Chapter 1
Historical Background: Musical and Socio-Cultural Contexts
Preliminary Remarks
Just as composers of “classical music” transformed and extended the musical
vocabulary of their predecessors, jazz performers have at various times, made significant
innovations that have transmuted the jazz language to some verifiable extent. However,
jazz has notably been a performer’s and improviser’s art, breeding few composers.1
Morgan and Horricks corroborate this by affirming that, “In jazz every seed of evolution
has been sown in the solo styles of a scattered handful of musicians, and only with the
final coordination of their principles has the new school been wrought.”2 In effect, each
subsequent jazz style has been established on the notions of the preceding generation of
players and not its composers.3 This conception is diametrically opposed to the one found
in “classical music,” where major innovations and style changes are implemented solely
by composers. Consequently, we can comprehend why the in-depth study of a performer’s
improvisational style has proven to be an attractive and rewarding venture for the jazz
historian.
Through listening and familiarization with the jazz idiom one recognizes that its
improvisational language has evolved and developed through numerous epochs
(dixieland, swing, bop, cool, hard-bop, modal, free, fusion) over the last century. To a
large extent, the characteristic modifications in each period have also occasioned
alterations in the grammar and syntax of this distinctive musical idiom. As Joseph Levey
Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: It’s Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press,
Inc., 1968), 134. The word “composer” here is used in the strictest sense of the term. Throughout jazz’s rich
musical history there have been only a few full-fledged major composers: Jelly Roll Morton, Duke
Ellington, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans.
2 Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks, Modern Jazz: A Survey of Developments since 1939. (1956;
reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977), 20.
3 Schuller, op. cit., 134.
1
10
states, “the history of jazz and the development of jazz improvisation are inseparable.”4 In
this chapter we want to provide a historical framework and socio-cultural context for
jazz’s development on which we can evaluate and understand Montgomery’s musical
evolution and improvisational style.
The 1940’s: Swing to Bop
Montgomery’s apprenticeship on jazz guitar began in 1943, coinciding with
significant developments in the world of jazz. At the beginning of World War II,
American popular music was still dominated by large dance orchestras, or “swing bands,”
as they were called. These bands provided accessible dance music and Tin Pan Alley
songs for mass audiences through “tightly arranged and rehearsed performances, while
still alloting room for improvised solos by virtuoso soloists.”5 Montgomery had the
opportunity to perform swing-band music with the Lionel Hampton orchestra (in 19481950), one of the few important big bands still in circulation at the time. By the end of the
war a new style of “hot jazz” called “bebop” was initiated in New York City, supplanting
swing as the mainstream jazz style by the end of the decade. The foundation of the style
was laid over a period of approximately six years, from 1939 to 1945. It may have
actually developed more rapidly, but a National Federation of Musicians recording ban
was implemented from August 1942 until November 1944,6 thus “a major medium for the
transmission of new ideas among the jazz musicians was temporarily denied them.”7
Bebop was in many ways, radically different from the music of the swing dance
bands. Even in its initial stage, it was very complex and required new levels of virtuosity
and technique. This style was characterized by the considerable use of chordal extensions,
4
Joseph Levey, The Jazz Experience: A Guide to Appreciation (Lanham: University Press of America, Inc.,
1983), 100.
5 Scott DeVeaux, “Bebop and The Recording Industry: The 1942 AFM Recording Ban Reconsidered,”
Journal of The American Musicological Society, Vol.XLI no.1, (1988), 129.
6 Robert D. Leiter, The Musicians and Petrillo (New York: Bookman Assoc., 1953), 132-140.
7 Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), 287.
11
chord substitutions, and passing chords that intensified the harmonic fabric.8 Its most
controversial aspect was its rhythmic complexity consisting of a more intricate rhythmic
sensibility, “arising not from the steady quarter-note dance beat, but from contrasts and
accents unfolding within mercurial streams of eighths and sixteenths.”9 It was smallgroup music performed by a five- or six-member combo in which the priorities of
individual expression and the prerogatives of the improviser were reasserted.10 Bop was a
more intricate art form than New Orleans and swing jazz because it could “command jazz
skills that developed over several generations of instrumental experimentation:”11
The beboppers were the cream of the orchestral sidemen, whose virtuosity enabled
them to handle with ease the most complicated scorings of Sy Oliver, Jimmy
Mundy, Eddie Sauter, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington. Thus, technical
skill was a requisite for those who would free themselves from the bondage of the
moribund swing orchestra and create a new jazz language.12
The bebop musicians had been dissatisfied with the orchestral jazz of the swing era and
the controlled solo space decreed by the arranger. They yearned to escape the confines of
this constricting style in order to attain full artist expression: “Dissatisfaction with the
general precepts of the big-band style resulted in the birth of a new jazz style in the early
forties, a musical reaction that was not without social implications.”13
1940-50: Socio-Political Climate
According to Micheal Budds, there were many social implications that occasioned
the rise of artistic consciousness at the onset of the bebop era. James Lincoln Collier
Levey, op. cit., 100. Levey observes that the “Jazz from this period often contains complete
reharmonizations of the original composition as well as substitute chords, altered chords and enriched
chords of all descriptions.”
