Jazz & New York City: The City’s Influence On Jazz Part 2

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The 1950s brought about big changes in jazz. Young African Americans who grew up listening to bebop took the style to the next level. After bebop came about in the late ’30s, hard bop began to emerge in the ’50s, with fresh musicians pushing the boundaries of rhythm, harmony, and improvisation to new heights. Artists like Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and Cannonball Adderley wrote and performed throughout this time in the New York club scene.

Hard Bop: Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Moanin’

At the same time, West Coast (cool) jazz was becoming popular in California; when West Coast musicians began to arrive in New York, some hard bop artists took notice. Miles Davis was quick to move away from the exhausting hard bop scene and began playing cool jazz. The idea of cool jazz is centered around more conservative harmonies and rhythms, and many, many fewer notes. Making an entire tune and solo out of just a few notes was a normal exercise for Miles and other cool jazz artists. Miles became key to the development of cool jazz, even though the cool jazz scene centered around California. Miles was one of just a few cool jazz players in New York at the time.

Cool Jazz: Miles Davis

At this point in jazz’s history, each sub-genre was a reaction to another. In the late ’50s Ornette Coleman came to New York from Los Angeles and brought free jazz with him. Free jazz pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries further than any other genre before it; with strange forms and hard-to-follow progressions, free jazz was truly a pioneering music. Other musicians followed, like John Coltrane and Sun Ra. Free jazz was the least received form of jazz, with a small but loyal following. John Coltrane took free jazz through many avenues in his career, mixing blues, gospel, bebop, and modal influences into his compositions. The beginning of the 1960s showed a large diversion from jazz music entirely, with the popularization of rock and folk music to America.

Free Jazz: Ornette Coleman - Free

The period between 1920 and the 1960s proved to be the most radical time for jazz music, with some of the biggest developments in American music happening in New York City, from American roots blues, to the big band and swing music through World War II, to bebop, hard bop, and beyond. Innovations by one-of-a-kind musicians in the 1960s paved the way for even more changes in jazz music, which is still evolving to this day.