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88 jazz
developments often began when musicians broke away from their commercialised occupations to make the sort of sound they pleased in their spare time. In the early '40s, musicians gathered this at Minton's Playhouse, a club for musicians in New York. The guiding spirit, at the outset, was Charlie Christian, a guitarist who had played with Benny Goodman's orchestra. Christian experimented with many novel guitar effects: the use of novel harmonies and chord progressions, and the featuring of expressive solos on the electric amplified guitar.
These are some of the fine instrumentalists you can hear on records who were inspired at Minton's to make experiments in technique and style:
Trumpet player: Dizzy Gillespie.
Saxophonists: Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins.
Bass players: Jimmy Blanton and Oscar Petti-ford.
Pianists: Clyde Hart, Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron and Thelonius Monk.
Gillespie, a vigorous extrovert and one of the leading figures of the modern movement, achieved fame as the originator (or one of the originators) of 'Bop'—a kind of jazz that experimented with intricate cross-rhythms, bitonalism, and altered notes in the melodic scales. He started visiting Minton's when he was playing with Cab Calloway's band; |
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