The Demise of Bebop
John
in the popularity of bebop? What factors in post-war America
contributed to this? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Ralph Wayvone
R
In article <4ed32794.01121...@posting.google.com>,
iumus...@yahoo.com (John) wrote:
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To reply by email, remove "-nospam" from the address.
Alan Young
> Can someone tell me why, in the 1950's, there was such a sharp decline
> in the popularity of bebop?
Bebop was never popular. It was a thing for jazz musicians only, pretty much.
In the early 50's, Gil Evans and Miles came up with the "cool" jazz thing,
and that attracted a new audience-- with a demographic more like a
classical music audience than a pop/dance audience-- and chaged the
popular perception of jazz.
--
8 8 8 8 8 8 8
Always remember: your focus determines your reality.
Ulf Åbjörnsson
> Bebop was never popular. It was a thing for jazz musicians only, pretty
much.
You mean, the crowds around the world who came to listen to Bird, Diz, Bud,
Monk & Co did not like the music?!?!?!?
Ulf
Geoff
You are absoutely right, of course they liked it.
Bebop was played, and still is, at all tempos, depending on the tune
and was and is very danceable.
My favourite music.
geoff
>
Alan Young
<aabj...@algonet.se> wrote:
Bird and Bud AFAIK never played to large crowds -- at least, not compared
to the big bands, Sinatra, and other performers who are usually referred
to as "popular."
Diz got big crowds in the 50's, after he changed his style to emphasize
the Cuban influence.
Monk never considered himself a bebop performer, as he always played his
own compositions. When he did finally become well-known, it was already
the 60's, so that doesn't suggest that his music declined in popularity
from the 40's to the 50's, as the original question presumes.
And, yes, there probably were people who came to hear these guys because
they were famous, and didn't like the music. But that wasn't what I
meant. :-)
If you do have any evidence of a decline in popularity of bebop from the
40's to the 50's, I'd like to see it--and then you can answer the original
question: why?
alan
Ulf Åbjörnsson
diskussionsgruppsmeddelandet:aayoung-2012...@d80.nas21.sonic.net...
Coltrane.
Of course, the boppers and the cool guys were not as popular as the big
bands or the traditional jazz bands, but the was a fair amount of jazz fans
through the major part of the 50s.
Ulf
Dave Moore
Ulf Åbjörnsson <aabj...@algonet.se> wrote in message
news:9vsl21$232$1...@green.tninet.se...
> IMO, Alan, the BIG decline in the popularity
> of jazz started with Miles and Coltrane.
Hard to believe, since Miles had the biggest-selling jazz album of all time
...
Dave
Kevin Dooley
of jazz history. The cool thing about bebop was its
exclusivity. It was *never* mainstream popular music.
When people talk about the jazz age, when jazz was the
pop music of the day, they don't mean bebop. They mean
big bands, they mean crooners, they even mean some of
the smaller swing combos like Benny Goodman and
Dave Brubeck. But guys like Monk, Bird and Bud were
never mainstream. Diz became popular through the force
of his extremely charismatic personality, but only after
he started working with a big band playing a lot of
Afro and Cuban influenced music. Miles became popular
only after he moved on to the Birth of the Cool thing.
Coltrane became a cultural icon among young African
Americans in the early 60's when the white kids were
listening to Bob Dylan.
In fact, I would argue the exact opposite from the original
poster. Bebop has *grown* in popularity since the 50's.
When it started out it was marginal and exclusive. Now
it's taught in schools around the world. Bebop is now
considered in many ways the basis for how improvisers
approach a set of chord changes.
But I'll cut you some slack, Ulf, because the European
view of jazz history is completely different than how
it happened in America. Bud Powell and Dexter Gordon
and many others thrived in Paris when it was hard to
make a living in New York City. As you point out in your
sig, "your focus determines your reality".
K
JC Martin
news:3c21a041....@news.austarnet.com.au...
Our ignorant Ulf troll would probably be astonished to realize that jazz
fusion groups like Weather Report and Pat Metheny sold more records and
played to larger audiences. I prefer Monk to Weather Report myself, but the
idea that BeBop was when jazz was popular and the 70's (fusion, free jazz,
etc.) killed it is based in idiot logic.
