THE IMPORTANCE OF 1959-1967 PERIOD IN JAZZ HISTORY

The focus of this study is on the history of jazz music between 1959 and 1967. The 1950s was a period of intense creativity in jazz, defined by emerging styles such as third stream, cool jazz and hard bop. The end of that decade, 1959, is considered to be a watershed year in which some of jazz’s most influential recordings were made and also effected the free jazz movement, which dominated until 1967, known as the "year that jazz music died". Therefore, 1959 becomes a bridge between the stylistic homogeneity of first half of the century and an outpouring of creativity in the second half. The echoes of the pre-fusion period 1959-1967 are still influential on the musical output of jazz in the twenty first century. This study aims to convey the variety of jazz styles between 1950 and 1967 by looking at the foundational elements that create the musical understanding of these styles by means of a descriptive methodology. Keywords: Jazz, Free Jazz, Hard Bop, 1959, Third Stream, Cool Jazz, Avant-Garde

Free Jazz

Free Jazz emerged in the late 1950s out of the ongoing negotiation of the American jazz tradition. By the mid-twentieth century, this African-American musical tradition had developed into an array of styles variously linked to New Orleans (Dixieland) or Chicago School (1920s), swing (1930s), and bebop (1940s). If swing embodied an industrialized modern evolution of New Orleans-style jazz (deemed traditional), bebop brought the modernist ethos to jazz by attacking what some critics suggested swing was becoming: too popular, too banal and uniform. Consequently, bebop—through innovators such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker—disrupted the unifying structures of big band swing while complicating the musical elements of rhythm, harmony, and melody. The contours of bebop’s own progeny—the styles associated with hard bop, cool jazz, and Third Stream—gave form to free jazz. The primary innovators of Free Jazz all came from the cutting edge of 1950s hard bop and sometimes rhythm and blues, but were also influenced by the modernist, avant-garde strains in classical music in the 1940s and 1950s (which also found expression in the musical arrangements in Third Stream and cool jazz). Free jazz musicians attempted to break from the confines of Western musical tenets, European tonal harmonic theory, and the dominance of the composer—the notated score that characterized jazz compositions through bebop—while renewing the collective improvisation of New Orleans-style jazz through spontaneous interaction within a group. Free jazz musicians placed a renewed emphasis on spontaneously improvised melodies and unfixed rhythms.

Davis, Miles Dewey III, (1926–1991)

Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis is one of the most significant artists in the history of jazz. He stood at the forefront of post-World War II developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, postbop, and jazz-rock fusion. His trumpet playing was renowned for a breadth of timbres, unique spatial arrangements, and emphatic use of the middle register. As a bandleader he hired and subsequently launched the careers of some of the most important and innovative jazz artists, including tenor saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, pianists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, guitarists John McLaughlin, Mike Stern, and John Scofield, drummer Tony Williams, and bassist Marcus Miller. His 1959 recording Kind of Blue remains one of the best-selling, most critically acclaimed, and iconic jazz albums of all time.