[turf3]

You hold tight to this view and have repeated it here and elsewhere tons of times...but I don't agree with it all, particularly, although parts I do.

It was, partially, the fact that Jazz stopped being accessible/understandable to its previous audience which also made folks (listeners) slip away from it. To lay it all at the feet of rock and roll isn't accurate. It's a multi-faceted occurrence, but to not acknowledge that be-bop replaced certain qualities and aspects of the music which had been relatively easily consumable for a listening and DANCING audience, with something far, far less so...would be ignoring a pretty obvious reality.

Mind you, flip side is - what would jazz BE today had that not happened, artistically/creatively speaking ? Hard to imagine it without the leaps and bounds made from the late 40's thru 60's and even thru 70's-80's with advent of fusion. But that's another subject.

So I agree, did bop "kill" jazz ? No, hardly. But did it have a significant role in 'killing' it as a popular, consumable musical genre ? Yes....

But you see, the thing is, bebop did NOT displace swing for the vast majority of young American music consumers and dancers. What displaced swing as pop music was singer-pop and rock and roll. Bebop was always a side issue, a niche thing. Most swing musicians kept on playing exactly what they had, and fewer and fewer people wanted to pay for it. In the period, let's say 1950-1955, there were still thousands of territory bands playing swing style stuff for dancers all over the country. But the people who came out to hear and dance, were the same people who'd been doing it in 1938. In other words, the parents and older cousins of the teenagers of 1950-55. Those teenagers, they might have been vaguely aware of this new kind of "modern jazz" that was being followed by maybe a couple hundred, mostly Black, musicians in New York and Chicago; but they wanted music that was (at least a bit) transgressive, new, they could do THEIR dances to it, not their parents' dances, the kind of thing that speaks to teenage hormones.

It wasn't like cadres of bebop enforcers came into every gig where the Mal Fitch or Jack Melick or Durwood Cline Orchestra was playing and forced them at gunpoint to fire the girl singers, up the tempos, start playing flatted fifths, and so on. Nope, those guys were putting out the same product as always, but it was losing market, and the customers were aging (and buying houses in the suburbs and getting 9 to 5 jobs and college degrees on the GI bill and making babies).

Of course, the earliest rock and rollers, mostly Black, were also mostly experienced Swing musicians, who saw that young people weren't paying to hear syrupy ballads or to Lindy Hop. I mean, you take Louis Jordan or Big Jay McNeely and tell me exactly what makes those guys "early rock and roll" or "jump music" while Cab Calloway is "jazz" or "swing". It's an awful fine line. So I'd say that in many ways, jazz split into two paths - bebop, a niche product for a few people, and jump/R&B/rock and roll, which was for the masses. The first rock and roll musicians were playing something that wasn't that far from the wildest simplified swing. Then you had the influence of country music and yet another of the many periodic injections of the blues (this time more of the electric Chicago style) and you get "classic rock and roll" - Little Richard, Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc. Really, you could make a pretty good case that all of that early rock and roll is just another style of jazz, like the difference between New Orleans, Austin High, swing, Big Band swing, bebop - well, rock and roll at that point in history was really just another branch on that tree.

Anyone remember - I think it was Lightnin' Hopkins - had a song "Twist ain't nothin' but the shimmy like Grandma did"?

 

[hakukani]

compared to what, tho ? It's one thing to say this YT broadcaster has a lot of followers...that isn't synonymous with Jazz having a large audience overall, relatively speaking in comparison to other genres.
One might ask ar the followers and fans of those channels and people also just within the very small overall group of 'true jazz fans' already, or are they actually folks who would not have become fans if not for exposure to these channels, etc ?...I would hypothesize that it isn't as if they have somehow popularized jazz for more people....but rather those who follow for most part are just already within the subset of folks who were jazz listeners already.

Well, compared to other 'influencers'. Laufey has 135 million likes and 3.4 million followers on tik tok and 20.2 million listeners on Spotify. 1 million followers makes you a macro-influencer. She's well over that.

 

[widetrack]

I heard a story told by Les Paul that, to the best of my memory, as he was taking a break from a studio session, he ran into Miles, who'd been recording in another room. As they chatted, Miles expressed concern with the financial success of his recordings. Les, with Milwaukee directness, said "Do you ever consider playing the melody?" Miles scoffed at the idea and Les came back with something like, "That's why you're hungry, Miles. People like the melodies." When I heard that, it clarified several things to me.

