1. Freedom 2
4. The 1950/60’s were a tumultuous time in the history of the U.S.A. particularly for
African Americans? Consider the role of jazz within the historical context of this period?
Introduction
We have discussed, briefly, the music of Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Ornette
Coleman, as well some of the history of racial segregation that led up to the U.S.
Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s – 60’s. This movement was not unique to the
United States of America, it was a movement that was gaining momentum
around the world, which at it’s heart was a desire for freedom from oppression,
particularly racial and political, and ultimately freedom of the individual. Jazz
encapsulates this sentiment and has always celebrated the individualist.
Looking back to the Be‐bop of the 1940’s we find that this concept of freedom
was present, particularly in the music of Thelonious Monk.
Thelonious Monk
• Monk was born in 1917, and died in 1982. He was a pianist of formidable
skill, as well as a composer. His compositions include Round Midnight &
Blue Monk.
• We have noted that Monk played with Coleman Hawkins, and was house
pianist at Minton’s on 52nd Street in New York.
• He had a very distinctive style in his playing and his clothes, famous for
wearing hats and glasses. His music was also distinctive with his use of
angular melodic phrases and percussive approach to the piano.
• Monk used a tremendous amount of space in his playing, often stopping
while other musicians were soloing.
• Similarly, he was known for his erratic behaviour and would stop playing
to dance, or even leave the bandstand during a performance.
• All accounts suggest a man determined to exert individual freedom.
• In the sounds and space he created we hear the beginnings of a unique
and freeer approach. Watch Monk
• We have also discussed Lennie Tristano, the blind pianist, who in 1949
recorded his own work “Intuition” and “Digression” both of which are
improvised takes. The group would also do this in their live sets. But was
it free, or just a small glimpse of the potential of Freedom?
Ornette Coleman
• Ornette Coleman is credited with the creation of this new sound and way
of playing, but he had a very difficult time of it. All accounts suggest that
he wasn’t popular, and had a hard time making a living. He worked at dull
jobs simply to get by. But all the while was thinking and studying.
2. • He said “It took me a long time to get them interested in studying with
me and staying… because when I met Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins and
Don Cherry, they were into Bebop. When we got together the most
interesting part is: What do you play after you play the melody if you don’t
have nothing to go with?” (The Freedom Principle: Litweiler, 1985)
• In other words no chord changes! Be‐bop had been built on harmonic
structures, so to take them away was a radical step.
• The beginning of this freedom then was documented in the release of
Coleman’s “Something Else!”
• Coleman met John Lewis, leader of Modern Jazz Quartet, in 1959 who
encouraged Coleman and enrolled him in the School of Jazz, in
Massachusetts, and this led to wider recognition of this new sound, and
eventually gigs in New York.
• The facility and technique were excellent, the aural awareness of the
instrument and the individual notes, as well as the textural qualities of the
ensemble, all were evident in Ornette Coleman’s playing. But there was
also the rhythmic sophistication. This meant that phrases and bars
became as ply‐able as any other element, and in a way, this more than
anything connects the music to the jazz tradition, harking all the way back
to the beginnings of blues.
• The music didn’t ignore the rules, it just didn’t define them.
Eric Dolphy
• Eric Dolphy is one of those many jazz musicians who had a tremendous
affect on those that he knew and worked with. There are several accounts
of his generosity, and humility, and like Clifford Brown he died young, of
complications to a diabetic condition.
• However, Dolphy was a brilliant Alto Sax, Flute and Bass Clarinetist. He
recorded and worked with many musicians, including Charles Mingus,
Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.
• Dolphy was versatile and this led to him working regularly, but rarely
following his own artistic inclinations.
• He became dissolutioned with life in the United States, and was planning
to spend more time in Europe when he died in Berlin in 1964.
• Jazz was an international music by the 1960’s and many musicians had
travelled to Europe, from the very beginnings. And they found there their
music often received with greater appreciation than at home in the U.S.
Miles Davis & John Coltrane
• Both men were born in 1926, with Miles Davis being several months older
than John Coltrane. Both were giants in the world of Jazz and both were
fiercely individual African‐American men.
• Both served long apprenticeships during the Bebop era, Miles working
with Charlie Parker, and Coltrane working with Dizzy Gillespie during the
1940’s.
• During the mid to late 50’s Coltrane worked in the Miles Davis band,
recording with him on influential recordings, as we have discussed,
including – Kind of Blue, and Round About Midnight and Milestones.
3. • And like Miles, Coltrane had been addicted to hard drugs (heroin) and
alcohol. However both managed to kick their habits.
• Coltrane took time to develop, and all account suggest he had a relentless
practice regime.
• Much of their work during this period was clearly part of the tradition, in
that they weren’t always consistent, or innovative. But they still made
secure statements, such as Milestones and Blue Train that are classic
albums.
• Milestone’s is interesting as, being built on the earlier work of George
Russell, it is one of the first examples of Modal playing, where a single
mode is used as the harmonic foundation of a section or piece. This
concept was later developed on the album Kind of Blue.
• Kind of Blue (1959) has all the stylistic conventions of a cool jazz album,
but it goes further. The players Davis, Coltrane with Cannonball Adderley,
Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, and on one track Wynton Kelly.
• It is a statement of Modal playing of the first degree.
• In 1958 Coltrane said “When I had first heard Bird, I wanted to be
indentified with him… to be consumed by him. But underneath I really
wanted to be myself. You can only play so much of another man.” Coltrane
(Shipton: pg542)
• Similarly, many accounts state that Coltrane’s deep religious beliefs were
deepend when he broke his addictions in 1957. This period marked the
beginning of Coltrane’s dominance, and artistic development as an
individual of the highest order.
