazz of the mid-1940s were the hot alto-sax virtuoso Charlie Parker, and the cool trumpet of Miles Davis.

Another leader and entrepreneur was Dizzy Gillespie – a happier, more sane and more hardworking man never lived. He was everything his nickname wasn’t and he helped progress jazz from dance music to concert music - from music to dance to – to music to listen to. With a big band and several small groups, Dizzy led the way for the hundreds of young modern players who were suddenly given the chance to totally express themselves. The style of Jazz became known as Bebop. The term bebop was actually the name of a tune, however a journalist misunderstood what he was told by a musician, and instead of simply modern jazz, the journalist called the music style, bebop. Dizzy Gillespie was credited as one of the movers and shakers of Bebop.

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