When was bebop born

As a teen, he played the baritone horn in the school band. By the time Parker was 15, the alto saxophone was his instrument of choice. Parker's mother had given him a saxophone a few years prior, to help cheer him up after his father had abandoned the family. While still in school, Parker started playing with bands on the local club scene. He was so enamored of playing the sax that, in , he decided to drop out of school in pursuit of a full-time musical career.

From to , Parker played the Kansas City, Missouri nightclub scene with local jazz and blues bands, including Buster Professor Smith's band in , and pianist Jay McShann's band in , with which he toured Chicago and New York. In , Parker decided to stick around New York City. There he remained for almost a year, working as a professional musician and jamming for pleasure on the side. After his yearlong stint in the Big Apple, Parker was featured as a regular performer at a Chicago club before deciding to move back to New York permanently.

Parker was at first forced to wash dishes in order to get by. It would prove a fruitful encounter. While jamming with Fleet, Parker, who was bored by popular musical conventions, discovered a signature technique that involved playing the higher intervals of a chord for the melody and making changes to back them up accordingly. Later that year Parker heard the news of his father's death and went back to Kansas City, Missouri for the funeral.

After the funeral, Parker joined Harlan Leonard's Rockets and stayed in Missouri for the next five months. It was with McShann's band, in , that Parker made his first recording. Parker stayed on with the band for four years, during which time he was given several opportunities to perform solo on their recordings. It was also during his time with McShann that Parker earned his famous nickname "Bird," short for "Yardbird. In , burgeoning jazz musicians Gillespie and Thelonious Monk saw Parker perform with McShann's band in Harlem and were impressed by his unique playing style.

Later that year, Parker signed up for an eight-month gig with Earl Hines. Then in , Parker joined the Billy Eckstine band. The year proved to be a landmark one for Parker.

At this stage in his career, he is believed to have come into his maturity as a musician. For the first time, he became the leader of his own group while also performing with Dizzy Gillespie on the side. The musical instruments used in the creation of the music often call and respond to one another. A phenomenon that does not go unnoticed by all who listen to the music. Bebop, also called bop or hip jazz bop was created in the late s.

The term was derived from the two-tone staccato sound in jazz music. The creation of Bebop was not well received by the public and already existing old jazz musicians. This caused Jazz musicians to split into two groups; the old staunch jazz musicians and the new, younger musicians who were more open to change and experimentation. While Jazz is diatonic, consisting of Western major harmonies and minor 7-note scales, Bebop is fully chromatic, making use of all the twelve notes on the chromatic scale.

In the early years of its conception, bebop was economically important as it addressed the issue of racism which was rampant at the time. If bebop is an offspring of jazz, hard bop is the offspring of bebop and the grandchild of jazz itself. Hard Bop was created in the s after the existing forms of jazz has been incorporated with musical styles from other factions like gospel and blues. They were about to introduce the public to a startlingly different sound: bebop. With bebop, they argue, modern jazz divorced itself from the dictates of commerce and returned to its African-American roots--and black jazz musicians liberated themselves from "white control.

The jazz world was segregated during the first three decades of the century, the authors note. Only during the '30s did this racial segregation give way. But the music and the industry remained white dominated. Parker, like many other players, chafed at the creative restrictions imposed by the swing bands.

He and others also resented the money white bandleaders made by "covering" tunes originated by black artists. Working over "Cherokee," a danceable and melodically straightforward tune, he later related, "I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.

I came alive.