 

[Frank D]

To the overwhelming majority of people, music means singing and dancing. If they can't imagine being able to sing along, they'll possibly tolerate it if they can at least dance to it, but without either one, they're at a loss as to how to respond, and they find it largely boring. Instrumental music is such an odd-ball phenomenon to them, it gets its own Grammy category -- one that is largely an afterthought.

The Audience - varies a bit. The most solid are the older generation, those who actually were around when the giants were, so who grew up with a Great American Songbook repertoire.....Understand this doesn't mean Coltrane or Monk or MIles or Mingus or Brecker or Kenny Garrett or whoever....there is zero familiarity with these artists and their material........It means 'familiar' with Billie, Ella, Sinatra, maybe some Astrud Gilberto, maybe a bit of Mel Torme, etc. A fair amount of commercial success having been achieved by current artists such as Samara Joy or Jane Monheit who have really just sorta successfully (and often tastefully) 'repackaged' this sort of material to provide another avenue for folks to become exposed........You get the pattern here ? Vocalist Jazz, not instrumental. Will they go out once in a while to listen to a local live group, and while they will sit thru a night of G.A.S.B. material...sung by a decent vocalist...they will probably leave after a set or set and a half of instrumental jazz which is bop, post-bop, neo- whatever you wanna call it.

These quotes hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. To illustrate the point, I just moved to a community with a "jazz club", and I was excited to get involved. Unfortunately I came to discover their interest focused entirely on vocalists, both local and name-brand. One meeting's topic was for everyone to name three jazz artists, and most struggled to come up with names other than Norah Jones and Kenny G. They sponsor quarterly concerts by local artists, nearly always vocalists. Once they featured a band (the band of one of the vocalists featured in a prior concert) playing instrumental music, and it was a complete flop. Granted this jazz club may be an anomaly, but I tend to think it's probably a fair representation of the general public.

 

[johnebravo]

I heard a story told by Les Paul that, to the best of my memory, as he was taking a break from a studio session, he ran into Miles, who'd been recording in another room. As they chatted, Miles expressed concern with the financial success of his recordings. Les, with Milwaukee directness, said "Do you ever consider playing the melody?" Miles scoffed at the idea and Les came back with something like, "That's why you're hungry, Miles. People like the melodies." When I heard that, it clarified several things to me.

That's pretty funny. A few years ago, I saw a documentary in which Terence Blanchard was talking about when he joined the Blakey band. Blakey told him something like "when you're playing a ballad, I want you to play the melody -- that's why the guy wrote it. I don't want any of that Miles Davis s***."

 

[mmichel]

I heard a story told by Les Paul that, to the best of my memory, as he was taking a break from a studio session, he ran into Miles, who'd been recording in another room. As they chatted, Miles expressed concern with the financial success of his recordings. Les, with Milwaukee directness, said "Do you ever consider playing the melody?" Miles scoffed at the idea and Les came back with something like, "That's why you're hungry, Miles. People like the melodies." When I heard that, it clarified several things to me.

Yeah, that sounds like an apocryphal story made up by someone who doesn't actually play or listen to any jazz.

Of any jazz musician you could select as a prototype exemplifying people who "don't play the melody," Miles may be the poorest example. Miles was a notoriously lyrical player. In fact, Les himself was a far "busier" player than Miles was.

 

[Mgmarcus]

Yeah, that sounds like an apocryphal story made up by someone who doesn't actually play or listen to any jazz.

Of any jazz musician you could select as a prototype exemplifying people who "don't play the melody," Miles may be the poorest example. Miles was a notoriously lyrical player. In fact, Les himself was a far "busier" player than Miles was.

Facts. It's not only apocryphal but utterly misguided. Maybe the roles in the conversation were reversed? Miles is an all-time legend because his playing was always lyrical and emotionally direct, even when he got abstract with the melodies (and got a little loose with intonation). And Miles was not the type to ask other musicians for advice. Give it, certainly. I don't know what Blakey had in mind, if that story is accurate. Perhaps he was thinking of post-fusion Miles. Seeing as how Art Blakey played with Miles in the 1950's, he would have known that Miles was one of the great ballad players.

