Jazz

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Tad Richards

Artistically, the Duke Ellington and Count Basie bands represented the pinnacle of the big-band style. Ellington, who began as a bandleader in the mid-1920s, and continued to lead a band far beyond the Swing Era, until his death in 1974, may have been the first jazz musician to gain an international reputation as a serious artist--the first to draw attention to jazz as a serious art form, although this battle was not to be won for a long time. By the end of the 1970s, jazz was being taught in universities, and major grants and awards were going to jazz musicians and composers. But in 1965, Ellington was passed over for the Pulitzer Prize for music because of a stubborn insistence by older conservatives on the committee that jazz was not really art.

Count Basie, who came from the Kansas City tradition of blues-influenced jazz, was arguably the most important figure in developing the concept of "swing" in the big-band idiom. J. Bradford Robinson, in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, says that his rhythm section "altered the ideal of jazz accompaniment, making it more supple and responsive to the wind instruments." Basie's approach to rhythm, and the musical innovations of his leading soloists, particularly tenor saxophonist Lester Young, provided an important basis for the revolutionary changes that were to come.

Throughout the 1930s, jazz was primarily popular music. Goodman, Ellington, and Basie played for dances, just like the "sweet" big bands led by Sammy Kaye, the Dorsey Brothers, and others. But in the 1940s, jazz enjoyed the fruits of the steady growth of the previous decade. After the end of Prohibition, a new generation of jazz clubs had begun to grow throughout the 1930s. They tended to be small, which meant they created a demand for small group jazz, generally a rhythm section and two lead instruments. The most important of these clubs were on 52nd Street, in New York, making New York more than ever before the center of jazz creativity.

New jazz musicians, primarily black, gravitated to New York, where they represented an urban, sophisticated generation. Impatient with what they perceived as the "Uncle Tom" image of many black showmen, like Armstrong and Cab Calloway, they presented themselves as cool, cerebral, and introspective. They were artists, more than entertainers.

These new musicians investigated the possibilities of improvisational music, trying more complex rhythms and harmonies and improvisations built on melodic and chordal substitutions which went way beyond conventional melodies. The two most important figures in the modern jazz, or bebop, movement were alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Their experiments galvanized an entire generation of musicians, who began to hear music in a whole new way. Experimentation became the new wave of jazz. In 1941 Minton's, a small club in Harlem, became the center for a series of after-hours jam sessions which soon attracted all the best players who were interested in the new music.