The Birth of Bebop: A Musical and Social History by Scott DeVeaux
Review by: Travis A. Jackson
Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 405-412
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405
icism of what are, in most other respects, excellent books, it is of those moments where they take the importance of their subject for granted, such as
those chaptersthat provide a survey of a particularfield and then fail to draw
any conclusionsabout the areathey havejust traversed.The absenceof critical
engagement with why and how these things are important in some way implies that they are self-justifying.They are not-except, perhaps, to a tiny
group of other musicologists.This problem is not peculiarto the "Schoenberg
industry":it is one that haunts all those who work on "new music," where
thriving intellectualprojects seem inverselyproportionalto the wider public
appealof what they discuss.I'm unwillingto single out Leon Botstein'schapter because it is only one of severalexcellent essays under review, but I do
think our endeavorswill increasinglyrequirehis degree of self-questioningand
critique. This is neither navel gazing nor the public airing of self-doubt.
Rather,it is an engagement with the legacy of the new music as a contemporaryissue ratherthan as a closed historicaldocument.
JULIANJOHNSON
TheBirth of Bebop:A Musicaland SocialHistory,by Scott DeVeaux. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1997. xiii, 572 pp.
In this engaging book, Scott DeVeauxis concernedwith a pivotalmoment in
the history of jazz: the emergence of bebop as a more or less distinct musical
style in the mid 1940s. As his title suggests, his approachcenters both on the
style and substanceof bebop as well as on the culturalconditions and individual and collectiveefforts that made its emergencepossible. Ratherthan taking
either of two well-worn paths through the historicalunderbrush,he makes a
compelling case for finding an altogether differentroute, one that makes the
journeymore complicatedbut ultimatelymore satisfying.
On one of the paths he rejects,one arrivesat bebop by following an evolutionary trackthat sees it as wholly continuous with earlierjazz styles. In that
sense, bebop is the almost inevitableresult of the cumulativelyincreasingvirtuosity and harmonic and rhythmic sophisticationof musicians,composers,
and arrangers.On the other path, one moves chronologicallyand experiences
bebop as a jarringbreak,as a self-conscious,revolutionarydeparturefrom the
past.
The first of those paths, DeVeaux notes, is the one typicallyfavored by
critics,music scholars,and musicians.It sees the problem of bebop's origins
as one that requiresfitting the music qua music-sans complicatingeconomic,
social, and politicalissues-into a coherent narrativeof jazz's progress:rising
from its "folk"originsto become an "art"that is today enshrinedin jazz repertory orchestras,college curricula,and culturalinstitutionslike Lincoln Center
(pp. 3-4). The coherence of this narrativecomes at the expense of other importanthistoricalconsiderations.DeVeauxobserves,for example,that many of
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University of
California Press
406
Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
jazz's most "prolificproselytizers"(e.g., Gunther Schuller,Martin Williams,
and Leonard Feather), despite a deep familiaritywith the business side of
music making, have shown a marked "reluctanceto relate the history of the
music to the messy and occasionallysordid economic circumstancesof its production" (p. 12).1 Their aims are surelyto distancethe art of makingjazz, as
they see it, from the world of commercialism,while at the same time makinga
case for it as a speciesof modernism.In doing so, however,championsof jazzas-arthave also tended to downplayanotherof its salientcharacteristics.
As the
notion of jazz as modernist art gains credence, DeVeaux notes, its ties to its
AfricanAmerican roots diminish, at least for this group of writers:"In the
process of becoming a modern art, jazz ceases to be exclusively,or even primusic. It is, instead, 'America'sclassicalmusic'-a
marily,an African-American
category into which racialdifferenceand the politicalturmoil it entailsfinally
disappear"(p. 18). While race is not entirely removed from discussions of
bebop in particularor jazz in general, it is considered to be an inconvenient
distraction,like economics, that detractsfrom the seemingly more important
story of the music's internal development. After all, such considerationsare
obstacles to an understandingof jazz; its role, as art, is "to transcendthem"
(p. 20).