9 DeVeaux, op.cit.
10 Michael J. Budds, Jazz in The Sixties: The Expansion of Musical Resources and Techniques (Iowa:
University of Iowa Press, 1978), 8-9.
11 Ross Russell, “The Evolutionary Position of Bebop,” in The Art of Jazz: Essays on The Nature and
Development of Jazz, ed. Martin Williams (New York: Da Capo Press, 1959), 197.
12 Ibid.
13 Budds, op. cit.
8
12
endorses this position when he says that, “Rarely has there been a movement in art that
showed so clearly as bop the lineaments of the social forces behind it.”14 The migration
north during the first decade of the century had produced a large population of AfricanAmericans who had grown up in a more liberal social climate than the preceding
generation. A new assertive spirit began to be felt by these musicians, who by 1940 were
hearing from critics that they were worthy of respect.15 They realized that the white
players in big bands usually enjoyed higher salaries for playing “what Blacks were
beginning to conceive of as their music.”16 Moreover, they suffered the insult of having
their families and friends refused access to the white clubs and dance halls where they
performed.
The beboppers, led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, were
rebelling for a number of reasons. They were upset with what had happened to an
art form that they as black musicians had given to America. They saw the
importance of improvisational solos diminish and take a “back seat” to the big
band sound of the swing era. They were angry with the lack of racial sensitivity in
requiring them to fight the so-called “yellow-skinned Jap” (World War II). They
felt it was a white man’s war and resented the hypocrisy of saving the “free world”
in a racially segregated army. They were also angry with the financial and social
back seat imposed upon them relative to the white bands, and vented their anger in
unusual ways.17
During this period race relations in the United States were beginning to change rapidly.
Even before America had entered the war, black leader A. Philip Randolph made a public
demand for equal treatment in defense industries, threatening to march on Washington if
his demands were not met. The concerned authorities conceded, and his demands were
14
James L. Collier, The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History (New York: The Bantam Doubleday
Publishing Group, Inc., 1978), 341.
15 James Lincoln Collier, “Jazz” in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed. Barry Kernfeld (New York:
MacMillan Press Limited, 1988), 1:595.
16 Ibid.
17 Fredrick Kaufman and John P. Guckin, The African Roots of Jazz (N.p.: Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.,
1979), 38-39.
13
met with an Executive Order, on June 25, 1941.18 Lerone Bennett argued in Before the
Mayflower, “a new set of relationships” between blacks and whites which coincided with
and helped precipitate, an “increasingly impatient activism among black political figures”
during this period.19 A new group of magazines such as Jet and Ebony, which celebrated
the African-American life, were founded during the war years. The Congress of Racial
Equality was also founded and staged its first sit-in in 1943.20 Porter and Ullman further
add that
At a time when it had more money to spend, and more power to wield, black
America, unintimidated by wartime race riots, was asserting itself in a great
variety of ways. The new generation of musicians reflected, and contributed, to the
times. Bebop involved a reinterpretation of the elements of music. This new
strikingly modern-sounding music, hip and upbeat, also reflected one kind of
response to the problems of the war years.21
Many of the black G.I.’S returning to the United States from the war were determined to
confront the second-class citizenship role they had been alloted. The bloody race riots in
industrial cities like Detroit and Chicago, demonstrated how steadfast the new demands of
the black Americans had become. After the Second World War, young black Americans
were committed not to be thrust into the traditional second-class status by the “dominant
white political structure:”22 “Black Americans began to fight back with words, with fists,
with pamphlets, with music.” Consequently, this new kind of jazz sounded “aggressive,
hostile, complex and blantantly non-commercial.”23 Dizzy Gillespie, one of the founding
fathers of bebop, recognized that this music reflected the socio-political climate of the
period:
18
Lewis Porter and Micheal Ullman, Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : PrenticeHall, Inc., 1993), 187-188.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Jack William Wheaton, “The Technological and Sociological Influences on Jazz as an Art Form in
America,” (Ed.D. dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 1976.), 149.
