Word: bop
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...jazz world puts all its heroes in "bags"-tight little schools of artistic similarity that confine each jazzman to his own musical neighborhood: Funk, Freedom, Groove, Bop, Soul. Only three great players have managed to avoid classification-Thelonious Monk because he is inimitable and Monkishly alone, Duke Ellington because he is a kind of president emeritus, and Count Basie because he so perfectly swings. Last week, in a wild and woolly engagement at Manhattan's Basin Street East, the Count's pigeonhole at last be came apparent: he's in the New Year...
...Except for the brazenly modern harmonies and voicings of his new arrangements, the "Basie sound" has remained steadfastly the same all along. With Benny Goodman his main competition, Basie was a swing king in the '30s, and his style is still defiantly prewar. In the first years of bop, Basie was considered so sadly reactionary that his band endured a long eclipse. Then, after four years' touring with a small combo, Basie collected a new 16-piece ensemble in 1952, and within a year it was fully established as the swingingest band in the land...
...tired jokes, the songs often had last night's audience roaring with laughter. Particularly successful were "Bureaucracy Calypso," a slap at modern urban government, "Living in the Twilight," which describes the life of the gangster associated with government and has suspicious echoes of West Side Story, and the "Accusatory Bop," a wild rock 'n roll bit in the grand style...
...Friday afternoon the Festival presented an interesting program of "New Faces in Jazz." One of the faces was not so new--that of Howard McGhee, who was an important bop trumpeter in the late forties and has returned from the living death of narcotics to resume his place in the jazz world. McGhee's quartet includes a 19-year-old Bostonian, Phil Porter, whose bluesy, rocking organ mixes perfectly, with McGhee's completely honest horn. Unlike so many musicians who wander aimlessly through a solo, McGhee plays solos which are each a single coherent message simply and forthrightly expressed...
Duke Ellington is generally regarded as one of the two or three greatest figures in the history of jazz. He showed why he deserves his reputation Saturday night. None of the usual labels apply to the Duke. He doesn't play Dixieland, he doesn't play bop; he plays a brand of music which is his own, and which has survived decades of fads. Although he uses techniques which have gone out of style, such as the wa-wa trumpet mute, Ellington never sounds dated. It is not so much that he has changed with the times; the times...