The view of bebop as a self-conscious,revolutionarymusical movement,
more commonly found in the work of individualsconcerned with large-scale
social and culturalchange, often caststhe music both as a reactionto the crass
commercialismof swing and as "a movement by young African-American
musicians(Parker,Gillespie,Monk) seeking to create an idiom expressiveof the
blacksubculture,not the white mainstream"(p. 4). Writerspromulgatingthis
view haveplacedraceand AfricanAmericancultureat the centerof discussions
of jazz. They see certainelements-"swing, call-and-responsepatterns,vocalized timbre, 'blue notes,' improvisation,and so forth"-as "musicalmarkers
of ethnicity" essential to any understanding of jazz or related African
Americanmusics (p. 17). While the music may develop and change over time,
these essentials are "not themselvessubjectto development"or change: their
presence is an indicator of the authenticityof particularmusical expressions
(p. 17; emphasishis). This view also, in DeVeaux's estimation, gains coherence by neglecting some historicalfacts (like the hiring of white musiciansby
bebop pioneers) and overstating the importance of others (particularlythe
politicalconsciousnessof some AfricanAmericanmusicians).2
1. Representativeworks include Schuller'stwo volumes of analysisand criticism:EarlyJazz:
Its Rootsand Musical Development(New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1968) and TheSwing
Era: The Developmentof Jazz, 1930-1945 (New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1989); Martin
Williams's TheJazz Tradition, new and rev. ed. (1970; New York: Oxford University Press,
1983); FrankTirro'sJazz A History(New York:Norton, 1977); and MarkGridley'sJazz Styles:
Historyand Analysis,7th ed. (Upper SaddleRiver,N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1997).
2. Leroi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Blues People:Negro Music in WhiteAmerica (New York:
Morrow, 1963), is an excellent example of writing in this category.And though their aims are
quite differentfrom Baraka's,one might also include variouswritingsby RalphEllison in Shadow
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407
DeVeaux is rightfully suspicious of the simplistic binaries around which
these two alternativesarestructured(continuity/discontinuity,art/commerce,
racial/nonracial), and he takes great pains to reveal the complexities they
mask. His centralquestions spin out from those binaries:Can bebop be both
continuous and discontinuouswith what preceded it?Are art and commercial
entertainmentmutuallyincompatible?Did the musiciansreallyconceive their
activityin such starklypolarizedterms?Can bebop be accuratelydescribedas a
revolutionary(or reactionary)movement, an attempt by frustratedAfrican
Americansto create something that whites couldn't steal?And if so, why was
bebop their solution?
Throughout, DeVeaux'saim is to write a history that avoids "the tendency
eitherto reduce bebop to a textbook exampleof stylisticevolution or to represent it as a social upheavalexpressed through music" (p. 27). Histories exhibiting either tendency, he argues, are mutually exclusive and ignore the
crucialdatum he presentsas a section heading at the end of the introduction:
"People Made Bebop" (p. 27). That observation,that bebop is "the result of
the decisions ... musiciansmade" (p. 28), requireshim to take a differentapproachto researchingand writing about the music. His solution is particularly
elegant: it reconfigures rather than rejects the extant literature.One of his
guiding assumptions,in fact, is that "anyanalysisof bop that ignores eitherthe
nuances of musical language or the political context for its creation is manifestlyincomplete"(p. 27). By makingthat claim at the outset, he strivesto retain what he finds most useful in previous approaches.Another assumption
enables him to chart a different path through the historicaldata, one positioned between the two well-worn paths:the most complete analysis,he suggests, resultsfrom focusing on the work of specifichistoricalagents ratherthan
on abstractsocialforces.The binariescontinuity/discontinuity,art/commerce,
and racial/nonracialare less neatlyseparablecategoriesthan they are attempts
to describe lived experience:for "the young black men who created bebop,
musical and social issues were not warring abstractions,but conjoined elements of their adult identities.... they were professionals:
ambitious and opportunistic,eager to exchange their specializedskillsfor monetary advantage
in the serviceof their careers.And their experienceas African Americanspermeated their music as well as every aspect of their personal and professional
lives" (p. 28). In DeVeaux'sreconfigurednarrative,therefore, a focus on the
lived experienceof musiciansmakes it possible for economic, social, cultural,
political,racial,and musicalissuesall to receivetheir due. By subtlyshiftingthe
emphasisto the actors rather than the results of their actions, DeVeaux has
perhapsfomented a quiet revolutionin jazz historicalwriting.