23 Ibid., 150.
14
Recently, after becoming an adult musician, after forty years, you realize that your
music reflects the times in which you live. My music emerged from the war years,
the Second World War, and it reflected those times in the music. Fast and furious,
with the chord changes going this way and that way, it might’ve looked and
sounded like bedlam, but it really wasn’t.24
As a result of this social unrest, bebop became a music of emotions and feelings that
expressed the black musicians’ rebellion.25 The escalation of technical proficiency in bop
was partially an affect of an emotional cause.26 The bop musician augmented the
expressive thrust of jazz improvisations by using more chromatic and angular melodic
lines in which the added complex organization of pitch and rhythm, implied a larger
number and variety of passing chords.27 These musicians were also attempting to raise the
quality of jazz from the level of utilitarian dance music to that of a chamber art form, and
the status of the performer from entertainer to artist. Outstanding technical and musical
proficiencies were essential requirements and the jam session was the bebop musician’s
trial by fire. Consequently, the musicians did their very best to disparage “anyone who
could not maintain the demanding pace of their music” and to keep incompetents off the
stage.28 Dizzy Gillespie recounted to Marshall Stearns that, “The modulations we
manufactured were the weirdest, especially if some new cat walked in with his horn and
tried to sit in with us.”29
24
John Birks Gillespie and Wilmot Alfred Fraser, To Be, or not ....to Bop: Memoirs of Dizzy Gillespie
(New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1979), 201.
25 Ross Russell, op. cit., 202. Russell supports this view and adds, “Bebop is a music of revolt: revolt
against big bands, arrangers, vertical harmonies, soggy rhythms, non-playing orchestra leaders, Tin Pan
Alley- against commercialized music in general. It reasserts the individuality of the jazz musician as a
creative artist, playing spontaneous and melodic music within the framework of jazz, but with new tools,
sounds, and concepts.”
26 Martin Williams, “Bebop and After: A Report,” in Jazz, ed. Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy (New
York: Da Capo Press Inc., 1959), 291-292.
27 Paul Oliver, Max Harrison, and William Bolcom, The New Grove: Gospel, Blues, and Jazz (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1986), 293-294.
28 Tirro, op. cit., 291.
29 Ibid., Quoted in Tirro, 291.
15
Economic factors were also at work breaking down the cultural lag between black
and white musicians, thus accelerating the dissemination of new ideas. During World War
II there was another mass migration of blacks from the south to the north which resulted
in the overturn of the ban on black workers in many new areas, and an increase in wartime
jobs that paid well.30 The economic importance of the black-population market was soon
recognized, and for the first time a series of Fifty-second Street and Broadway nightclubs
advertised for the black public. This black audience was highly receptive and greatly
influenced the development of the new music: “By 1947-48 patrons formed queues
around the block waiting to enter the Royal Roost, ‘The Metropolitan Bopera House,’ on
Broadway.”31 Also by the late forties, Fifty-second street was lined with nightclubs that
featured jazz and many younger musicians got their chance to play in these clubs: “Fiftysecond Street beckoned the bop players, and the movement from Harlem to “the Street”
made the new music more public.”32 Charles Nanry also adds that: “Eventually, this shift
and the accessibility of midtown Manhattan led to the stylization of bop and,
paradoxically, fixed its vocabulary.”33
First Bop Soloists
The first leading bop soloists contributed a new vocabulary of musical phrases and
distinctive techniques of matching improvisation to chord progressions that effectively
reflected the exigency for individual expression. This vocabulary became the most
substantial system of jazz for the next forty years.34 Eminent saxophonist Charlie Parker,
trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk, had inspired a legion of creative
30
Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 219.
Ibid.
32 Charles Nanry, The Jazz Text (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1979), 173.
33 Ibid.
34 Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 4rth ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1991), 139. Gridley adds that, “even during the 1980’s, musicians frequently evaluated new players
according to their ability to play bop. Mastery of this style was considered the foundation for competence as
a jazz improviser.”
31
16
musicians including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Bud Powell by the middle to the
late 1940’s. In the preface of his book How To Play Bebop, David Baker affirms that
Of all the styles to emerge from jazz, the most important and pervasive in terms of
influence and consequences is that body of music which had its inception in the
early 1940s. In the playing of its two main giants, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie
Parker, the music which is now known as bebop was born.....virtually every voice
in jazz has demonstrated an indebtedness to them and the exciting new style that
they pioneered.35
To unearth the inception and early development of bop, one has to look to the big bands
of the late thirties and early forties, to the small group recordings of such soloists as
Lester Young and Charlie Christian, and to the clubs like Monroe’s and Minton’s in
Harlem, New York, where musicians jammed and experimented. New sounds and
innovative ideas were heard in the famous Charlie Christian 1941-sessions from
Monroe’s Uptown House and Minton’s which included the sidemen Thelonious Monk on
piano, Kenny Clarke on drums, Don Byas on tenor saxophone, and Dizzy Gillespie on
trumpet. Frank Tirro remarks that “as a direct consequence of listening to these pioneer
explorations of the early 1940’s, a group of musicians began playing a new style of
music.”36 Guitarist Charlie Christian, who had been a featured member of Benny
Goodman’s ensembles, played his most experimental music during these sessions,
consisting of intricate lines and flowing phrases with effortless swing. He died shortly
afterwards in 1942, nonetheless, he is considered to be one of the founders of modern
jazz, having fashioned from “swing” the foundations for its development.37 Christian’s
playing made a profound first impression on Wes Montgomery, impelling him to take up
the instrument seriously. Wes inherited from Christian and the new wave of bop
musicians, the fundamental vocabulary and techniques developed during this pivotal
35
David Baker, How To Play Bebop (Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Publishing Company, Inc., 1987).
