The History of Jazz (44 page)

Shavers shared Gillespie’s enthusiasm for Roy Eldridge, and they both memorized Eldridge’s solos and began playing them note for note on gigs. The Eldridge sound would continue to linger in the background of Gillespie’s playing long after he developed his mature style, and would give a veneer of Swing Era traditionalism to even Dizzy’s most experimental work. And perhaps it was Eldridge’s model that led Gillespie to retain a strong sense of syncopation in his playing while other beboppers—especially Parker—favored more flowing lines. Moreover, Gillespie would often break up the long melodic lines, so favored by modern jazz players, with short, jagged phrases and virtuosic leaps into the higher register of the horn—both mannerisms also reminiscent of Eldridge. These elements of showmanship, which connected Dizzy to the prebop tradition of jazz trumpet—not just Eldridge, but back further to Armstrong—also were appreciated by the general public, who accorded Gillespie a fame and following that no other bebopper enjoyed.

In 1937, Gillespie, only nineteen years old, moved to New York. Here he stayed with his brother and experienced the wide range of music the city had to offer. He frequented the Savoy Ballroom, sat in with Chick Webb, met the great Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauzá—who helped spur an interest in Latin rhythms that would have a lasting influence on Gillespie’s music—and began to make a reputation for himself as an up-and-coming trumpeter. A chance encounter with Teddy Hill at the Savoy Ballroom led to Gillespie joining Hill’s band for a European tour. His solos on the band’s May 1937 recordings of “King Porter Stomp” and “Blue Rhythm Fantasy” make clear that Gillespie was already a skillful imitator of Eldridge’s work.

The addition of Kenny Clarke to the Teddy Hill band brought Gillespie into close contact with a drummer who would help transform the rhythmic pulse in modern jazz. A Pittsburgh native who had apprenticed in a wide range of bands in the Midwest and on the East Coast, Clarke had emulated the lighter swinging style of Jo Jones, shifting the underlying beat from the bass drum to the ride cymbal. On top of this Clarke added an array of offbeat accents, percussive asides, and cracking cat-o’nine-tails interjections designed to propel the soloist. These polyrhythmic explosions came to be called “bombs” by the jazz players of the war years. Clarke’s nickname, Klook (sometimes Klook-Mop), may have been an onomatopoeic echo of this technique. He would come to play a prominent role at the Harlem jam sessions where the new modern jazz style was forged. Proficient on several instruments and a skilled composer (he is listed as cowriter of Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts” and Monk’s “Epistrophy”), Clarke stood out as one of the most versatile percussionists of his generation.

Gillespie’s next major employer, Cab Calloway, was more than a top jazz bandleader but also one of the leading entertainers of the day. His flamboyant wardrobe, his extroverted stage presence, his pseudo-hip scat singing captured the public’s imagination—so much so that George Gershwin used him as the model for the flashy Sportin’ Life character in
Porgy and Bess
. Calloway and Gillespie had a stormy relationship—the trumpeter was eventually fired after a heated offstage encounter with the bandleader—but Dizzy clearly learned by watching his boss’s act. “Playing with Cab, I was always doing my damndest to be hip,” Gillespie later acknowledged. Following his stint with the band, Gillespie began sporting the beret and stylish clothes that would become virtual trademarks of the bebop movement. Gillespie would later stand out as the only prominent member of the bebop generation who took the role of entertainer seriously, and he made it a point to charm the audiences who came to see him with his banter as well as with his music. Whether in pursuing hokey onstage routines or simply ad libbing jokes with the audience, he countered and, at times, even parodied the self-serious attitude of his contemporaries. Calloway’s influence in this regard has typically been ignored by commentators and critics but may well have been decisive.

Of course, Gillespie’s evolution during this period went beyond the superficial veneer of clothing and mannerisms. Section mate Mario Bauzá, who had befriended Gillespie during his early New York days, again took the younger trumpeter under his wing—“Mario was like my father”—as well as nurtured Gillespie’s growing interest in Afro-Cuban music. Gillespie’s arrangement of “Pickin’ the Cabbage” for the Calloway band reflected this new direction in his compositions. His opportunities outside of the Calloway band also began to expand. In 1939, Gillespie was enlisted to participate in the Lionel Hampton recording of “When Lights Are Low” and “Hot Mallets,” where he worked alongside a horn section composed of Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, and Chu Berry. Less visible to the public, but even more influential, were the informal sessions Gillespie was attending when the Calloway band resided in New York.