 

[turf3]

I'd be a lot more likely to believe that story if it were told about Coltrane or Eric Dolphy or Charlie Parker. MIles is one of the most melodic players there ever was.

 

[etc-etc]

Yeah, that sounds like an apocryphal story made up by someone who doesn't actually play or listen to any jazz.

Of any jazz musician you could select as a prototype exemplifying people who "don't play the melody," Miles may be the poorest example. Miles was a notoriously lyrical player. In fact, Les himself was a far "busier" player than Miles was.

A guitar player can "get away" with a much busier interpretation compared to a trumpeter or a saxophonist. Compare rock guitar solos with winds solos in the same band.

 

[johnebravo]

Facts. It's not only apocryphal but utterly misguided. Maybe the roles in the conversation were reversed? Miles is an all-time legend because his playing was always lyrical and emotionally direct, even when he got abstract with the melodies (and got a little loose with intonation). And Miles was not the type to ask other musicians for advice. Give it, certainly. I don't know what Blakey had in mind, if that story is accurate. Perhaps he was thinking of post-fusion Miles. Seeing as how Art Blakey played with Miles in the 1950's, he would have known that Miles was one of the great ballad players.

I think the distinction is between playing a melody and playing the melody. No one would deny that he played melodically; the question is to what extent he tries to stay true to the written melody.

On the CD of Kind of Blue there's an alternate take of Flamenco Sketches, and he plays a completely different melody. This is really just another way of saying that the entire melody is improvised, and there really is no fixed melody. That people thought there was a fixed melody, given that they had only one take for a long time, is understandable, but clearly there isn't. I read somewhere Davis saying something on this point; "if you already know what I'm going to play, why am I playing it?"

 

[mmichel]

On the CD of Kind of Blue there's an alternate take of Flamenco Sketches, and he plays a completely different melody. This is really just another way of saying that the entire melody is improvised, and there really is no fixed melody. That people thought there was a fixed melody, given that they had only one take for a long time, is understandable, but clearly there isn't.

I'm not sure what this example is supposed to illustrate. That Miles improvised a melody on one of his own compositions? There are 4 other originals on that album, all of which have fixed melodies that Miles played pretty faithfully. We also have countless of recordings of his playing on standards, in which he usually plays the melody pretty recognizably.

 

[johnebravo]

I'm not sure what this example is supposed to illustrate. That Miles improvised a melody on one of his own compositions? There are 4 other originals on that album, all of which have fixed melodies that Miles played pretty faithfully. We also have countless of recordings of his playing on standards, in which he usually plays the melody pretty recognizably.

Apparently, he simply forgot to play the melody for Flamenco Sketches on the alternate take. Got it.

 

[Mgmarcus]

I'd be a lot more likely to believe that story if it were told about Coltrane or Eric Dolphy or Charlie Parker. MIles is one of the most melodic players there ever was.

I wouldn't believe that, either, because none of those guys would have been worried about record sales. And they, too, were melodic and harmonic geniuses. For people with ears.

 

[JL]

I don't believe for a second that musicians of the caliber of Les Paul or Art Blakey would say Miles Davis was not a melodic player. Far more likely that someone else made up those quotes. Or there's some other explanation. And yeah, both Coltrane and Bird were among the most melodic of players, even if they stretched the melody in a million different ways.

 

[BH9]

Definitely not dead.

 

[JayeLID]

But you see, the thing is, bebop did NOT displace swing for the vast majority of young American music consumers and dancers. What displaced swing as pop music was singer-pop and rock and roll. Bebop was always a side issue, a niche thing.

The musicians of the bop era came from cutting their teeth in swing bands tho. So, Jazz...being Swing...then moved to bop. Therefore, to claim that Jazz and Pop were separated back then isn't really accurate. If Pop was Jazz...it was....then Pop became Rock and Roll....which it did....doesn't mean that Jazz going from Swing to Bop did not play a roll in the diminished popularity of Jazz. It certainly did.

I recall a quote by Diz saying that when bop elements started creeping into the Big Band and smaller band swing bands at that time, there would be situations where clearly the audience, who came to dance, didn't know what to do with the newer music, dance-wise. This was an observable reality.

