Inside Jazz

by Leonard Feather

By 1940 the big band sound had grown stale, and jazz musicians began to search out new sounds and styles. At the Harlem nightclub Minton's Playhouse, a small group of musicians -- John Birks, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Beau Hawkins, and Thelonious Monk, among sounding blend of flatted fifths, unfamiliar chord lines, and accelerated offbeat rhythms. They were joined on 52nd Street by alto saxist Charles Bird Parker, and bop -- or bebop, as it was first called, from the triplet figure buh-BE-bop -- was born.




Bop was aggressive, provocative, and belligerent, Its proponents wore gears and berets and refereed to the Dixieland and New Orleans diehards as moldy figs who in tureen labelled the new jazz the modern complex chord, and a new reperatory into jazz, and by the end of the forties the moldy figs were forced to concede that bop was indeed the harbinger of a new direction in American jazz.




Critic Leonard Feather was one of the earliest and most persistent champions of bop. It was he who persuaded RCA Victor that the new music was worth recording. His Inside Jazz is a full-length account of its origins and development and the personalities of the musicians who created it. Numerous photographs and anecdotes bring this innovative era in jazz history to life once more.

Genres: Music, Jazz

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-American musician, composer, record producer, music journalist and radio broadcaster. He began working in radio broadcasting in the U.K. during the 1930s, and wrote a regular column for the British magazine 'Radio Times' during those years as well, titled "Tempo di Jazz". After working as a record producer in both the U.K. and U.S., he moved in 1939 to New York City; he later moved to Los Angeles during the early 1960s. Leonard Feather was co-editor (with Barry Ulanov) of the U.S. music business magazine 'Metronome' for many years, until it ceased publication in 1961. He also served as chief jazz critic for the Los Angeles Times until his death.

Reviews

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first books (the first?) on modern jazz. Originally titled "Inside BeBop", I read a 70's reprint retitled "Inside Jazz." The first section tells the story in detail of how the music developed, one band at a time. The sections on Bird and Diz were exceptional and often quite amusing. The stuff on Charlie Christian was great too. The second section describes the musical characteristics of bop in a way that a near layman can follow. The third is an index of who's who. Great photographs throughout. A slim volume, but one of the more important documents of 20th century music written by someone who was there. It's sort of a perfectly timed snapshot that came along at that brief point in 1949 when bop had finally become accepted into the jazz mainstream but before Miles' "Birth of the Cool" came along and changed everything.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic...and short.