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The 90′s have brought a much needed revitalization to the jazz world and one of those areas that have seen the effects is the return of the conventional “swing” band. Generally referred to as “retro-swing”, this 90′s movement has garnered quite a large national following along with some major press for some of its top performers. Retro- swing incorporates the same bouncing, swinging feel as the 30′s and 40′s swing band but the newer retro-swingers have also added an number of more recent influences as well. One of the more noticable influences has to do with the faster beat rhythms (much higher bpm (beats per minute)) which often have those lindy hoppers working double-time to keep pace. Also a number of the recent bands have sounds based/influenced on such modern styles as ska and punk which also add to the faster swing rhythms. The retro-swing bands have also embraced such styles as jump-swing (a more blues-based boogie woogie sound), lounge swing (varying from Louis Prima’s Vegas style to Les Baxter’s island style), New Orleans/Cajun, and traditional swing (Glen Miller, Benny Goodman styles).
Although swing music has made appearances in modern music from time to time (such as the classic Joe Jackson album “Jumpin’ Jive”) it wasn’t until the mid-90′s that bands dedicated to playing strictly swing began to appear in the major metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco in such well known swing clubs such as the Derby and the Hi-Ball Lounge. The major drivers during this time tended to play regular clubs dates with some recordings made on independent labels and include bands such as Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Squirrel Nut Zippers. The formation of Brian Setzer’s Big Band and subsequent recordings as well as the movie “Swingers” helped to bring this new genre into the national spotlight. Starting in 1998 the genre has really taken off with national acclaim and media helping to drive this phenomenon. There are now 100+ retro-swing bands playing and recording…

As jazz developed its cannon and rock and roll filled its role as America’s popular music, a new crossover began between the two musical styles. This musical crossover eventually became known as fusion in the jazz community beginning around 1965. Jazz began to import rock’s instruments, volume, and stylistic delivery.

Like bop, fusion did not occur without controversy. As jazz was establishing its legitimacy, it was taking a risk by fusing with rock. Rock also represented a generational division in the American profile. It accompanied the emergence of the post- World War II baby boom to adolescence. It was the first associated exclusively with the young generation and worked as a banner distinction. Its further association with the social and political polarity of the 1960s tended to reinforce the generation lines. Jazz criticism at that time was founded in the swing and, to a lesser extent, the bop traditions. Rock fusion represented a commercialization of an emerging American art form. As the popularity of rock was carried by the baby boom into the adult listening market, its possible fusion seemed guaranteed.
Miles Davis

The earliest notable fusion experiments happened again under the guidance of Miles Davis in his albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. This later album included players who later form the most popular fusion groups.

The most prominent later fusion groups belonged to former Davis players, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Wayne Shorter. At the time, this style offered a new virtuosity which, like earlier technical approaches, has become a part of common practice.

Free jazz is one name for the music of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, and their colleagues and disciples. Though Coleman and Taylor had recorded before the ’60s, the free jazz term was not common until then. The free designation derives from Coleman’s decision to offer performances that were not always organized according to preset melody, tempo, or progression of accompaniment chords. Freedom from these guidelines allows improvisers a greater degree of spontaneity than was available in previous jazz styles.

Ornette Coleman

Cecil Taylor

Albert Ayler

Though nonmusicians find much of Coleman’s music indistinguishable from bebop, musicians make distinctions according to the methods used (lack of preset chords) and the melodic vocabulary (original not bebop-derived). Much of Cecil Taylor’s music is extremely active. It is densely packed with rapidly shifting layers of complex harmonies and rhythms. And some recordings of Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and Ornette Coleman include loud screeches and shrieks from trumpets and saxophones, combined with nonrepetitive, highly complex sounds from basses and drums. For these reasons, some listeners equate the term “free jazz” with high-energy, seemingly chaotic group improvisations, even though freedom from adhering to preset chord progressions does not necessitate high “energy” playing or any particular tone qualities or ways of organizing tones for melodic lines. For example, some of John Coltrane’s music of the middle 1960s is often classified with “free” jazz, probably because of its collectively improvised turbulence, despite its using preset arrangements of the harmonies guiding the improvisers.

The West Coast (or The Coast) was an established jazz center by the 1920s and the first black New Orleans-style band to make records, Kid Ory’s did so in Los Angeles in 1922. But what is usually meant by West Coast jazz is a particular type of mutant modernism which became popular in the early 1940s.