Tirro, op. cit., 287.
37 Joachim E. Berendt, The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond, 6th ed., trans. by H.B.
Bredigkeit, Dan Morgenstern, and Tim Nevill (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992), 17.
36
17
segment of jazz history. Professor-guitarist Ted Dunbar, a close friend of Wes
Montgomery, concluded that “It was the mindset of the 40’s that Wes created his music
with. You had to know the music inside-out to be able to play it off the top of your head.
That’s what Wes did.”38
The Fifties: Cool Jazz
By the early fifties Montgomery had absorbed much of the new bebop vocabulary;
his style had matured and solidified even though he undoubtedly continued to evolve
throughout his musical career. He acknowledged being surprised to win the DownBeat
readers’ and critics’ polls in the sixties, contending he was playing better during the early
fifties: “I was surprised to win the DownBeat thing. I think I was playing more in 1952
than I ever have.”39
Several jazz styles coexisted during the fifties, and it was now more difficult to
discern with certainty the mainstream sound, the most influential artists, or the most
significant developments.40 According to Tirro, what was happening in jazz was not
unique, “for the same tearing apart had been taking place throughout the century in
literature, the visual arts, and classical music.” The decade began at the apex of the bebop
revolution and witnessed what was aptly called “the birth of the cool.” By mid-decade
“hard bop” was established and the period ended with Miles Davis popularizing modal
jazz through his 1959 recording of Kind of Blue. The arrival of Ornette Coleman, Cecil
taylor and the free jazz movement also coincided with the close of the decade.
Bebop had served as a point of departure for two developing sub-styles. The first
of these was labeled “cool jazz,” and several musicians in the late 1940’s were
responsible for its occurrence. Stan Getz, Lennie Tristano, and Miles Davis were the most
Bill Shoemaker, “The Birth of the Modern Guitar: Wes Montgomery,” Downbeat, Vol. 60, no.5, May
(1993), 23.
39 Ralph Gleason, “Wes Montgomery: A Previously Unpublished Interview,” Jazz & Blues, Vol.3 no.7,
(Oct 1973), 8-9.
40 Frank Tirro, op.cit., 331.
38
18
instrumental in creating a sound that was quickly labeled “cool.”41 Bebop had been, in
part, a reaction against swing music and in many ways, the rise of cool jazz was a
response to the overwhelming intensity of bop. Some musicians felt that in bebop the
gentler aspect of jazz had been prematurely forsaken, thus many original players of the
fifties “defined themselves by looking to the more lyrical masters of the swing era as
sources, while retaining the lessons of bop they felt still applied.”42 Budds summarizes
and describes the fundamental traits of this style:
The cool style, which appeared first, was characterized by a relaxation of intensity,
a toning down of bop’s drive and edge. This softening process was reflected in the
acceptance of a subdued, controlled tone quality, breathy, often muted, and with
little vibrato. Impressionistic-like harmonies became the favored vehicle for the
accommodation of coloristic effects and pastel moods. Slower tempos permitted
soloists to create long-lined, lyrical melodies. The rhythm section was encouraged
to make coloristic contributions, such as the use of brushes on the snare drum and
the use of the bow on the string bass. The popularity of triple meter (the jazz
waltz) led to an interest in other meters, such as 5/4 and 9/8. The casting of jazz in
structural designs borrowed from European art music, such as the rondo and the
fugue, also appeared.43
From the aforementioned stylistic traits we can appreciate that cool jazz was more
controlled and more calculated than bop. As a result, white musicians who were the main
exponents of this style, were often criticized for being too overtly intellectual in their
approach. The style projected conservatism and the musicians seemed to distance
themselves from expressed emotion- a natural enough reaction to the intensity of bop.44
The blues with its inherent urgency, emotion and earthiness, was no longer appropriate for
the refined goals of the cool school. Critics felt that this style lacked excitement,
41
Ibid., 332.
