Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s

331 pp. "In the words of the musicians who made it happen, Swing to Bop chronicles a watershed in jazz history: the music's movement from the Big Band era of the late 1930s and 1940s into the modern jazz period. It will serve for years to come as the basic work on the rise and development of bop in jazz. Engendered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, bebop, as it was first called, quickly became the most powerful musical force in modern jazz. Today, in altered form, it is still the main musical language of jazz musicians. Over a ten-year period, Ira Gitler interviewed more than fifty of the seminal figures in the bop movement to preserve for posterity their recollections of this critical phase in jazz history. The musicians interviewed recreate not only their own experiences but also evoke other legendary personalities such as Clyde Hart and Freddie Webster. Swing to Bop shows how the music first established itself in jam sessions in Harlem and then spread to New York's famed 52nd Street and beyond. Separate chapters describe how young musicians in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit became swept up in the movement. Along with the music and the musicians, the book sharply evokes the atmosphere of the country during the 1930s and '40s: traveling on the ballroom theater circuit; racial attitudes and interaction; extramusical pastimes; the effect of World War II; and the influence of drugs. Thus Swing to Bop reveals not only how the music evolved but the environment in which it flourished and what effect in turn the music had on that environment and the music that was to follow."