Its most typical sounds were associated with former sidemen of the Stan Kenton and Woody Herman bands such as Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne, who specialized in a brand of easily palatable filleted bebop. The melodies were especially rhythmic, predictability as much of their material was by superior soloists, people like Bud Shank and Art Pepper. The occasional use of European-style counterpoint and of instruments such as flute and oboe was greeted with more enthusiasm than seems justified in retrospect. Other, more distinctive, sounds from the groups of Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck were classified for geographical reasons as West Coast jazz, but the movement as a whole is associated with a watering–down of 1940s bebop, just as European tradition of the 1950s diluted the 1940s New Orleans revival.

Probably more significant in terms of historical impact was the West Coast Blues movement of the late l940s and early 1950s. Groups such as those of Roy Milton and Joe Liggins provided a considerable input into the newly defined field of rhythm and-blues, while leaders such as T-Bone Walker incorporated the style of amplified guitar work that was to become so crucial in the development of rock and roll. During the 1960s, West Coast Jazz fit into the mold of the Cool style.

When introduced, bop was as unpopular as swing had been popular. The complexity of the style often left the audience behind. The funky players were interested in recapturing the audience and reestablishing the hot jazz expression that had been abandoned by the cool style. This return was enthusiastic and reached back to the most communicative music in their past- church music. Another motive, less defined and certainly debatable, was the need to reclaim jazz as a predominantly African-American expression. Cool, and particularly West Coast jazz, was predominantly white even though Davis and Young were the forerunners. The structured, soft-spoken arrangements were certainly more typical of the European tradition than the expressive African-American voice heard in the early blues.

Hard Bop influenced other musical forms beginning in 1955 and thus transcending all future jazz styles. The public accepted this moving music joyful and appreciated the opportunity to participate once again in jazz performances. Funky jazz uses simpler harmonies, an emphasis on rhythm, easily recognizable tunes, and anything else that players like Horace Silver could invent to increase the audience’s involvement and pleasure. Gospel jazz is an extension of funky jazz. Funky jazz can be heard in the performances of Bobby Timmons with Art Blakey, as well as with Cannonball Adderly. The adoption of gospel idioms by Les McCann could place his performances in the church as easily as on stage or in the night club.

Cool jazz followed bop but was entirely different in mood, in its approach to arranging, and even in its choices of instruments. World War II was over-the country was relaxed and jazz relaxed.

In this era, which began in 1947, many instruments were used in jazz for the first time. Softer-sounding instruments, unamplified, created a different mood from that expressed earlier. The G.I. Bill made schooling possible for many jazz players, which encouraged experimentation in jazz that had been previously ignored: new meters, longer forms, and explorations in orchestration. Longer forms were also made possibly by the introduction of long-playing records.
Lester Young

Although Lester Young came primarily out of the swing style and Miles Davis out of the bop style, they are two of the players associated with the development of the cool style. Young’s contribution was the relaxed sound and style of his playing. Davis’s work with Gil Evans that led to the recording of the “Birth of the Cool” signaled the beginning of that period. Although these first recordings appeared in New York, many of he later cool groups worked out of Los Angeles and were former members of the Stan Kenton band. Players like Gerry Mulligan, Shelly Manne, and Stan Getz were often associated with this “West Coast” style. Listen to Young’s style on “Lester Leaps In” and Davis’s “Boplicity” to hear examples of the cool sound. Also listen to Miles Davis on “Summertime” to hear sonorous sounds typical of Gil Evans’s arrangements.

The cool sound was exemplified by players like Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Chet Baker on trumpet, and George Shearing on piano. These players all typified the relaxed sound and manner of performance associated with cool.

Although the swing style may have launched the art status of jazz by placing it in the ears and the minds of the world, it was its successor, bop, which claimed mainstream status. More significant changes, both musical and nonmusical, occurred in jazz with the advent of bop than at any other time in jazz history. The military service draft of World War II brought about the dissolution of the big bands and the rise of small combos. The country was nervous, and the music was nervous and agitated. Because many well-known players were in the military, new, young players and their ideas were able to get exposure.

There were considerable changes in techniques and attitudes toward performances. There also were changes of attitude toward audiences. Bop became the first jazz style that was not used for dancing. Consequently, there were great changes in the repertoire. There was also a shift away from the popularity that swing enjoyed to a more elite listening audience. The elitism also expanded to the players. If you were an accomplished swing player, there was no guarantee that you would be able to survive the expectations of the bop musical world. The music’s complexity required players to extend their former playing knowledge. A theoretical underpinning began to emerge as players stretched the harmonic boundaries of early jazz styles. Players had to have a greater and more immediate sense of chord recognition, as well as their extensions and possible substitutions. The music was generally fast, demanding execution on individual instruments seldom required by previous styles. It is interesting that bop is today considered the mainstream of jazz style, yet it was not enthusiastically accepted by the jazz community at the time of its emergence.
Bebop Era

The bebop era, 1944-1955, represents for many the most significant period in jazz history; several consider it the time when musicians began stressing artistic rather than commercial concerns, put innovation ahead of convention, and looked toward the future instead of paying homage to the past.

