Dancing To Bebop

Message

Doug · #1 Post by **Doug** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:02 pm

sonofvu wrote:<snip> I think the idea of bebop is to make music that you can not dance to.

Huh?? Dizzy Gillespie, for example, used to be quite puzzled why the dancers didn't like to dance to his music. He thought that it was quite danceable. I think that the general consensus is that bebop was not a reaction to nor a rebellion against swing. It was rather a natural evolution as swing players increased the complexity and technical difficulty of what they were playing. After all, Charlie Parker was a marvelous swing musician.

And although I would not dj a competition with bebop - mainly 'cause it would piss off the organizers & many of the dancers - I do love to dance to a number of bebop standards and do dj with it when I have a mature audience that likes bebop and can deal with the complexity. And this is not too often - mainly works at my regular gig where I have introduced bebop over the past year, and certain of the standards have found acceptance.

An easy intro to bop, other than the bebop singers which are very accessible and easy to dance to, would be Benny Goodman's short lived bop group. He basically kept a swing rhythm section but used several excellent bop players in the group.

mousethief · #2 Post by **mousethief** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 7:18 am

Just because Dizzy wanted to attract dancers doesn't mean he was going to get Lindy Hoppers. Frankie disliked bop intensely when he first heard it. There are a number of stories on this.

Monk used to get up and dance his damn self while he was playing. That doesn't mean it was good music for swing dancers. You can dance to damn near anything after all but bop came around as social dancing was dying off and all those GIs were in college or making babies or both. Social dancing wouldn't really come back as a phenomenon until those first baby boomers found rock 'n' roll and Motown.

Kalman

Doug · #3 Post by **Doug** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 7:44 am

[Rant=Bebop good]
Bebop is good dance music! A lot of people don't like it for various reasons. So what? That Frankie disliked it doesn't mean anything to me except that he disliked it. Period. Benny Goodman disliked it and then finally came to terms with it and ran his own (short lived) bop group.

One difficulty with bebop is that is predominantly up tempo, but without the drive of a solid up tempo swing song. This makes it very hard for me personally to do fast Lindy to it. It lacks the energy. But doood, Lindy is not the only swing dance! It is wonderful for Balboa!. Bal doesn't demand the same drive in the music as does fast Lindy because it is inherently a much tighter and more in-control type of dance.

Another difficulty that most dancers have with bop is that it is structurally very challenging. Again, I find this makes fast Lindy to bebop somewhat annoying. But for bal? S’wonderful. In particular, the somewhat scattered flavor of bop cries out for cool bal footwork.

So although I grant you that most on this board probably don’t like bebop, and most certainly do not dj with bebop, I think of this more as a limitation of our dance community and not some inherent danceability limitation in the music.
[/Rant/

mousethief · #4 Post by **mousethief** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 8:18 am

That doesn't change the fact that dancers didn't want to dance to it during its heyday, nor does it alter the fact that Dizzy was playing great music in a changing world, which greatly accounts for his inability to attract new dancers.

How many people knew balboa in 1946? How many of those were on the East Coast? Even better, since fast bal is a fairly recent innovation, how many of those fast-bal dancers were out dancing to bebop?

Benny Goodman might have been swayed because his big band fell apart because it was no longer profitable and he wanted to feed his family. I gotta tell you, if I was faced with that choice and still wanted to play, I would damn well learn how to play bebop so I could not only cash in on my fame but continue to play with the best artists in Jazz.

Go read the Other Music threads. Most of us like bebop and many may own as much or more bebop than swing. That doesn't alter the fact that we DJ for lindy hoppers almost exclusively and won't DJ much bop at dance events - especially ones with widely varying levels of skill. Early hot jazz and Dixieland are inherently danceable as well but how much of it makes the cut?

Kalman

Kyle · #5 Post by **Kyle** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 9:38 am

Doug wrote:Bebop is good dance music!

OH MY GOD doug Please tell me you are kidding.

Have you ever tried to dance to anything from Bitches Brew of Love Supreme? Have you ever tried to syncopate to Coltrane while he was doing heroine?

Have you looked at the structure of bop? Its all mathematical and doesn't swing. It doesnt period. I'm sure you will point out your 4 or 5 exceptions, but it still wont change my perception. BOP IS NOT FOR DANCING.

#6 Post by **JesseMiner** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 9:55 am

I've split this discussion off from the An interesting comment on swing (dance) music ... thread as it was getting off-topic.

You might also want to reference the Bop v. Swing thread.

Jesse Miner
SwingDJs Moderator

Doug · #7 Post by **Doug** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:07 am

Kyle wrote: OH MY GOD doug Please tell me you are kidding.