That has nothing to do with the advent of Rock...it may have been a parallel occurrence, but to claim that the transformation of Jazz had no role in the switch of popular tastes to Rock...is erroneous, IMHO. Or in the least a bit presumptuous, as assigning a 'primary reason' or 'culprit' so to speak, when multiple dynamics were occurring simultaneously,

Well, compared to other 'influencers'. Laufey has 135 million likes and 3.4 million followers on tik tok and 20.2 million listeners on Spotify. 1 million followers makes you a macro-influencer. She's well over that.

Again, numbers are nice but it doesn't answer the question: are these followers mostly musicians, or were they already jazz fans ? Basically all the numbers illustrate is these artists have a lot of fans, again it fails to illustrate or support an argument one way or another that that fandom is 'wide base' vs. narrow base....that's all I was saying.

I mean, relatively speaking jazz fandom is small, but that doesn't mean the numbers worldwide (a fair assumption to make that the cross section of YT subscribers to channels is worldwide) are gonna look anemic.

I honestly dunno what 'macro-influencer' even means or is supposed to mean (?) If it again implies, to you, that this artist somehow is spreading the popularity of jazz to non jazz or previously non jazz fans...the data you are relying on to suggest this doesn't support that without a good amount of assumption being made, IMHO. Could just as easily mean a lot of jazz fans (who make up a small amount of music fans) happened to have come across these channels and like them.

Anyways, the thread subject can go off on many tangents, and there are a lotta tangents going on here already...don't wanna get too stuck on that.
I was sorta hoping there'd be more chiming in from folks describing what the makeup of Jazz fans in their corner of the country or world looks like nowadays. That's sorta how I had interpreted the OP.

 

[JL]

The musicians of the bop era came from cutting their teeth in swing bands tho. So, Jazz...being Swing...then moved to bop. Therefore, to claim that Jazz and Pop were separated back then isn't really accurate. If Pop was Jazz...it was....then Pop became Rock and Roll....which it did....doesn't mean that Jazz going from Swing to Bop did not play a roll in the diminished popularity of Jazz. It certainly did.

Hey Jaye, speaking of semantics, I really enjoyed reading that (the quote above)! It sort of sounds like a Jerry Seinfeld bit. And that's a compliment, by the way.

Anyway, bottom line, it all came from the blues! To comprehend jazz, R&B, R&R, you have to start with the blues. Then go from there. That's my deep philosophical take on all this.

 

[151733]

We spend countless hours and deal with all these practice demons for whom? Jazz seems to have become a bit selfish with musicians player for themselves and other musicians. Maybe it’s been like this since Bebop moved jazz underground.

This came up in a discussion with some audience members after a quartet gig last week. We were just chatting. Two older gentlemen who are life time jazz fans were sharing thoughts about the latest chord less trio trends where players just play a million notes without really saying anything.

Nerds and stuck up people

 

[Cjames]

Well, jazz has come a long way from foot stomping plantation workers. This is a great thread, with much wise input. Isn't it safe to say that bebop marks the transition from singing/dancing/foot tapping entertainment to a music form which encourages listening and analysis?
Sure, swing evolved into rock and roll, but bebop branched off, and evolved in a different direction.

The music education institutions are turning out some absolute virtuosos these days. I listen to a young sax player executing some blindingly fast passages, and hitting all the changes accurately. Pitch perfect, killer tone, lovely vibrato. I don't know if I'm entertained by it, I think 'wow, great player!' But yeah...

 

[etc-etc]

Well, jazz has come a long way from foot stomping plantation workers. This is a great thread, with much wise input. Isn't it safe to say that bebop marks the transition from singing/dancing/foot tapping entertainment to a music form which encourages listening and analysis?
Sure, swing evolved into rock and roll, but bebop branched off, and evolved in a different direction.

The music education institutions are turning out some absolute virtuosos these days. I listen to a young sax player executing some blindingly fast passages, and hitting all the changes accurately. Pitch perfect, killer tone, lovely vibrato. I don't know if I'm entertained by it, I think 'wow, great player!' But yeah...

The good technical development awaits now the entertaining touch ... how come this is not taught at a school?