and Act (New York:Random House, 1964) and Albert Murrayin The Omni-Americans:New
Perspectiveson Black Experiencein American Culture (New York:Osterbridge and Dienstfrey,
1970) and StompingtheBlues(New York:McGrawHill, 1976). See also Albert Murrayand John
F. Calhoun, eds., Trading Twelves:TheSelectedLettersof Ralph Ellisonand Albert Murray(New
York:Modern Library,2000).
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Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
After an introduction, the book is divided into three major sections that
proceed chronologically beginning in the 1930s. Briefly, the first section,
"College of Music: Coleman Hawkins and the Swing Era," describes the
swing bands that were a trainingground for the musicianswho would come
to constitute the bebop vanguard.In the second section, "ProfessionalsAfter
Hours: Young BlackMusiciansin the 1940s," the focus is the work of those
young musiciansonce they had begun establishingreputationsfor themselves
separatefrom the bandleaderswith whom they had apprenticed.The third
section, "TakingAdvantage of the Disadvantages:Bop Meets the Market,"
tracesthose same musicians'fortunes once bebop had become an identifiable
entity.The work containedin these sections deftly synthesizesmaterialsdrawn
from recordings,oral histories,biographies,and varioussecondarysources, as
well as information drawn from what seems to have been a comprehensive
survey of such contemporarytrade publicationsas Downbeat,Billboard,and
Variety.The resultof this meticulousresearchis the most cogent and informative analysiswe have of the earlydevelopment of bebop, a richlydetailed account whose largerstory is nonetheless clear.
The first section of the book, "College of Music: Coleman Hawkins and
the Swing Era," deals with both the life of tenor saxophonist Coleman
Hawkinsand the emerging commercialentertainmentsystem that would be a
trainingground for those musiciansregardedas bebop's pioneers.Hawkins,at
firstglance, might seem an unlikelysubjectfor a discussionof the emergenceof
bebop. DeVeaux justifieshis choice by presenting Hawkins as a "passionate
virtuoso," a musicianwith an "unabashedlyromantictemperamentinformed
by an unquestionedmasteryof craft,as well as a thoroughlyprofessionalinsistence on getting the job done right" (p. 103). Indeed, the profundity of
Hawkins's harmonic mastery as deployed in improvised lines possessing a
sense of both inevitabilityand forwardmotion is well capturedby the phrase
"harmonicprogression."His celebrated1938 recordingof "Body and Soul,"
DeVeauxasserts,is prime evidence of his statureas an improviser:"Anyonelistening to it with an ear for technical detail would understand,if they hadn't
understood before, that intellectual rigor was not incompatible with jazz's
well-known emotional expressiveness"(p. 110).
Bebop musicianswould value that combination of intellect and expression,
at least as a foundation for their work as improvisers.Even more, they would
value another approach,one that emphasized "ambiguityand discontinuity,"
qualities "notably absent from Hawkins's music but salient in the music of
[Count Basie'stenor saxophonist]LesterYoung" (p. 111). Young'swork was
more dearly founded on what DeVeaux labels a blues-basedapproach,one
that tended to de-emphasizeharmonicprogressionand to be more rhythmically elastic. His improvisationsoften seemed to float over and disregardthe
harmonic background, using "gestures, usually subtle bends in intonation,
that suddenly evoke[d] a blues frame of reference"(p. 112). One wonders,
given this observation, why Young is not discussed more extensively.While
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409
the parallelsbetween Hawkins'scareerand ambitionsand those of trumpeter
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespieare palpable,so too are those between Young's
careerand that of alto saxophonistCharlieParker.Parker'simprovisations,as
DeVeauxnotes laterin the book, proceed from a combinationof Young's and
Hawkins's sensibilities,with respective "bluesy 'rice-and-beans'gestures ...