Nope. I'm not. And the structure of bebop (NOT FREE JAZZ) is basically just like swing. For the sake of argument, here is a list of tunes on one of my burned bop dj cds.

Artist - Song - BPM - Track Date
Benny Goodman - Bedlam - 220 - 4/14/1949
Benny Goodman - Blue Lou - 220 - 4/14/1949
Benny Goodman - Stealin' Apples - 207 - 12/21/1947
Charlie Parker - Moose The Mooche - 216 - 3/28/1946
Charlie Parker - Ornithology - 221 - 3/28/1946
Charlie Parker - Yardbird Suite - 208 - 3/28/1946
Dizzy Gillespie - Hot House - 170 - 5/11/1945
Dizzy Gillespie - Ol' Man Rebop - 202 - 2/22/1946
Dizzy Gillespie - Ow! - 172 - 8/22/1947
Dodo Marmarosa - Dodo's Bounce - 190 - 11/1/1946
Fats Navarro - Fracture - 190 - 12/18/1946
Fats Navarro - Maternity - 174 - 12/18/1946
Fats Navarro - Sealin' Trash - 200 - 12/18/1946
Kenny Clarke - 52nd Street Theme - 217 - 9/5/1946
Lucky Thompson - Slam's Mishap - 215 - 9/13/1946
Sonny Stitt - Blazin’ - 193 - 6/28/1950
Sonny Stitt - Confirmation - 212 - 1/1/1966
Sonny Stitt - Scrapple From The Apple - 220 - 1/1/1966
Tiny Grimes - Red Cross - 206 - 9/15/1944
Tiny Grimes - Tiny's Tempo - 215 - 9/15/1944
Wardell Gray - Blue Gray - 180 - 4/25/1950
Wardell Gray - Citizen's Bop 200 6/9/1952
Thelonious Monk - Well You Needn't 184 10/24/1947

Sorry that my table didn't align well, and sorry about the incomplete data, in particular the lack of info re the CDs I ripped these from. Don't have that handy right now.

And I'll share some of these sounds with you at ABW if you want. In fact, when I see you on the floor I might just crank one up!

Mr Awesomer · #8 Post by **Mr Awesomer** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:09 am

Also, it's sounding like it might be good for some people to read around allmusic.com (esp. the groove lovers) as they might be surprised as to who and how many people are labeled as some form of bop.

mousethief · #9 Post by **mousethief** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:52 am

JesseMiner wrote:I've split this discussion off from the An interesting comment on swing (dance) music ... thread as it was getting off-topic.

Our threads get off-topic?

Kalman

kitkat · #10 Post by **kitkat** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:53 am

I wish Peter would post here--it was either a dinner at Herrang or on some message board that I remember him talking about a form of dance that evolved for bop music. In other words, it may not be lindyable, but it's danceable if you're creative.

Mr Awesomer · #11 Post by **Mr Awesomer** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 11:15 am

kitkat wrote:I wish Peter would post here--it was either a dinner at Herrang or on some message board that I remember him talking about a form of dance that evolved for bop music. In other words, it may not be lindyable, but it's danceable if you're creative.

Applejacks

julius · #12 Post by **julius** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 11:19 am

Early bop is still somewhat similar to swing in structure and rhythm, it's just that the drummer is going a bit more crazy and the soloists are using flurries of 16th notes and chords and modes that swing musicians typically ignored.

Bop is the 1940s-mid 50s output of Diz, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, and other titans. Coltrane is ... well, he's a freak. Miles started out as a bop player but quickly developed his own style of playing (several times).

I would still prefer to dance to swing music, but it gets fuzzy at the border.

Kyle · #13 Post by **Kyle** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:35 pm

where is the line between bop and hard bop? what about contemporary jazz. where is thatl line in comparison?

Doug · #14 Post by **Doug** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:59 pm

No hard lines. But most of the boppers were swing era musicians who evolved a more complex style of jazz. A lot of the hard boppers and post bebop players were never a part of the swing era and I do find that many (most??) do not swing and are not fun to dance to. For example, a typical hard bopper is Cannonball Adderly. I generally find him very annoying to dance to irrespective of the dance style. As a dancer, I find that he just doesn't swing as hard as the beboppers. Same with the Jazz Messangers and a lot of other other post bop players irrespective of their standing in the jazz pantheon.

Modern jazz?? Oh my god we have entered a world of complexity here.

Kyle · #15 Post by **Kyle** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 1:02 pm

Now, you can't say that you can't dance to Cannonball, it is more correct to say that you can't dance to Cannonball when he was playing Hard bop, or you cant dance to Hard Bop. I know of one track with him a Lou Rawls that is very dancable and swings too.