-JC
JC Martin
news:uIpU7.4278$PO5.7...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Oh wait a minute...I'm sorry. According to Ulf the genius, Miles Davis and
John Coltrane (the two largest selling and most popular acoustic jazz
artists, even today!) are the ones that killed jazz. Brilliant.
-JC
JC Martin
news:9vt4ra$qgt$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
Of course all those record companies keep re-issuing Miles and Coltrane
albums because they're *not* popular. *L* Ulf is one character. Jazz
would in fact be more dead if not for the likes of these two brilliant,
substantive and yes, even popular artists.
-JC
Marc Sabatella
> IMO, Alan, the BIG decline in the popularity of jazz started with
Miles and
> Coltrane.
>
> Of course, the boppers and the cool guys were not as popular as the
big
> bands or the traditional jazz bands, but the was a fair amount of jazz
fans
> through the major part of the 50s.
As there were through the 60's. There was a sharp dropoff in numbers,
however, in the post-war years, as jazz no longer had much bearing on
the popular music of the day. I'd be curious to see sales or radio
airplay figures, but I seriously doubt you'd see the same kind of
dramatic dip during the 60's that you saw in the 50's or even 40's.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Gary Smiley
Anybody can dance. So when Jazz was popular, it was because it was dance music. The
masses had a good time dancing to it. They all liked it.
Don't get me wrong. I love and play Bebop. But in my generation, people found it
was a lot easier for them to dance to Rock and Roll. They liked it.
Bebop has an intellect requirement. Most people can't "hear" it. They don't like
what they can't hear. They'll dance to popular melodies, but once the musicians
begin to improvise, many will stop dancing, because they can't hear it.
A funny thing happened about two weeks ago which confirms my point: My big band
(composed of Harvard grad students) gave its semi-annual concert of jazz
arrangements ranging from Duke to Mingus to Maynard to Oliver Nelson to Miles/Gil
Evans, Bill Holman, etc.. The audience liked liked the show. But when we played
"Rockin in Rhythm" by Duke Ellington (a swing tune with mass popular appeal), a
couple got up and started dancing in the aisles with reckless abandon. They were
fun to watch. They couldn't restrain themselves. They couldn't resist the tune. It
was then that I realized that Ellington's rhythms and syncopations were so much
more danceable than, say, Salt Peanuts or Donna Lee.
So my conclusion is that when Bebop elevated its musical level it lost its mass
appeal as popular dance music. Personally I think Bebop was a revolutionary
improvement. But within a few years the rock-and-rollers came along and gave the
masses something that was not musically challenging that they could shake their
asses to.
Basically it's all a numbers game, where jazz went from the center of the
bell-shaped curve of mass appeal to somewhere near the edge.
Dennis J. Kosterman
<aabj...@algonet.se> wrote:
>IMO, ... , the BIG decline in the popularity of jazz started with Miles and
>Coltrane.
Knowing your tastes, I'd accept that statement if you had said
"quality" instead of "popularity" (I wouldn't agree, mind you, but I'd
accept it). But I don't know how you can blame a decline in popularity
on two of the most popular jazz artists ever. From the late 50s
through the mid 60s, Miles and Coltrane were selling more records than
any other jazz artist (and more than any jazz artist *had* sold until
they came along). I can't see how that explains a decline in
popularity.
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Ulf Åbjörnsson
> But I don't know how you can blame a decline in popularity
> on two of the most popular jazz artists ever. From the late 50s
> through the mid 60s, Miles and Coltrane were selling more records than
> any other jazz artist (and more than any jazz artist *had* sold until
> they came along). I can't see how that explains a decline in
> popularity.
It explains the decline in popularity in the jazz audience. Miles was a
respected trumpeter in jazz circles, but became really popular when he
turned to rock - but NOT IN JAZZ CIRCLES! He wanted to make money. He found
a new - younger - rock-oriented audience. There he was (is) popular.
Ulf
Michael Fitzgerald
If you look above, clearly we are talking about "from the late 50s
through the mid 60s" - do you suggest that Miles Davis was courting a
rock-oriented audience during this period?
MIke
JC Martin
news:hv962ukl8c2s730pj...@4ax.com...
Do you really expect this guy to get it? Miles and Coltrane's *acoustic*
re-issues are the main focus of the record companies these days. Why?
Because it sells.