• In 1959 Coltrane recorded and released Giant Steps. The recording
features several original compositions that feature a chord progression
that has its beginnings in the bridge of a song called Have You Met Miss
Jones.
• This, harking back to Mingus’s belief that music should convey an artists
inner most thoughts and feelings, is a remarkable album because it
combines the highest technical proficiency with emotion and
vulnerability.
• The album Giant Steps is the hub of Coltrane’s later work. The unrefined
product.
• (This is often an interesting point in music and art more generally, that
very often there is an example of the original idea or concept, that
through refinement, becomes the artists dominant style or statement.)
• Coltrane’s connection with the political was never overt and he can
perhaps best be viewed as an artist that pointed towards a better world.
Certainly much of his work was concerned with the very highest of
personal endeavour.
• During the early 1960’s as the Civil continued Coltrane’s album’s were
heavily marketed and according to Gary Giddins the liner notes “gave
each one a political cast…” (Shipton:pg550)
4. • As such Alyn Shipton states “Coltrane’s music came to symbolize much of
the African‐American unrest of the time.”
• However, Coltrane denied that his music was “not an overt statement of
political anger.” (Shipton:pg551)
• In 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, had become a flash point of the movement
because it was one of the most segregated schools in the U.S. On Sunday
15th September 1963 a Baptist Church was bombed. While this was not a
new tactic for the Ku Klux Klan, it was decisive in galvanising public
opinion against segregation. The death of four young children caused
horror and it became another crucial saga in the reform of America’s laws.
• In direct response to the atrocities in Birmingham Coltrane wrote
Alabama. A meditative composition Alabama was first performed and
recorded on 8 October, 1963. This was less than a month after the
bombing.
• As a result of this close association, some very astute marketing on the
part of Impulse, the timing of his career, and his high profile as one of the
defining jazz musicians, Coltrane’s music has “become synonymous with
this period of protest.” (Shipton:551)
Coltrane’s Death
• Coltrane died in 1967 of cancer at the age of 40. It would seem that his
illness and death was quick and left many of his contemporaries shocked
at the sudden loss.
• Over the last few years of his life, he pursued a form of music singular in
it’s approach with more in common with the music of Ornette Coleman
and the Free jazz, or what was often referred to as AvantGarde Jazz.
Miles Davis in the 60’s
• Having recorded the on of the biggest selling and most critically
acclaimed albums of all time, Davis continued to play extensively and
record.
• He worked with several musicians during this time with several regular
quintet line‐ups, recording albums including Sketches of Spain, Someday
My Prince Will Come, Quiet Nights, Seven Steps to Heaven, E.S.P. Miles
Smiles, and numerous live recordings including My Funny Valentine from
1964.
• All these albums are classics in the repertoire and provide a stark
contrast to the direction that Coltrane took.
• On each of these albums Miles and his groups pushed the development of
jazz in all sorts of ways. Rhythmically, Harmonically, Melodically, as well
as texturally, and in terms of Form and Structure.
Bill Evans
• Bill Evans was born in 1929, and was a pianist who came to redefine the
piano trio in jazz.
5. • He was influenced by the work of Lennie Tristano and George Russell as
we mentioned earlier in the course, as well as the soloists that worked
with them such as Lee Konitz and Art Farmer.
• His debut album New Jazz Conceptions, released in 1956, is a bold album
on which Evans plays a combination of standards and original
compositions. Two in particular, Five and Displacement build on earlier
rhythmic advances, and prefigure the later work of Miles Davis and others
that we have just mentioned.
• In common with Mingus and Coltrane, Evans believed that music should
be as emotionally honest as is possible and he came to develop a style that
was described as introspective.
• In 1959 he formed a trio with Paul Motian on drums, and Scott LaFaro on
bass, and recorded several albums. These are considered classic albums
of the jazz piano trio format.
• This trio managed to bring a level of precision and dynamics to their
performances, that they elevated what was a standard format, the piano
trio, to the level of a chamber ensemble.
• The earlier defined roles of piano, bass and drums, was here re‐defined,
so that anyone of the three instruments might take on a more melodic or
more rhythmic role than had previously been accepted.
• Furthermore, any of the three players might at any one time take the lead.
• LaFaro tragically died in a car accident in 1961. So this trio’s recorded
output is limited, perhaps this only serves to highlight the exceptional
quality of the work. Listen – Waltz for Debby
• Bill Evans was devastated by the loss of LaFaro, and to some never
recovered.
• Evans lived until 1980, when his long battle with drugs was finally lost. He
continued to develop and refine his own playing, making definitive solo
and trio recordings. He came to define the term “Jazz pianist” in a modern
sense, one in which tradition and modernity meet and create something
new.
Keith Jarrett
• The pianist Keith Jarrett can be considered as the artist in which the
concept of FreeJazz or the AvantGarde and the more Evans influenced
intellectual understanding and developments in jazz since Bebop merged.
• Jarrett was born in 1945 and came to prominence in the Miles Davis group
of the late 60’s, which we will discuss later.
• Jarrett has a life long commitment to freely improvised solo piano
concerts that move from highly dissonant, rhythmically dense
improvisations to gentle highly lyrical passages.
• He has also made many, many group recordings of original compositions,
and standard tunes. We will discuss his work further later.
Civil Rights
• Bay of Pigs 1961, Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, and the Vietnam War 1955 –
75.
• March on Washington August 1963