Porter and Ullman, op.cit., 235. “A whole school of saxophonists- they included Stan Getz, Zoot Sims,
Warne Marsh and others- were entranced by the soft tone and gracious, long lines of Lester Young’s
playing. These players, with their varying styles, were often white.”
43 Budd, op. cit., 10.
44 Harrison, op. cit., 301.
42
19
nonetheless, we should recognize that these players were simply seeking a more subtle
means of jazz expression.45
The cool conception of jazz prevailed during the first half of the fifties and found
its most representative expression in the famed nonet recordings of the Miles Davis
Orchestra, recorded in 1949-1950 and eventually called The Birth of The Cool.46
However, in retrospect, it seems that the musicians at the time were not consciously trying
to promulgate anything new. Most of the musicians came from the Claude Thornhill band
and had assembled primarily to play some new arrangements by Gerry Mulligan and Gil
Evans. Miles Davis, who had previously worked with Charlie Parker from 1945 to 1948,
was interested in nothing more original than playing with a lighter sound because he felt it
was more expressive.47 Lewis and Ullman remark that, “The mood of these sessions, the
particular sobriety and the sonorities of the various arrangements, had an important, if not
always definable, effect on the jazz of the fifties.......These sessions have widened the
scope of jazz.”48 Collier makes comparable claims as to the historical importance and
impact of these sessions:
It is rare when a single group of records by itself has a significant impact on jazz.
The Armstrong Hot Fives had such an impact, and so did the Parker-Gillespie
records of 1945. The birth-of-the-cool sides, although neglected by record buyers,
was to have similar, if somewhat less pervasive, impact on musicians.49
Several other musicians and groups helped perpetuate and heighten the relative popularity
of cool jazz, many of which were situated on the West Coast and were offshoots of the
Davis nonet: Shorty Rogers band, the Mulligan tentette, John Graas’s Group, and Shelly
Manne. Esteemed saxophonist and composer-arranger, Gerry Mulligan, continued to lead
45
Paul O.W. Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David W. Megill, Jazz, 6th ed. (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown
Publishers, 1988), 105.
46 Berendt, op. cit., 20.
47 Tanner, Gerow, and Megill, op. cit., 106.
48 Lewis and Ullman, op. cit., 241.
49 Collier, The Making of Jazz, 416.
20
some of the most successful piano-less small groups of the fifties (Mulligan-Baker
Quartet), for which he became well-known. From 1952 until 1974, the Modern Jazz
Quartet under the leadership of pianist-composer, John Lewis, was one of the most
sought-after groups in jazz history, performing in clubs, colleges and concert halls all over
the world. “Third-Stream,” a label coined by composer Gunther Schuller, consisted of the
merger of classical composition and American jazz, and had a somewhat less pervasive
impact during this period.
West Coast Jazz
Numerous groups of predominantly white musicians situated in and around Los
Angeles during the 1950’s, adopted the sonority and feeling of the Birth of The Cool
sessions; their music was labeled “West Coast style.” West Coast jazz developed on
account of the small group of local record companies (Dial, Fantasy, Pacific,
Contemporary, Capitol) dedicated to presenting the area’s musicians to the nation at
large.50 Ted Gioia argues that it is these jazz institutions that determined, to a great extent,
the nature of a region’s sound and its level of visibility:
The whole West Coast sound might have been radically different had Dial
Records and its bop-oriented sound stayed on the West Coast.......these institutions
played a crucial role in delineating, preserving and disseminating the music- and
those three tasks have tremendous import even if they require no familiarity with
harmony, melody, and rhythm.51
These record labels represented the “existence of opportunities” to record, not only for
local musicians, but also attracted many itinerant musicians like the Montgomery brothers
to the area. Musicians were also attracted to the coast because there were many
50
Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford Press, 1992),
363.
51 Ibid., 364.
21
institutions in place- clubs, performance opportunities, and record companies- to justify
the move.52
Wes Montgomery’s brothers, Monk and Buddy, as well as drummer Benny Barth
and pianist Richard Crabtree, formed the Mastersounds- one of the finest and most
successful West Coast bands of the late 1950’s. Originally from Indianapolis, the band
came to San Francisco, recorded, and received wide public acceptance while performing
at the Jazz Showcase, the Jazz Workshop on Broadway, and several other important
venues. Wes remained in Indianapolis but occasionally joined the band as a featured
guest. At the close of the 1950’s, Monk and Buddy Montgomery left to form a band with
brother Wes, only a short while after the Matersounds had won the New Star Award for
combos in the Downbeat International Critics Poll.53 Wes had the opportunity during this
brief period to travel to the West Coast, record some sessions with his brothers, and make
the acquaintance of important musicians in the area. However, it appears that Wes was
not playing at his full capacity in the more restrained settings of the cool style, as is
reflected by a later recording with pianist George Shearing (who led some of the most
popular cool-sounding quintets of the fifties).54
Mid-Fifties: Funky & Hard Bop
Scholars agree that the advent of hard bop was, to some extent, precipitated by
unique sociological forces. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of
desegregation, causing a real turmoil in many educational institutions and resulting in a
resurgence of black pride in African roots.55 James L. Collier remarks that the blacks took
over the leadership of the civil rights movement, with whites increasingly playing smaller
52
Ibid.