-JC
Dennis J. Kosterman
That's a nice theory, but the facts behind it just aren't true. "Kind
of Blue" -- a jazz album if anything is -- has sold more copies than
"Bitches Brew" or any other electric Miles Davis album. "Bitches Brew"
was fairly popular, but the fusion albums after that weren't. The
music was too loud for jazz fans, and it was too weird for rock fans.
If he was selling out, he wasn't very good at it. Miles in the 70s was
never as popular as he was in the late 50s and 60s -- when he was
indisputably playing jazz.
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Victor Eijkhout
> It was then that I realized that Ellington's rhythms and syncopations were
> so much more danceable than, say, Salt Peanuts or Donna Lee.
Frankie Manning, a living legend of swing dancing, was
interviewed/featured in GQ a few years ago.
"Frankie Manning was drafted. He served in the South pacific for five
years, and when he came back to America, swing music was finished. The
big-band era was over. Bebop jazz had arrived, and there was nothing for
Frankie ta dance to anymore. He perofrmed one night with his old friend
Dizzy, struggling to find the rhythm in Dizzy's improvisational
stylings. After the show, he confronted the trumpeter: "What the fuck
was that?" dizzy gave a big grin. It was the future of jazz."
--
Victor Eijkhout
"the time comes for everyone to do deliberately what
he used to do by mistake" [Quentin Crisp]
Mike C.
"sheet music" period that killed jazz... ;-)
Don't worry, Ulf, you're still in my kill file, so replying is of no use to
anyone but yourself.
Merry Christmas.
"JC Martin" <subs...@NOSPAMearthlink.net> wrote in message
news:peNU7.6878$PO5.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
PAUL MACCA
>So my conclusion is that when Bebop elevated its musical level it lost its
>mass
>appeal as popular dance music. Personally I think Bebop was a revolutionary
>improvement. But within a few years the rock-and-rollers came along and gave
>the
>masses something that was not musically challenging that they could shake
>their
>asses to.
>
>Basically it's all a numbers game, where jazz went from the center of the
>bell-shaped curve of mass appeal to somewhere near the edge.
>
But to sum up rock music as being not being "musically challenging" and
"danceable" to explain its rise in popularity (and jazz's downfall), is being a
bit oversimplistic.
Do you remember the movie, "Back To The Future," where a high school prom from
the 1950s is taking place? The students there were dancing to the genres that
were popular with teenagers at the time, like doo-wop (i.e. Earth Angel) and
even some good old fashioned Chuck Berry rock and roll (Johnny B. Goode). But
did you recall what happened when Marty McFly (the boy from the future) started
playing those Jimmy Hendrix and Pete Townshend guitar riffs? The students
stopped dancing as Marty was caught up in his soloing and improvising.
Now what's my point to all this? Rock (like jazz) is made up of many
sub-genres, some of which are simple and easy to dance to, others that are not.
The 1950s/early 1960s rock/pop may have been simple and danceable for the most
part. But in the late 1960s, you had rock artists who were becoming more
experimental and adventurous (like their bebop counterparts) with music that
was not very danceable. Besides the Hendrix Experience and the Who, you also
had Pink Floyd (ever seen anyone try to dance to the "Atom Heart Mother" LP?),
Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention, etc. Yet, the emergence of these
innovative, non-danceable forms of music did not kill off rock's popularity.
It was maintained by the other, more accessible sub-genres (for ex: bubble-gum
artists like Ohio Express and the Archies.)
The question I have is this. Why was jazz not able to do the same, that is,
develop accessible and danceable sub-genres during the bebop era that could
maintain the level of popularity that existed during the golden age of swing?
Dennis J. Kosterman
> ... Rock (like jazz) is made up of many
>sub-genres, some of which are simple and easy to dance to, others that are not.
> The 1950s/early 1960s rock/pop may have been simple and danceable for the most
>part. But in the late 1960s, you had rock artists who were becoming more
>experimental and adventurous (like their bebop counterparts) with music that
>was not very danceable. Besides the Hendrix Experience and the Who, you also
>had Pink Floyd (ever seen anyone try to dance to the "Atom Heart Mother" LP?),
>Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention, etc. Yet, the emergence of these
>innovative, non-danceable forms of music did not kill off rock's popularity.
