Something Blue originally aired 08/29/98 - Bebop with Leon McEntire Tal Farlow, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian, Miles Davis, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Dizzie Gillespie play - Tal Farlow, The Love Nest Welcome to Something Blue, This is Hairy Larry and I've got the Blues, ... for you. play - Thelonius Monk, Hackensack larry All right, Thelonius Monk, playing "Hackensack". Kicking us off tonight we heard the Jazz guitar of Tal Farlow. We're doing a show on Bebop and the Blues. With me tonight is Leon McEntire, a well known Jonesboro guitarist, who is also an enthusiastic collector of jazz and blues music and information. leon Thanks Larry. Tal Farlow got his start in the Red Norvo trio with Charles Mingus and was a major innovator throughout the forties. He's also a very disciplined player whereas most of his comtemporaries tended to use a looser approach to the early single-string guitar style. Monk, on the other hand was more of a creative genius in the area of composition, but his improvisatational style was also copied by many Bebop players. The tune we just we heard was Monk at his peak. larry Blues and Jazz grew up together as siblings. Since the early 1900s Blues and Jazz have influenced each other but one was not derived from the other. Bebop, however, is a jazz idiom based on the blues. Many bebop changes come right out of the blues and the idea of jazz riffing is essential to bebop playing. leon As the Dixieland style brought many players North to such places as St. Louis, Kansas City and even New York City, the young musicians were soaking up everything and the time was right for a revolution in music. Bebop was the result and it got it's start with a little help from a young rebellious Kansas City Alto Sax player named Charlie Parker. After a job in Jay McShann's Big Band and a lot of woodshedding, "Yardbird", as he would later be called, changed the world with his harmonic explorations. The first song Bird played in his new extended style was "Cherokee". He called it Koko and after he and Dizzy Gillespie, (the co-founder of Bebop), play the opening riffs, you can hear "Cherokee" underneath the substitutions quite clearly. larry Let's play it now. Here's Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie with "KoKo". play - Charlie Parker, Koko play - Charlie Christian, Guy's Got To Go larry And that's Charlie Christian playing a bluesy jazz song called "Guy's Got to Go". Joining him in this improvisational set are Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and Thelonius Monk on piano. leon Charlie Christian was the guitarist for the Benny Goodman Orchestra and sextet. He and some of his peers always used to jam at Minton's, the after-hours club and was featured in that last song playing some of the most adventurous guitar riffs that anyone had ever heard in all of Jazz. All of the best players would go there because they were involved in changing the direction of popular music from Big Band sounds to the intimate sounds of the small groups. Because of the devotion of the fans to Bebop, it became a huge success as an artform. Dizzy, Bird, Monk and Miles were not alone. Bud Powell, was the most delicate pianist in Bebop and they all played in such a way that as a result of their efforts, every musician today is influenced by their collective genius. Here are a couple of my favorite Bird tunes from a 1949 set live at the Royal Roost. play - Charlie Parker, Ornithology play - Charlie Parker, Groovin' High larry And that's Bird, Mr. Charlie Parker, "Groovin' High" from "Bird at the Roost, The Savoy Years" a four volume set. leon When Charlie Parker had a chance to record his own band on the Dial label, he chose Miles Davis to play trumpet. Miles toured with Parker for a while then Charlie went through several musicians before he had to be hospitalized in a mental institutuion in Camarillo, California to recuperate from his excessive lifestyle. When he came out, he played with a vengeance, even making it to Carnegie Hall with Dizzy and then eventually back down the path that killed him at age 35. Due to the fact that Miles had a plan of his own and wanted to lead a band, Dizzy and Bird were heralded as the two Kings of Bebop. Miles went on to create the "Cool Jazz" movement that took over after bebop's heyday. Fortunately, there is plenty of room for both styles as they are both blues related and can be manipulated by modern musicians to create the new Jazz for the future. larry Miles first came to the forefront during the bebop era and since then has been a leader in modern jazz, cool jazz, free jazz, fusion, and even hip-hop. Now from "Cookin with the Miles Davis Quintet" Miles Davis, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor sax; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass and Philly Joe Jones, drums; here's "Blues by Five". play - Miles Davis, Blues By Five play - Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane, Freight Trane larry And that's Kenny Burrell on guitar and John Coltrane, tenor sax, doing one called "Freight Trane". Coltrane also cut his teeth on bebop and then went on to be a leader in several jazz styles. His playing has a raw energy that has to be compared to the blues. leon Kenny Burrell sort of ties all these musicians together. He recorded and toured with Bird during the `50s on the Verve label and later went on to do sessions and release many albums that are considered to be "must haves" today, like the one we just heard. Coltrane's backup band on that session was The Tommy Flanagan Trio. They were used by Ella Fitzgerald and many others after their stay with Coltrane. All of the musicians we have been listening to tonight are some of the most important figures in Jazz. I'm sure they will always influence future generations with their amazing talents. larry And thanks Leon for helping us out on this special "Something Blue" focusing on bebop and the blues. leon Thank you Larry for the opportunity to provide the listeners with a branch of the Blues that has had a great impact on many people. Everybody has their favorites and tonight we have been listening to some of mine. I don't care if the music was recorded in the `40s and `50s. I have loved it for almost 30 years and I never get tired of listening to different versions of all the classics. Bebop is the most technically challenging of all the Jazz styles and yet somehow it's also the most personal. larry Leon McEntire writes the "Delta Pickins" music reviews on Delta Boogie. To read his reviews log on to the internet at www.deltaboogie.com/leon. You can also find out about Something Blue, read Calendar Lore, or check out the Delta Musicians pages on Delta Boogie. Leon is the founder of the bebop chat room on DALNet and can also be found chatting in blues and rocknroll. Learn more about chat at www.deltaboogie.com/blues. Now here's Charles Mingus playing his own composition, "Noddin Ya Head Blues". play - Charles Mingus, Noddin Ya Head Blues play - Miles Davis, Airegin Closing the show here's the Miles Davis Quintet and "Airegin". Something Blue is a production of KASU at Arkansas State University. I'm Larry Heyl your producer and host. If you have enjoyed the show cantact us at www.deltaboogie.com. Until next week this is Hairy Larry, reminding you once again, Blues is the Mainstream. Thanks for listening.