Ibid., 113.
54 Listen to Wes’ solos on the album George Shearing and The Montgomery Brothers (Jazzland, J-955).
The fiery, self-contained and expansive solos that are characteristic of Wes’ style do not come across in
these restrained settings of “polite jazz.”
55 John Ralph Harding, “A Survey of The Evolution of Jazz for The General Reader” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Miami, 1981), 240.
53
22
roles.56 In effect, by the late sixties the black rights organizations were almost entirely
black. During this social development, African-Americans found that black church music,
with its distinctive harmonies and blues inflections, could link them to their musical
roots.57 Adherents of the civil-rights movement that had grown up during the fifties
asserted that the black subculture was not only ligitimate but central to their experience.
They called upon African-Americans to cease emulating whites and devote themselves to
their own unique folkways.
David Rosenthal contends that during the late fifties and early sixties jazz, like
blues, continued to be economically viable in black neighborhoods until it was dislodged
by pop music.58 This is understandable since hard bop had its roots in other kinds of black
music prevalent in the fifties such as rhythm-and-blues, gospel, and in the sixties- soul:
“Less intellectual and less technically dazzling than bebop before it, hard bop was also
more open to the black popular tradition- especially blues and gospel.”59 This bluesbased, hard-swinging, hard-blowing style of jazz contrasted sharply with the carefully
devised, contrapuntal, light ensembles sonorities of the cool jazz musicians. Frank Tirro
notes that
These East Coast musicians resented the lack of emotional involvement inherent
in cool and West Coast jazz, so they took their stand around the banner of hot-jazz
values: full-voiced instrumental sound, loud dynamics, blistering energy in the uptempo performances, greater accentuation, and emotional fervor in the
performance of ballads.60
Some scholars believe that the advocates of hard bop were mainly interested in
reaffirming the features of bop cast aside or diminished by the proponents of the cool
56
Collier, op. cit., 437.
Tanner, Gerow, and Megill, op. cit., 112.
58 David H. Rosenthal, Hard Bop: Jazz & Black Music, 1955-1965 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1992), 62.
59 Ibid., 63.
60 Tirro, op. cit., 345.
57
23
style.61
62
The hard bop idiom also reflected the jazzman’s need to rediscover his
emotional roots at a time when cool jazz seemed to be jeopardizing them in favor of
excessive refinement and schematic planning.63 The gospel tradition seemed to have had a
profound effect on performers searching for these roots:
As practiced by the black jazz artists, hard bop represented a return to basics, a
return to the emotional content of earlier jazz, and a disregard for the “European”
mannerisms of the rival style. It was strongly influenced by the “gospel” music of
black protestants and its rhythm-and-blues counterpart in entertainment music.
The “gospel” sound was achieved by the frequent use of open fourths and fifths,
the presence of the IV-I cadence and repetitive melodic units (recalling the riff),
and the infrequent use of chromatic effects. The rich vocabulary of melodic
nuances and inflections- the tradition of black vocal practice- was prominent. Offbeat accentuation was the characteristic rhythmic style trait.64
Pianists Bobby Timmons and Horace Silver, trumpeters Donald Byrd and Kenny Dorham,
saxophonist Hank Mobley, and drummer Art Blakey were all at the forefront of this style
that fused the innovations of the beboppers with the expressive traditions of the gospel
singers. Subsequently, a second generation of “aggressive technical virtuosos” such as
trumpeter Clifford Brown, saxophonist Sonny Rollins, and drummers Art Blakey and
Max Roach popularized the designation, hard bop or East Coast jazz. They played “an
advanced bebop that retained the hard-cutting sound and rhythmic drive of funky jazz but
added even more exaggerated up-tempo performances and a variety of formal schemes.”65
Wes Montgomery’s peak of creativity transpired from the late fifties to early
sixties, and historians such as Mark Gridley and Norman Mongan have labeled his style-
61
Budds, op. cit., 11.
Martin Williams, “The Funky-Hard Bop Regression,” in The Art Of Jazz, ed. Martin Williams (New
York: Da Capo Press, 1959), 233-234. Williams contends that “this almost wholesale “return to the roots”
has already had significance and has been made with good reason. First, it saved both the emotional heart of
jazz and its very substance from a preciocity, contrivance, and emptiness that certain tendencies in “cool”
jazz might have led to.”