>It was maintained by the other, more accessible sub-genres (for ex: bubble-gum
>artists like Ohio Express and the Archies.)
>
>The question I have is this. Why was jazz not able to do the same, that is,
>develop accessible and danceable sub-genres during the bebop era that could
>maintain the level of popularity that existed during the golden age of swing?
Jazz did develop such sub-genres: jump blues, R&B, big bands fronted
by vocalists, etc. But these evolved into "pop" music and eventually
were not considered jazz anymore. And in a sense, bubble-gum artists
such as those mentioned above were not really playing rock anymore,
either (at least not in the same sense that Hendrix and the Who were).
It's all a matter of semantics. Apparently, pop/rock fans are more
broad-minded (or, to take the opposite perspective, less
discriminating) than jazz fans when it comes to defining the limits of
their genre.
You could say that jazz lost its popularity "by definition" -- at some
point in its history, mass popularity became "uncool", and anything
that became popular, well, it couldn't be jazz if it's popular...so
"jazz" and "popular" became mutually exclusive concepts. Hence we have
two separate streams of music. The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock" --
the jazz stream isn't as willing to do that. It simply lets all
popular streams drift off to join "pop/rock".
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Robert McKay
>From: den...@tds.net (Dennis J. Kosterman)
>Date: 12/24/01 9:56 PM Mountain Standard Time
>The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
>on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock"
Ain't that the truth. Within rock you get bubblegum (already a couple of names
out there), art rock (Yes, ELP), heavy metal with its own divisions (KISS,
Black Sabbath), punk (the Sex Pistols, the Clash), New Wave (Blondie, Tears for
Fears), acid (Amboy Dukes, Strawberry Alarm Clock), southern rock (Lynyrd
Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet), what I call California soft rock (the Eagles, Linda
Ronstadt), country rock (Linda Ronstadt), blues rock (Indigenous), and I have
no idea where to classify Peter Gabriel, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Led
Zeppelin, and others who don't fit easily in any one category. And this is by
no means a complete listing of rock categories, much less artists who work in
those categories. I've been listening to rock for 30 years, and I have by no
means heard everything that makes up rock.
And it's that 30 years that helps make jazz a bit intimidating. Jazz is about
twice as old as rock, and I'm trying to get caught up in considerably less time
than I've had to get my rock experience.<g>
>It simply lets all
>popular streams drift off to join "pop/rock".
Wouldn't it be true, though, to say that within the realm of jazz fandom there
is jazz that's more popular, and jazz that's less popular?
Robert McKay
goffs...@aol.com
Remember the Gulag Archipelago
Dennis J. Kosterman
wrote:
>>Subject: Re: The Demise of Bebop
>>From: den...@tds.net (Dennis J. Kosterman)
>>Date: 12/24/01 9:56 PM Mountain Standard Time
>>The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
>>on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock"
>Ain't that the truth. Within rock you get bubblegum (already a couple of names
>out there), art rock (Yes, ELP), heavy metal with its own divisions (KISS,
>Black Sabbath), punk (the Sex Pistols, the Clash), New Wave (Blondie, Tears for
>Fears), acid (Amboy Dukes, Strawberry Alarm Clock), southern rock (Lynyrd
>Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet), what I call California soft rock (the Eagles, Linda
>Ronstadt), country rock (Linda Ronstadt), blues rock (Indigenous), and I have
>no idea where to classify Peter Gabriel, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Led
>Zeppelin, and others who don't fit easily in any one category. And this is by
>no means a complete listing of rock categories, much less artists who work in
>those categories. I've been listening to rock for 30 years, and I have by no
>means heard everything that makes up rock.
Peter Gabriel (at least his stuff with Genesis) usually gets put in
with Yes and ELP under art rock, also known as progressive rock.
Jethro Tull is often put in that group as well. Some rock historians
consider Led Zep the first heavy metal band. That's plausible, and you
could say the same about Hendrix, I suppose. But both of them have a
lot more blues in their music then I've ever heard from any of the
later heavy metal bands.
I know what you mean, though. None of those bands fits quite
comfortably in the categories I've put them in, and there are lots
more categories, especially if you consider pop/rock as a whole and
not just rock (for example, I wouldn't consider either Barbra
Streisand or Britney Spears to be making rock music, but they both fit
comfortably under the pop/rock umbrella).
