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9780195106510

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The most in-depth and scholarly assessment of the context, music, and its practitioners to date. --Eddie Meadows, author of Jazz Research and Performance Materials A detailed, well-researched book for those serious about jazz and its components. It will double as interesting reading for individuals, and be vitally useful in the classroom. Bravo! --John Clayton An excellent way to get a more-than-superficial knowledge of certain aspects of bebop. --Jazz Now A very informative and enlightening book. --Horace Silver Both for the specialist and the general reader, Thomas Owens's Bebop: The Music and Its Players is an informative and highly readable treatment of this major development in jazz history. --Notes Accessible and inviting. --Booklist This is about as microscopic a look a bebop as you can get from a book....An excellent way to get a more-than-superficial knowledge of certain aspects of bebop. --Jazz Now A very informative and enlightening book on the bebop era. --Horace Silver Owens has an impressive grasp of the essence and importance of bop. He dazzles the reader with his transcribed and annotated musical examples. This book makes you want to listen. --Douglas A. Ramsey, author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers Owens does something valuable and new by offering musical transcriptions--in the manner of a string quartet score--of what an entire group is doing during an entire recording. This places the soloist in an ensemble context, without which it is impossible to fully understand what the soloist is doing. --Lingua Franca

"""The most in-depth and scholarly assessment of the context, music, and its practitioners to date.""--Eddie Meadows, author of Jazz Research and Performance Materials ""A detailed, well-researched book for those serious about jazz and its components. It will double as interesting reading for individuals, and be vitally useful in the classroom. Bravo!""--John Clayton ""An excellent way to get a more-than-superficial knowledge of certain aspects of bebop.""--Jazz Now ""A very informative and enlightening book.""--Horace Silver ""Both for the specialist and the general reader, Thomas Owens's Bebop: The Music and Its Players is an informative and highly readable treatment of this major development in jazz history.""--Notes ""Accessible and inviting.""--Booklist ""This is about as microscopic a look a bebop as you can get from a book....An excellent way to get a more-than-superficial knowledge of certain aspects of bebop.""--Jazz Now ""A very informative and enlightening book on the bebop era.""--Horace Silver ""Owens has an impressive grasp of the essence and importance of bop. He dazzles the reader with his transcribed and annotated musical examples. This book makes you want to listen.""--Douglas A. Ramsey, author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers ""Owens does something valuable and new by offering musical transcriptions--in the manner of a string quartet score--of what an entire group is doing during an entire recording. This places the soloist in an ensemble context, without which it is impossible to fully understand what the soloist is doing.""--Lingua Franca"

An academic exegesis of the popular jazz form and its musicians. Bebop was a revolutionary new style when it burst on the jazz scene in the late 1940s. Created by a small coterie of primarily New York - based jazzmen, including legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Thelonious Monk, and trumpeter/bebop spokesperson Dizzy Gillespie, it was a melodically and harmonically complicated chamber music with unusual rhythms that demanded serious listening (the earlier big-band jazz had been more approachable, with its simple, repetitive melodies, predictable chord changes, and toe-tapping rhythms). Beginning his work with a historical overview, Owens traces the roots of bebop, focusing on Parker's saxophone stylings. He then moves rather mechanistically through a study of different instrumentalists (alto and tenor sax players, trumpeters, pianists, bassists, drummers, etc.), ensembles, and today's young masters. Owens primarily relies on close interpretation of the scores of the major bebop works; like a patient graduate student, he guides us through the key motives and harmonics employed by Gillespie, Monk, et al. Of course, such a discussion is absurdly reductionist: Owens asserts that Parker's memorable style is primarily based on a descending scalar organization that he finds in the saxophonist's solos, ignoring Parker's unique sound, his raw emotionality, and his stunning technique. The author himself admits that many elements of the bebop style defy meaningful representation in musical notation, yet this is essentially his modus operandi throughout the book. Another problem is his decision to group together instrumentalists who are often stylistically disparate, which results in a disjointed narrative. The inclusion of a glossary with definitions of basic musicological terms will not make this more palatable for a general audience. A triumph of the academy over a musical style that, to this point, had avoided institutionalization. Bebop lives, Owens asserts - but not in this text. (Kirkus Reviews)

a book that deserves a place on the shelves of all jazz lovers * Stage & Television Today *

a book that deserves a place on the shelves of all jazz lovers Stage & Television Today

Author Information

Thomas Owens is Professor of Music at El Camino College in Torrance, California.

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