Masters of Bebop A Listener's Guide

Back in the early 1940s, late at night in the clubs of Harlem, a handful of jazz musicians began to experiment with a style that no one had ever heard before. The music was fast, complicated, impossible to play for many of the older musiciansbut it soon became the lingua franca of jazz music. They called it bebop, and as the years went by, it became even more popular. Today it reigns as perhaps the best-loved style of jazz ever created. Ira Gitler conveys the excitement of this musical birth as only someone who was there can. InThe Masters of Bebop,Gitler traces the advent of what was a revolution in sound. He profiles the leading playersCharlie Parker, Dizzy Gillepie, Max Roachbut also studies the style and music of the first disciples, such as Dexter Gordon and J. J. Johnson, to reveal bebop's pervasive influence throughout American culture. Revised with an updated discographyand with a new chapter covering bebop right up through the end of the twentieth centuryThe Masters of Bebopis the essential listener's handbook.Gitler, Ira is the author of 'Masters of Bebop A Listener's Guide' with ISBN 9780306810091 and ISBN 0306810093.