>And it's that 30 years that helps make jazz a bit intimidating. Jazz is about
>twice as old as rock, and I'm trying to get caught up in considerably less time
>than I've had to get my rock experience.<g>
It's not as bad as you think. Since popular music is, well, a whole
lot more popular than jazz, there are a lot more popular artists than
jazz artists, and a lot more popular recordings available, despite
jazz's 40-year head start (for most of those 40 years, they just
weren't making very many recordings compared to today's numbers). Just
look at the relative size of the jazz department and the pop/rock
department at any CD store -- even one with an excellent jazz
selection.
Also, at the risk of getting flamed out of the newsgroup, I think
pop/rock has greater variety than jazz. Jazz has plenty of variety, of
course, but the limits are much tighter. Anything that goes too far
off the mainstream is disowned by a sizable portion of the jazz
audience. An extreme example is the insistence of people like Amos and
Ulf that jazz stopped developing some time in the 50s, and that all
new developments since then simply aren't jazz. Obviously, most jazz
fans don't go that far, but they do tend to be purists, and are fairly
picky about what is and isn't jazz. Pop/rock, perhaps by its very
nature (it's more of a catch-all term than "jazz" is), is much more
broadly defined. It happily contains all kinds of stuff that sounds
nothing at all like your basic rock and roll.
So I think somebody who's new to jazz might have an easier time
getting to know a broad spectrum of jazz than someone trying to go the
other way (i.e., new to rock). On the other hand, at least in my
experience, getting familiar with a piece of jazz music is generally
more difficult than with popular music, because most jazz lacks the
obvious "hooks" (vocals, for one) that are part of most popular songs.
>>It [jazz] simply lets all
>>popular streams drift off to join "pop/rock".
>Wouldn't it be true, though, to say that within the realm of jazz fandom there
>is jazz that's more popular, and jazz that's less popular?
Definitely, but anything beyond a certain point starts to lose its
"legitimacy" as jazz. Witness all the arguments about whether or not
Diana Krall is a jazz singer/musician. To be fair, some of that is a
response to stylistic changes in her music -- her recent stuff doesn't
sound as jazzy as her old stuff -- but she was certainly singing and
playing jazz on "All for You". Ergo, she's a jazz singer at least some
of the time. I think the arguments are motivated as much by her
popularity (and the feeling that she's cashing in on her looks) as by
the stylistic change.
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
PAUL MACCA
>>The question I have is this. Why was jazz not able to do the same, that is,
>>develop accessible and danceable sub-genres during the bebop era that could
>>maintain the level of popularity that existed during the golden age of
>swing?
>
>Jazz did develop such sub-genres: jump blues, R&B, big bands fronted
>by vocalists, etc. But these evolved into "pop" music and eventually
>were not considered jazz anymore. And in a sense, bubble-gum artists
>such as those mentioned above were not really playing rock anymore,
>either (at least not in the same sense that Hendrix and the Who were).
>It's all a matter of semantics. Apparently, pop/rock fans are more
>broad-minded (or, to take the opposite perspective, less
>discriminating) than jazz fans when it comes to defining the limits of
>their genre.
>
EXACTLY!!! A lot of this talk about rock and jazz's relative levels of
popularity is mainly a matter of people's perceptions, how the general public
and the media chooses to classify where artists and sub-genres fall under
where. Toss in the fact that many individual artists and groups themselves are
evolving and "crossing-over" and you may never get any definitive answers as to
the relative levels of popularity among the different genres.
>You could say that jazz lost its popularity "by definition" -- at some
>point in its history, mass popularity became "uncool", and anything
>that became popular, well, it couldn't be jazz if it's popular...so
>"jazz" and "popular" became mutually exclusive concepts.
I think it goes farther than that. Everyone seems to have their own idea of
what falls under jazz and what doesn't. And I suspect that one of the reasons
for it is because it is becoming increasingly common for musicians to dabble in
many forms of music. For example, did the public's perception of "funk" change
when jazz giants like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock embraced it during the
1970s? Did their embracing it cause people to draw a closer association (if
not an outright overlap) of those genres?
>Hence we have
>two separate streams of music. The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
>on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock" --
>the jazz stream isn't as willing to do that.