63 Williams, “Bebop and After: A Report,” op. cit., 297.
64 Budds, op. cit., 11.
65 Tirro, op. cit., 345.
62
24
hard bop or mainstream.66 Guitarist John Scofield emphasized that Wes’ music came
from
the tradition of Lionel Hampton, the mainstream black tradition- boisterous,
jovial, outgoing, like Cannonball Adderley- he put that on guitar........But, though
he stayed in the mainstream, he came up with a way of playing that was
revolutionary, in a soulful, church-element way. It’s all in the sound he got with
his thumb. He was preaching.67
The characteristic gospel traits permeating the hard bop style appear to be clearly depicted
in this succinct description of Montgomery’s style. Scofield adds that Wes was “the guy
who took the straight-ahead music of the late 50s and early 60s and put it on guitar.”
The State of Jazz at The End of The Fifties
Improvisational skills of jazz performers have developed as each new generation
of improvisers has based its own practice upon the experiments and accomplishments of
established figures.68 Gunther Schuller posits that, “it is virtually axiomatic that each
succeeding jazz style has been nurtured on the conceptions of the immediately preceding
generation of players....”69 Michael Budds concurs and notes that, the changes that
occurred in jazz before 1960 are manifestations of two closely related musical
phenomena:
the extension of the technical resources of soloists and an increase in the
complexity of compositions accepted or modified for jazz treatment.......The
observations that standards of instrumental technique and improvisational skills
have changed, have influenced subsequent jazz style, and have exhibited a
progressive display of virtuosity should not, however, imply a value judgment.70
66
Tanner, Gerow, and Megill, op. cit., 119. Since the hard bop school often explained its development as a
return to the basics of jazz, their call was therefore, back to a “straight-ahead” jazz that was more
improvisatory and emotionally based than cool. “Mainstream” was another term often applied to this returnto-basics movement, which was also a recognition by jazz musicians that they had a guiding jazz tradition.
67 Bill Shoemaker, op.cit., 21.
68 Budds, op. cit., 12.
69 Schuller, op. cit., 134.
70 Budds, op. cit., 11-12.
25
The apparent increase in technical proficiency and improvisational skills naturally
allowed some of the unsatisfied performers to explore new musical frontiers. Therefore, it
is not uncommon to encounter during this period varying forms of musical
experimentations, often contrasting dramatically with antecedent jazz styles such as bebop
or hard bop. These endeavors are also directly linked to the jazz performer’s relentless
quest for greater musical freedom and expression in his improvisations.
During the late fifties and sixties when Montgomery recorded, for Riverside,
several other courses of musical development were in effect. In his seminal work, Jazz in
The Sixties, Budds states that only “two courses of development can be identified.”71
Here, Budds is talking in very general terms, identifying the first course as a “musical
exploration within the limitations of traditional performance methods.”72 The second
course being concerned with “the disintegration of the structural background itself, in
many cases an intentional assault on the rigidity of the historical framework.”73 These two
courses were, in fact, the basis for the development of disparate musical manifestations
during this period which some scholars have labeled, “proliferation of styles.”74 In a
discerning essay entitled “Changing Patterns in Society and Music: The U.S. Since World
War II,”75 it is posited that up until the mid-1950’s, American life was traditional, stable
and generated a culture with a unique quality. From the war years through 1955, America
had a unified spirit that radiated “obedience, trust, conformity, cooperation, discipline, of
working with others for the common good- with as little friction and disagreement as
possible.”76 However, we are also told that “national pride in American military and
industrial accomplishments, so strong and universal during and after World War II, was
71
Ibid., 12
Ibid., 12.
73 Ibid., 12-13.
74 Frank Tirro, op. cit., 291-318
75 Charles Hamm, in Charles Hamm, Bruno Nettl, and Ronald Byrnside, Contemporary Music and Music
Cultures (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975), chapter 2.
76 Ibid.
72
26
gradually replaced by questions, doubts, and eventually hostility and opposition.”77 On
account of these occurrences, many Americans chose to follow “their own individual
desires, tastes, and needs” in every aspect of human behavior. According to Tirro, along
this change, a proliferation of musical styles emerged in the mid-1950’s that is “easily
documented by examples from inside as well as outside the jazz idiom.”78
At the time when Montgomery began recording he had his choice of various
stylistic paths. Cool jazz and hard bop were still practiced musical expressions, and Miles
Davis’s Kind of Blue
79
album (1959) officially launched modal jazz. Lyons believes that
for jazz musicians, this vehicle certainly provided increased freedom and self-expression.