Others view bebop as jazz’s ultimate dead end, the style that instituted solemnity and elitism among the fraternity stripped jazz of its connection with dance, and made it im- possible for anyone except hard-core collectors, academics, and other musicians to enjoy and appreciate the music. Each assessment contains enough grains of truth to merit closer, more extensive examination, and there have been many studies, dissertations and essays, devoted to addressing and evaluating these contentions. But it’s undeniable jazz changed forever during the bebop years. This chapter looks at the musicians who made these sweeping changes and what they were.

Although jazz and dancing were regularly linked until the towering of rock and roll, dance bands occupy their own echelon in jazz history. From the 1920s such bands organized to provide copybook replays of popular material at the correct tempo for dancers (not necessarily jazz fans), were a necessary part of America’s and Europe’s social scene. What they played was functional music with strong emphasis on a singable melody, particularly early on, and was often heard as an anti-social irrelevance. However, American bandleaders such as Paul Specht, Roger Wolfe Kahn and dozens of others (as well as such studio bands as Fred Rich’s, the California Ramblers) often staffed their orchestras with toprank jazzmen such as Mannie Klein, Sylvester Ahola, Red Nichols, Jack Teagarden, Frank Signorelli and the Dorseys.

Hunting down these great musicians’ short solo contributions to otherwise mediocre records, as well as records of dance bands that reveal overall jazz feeling and arranging flair, has become a study in itself: in Europe the VJM label has regularly issued examples of the genre known collectively as hot dance.

Up to World War II, the story in Europe (and particularly in Britain) was much the same. Jazz by and large remained a specialist music played by musicians who made their living working for dance bands then let their hair down in the small hours playing clubs. Records of British bands of the period (Ambrose, Lew Stone, Ray Noble, Roy Fox and others), like their American counterparts were often spiced with jazz solos, many being magnificent jazz in their own right. A dramatic and regrettable development in Britain post-war was the wholesale discarding of the pre-war musicians, who in the wake of crusading revivalism (which condemned commercially based music of any kind), and bebop (which set store by modernism above all), found themselves prematurely consigned to retirement.

It is not a recent concept for dance band musicians (including jazz performers with large bands) to vary their style of renditions according to the different expectations of various audiences. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, there were thirty quite well-known bands in New Orleans alone. The music played in some African-American clubs was considered far too “rough” for the white dances. Consequently, the musicians would have to adjust to a more sweet style.

These society bands almost always performed in the more posh hotels, such as New York’s Waldorf Astoria, Lexington, Pierre, Taft, Roosevelt, the Central Park Casino, the Rainbow Room atop Radio City, Chicago’s Palmer House, and the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles. Obviously, there was an excellent pay for performance in a style to which the society of the country could dance. Some of the more successful bands were Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, Sammy Kaye, Eddy Duchin, Dick Jurgens, Wayne King, and Freddy Martin.

Swing is the jazz style that emerged during the early 1930s and emphasized big bands. It spilled into the late 1940s and then remained popular in recordings, film, and television music long after its main proponents had disbanded. Most swing-style groups had at least 10 musicians and featured at least three or four saxophones, two or three trumpets, two or three trombones, piano, guitar, bass violin, and drums. Guitarists, bassists and drummers offered repeating rhythms that were sufficiently simple, buoyant, and lilting to inspire social dancers, the style’s largest audience. Musicians strove for large, rich tone qualities on their instruments. Solo improvisers did not seek intricacy in their lines so much as lyricism and a hot, confident feeling that was rhythmically compelling. For these reasons, the musical period of the 1930s and 1940s has been called the swing era and big-band era. Not all dance music played by big bands of the 1930s and 1940s was jazz. A large segment of the public, however considered almost any lively, syncopated popular music to be jazz.

Journalists and jazz fans drew distinctions between bands that conveyed the most hard-driving rhythmic qualities and extensive solo improvisations and those that conveyed less swing feeling and improvisation. The former were called swing bands or hot bands (for example, the bands of Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Andy Kirk and Duke Ellington). The latter were called sweet bands (for example the bands of Glenn Miller, Wayne King, Freddy Martin, and Guy Lombardo). Many listeners, however, did not make such distinctions. They considered all the big dance bands to be swing bands. This is not surprising because all the bands (even Guy Lombardo’s) did play some jazz and even the honest of swing bands (like Duke Ellington’s) featured some sweet numbers. Conversely, some of the biggest hits by Glenn Miller’s sweet band contained brief jazz improvisations and conveyed quite danceable swing feeling. An instructive illustration for this confusion regards Tommy Dorsey’s immensely popular bands of the 1940s. The groups had first-rate jazz oriented accompanists, swinging arrangements, and a number of top-notch jazz improvisers. Yet huge portions of their repertory were composed of ballads and vocal features. Therefore, though jazz historians don’t usually give Dorsey’s bands much attention, jazz musicians generally confer high respect upon them.
Charlie Christian, Lionel Hampton,
Benny Goodman