These jam sessions at Minton’s and Monroe’s Uptown House have frequently been cited as the birthplace of bop, the melting pot where the disparate elements that contributed to this music coalesced into a definable style. Firsthand accounts, supplemented by a few amateur recordings, reinforce the importance of these venues, yet their elevation to mythic status has overshadowed the many innovations that were making headway outside their doors, and glosses over the halting and gradual progress that often took place even on these famous bandstands, where more traditional instrumentalists, vocalists of various stripes, and assorted wannabes often shared the stage with the burgeoning boppers. To a great extent, the historical importance of the Minton’s and Monroe’s sessions only became clear in retrospect. “I wasn’t thinking about trying to change the course of jazz. I was just trying to play something that sounded good,” Thelonious Monk later characterized the Minton’s gig.
⁴
Monk and Kenny Clarke were the only prominent modernists on the payroll at the club, but the guests on any given night might include other young progressives such as Gillespie or Parker, Jimmy Blanton or Charlie Christian, as well as seasoned Swing Era veterans Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Benny Goodman, or Ben Webster.

Of the younger players involved in the Minton’s sessions, pianist Thelonious Monk stood out as one of most adventurous and clearly the least easy to classify. His interest in unconventional harmonies and rhythmic patterns converged to some extent with Gillespie and Parker’s, but his overall conception of improvisation and composition remained
sui generis
. As his mature style made clear, the facile virtuosity of the other beboppers held little lasting interest for him, nor was he attracted to the fast tempos and flashy improvisational style that came to characterize most bebop music. Instead, he delved more deeply into textures and dissonances, and pursued a style of improvisation far more compositional in nature. Few other pianists were prepared to follow in this path until the 1950s, and the full extent of his impact would not be felt until after his death in 1982.

Only a few days younger than Gillespie, Monk had been born in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, on October 10, 1917, but spent most of his youth in the San Juan Hill section of New York. His family’s acquisition of a player piano sometime around 1926 inspired the youngster to try his hand at the keyboard, and he began taking lessons at age eleven. In his teens Monk apprenticed in the musical venues of Harlem, which ranged from rent parties to the Apollo Theater, and at sixteen he went on the road with an evangelical troupe. He was a little-known musician, scuffling from gig to gig when, at age twenty-three, he landed the job as house pianist at Minton’s.

Monk and the other Minton’s players were soon joined by an alto saxophonist who was making a name for himself at after-hours sessions held at nearby Clark Monroe’s Uptown House. Charlie Parker, who had crossed paths with Gillespie in Kansas City some months back, was now frequently reunited with the trumpeter onstage at these New York sessions. Now supported by Clarke, Monk, and other talented young players, Parker and Gillespie solidified their experimental leanings into a powerful style. They began recrafting standard songs such as “I Got Rhythm” as well as developing new compositions, pursuing faster and faster tempos, and honing a quicksilver, virtuoso technique that would frighten and astonish, by turns, other instrumentalists. A paper disc recording from the collection of Jerry Newman finds Parker, circa 1942, blowing over the changes of “Cherokee” at a Monroe’s session: Bird’s rhythm section is stodgy, offering a tepid two-beat support, but Parker’s solo is fiery and inventive. Another amateur recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” from a few months later, finds Parker in more suitable company, with Gillespie joining him on trumpet—the duo’s earliest surviving recorded collaboration—and Blanton disciple Oscar Pettiford, a sympathetic accompanist, on bass. This is a raw performance, especially Gillespie’s contribution, but there can be no mistaking it for anything other than bebop.