The “modal” or “scalar” approach was central to new developments in jazz and offered
musicians the “unprecedented possibility of improvising upon a series of tones, similar to
a scale, rather than upon chord progressions.”80 In effect, Kind of Blue made a drastic
move away from harmony as the structural determinant of jazz improvisation.81 Harrison
points out that this modality was used to overshadow the harmony without rejecting its
presence, or the gravitational effect of a tonal center.82
The modal approach lifts the burden of constantly changing harmonies, thereby
increasing the burden of inventiveness upon the improvisers. While a sense of
variety was often built into bebop and hard bop by using dozens of chord changes
in a thirty-two-bar piece, modal jazz employed a single sequence of notes as its
“raw material” for as long as sixteen bars. (example So What ) Thus the melodic
freedom that was gained had to be matched by the players’ melodic imagination. 83
77
Ibid.
Tirro, op. cit., 365.
79 Columbia CL 1355.
80 Len Lyons, The 101 Best Jazz Albums: A History of Jazz on Records, (New York: William Morrow and
Company, Inc., 1980), 258.
81 Harrison, op. cit., 313. The themes of the five tracks and all the solos derive from various scales instead
of chord sequences. So What, for example uses the dorian mode. Its 32-bar chorus follows a conventional
AABA pattern and the same melodic phrase is heard in all four sections: The A sections are in the dorian
mode on D, the B section is also dorian but on Eb, providing an element of contrast without harmonic
implications.
82 Ibid., 314.
83 Lyons, op. cit., 259.
78
27
Free jazz or avant-garde jazz, as it was called, was also in a fermentative state as
early as 1957. Its rise was also related, in part, to the increasing momentum of the civilrights movement in America around 1957. The majority of jazz musicians in America
were black, and the social unrest that had been felt in the years following the Second
World War was carried over in the sixties. For many African-American musicians living
in the United States around this time, musical freedom was interconnected with protests
against racial discrimination, oppression, and against the domination of whites in the
marketplace.84 Many of these musicians were dedicated to making a powerful declaration
about their lives and culture through their music. They also tried to increase the political
as well as aesthetic consciousness of their listeners while developing their own ways for
presenting the music.
Unlike the new developments that have been extensions of earlier traditions, free
jazz radically severed all ties with preceding styles and procedures. It discarded the
structures of harmonic repetition and rhythmic regularity, allowing the players to react
without restrictions to one another.85 In his discussion of free jazz performers, Collier
remarks that,
These men came from diverse musical and social backgrounds, and their
approaches to music were often diametrically opposed. But disparate as their
backgrounds were, they were all motivated by one idea: to “free” jazz from what
they saw as restrictions of chords, ordinary harmony, bar lines, and even the
tempered scale.86
Saxophonist Ornette Coleman, one of the founders and one of the most controversial free
jazz players, was the embodiment of “the new thing.” He was considered to be the most
revolutionary figure in jazz since Charlie Parker.87 In his style we recognize the
84
Porter and Ullman, op. cit., 395.
Tanner, Gerow and Megill, op. cit., 122.
86 Collier, op. cit., 454.
87 Lyons, op. cit., 387.
85
28
maximizing of individuality, emotion, freedom and self-expression, never before
encountered in the evolution of the idiom.
...the melody, timbre, pitch, and of course, the rhythm- all of these move by
Ornette’s singularly emotional approach to jazz, in much the same way as the
older, “primitive,” blues singers produced their music....This freedom that
Coleman has insisted on in his playing, has opened totally fresh areas of
expression....88
This freedom that became so characteristic of jazz was part of a general movement, in
science, philosophy and the arts. This view tended to consider and express the world in
terms of possibility rather than necessity.89 The search for possibilties also brought an
awakening interest in the music of the “Third World,” and a synthesis of jazz and the
European fine-art tradition into a “Third Stream”90 of music. Furthermore, Budds notes
that, “the revitalization of the big band, and the continued incorporation of popular music
into the jazz tradition created a stylistic diversity unprecedented in the history of jazz.”91
Throughout the history of jazz the soloist has deliberately attempted to liberate
himself from the varying constraints that may have obstructed his improvisatory freedom.
The proliferation of styles encountered during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, was a
direct result of the disparate needs of performers to attain their individuality, freedom and
self-expression through improvisation. Amidst this proliferation and emancipation,
Montgomery favored the traditional or mainstream approach of jazz improvisation- the
“exploration within the limitations of traditional performance methods”- and did not
embark on these other contemporary stylistic trends. At its best, his soloing style was fiery
and exciting, respecting and adhering to the tradition established by antecedent styles.
88
LeRoi Jones, Black Music (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1967), 40.
Harrison, op. cit., 317.
90 Budds, op. cit., 13. In a lecture given in 1957, Gunther Schuller coined this term for a kind of music in
which the elements of jazz and European fine-art music were intentionally combined.
91 Ibid., 13.
89