Though there were large dance bands before the swing era, big-band music as a concept for music fans developed most firmly during this era and persisted for decades thereafter. This has caused ambiguity in labeling because, for example, record store clerks often catalog big-band music as though it were a single style, despite the many different harmonic and rhythmic approaches that new ensembles of similar instrumentation have used dance the swing era. Large ensembles have performed almost every kind of jazz: swing, bebop, cool, hard bop, free jazz and jazz-rock fusion. Not all big bands are swing bands and so big-band style should not be used routinely to designate the jazz of all large ensembles. But many consider big band to denote an idiom, not just an instrumentation. Also note that there were important jazz improvisers in the swing era, such as Art Tatum and Django Reinhardt, who did not earn their reputations in the context of big bands and there were others, including Lester Young, Charlie Christian, and Coleman Hawkins, who often made their best recordings in small-band formats, though most of their livelihood and exposure came initially as soloists in big bands.
Swing Style

The swing players, generally speaking, were more schooled than their predecessors. Playing exactly in tune was often a more important issue than the feeling of the part. In early New Orleans Dixieland for example, the feeling of the phrase was of much more concern than any other aspect of playing. Some distinction should be drawn between the African-American and white bands in this matter. The white bands tended to avoid inflections that would disturb the ensemble’s blend. Because of their size and the nature of the sectionalization, everyone in the ensemble had to conscientiously start and stop each note together. There was a protocol that was silently agreed upon. Some bands played a bit on top of the beat and some played a trifle behind the beat. A newcomer to a band would do well to listen intently to the rhythmic approach of that particular group in order to fit well into the ensemble. The African-American bands generally had a looser ensemble style that reflected more individual inflections. The Count Basie band became an ensemble machine. Its controlled balance among players has seldom been rivaled. However, even that balance was a result of listening more than reading. The musical reading skills of the players were not necessarily their strong point. The notation of the arrangements could not possibly reflect such nuances of performance interpretations.
Progressive Swing:

Progressive swing, also known as Progressive Jazz was an extension of the jazz orchestras following the decline of the big band era. The style is closely associated with the output of Stan Kenton beginning in the late 1940s, however, the term applied to a number of bands and small groups who played a darker sound than their big band era counterparts. Moreover, Progressive Swing was modernistic with a more dissonant harmonic turbulence, as rebellious as swing could get.

The term, Progressive Swing, is referred to in the post-bop era as Progressive Jazz and hence has become synonymous with modern jazz. A few examples of Progressive Swing are Stan Kenton’s “Chorale for Brass, Piano and Bongos” recorded in 1947 and “Invention for Guitar and Trumpet” in 1952. Boyd Raeburn also performed Progressive Swing for a short time with output that included “Boyd Meets Stravinsky” which his orchestra recorded in 1946.

Boogie-woogie is a jazz style that seems quite accessible to the listener. It is a piano style that was occasionally orchestrated successfully. This full-sounding style came into existence when it became necessary to hire a piano player to substitute for an orchestra. The resulting “barrel-house” piano which could be found in rural southern juke joints tried to imitate the sound of three guitars: one playing the chords, one melody, and one bass.

Most boogie-woogie is played on the blues chord progression with a repeated ostinato. The definite feeling of eight beats to the measure is the signature of this style.

During the 1930s, the strict blues form was being used more in jazz recordings as the tempos were speeding up. In the years just before 1940, the primitive blues form of boogie woogie became a popular fad. Music historians have credited Meade Lux Lewis for the boogie woogie craze. All during the 40s boogie influenced a number of arrangements within the big bands. The swing bands found great success when they added the element of boogie, such as the case of Will Bradley’s “Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar,” and Tommy Dorsey’s “Boogie Woogie.”

Of the boogie woogie players who came to promeinence during the boogie fad; seven stand out as the major contributors and influences: Pine Top Smith, Albert Ammons, Jimmy Yancey, Joe Sullivan, Clarence Lofton, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. In later years Freddie Slack, Cleo Brown and Bob Zurke came to promidence as the younger generation of boogie woogie players.

The blues based boogie would later merge with the stride style to became the main line of development of jazz piano playing, a form that would lead to a major movement in jazz, led by the “Fatha,” Earl Hines.