Assignment 3

Before it is possible to evaluate the playing styles and methods associated with the Bebop

era, it is important to first understand how and why the genre came into existence. During the

1920s and 1930s the swing music associated with the big band was wildly popular in America.

The swing sound was standardized by the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the Earl Hines

Orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Once these bands began

to record and tour throughout the nation, their music became available to a wide variety of

listeners. As a result of the big band’s popularity, swing music became commercialized and lost

some of its original innovation and integrity. Earl Stewart states that:

While swing was initially an adventurous and innovative style, once it achieved mass popularity, many second- and third-rate bands jumped on the swing bandwagon. The innovative techniques of call-and-response and swinging rhythms soon became hackneyed in the hands of lesser arrangers and players. Younger and more serious jazz musicians felt that the swing style had reached an artistic dead end.1

The typical instrumentation of Bebop groups would differ slightly from that of the Swing

era. Big band groups were large ensembles that would typically consist of five saxophones, four

trombones, four trumpets, and a rhythm section: piano, bass, and drums. 2 The standard

instrumentation of most Bebop groups was much smaller. 3

1 Earl Stewart, African American Music: An Introduction (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998), 137.2 Mark Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 4th ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991), 86. 3 Ibid., 140.