linked seamlesslyto the esoteric arabesquesof the improvisingvirtuoso, at a
speed that makes the whole process seem abrupt and startling"(p. 380). It
would seem that if both Hawkinsand Young are foundationalfor bop's emergence as a musicalstyle, they should be given equal treatmentin the text.
The second section, "ProfessionalsAfter Hours: Young BlackMusiciansin
the 1940s," is in itselfperhapsthe most useful and informativepiece of writing
on the origins of bebop ever produced. Its major claim is that the young
AfricanAmerican musicianswho were the music's primarycreatorssaw no
incompatibilitybetween their art and the commercialworld in which it was
positioned. They, in other words, were not greatly concerned with some of
the myths of artistic "genius" and spontaneity that would be attributed to
or associated with them by the press and Beat Writerslike Jack Kerouac.3
Instead,they were musicianswho were concernedwith carvingout a spacefor
their art in an increasinglyconstricted commercialworld (p. 170). Many of
them had spent their late teens and early twenties in regionally prominent
"territorybands"and had moved into nationallyknown big bandsby the early
1940s. Using the biographiesof Gillespieand Parkerup to 1942 as examples,
DeVeaux illustratesthe tensions, contradictions, ambiguities, and triumphs
that characterizedthese musicians'attemptsto fashion careersfor themselves.
A deft analysisof their musicaldevelopment-including Gillespie'suse of substitute harmonies and Parker'ssynthesisof harmonic complexity and bluesy
expressivity-fills out the portraitsof foundationalmusicians.
DeVeaux follows these concentrated biographieswith a discussion of the
jam session, "the jazzman'strue academy."His exposition clarifiesthe procedures of jam session playingand dispelsa number of myths that have become
associatedwith jamming and its role in bebop's development (pp. 203-7). In
particular,common jam session practices-playing at extremetempos, playing
in odd keys, and using complex reharmonizationsof standardrepertoryand
abrupt modulations-helped young artistspush one another and develop as
skilled musicians.They weren't, as is commonly maintained,merely part of
a self-conscious attempt by black musicians to create something "whites
couldn't steal" or to humiliate older or less-skilledimprovisers.Jam sessions
were, it is true, settings where young musicians could practice, work out
and exchange ideas, network, and establisha "rough-and-readyhierarchyof
competence" (p. 207). They were never designed, however, to furtherother
3. For an examinationof the misreadingof jazz by the Beat Writersand Americansociety in
general (particularlyin the case of bebop), see Jon Panish's The Color of Jazz: Race and
Representationin PostwarAmerican Culture (Jackson:UniversityPress of Mississippi,1997) and
David Meltzer'sReading Jazz (San Francisco:MercuryHouse, 1993).
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Journal of the American Musicological Society
skills important for viabilityin a market oriented toward big bands-sightreading and section-leadingamong them. In this sense, the jam session was a
complement to ratherthan substitutefor other forms of formal and informal
education.
Paradoxically,DeVeaux revealsthat Gillespie,Parker,and other musicians
trainedin big bands and jam sessionshad been preparedto face a marketdifferentfrom the one they confronted in the mid 1940s. By then, opportunities
for musicianswishing to become bandleadersin their own right were dwindling: the wartime economy led to crucialshortages of materialsneeded for
making recordings(shellac)and for touring (fuel and rubber). The impact of
these shortageswas nothing short of devastatingfor both well-establishedand
new ensembles.For example,becauseof the difficultiesof travelingby trainor
automobile, scenariosthat tended to open them to harassmentfrom whites,
black musicianshad previouslyresorted to using chartered buses. Fuel and
rubber rationing made that mode of transportationincreasinglyless viable.
