Hard Bop and Cool

Hard Bop a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a number of styles deriving from bebop. [1] Hard bop incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. David H. Rosenthal contends in his book Hard Bop that the genre is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of black American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music [2]:24 and prominent jazz musicians like Tadd Dameron worked in both genres. Another major influence in this genre was Miles Davis.

Hard Bop Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop." The "funky" label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style. [3 The descriptor is also used to describe soul jazz, which is commonly associated with hard bop.

Hard Bop Hard bop developed in the mid-1950s, and is generally seen as originating with The Jazz Messengers, a quartet led by pianist Horace Silver and drummer Art Blakey. Some saw hard bop as a response to cool jazz and west coast jazz. [4]

Hard Bop Michael Cuscuna maintains that Silver and Blakey's efforts were in response to the New York bebop scene: Both Art and Horace were very, very aware of what they wanted to do. They wanted to get away from the jazz scene of the early '50s, which was the Birdland scene—you hire Phil Woods or Charlie Parker or J. J. Johnson, they come and sit in with the house rhythm section, and they only play blues and standards that everybody knows. There's no rehearsal, there's no thought given to the audience. Both Horace and Art knew that the only way to get the jazz audience back and make it bigger than ever was to really make music that was memorable and planned, where you consider the audience and keep everything short. They really liked digging into blues and gospel, things with universal appeal. So they put together what was to be called the Jazz Messengers.

Hard Bop A key recording in the early development of hard bop was Silver's composition "The Preacher," which was considered "old-timey" or "corny," such that Blue Note head Alfred Lion was hesitant to record the song. [ However, the song became a successful hit. [ Miles Davis, who had performed the title track of his album Walkin' at the inaugural Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, would form the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane in 1955, becoming prominent in hard bop before moving on to other styles. Other early documents were the two volumes of the Blue Note albums A Night at Birdland, also from 1954, recorded by the Jazz Messengers at Birdland months before the Davis set at Newport. Clifford Brown, the trumpeter on the Birdland albums, formed the Brown-Roach Quintet with drummer Max Roach.

Hard Bop The hard bop style enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz. According to Nat Hentoff in his 1957 liner notes for the Blakey Columbia LP of the same name, the phrase "hard bop" was originated by author-critic- pianist John Mehegan, jazz reviewer of the New York Herald Tribune at that time.

Hard Bop Other musicians who contributed prominently to the hard bop style include Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Carl Perkins (pianist) [3], Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt.

Cool Jazz The very term "cool jazz" conjures up images of martinis, bachelor pads outfitted with the latest stereo equipment, and sophisticated, detached chicks dressed in the latest fashions. The word cool denotes a detachment, a less emotional approach to the music. In short, cool jazz is something of a college-educated form of jazz, often influenced by other musical forms such as classical music.

Cool Jazz Cool jazz features arrangements that are generally more complex than those found in bop, where the head is played, followed by solos, then played again. Often complex harmonies were played behind the solos in cool jazz--it was much more a style that emphasized the composer and arranger.

Cool Jazz The first 'cool' jazz recordings were by a nonet (or nine piece) group led by Miles Davis and recorded on a group of sides that came to be known as The Birth of the Cool (a title that was applied after the fact, by the way).

Cool Jazz The Davis group was more collaborative and marked some of the first influences of composer/arranger Gil Evans, who later worked with Davis on a groundbreaking group of albums that sought to combine delicate, complex arrangements with improvisation. In addition, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who later became a major player in cool jazz on the West Coast, also played on the Birth of the Cool sessions, as did John Lewis, a pianist whose approach was certainly cerebral in nature.

Cool Jazz The instrumental voices in the Davis nonet were fused in such a way as to make them all equals rather than competing sections like those of a big band. More tonal colors worked their way into the palette as well, with French Horns and tuba being added. These were musicians who were well grounded in bebop, having come up playing this style, so it is not a question of their possessing virtuosity. Rather, they chose to express themselves in a way that left the technical virtuosity that was obvious in bebop behind.

Cool Jazz The Birth of the Cool nonet was not commercially successful and their recorded sides were few. Recent CD releases have combined the total studio output of the group with a live radio broadcast from the Royal Roost to collect virtually all of the group's recorded music under the "Birth of the Cool" title, but at the time there was no real sense that the group had recorded a large or even unified body of work. Nonetheless, their music became highly influential as the various members who had contributed to the nonet spread out and began to lead their own ensembles.

Cool Jazz Gerry Mulligan's piano-less quartet, featuring trumpet player Chet Baker, certainly did much to increase the profile and popularity of cool jazz. Mulligan and Baker played counterpoint around and against each other's lines, sounding more like a relaxed version of a Bach fugue than contrapuntal New Orleans jazz. The space opened up by the lack of piano or guitar not only helped further define the cool sound as a basically minimalist style, it also left considerable room for Mulligan and Baker to solo in a relaxed, unhurried style.

Cool Jazz Very little cool jazz produced through the end of the '50s and into the 1960s is strictly cool, but it all has recognizable elements that link the different practioners of the sound together. For example, Dave Brubeck's work, while retaining many elements of the cool movement, is often very agitated, searching, and experimental

Cool Jazz. His quartet's work with "odd" time signatures opened the door for late-'60s experimenters like Don Ellis and Brubeck's piano work has sometimes been described as "bombastic" by jazz critics. But the quartet also featured alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, who played every bit as lyrically as Chet Baker or Lee Konitz and had a gorgeous, thin sound that went against what any alto player has done before or since

Cool Jazz An intellectual and talented wordsmith, Desmond became, in many ways, the perfect example of a cool jazz artist--cerebral, clever, humorous, and with a penchant for good scotch and dating models. Brubeck, too, came across as an intellectual and something of an avant-gardist because of the fact that he had studied with composer Darius Milhaud. The group's music is anything but an exercise in intellectualism, though--with drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright, the group could swing fiercely in any time signature.