Among the so-called "jazz purists," you may be right. But what about the
public-at-large? I wonder, do they make a distinction between the music that
Chuck Mangione made with the Jazz Messengers vs. Feels So Good?
Dennis J. Kosterman
>Dennis J. Kosterman wrote:
>>Hence we have
>>two separate streams of music. The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
>>on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock" --
>>the jazz stream isn't as willing to do that.
>Among the so-called "jazz purists," you may be right. But what about the
>public-at-large? I wonder, do they make a distinction between the music that
>Chuck Mangione made with the Jazz Messengers vs. Feels So Good?
Not consciously -- the public-at-large is mostly on the "pop" side of
the fence, and as I've said, those people tend to be less picky about
what's in which category. However, I'll bet "Feels So Good" sold a lot
more copies than anything by the Jazz Messengers (with or without
Mangione). Probably not a conscious choice, but the average person
doesn't have the time, energy, or ambition to seek out unfamiliar
music. Music to them is whatever they hear on the radio. "Feels So
Good" was on the radio, so people bought it. And most of those people
probably didn't have a clue that he ever played with the Jazz
Messengers (I wasn't aware of it myself -- I'm taking your word for
it).
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Victor Eijkhout
> The pop/rock stream is willing to keep
> on splitting and keep calling all the separate streams "pop/rock"
And a lot of pop music is not rock but undergoes the same
transformations you sketch. Disco was by definition danceable, and gave
rise to house, techno, ... Some of that is still danceable (trance)
other is more cerebral (drum&bass), but it's quite remarkable how it
stays integrated with a large dose of respect between artists in the
various directions.
Sally Lyle
> music was too loud for jazz fans, and it was too weird for rock fans.
> If he was selling out, he wasn't very good at it.
lol - Beautifully put!
Miles, as far as I know, made his changes in direction because of an
intense desire to keep moving and exploring, rather than from
calculation of potential audience sizes. Then again....
Sally
c...@csatennis.com
Kosterman) wrote:
>what's in which category. However, I'll bet "Feels So Good" sold a lot
>more copies than anything by the Jazz Messengers (with or without
>Mangione). Probably not a conscious choice, but the average person
>Good" was on the radio, so people bought it. And most of those people
>probably didn't have a clue that he ever played with the Jazz
>Messengers (I wasn't aware of it myself -- I'm taking your word for
>it).
He made a nice album with Art Blakely called Buttercorn Lady which
also had Keith Jarrett. He also made some albums for Riverside. I
believe one was with Sal Nistico. They were all very good and worth
listening jazz wise.
Bob
Joseph Scott
"Can someone tell me why, in the 1950's, there was such a sharp
decline in the popularity of bebop? What factors in post-war America
contributed to this?"
I wouldn't say bebop, I'd say jazz: Americans lost interest in jazz in
general big-time during about 1947 to 1952, and this heavily impacted
jazz musicians in general, which happened to include bebop musicians.
The big bands had had a nice long run, and younger people were more
interested in music such as pop singing and R&B (R&B evolved mostly
out of swing-era jazz but was simpler in some ways, which allowed it
to be more popular); naturally, countless jazz musicians took jobs
playing either pop or R&B.
Charlie Parker was never "popular" during his lifetime -- think about
how much film footage we have of Louis Jordan compared to how much
film footage we have of Charlie Parker. I'd be interested to know the
largest attendance of any show Charlie ever played.
To the best of my knowledge some of the worst years for jazz musicians
in general were around the early '50s, when Coleman Hawkins didn't
have any record contract, Dizzy Gillespie could be announced coming
onstage at Birdland to zero applause, and Buck Clayton couldn't even
support himself playing trumpet, got a job as a salesman for a while.
Then interest in jazz gradually picked up again _somewhat_, with the
popularity of Brubeck, Miles, etc. One of Hampton Hawes' musicians
told me that Hawes said the most money he ever made, by far, was in
the '70s. By the '70s jazz was recognized an "art form," as Alan
suggested, whereas back during the Swing Era most people went to a
Lionel Hampton or Artie Shaw show because it was the hip young
people's music that you could dance to.
Overall, jazz has never been as popular again as it was before 1950,
when a real jazz record like Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home" could
actually sell a lot of copies. Bebop in particular has never been
popular with the masses during any era.
Joseph Scott