Likewise, the crowding of the big band market and the resultant need for
ensembles to feature (highly paid) star artists caused band payrolls to skyrocket,as leadersendeavoredto keep the best musiciansfrom leavingfor other
groups. After a time, many large ensembles simply could not cover their expenses. The more cost-effectivealternative,performing for long stretchesin
stable locations like hotel ballrooms, was an opportunity disproportionately
extended to white bandleaders(pp. 240-44).
Taken together, these conditions and constraints,along with the musical
ones addressedearlier,furnishthe context for the book's finalsection, "Taking
Advantageof the Disadvantages:Bop Meets the Market."In summarizinghis
argumentto this point, DeVeauxwrites:
or
Bythe early1940s,manymusicianscouldimaginemakinga livingprimarily,
even exclusively,
with small,jam-session-style
combos.This trendhad been
underwayforsometime.The gradualdriftof thejamsessionout of the musicians'communityandinto the publicspherebeganin the mid-1930s,marked
into nightclubsand the emerby the conversionof 52nd Streetspeakeasies
gence of the "jazzconcert."The peculiardynamicsof wartimeboth acceleratedthe processandskewedit unpredictably.
(p. 274)
Chapter7, the firstchapterof this section, expandsthat statement, exploring
the ways that musicians,promoters, and club owners transformedthe private
sphere of the jam session into a public performancesphere-one that encouraged smallcombo performance.
Chapter 8 focuses on bebop's entry into the marketvia recordings. The
chapter updates DeVeaux's influential article that appeared in this journal
more than a decade ago4 by examining the political economy of recording
leading up to the 1942 American Federation of Musicians recording ban.
Where earliercommentators have asserted that this ban was responsiblefor
4. Scott DeVeaux, "Bebop and the Recording Industry: The 1942 AFM Recording Ban
Reconsidered,"this Journal 61 (1988): 126-65.
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411
the spotty recorded documentation of bebop's early years, DeVeaux argues
that it would be at best naive to assume that major record companieswould
have had any interestin recordingthis music, even without a ban. The major
recordlabelswere much more concernedwith recordingpopularsinging stars
than with recordingearlybebop or, for that matter,jazz of any kind, for it was
simplynot profitable.As one trade correspondentsaid, jazz records "takeup
shellac,sell slowly,and have a low marginof profit. They're out" (p. 297). To
gain a foothold on such terrain, bebop had to become a commodity that
could be easilymarketed:
Beforebebopcouldmakeitswayinto the recordingstudio,it hadto becomea
viablecommercial
product.In its originalHarlemsetting,the newmusic,asyet
Its distinctiveidiosyncrasies-aloose, imunnamed,... was uncommodified.
provisatoryformatand an eclecticrepertoryof standardsstuddedwith harmonicobstacles-weretailoredto the specializedrequirements
of professional
who pursuedtheircommercial
ambitionsthroughother,morepubmusicians,
lic channels.(p. 298)
The processof making bebop commerciallyviablewould entail converting
the jam session repertoryinto a body of originalcompositions and streamlining and reshapingthe looseness of the jam session into formal presentations
for paying audiences.The resultsof this process, DeVeaux shows, were most
dear in recordingsmade during and after 1944 on a seriesof smalllabels(e.g.,
Guild, Apollo, Dial, and Savoy). Coleman Hawkins's recordingsfor Apollo,
for example,codified much of what was common practicein jam sessions,particularlythe emphasisplaced on half-diminishedseventh chords and altered
dominant chords,5both of which could offer support in the harmonic background for practicesthat were becoming common in improvisation:"chromatic dissonances [e.g., flattened ninths, sixths, and sevenths] that had
previouslyseemed to be eccentric 'off notes' were absorbed into a comprehensive musicalvocabulary"(p. 313). Moreover, the young musicians,many
of whom considered blues-basedplaying to be the backward,ruralcounterpart to their sophisticatedurban music, had to find a way to reconcile their
musical practiceswith the expectationsand tastes of their blues-loving audiences. As a result,blues-basedcompositionsunderwent a transformationsimilar to that previouslyundergone by the repertoryof standardsand Broadway
show tunes: to relativelyunadorned twelve-barI-IV-V sequences, musicians
added
an ironiclayerof complexitythat(not incidentally)
flauntedtheirspecialskills.
