9

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 performers and
improvisers art, breeding few composers. Morgan and Horricks corroborate
1

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. In effect,
2

each subsequent jazz style has been established on the notions of the
preceding generation of players and not its composers. This conception is
3

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 performers
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,
Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its 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 jazzs 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

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 states, the
history of jazz and the development of jazz improvisation are inseparable. In
4

this chapter we want to provide a historical framework and socio-cultural

context for jazzs development on which we can evaluate and understand
Montgomerys musical evolution and improvisational style.

The 1940s: Swing to Bop

Montgomerys 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. Montgomery had the opportunity to
5

perform swing-band music with the Lionel Hampton orchestra (in 1948-1950),
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,

thus a major medium for the

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.
4

11

transmission of new ideas among the jazz musicians was temporarily denied
them.

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, chord substitutions, and passing
chords that intensified the harmonic fabric. Its most controversial aspect was
8

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. It was
9

small-group music performed by a five- or six-member combo in which the

priorities of individual expression and the prerogatives of the improviser were
reasserted. Bop was a more intricate art form than New Orleans and swing
10

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

Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), 287.
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.
7
8

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 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. The migration north during the first decade of
14

the century had produced a large population of African-Americans 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. They realized that the
15

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
Budds, op. cit.
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.
13
14

13

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 mans 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 met with an
Executive Order, on June 25, 1941. Lerone Bennett argued in Before the
18

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. A new group of magazines
19

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. Porter and Ullman further add
20

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 modernFredrick Kaufman and John P. Guckin, The African Roots of Jazz (N.p.: Alfred Publishing
Co., Inc., 1979), 38-39.
18 Lewis Porter and Micheal Ullman, Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1993), 187-188.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
17

14

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: Black Americans began to fight back with words,
22

with fists, with pamphlets, with music. Consequently, this new kind of jazz
sounded aggressive, hostile, complex and blantantly non-commercial. Dizzy
23

Gillespie, one of the founding fathers of bebop, recognized that this music
reflected the socio-political climate of the period:
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 mightve looked and sounded like
bedlam, but it really wasnt.
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

Ibid.
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.
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.
21
22

15

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. These musicians were also attempting to raise the quality of
27

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 musicians 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

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 1947Martin 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.
30 Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 219.
26

16

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: Fifty-second
Street beckoned the bop players, and the movement from Harlem to the
Street made the new music more public. Charles Nanry also adds that:
32

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. Eminent saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and
34

pianist Thelonious Monk, had inspired a legion of creative musicians

including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Bud Powell by the middle to the
late 1940s. 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
Ibid.
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 1980s, 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
32

17

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
Monroes and Mintons in Harlem, New York, where musicians jammed and
experimented. New sounds and innovative ideas were heard in the famous
Charlie Christian 1941-sessions from Monroes Uptown House and Mintons
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 1940s, a group of musicians began playing a new
style of music.

36

Guitarist Charlie Christian, who had been a featured

member of Benny Goodmans 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

Christians 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 segment of jazz history. Professor-guitarist Ted Dunbar, a close friend
of Wes Montgomery, concluded that It was the mindset of the 40s that Wes
David Baker, How To Play Bebop (Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Publishing Company, Inc.,
1987).
36 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.
35

18

created his music with. You had to know the music inside-out to be able to
play it off the top of your head. Thats 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. According to Tirro, what was
40

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
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

19

1940s were responsible for its occurrence. Stan Getz, Lennie Tristano, and
Miles Davis were the most instrumental in creating a sound that was quickly
labeled cool. Bebop had been, in part, a reaction against swing music and
41

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 bops drive and edge. This softening
process was reflected in the acceptance of a subdued, controlled tone
quality, breathy, often muted, and with little vibrato. Impressionisticlike 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
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 Youngs playing. These players, with their varying styles, were often white.
43 Budd, op. cit., 10.
41
42

20

natural enough reaction to the intensity of bop. The blues with its inherent
44

urgency, emotion and earthiness, was no longer appropriate for the refined
goals of the cool school. Critics felt that this style lacked excitement,
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. However, in retrospect, it seems that the musicians at the
46

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,
Harrison, op. cit., 301.
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.
44
45

21

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 Graass Group, and Shelly Manne. Esteemed
saxophonist and composer-arranger, Gerry Mulligan, continued to lead 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 1950s, 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
areas musicians to the nation at large. Ted Gioia argues that it is these jazz
50

institutions that determined, to a great extent, the nature of a regions sound

and its level of visibility:
Collier, The Making of Jazz, 416.
Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford
Press, 1992), 363.
49
50

22

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

institutions in place- clubs, performance

opportunities, and record companies- to justify the move.

52

Wes Montgomerys 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 1950s. 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 1950s, 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. Wes had the
53

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
Ibid., 364.
Ibid.
53 Ibid., 113.
51
52

23

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 roles. In effect, by the late sixties the black rights organizations
56

were almost entirely black. During this social development, AfricanAmericans found that black church music, with its distinctive harmonies and
blues inflections, could link them to their musical roots. Adherents of the
57

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. This is understandable since hard bop
58

had its roots in other kinds of black music prevalent in the fifties such as
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.
56 Collier, op. cit., 437.
57 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.
54

24

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. This blues-based, hard59

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 up-tempo 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 style.

61

62

The hard bop idiom also reflected the jazzmans 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
Ibid., 63.
Tirro, op. cit., 345.
61 Budds, op. cit., 11.
62 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.
59
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influenced by the gospel music of black protestants and its rhythmand-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. Off-beat 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 Montgomerys peak of creativity transpired from the late fifties to

early sixties, and historians such as Mark Gridley and Norman Mongan have
labeled his style- hard bop or mainstream.

66

Guitarist John Scofield

emphasized that Wes music came from

the tradition of Lionel Hampton, the mainstream black traditionboisterous, jovial, outgoing, like Cannonball Adderley- he put that on
guitar........But, though he stayed in the mainstream, he came up with
Budds, op. cit., 11.
Tirro, op. cit., 345.
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 straightahead jazz that was more improvisatory and emotionally based than cool. Mainstream
was another term often applied to this return-to-basics movement, which was also a
recognition by jazz musicians that they had a guiding jazz tradition.
64
65

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a way of playing that was revolutionary, in a soulful, church-element

way. Its 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 Montgomerys 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. Gunther Schuller posits that, it
68

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

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
Bill Shoemaker, op.cit., 21.
Budds, op. cit., 12.
69 Schuller, op. cit., 134.
70 Budds, op. cit., 11-12.
67
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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 performers 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. These two courses were, in fact, the basis for the development
73

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, it is
75

posited that up until the mid-1950s, 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. However, we are also told that
76

national pride in American military and industrial accomplishments, so

strong and universal during and after World War II, was gradually replaced
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.
71
72

28

by questions, doubts, and eventually hostility and opposition. On account of

77

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 mid1950s 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 Daviss 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. In effect, Kind of Blue made a
80

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
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.
77
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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

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 civil-rights 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

Lyons, op. cit., 259.

Porter and Ullman, op. cit., 395.
85 Tanner, Gerow and Megill, op. cit., 122.
83
84

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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. In his style we recognize the maximizing of individuality, emotion,
87

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 Ornettes 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

Collier, op. cit., 454.

Lyons, op. cit., 387.
88 LeRoi Jones, Black Music (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1967), 40.
89 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.
86
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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
1950s and early 1960s, 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.