By this time, both Parker and Gillespie were working together in Earl Hines’s big band. Despite his prominence as a master of traditional styles, Hines had put together what may well have been the most forward-looking jazz orchestra of its day. From 1928 to 1939, Hines had found a safe haven from the Great Depression, which decimated the careers of so many musicians, as leader of the house band at the Grand Terrace, a posh Chicago nightclub. Hines was almost the antithesis of Ellington, preferring to delegate responsibility for his band’s sound rather than take an active role as leader. He prospered by hiring musical talents with different stylistic allegiances from his own and giving them substantial responsibility for shaping the style of the group. This would prove to be a key formula for the 1943 band’s success, but even a decade earlier Hines had moved far beyond the “classic” sound of his sides with Louis Armstrong and Jimmie Noone (although he would return to this traditional approach after the twenty-year hiatus that spanned from 1928 to 1948), and was anticipating the advent of the Swing Era. Relying on the strong charts of Jimmy Mundy, Budd Johnson, Quinn Wilson, and others, Hines was fronting one of the hottest dance bands of the day. But almost at the crest of the Swing Era, Hines was already embracing even more modern sounds. The first signs of the Hines band’s flirtation with bebop could be seen in 1941, when members Billy Eckstine, Budd Johnson, Freddie Webster, Little Benny Harris, and Shadow Wilson all showed, to a greater or lesser extent, leanings toward a more progressive conception of jazz. These allegiances exploded into full-fledged modernism late in 1942 when Hines hired Gillespie, whose reputation had spread through his work with Calloway, Lucky Millinder, and others. A short while later, Hines brought in Charlie Parker to play tenor sax (in replacement of departing Budd Johnson) as well as vocalist Sarah Vaughan.

In late 1942, Vaughan had won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater—claiming a prize of ten dollars and a week-long engagement at the famous venue. Hines heard her at the Apollo and, impressed by her vocal skills and range, which spanned almost three octaves, offered her a job with his orchestra. Now, still in her teens, Vaughan was sharing the bandstand with the two greatest talents of the new generation of jazz players. But the young vocalist was singularly well equipped to thrive in this setting. Like the beboppers, who flaunted their virtuosity, Vaughan had unsurpassed technical fluency and a fondness for ornate phrasing. She also shared the beboppers’ deep grasp of harmony and, like a growing number of them, could demonstrate it with some facility on the piano. In fact, her original role in the Hines band had her serving as vocalist and backup pianist to Hines. In her range, her skill in navigating difficult interval leaps, her instinct for the grand gesture, her expressive mastery of tones and timbres, Vaughan seemed closer in spirit to Gillespie than to other jazz singers. It comes as little surprise that jazz historians cite Vaughan as evoking an essentially “hornlike” style of vocals. Gillespie, responding to the inspiration of this new addition to the band, began showing an interest in writing parts to back Vaughan’s singing. Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia,” which would become a bop anthem, dates from this period and was originally recorded (although not until the end of 1944) with a Vaughan vocal under the name “Interlude.” In later years, Vaughan, like many jazz vocalists, tempered her bop proclivities in pursuit of a more mainstream pop-oriented style. Drawing heavily on the Tin Pan Alley tradition, she made memorable recordings of various “songbooks” of composers such as Gershwin, Rodgers, and Berlin. In time, her reputation as a jazz diva came to be matched by deserved respect as an interpreter of popular music. But rarely would her later work find her in a jazz setting as inspiring as the Hines band of the war years.

Or so one suspects. Unfortunately, the recording ban prevented this edition of the Hines band from ever entering the studio. Certainly no commercial recordings were made and no taped broadcasts (so common with other bands from this period) have materialized. The 1943 Earl Hines orchestra ranks only slightly below the Buddy Bolden band as the most important unrecorded ensemble in the history of jazz. Nor do later recordings by the band provide much information. Hines was unable to retain this all-star lineup of emerging stars for long, and by the time he returned to the studio the group had lost its key soloists. Little Benny Harris left in July 1943, and Parker departed in August. Soon after, Billy Eckstine quit to form his own band, eventually bringing with him some of Hines’s finest talents, including Gillespie and Vaughan.

A powerful singer with a resonant baritone voice, Eckstine had recorded the hit “Jelly, Jelly” while with the Hines band and now was interested in building on that success. As it turned out, his fascination with the cutting-edge sounds of bop may have compromised his success as a pop singer. Under somewhat different circumstances, Eckstine might have approached the popularity of a Nat King Cole, or even a Frank Sinatra, but the broader audience he sought mostly eluded him. This early 1940s Eckstine band, the most important of his career, did little to help his prospects, dividing critics and making little headway with the general public. Yet its solid musicianship and modern jazz ethos established it as a major forerunner to the bop big bands of Gillespie, Woody Herman, and others. But Eckstine, like Hines, found it difficult to retain his star soloists, many of whom were leaving to work in the small-combo format that would come to dominate the bebop idiom.