"Bebopis a highlysophisticatedform of music;the bluesis very simple,in
form,"commentedDizzy Gillespie."The bebop musicianswantedto show
their virtuosity.They'd play the twelve-baroutline of the blues, but they
5. For jazz musicians,the instructionto play an alteredchord resultsin a dominant seventh
chord whose fifth and ninth have bothbeen chromaticallyaltered,that is, flattenedor sharpeneda
half step. Whether both degrees are treatedin the same way or differentlyat a given moment is at
the discretionof a performeror group of performers.
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Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
wouldn'tbluesit up likethe olderguystheyconsideredunsophisticated.
They
busiedthemselvesmakingchanges,a thousandchangesin one bar."(p. 340)
After discussingthe attempts of Woody Herman and Billy Eckstineto incorporatebebop into big band performance(and thus use the new music in
an alreadyestablished format), DeVeaux turns to a discussion and analysis
of the important small-band recordings made in 1945. His analyses, both
detailed and cogent, offer a welcome correctiveto commentariesthat focus
too much on the commercialtaint that recordings carry.6Instead, DeVeaux
examines CharlieParker'sSavoy recordingswith the understandingthat the
studio was a specialenvironmentthat encouragedsome forms of performance
while discouragingothers. Recordings, after all, were "ephemeralcommodities, placed into circulationessentiallyas a form of advertisement"(p. 366),
that is, as a way for musiciansto gain reputationsthat would lead to live performancebookings. Gillespie'srecordingsfor Manor, Guild, Continental,and
Black & White are singled out for praisein this discussion.DeVeaux explains
that in them,
methodof presentationthat
Gillespiemovedsteadilytowardthe streamlined
came to characterizebebop in particular:the convolutedmelodiclines, or
beforeandafterthe improvisedsolos on familiar
"heads,"playedimmediately
chordprogressions.
Theseingeniousmelodicandrhythmiccreationsareideally
suitedto the smallcombo, makinga virtueof its limitedresourcesand contributingto the senseof a distinctbebopaesthetic.(p. 424)
He then goes on to examine in more detail the differencesbetween big band
and smallcombo performancestylesas exhibitedin bebop.
It is at this point, however, that DeVeaux's narrative abruptly ends.
Although he brieflysurveysGillespie'sattemptsto form a bebop big band in
1946, he is not greatlyconcerned in this book with bebop's fortunes beyond
1945 or with its impact on furtherdevelopments in jazz. While such discussion might have been welcome, DeVeaux saves such explorationfor another
volume, perhapsto be written by him, perhapsby someone else. In his thorough, clearheadedexaminationof the recordingsand other source material,
DeVeaux has produced a landmarkin jazz scholarshipand musicology, one
that will lead to greater expectations for the work of future scholarsin this
field. Indeed, if anyone undertakesa sequel to what DeVeauxhas done here, it
will demand the same carefulresearch,attention to detail, and clear writing
that characterizethis work.
TRAVISA. JACKSON
6. Recordings,the argumentgoes, aretaintedby musiciansand recordindustrypersonnel
moreconcernedwith manipulating
consumersfor financialadvantage
thanwith the dissemination andadvancement
of high-quality
artisticwork.DeVeaux(pp. 371-81) discussesthe version
of this myth that appearsin Ross Russell'sBird Lives:TheHih Life and Hard Timesof Charlie
"Yardbird"
Parker(NewYork:Charterhouse,
1973),wherethe authorbemoansthe commercial
of guitaristTinyGrimes,withwhom Parkermadehis firstrecordingsfor the Savoy
aspirations
label.
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