Summaries adapted from the PBS website.
Episode 7: "Dedicated to Chaos"
1940 - 1945
When America enters World War II, jazz is part of the arsenal. In Europe, where musicians like the Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt continue to play despite a Nazi ban, jazz is a beacon of hope. In America, it becomes the embodiment of democracy, as bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw enlist, taking their swing to the troops overseas.
For many black Americans, however, that sound has a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they find themselves fighting for liberties their own country denies them, as authorities padlock the Savoy Ballroom to keep servicemen off its integrated dance floor, and military police patrol Swing Street, breaking up fistfights sparked by prejudice and pride.
Despite such injustices, jazz answers the call during the war years. Duke Ellington sells war bond, and premieres his most ambitious work ever, the tone portrait Black, Brown and Beige, as a benefit for war relief. His band at a peak, Ellington is helped now by the gifted young composer Billy Strayhorn and continues manipulating his players' talents, turning his orchestra into an instrument with which he creates music of astonishing perfection.
Yet underground and after-hours, jazz is changing. In a Harlem club called Minton's Playhouse, a small band of young musicians, led by the trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie and the brilliant saxophonist Charlie Parker, has discovered a new way of playing - fast, intricate, exhilarating, and sometimes chaotic. A wartime recording ban keeps their music off the airwaves, but soon after the atom bomb forces Japan's surrender, Parker and Gillespie enter the studio to create an explosion of their own. The tune is called Ko Ko, the sound will soon be called "bebop," and once Americans hear it, jazz will never be the same.
Episode 8: "Risk"
1945 - 1955
The postwar years bring America to a level of prosperity unimaginable a decade before, but the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation makes these anxious years as well. In jazz, this underlying tension will be reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop, and in the troubled life of bebop's biggest star, Charlie Parker.
Nicknamed "Bird," Parker is a soloist whose ideas and technique are as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. He is idolized — his improvisations copied, his risk-all intensity on stage imitated, and his self-destructive lifestyle adopted as a prerequisite for inspiration. Parker's example helps bring a narcotics plague to the jazz community, and when he dies, wasted by heroin at age 34, drugs are as much a part of his legacy to jazz as the genius of his music.
Searching for a new audience, California musicians create a mellow sound called cool jazz, and Dave Brubeck mixes jazz with classical music to produce a million-seller LP. But one man remains determined to give jazz popular appeal on his own terms, the trumpet player Miles Davis. A one-time Parker sideman who has finally broken heroin's grip on his career, Davis is moving beyond the cool sound he inspired and stands poised to lead jazz in a new direction.
Students, in 2-3 complete sentences, post your comment on the video clips we watched in class below.
Episode 7: "Dedicated to Chaos"
1940 - 1945
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| Black musicians in the WW II Navy Band |
For many black Americans, however, that sound has a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they find themselves fighting for liberties their own country denies them, as authorities padlock the Savoy Ballroom to keep servicemen off its integrated dance floor, and military police patrol Swing Street, breaking up fistfights sparked by prejudice and pride.
Despite such injustices, jazz answers the call during the war years. Duke Ellington sells war bond, and premieres his most ambitious work ever, the tone portrait Black, Brown and Beige, as a benefit for war relief. His band at a peak, Ellington is helped now by the gifted young composer Billy Strayhorn and continues manipulating his players' talents, turning his orchestra into an instrument with which he creates music of astonishing perfection.
Yet underground and after-hours, jazz is changing. In a Harlem club called Minton's Playhouse, a small band of young musicians, led by the trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie and the brilliant saxophonist Charlie Parker, has discovered a new way of playing - fast, intricate, exhilarating, and sometimes chaotic. A wartime recording ban keeps their music off the airwaves, but soon after the atom bomb forces Japan's surrender, Parker and Gillespie enter the studio to create an explosion of their own. The tune is called Ko Ko, the sound will soon be called "bebop," and once Americans hear it, jazz will never be the same.
Episode 8: "Risk"
1945 - 1955
 |
| Charlie Parker |
Nicknamed "Bird," Parker is a soloist whose ideas and technique are as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. He is idolized — his improvisations copied, his risk-all intensity on stage imitated, and his self-destructive lifestyle adopted as a prerequisite for inspiration. Parker's example helps bring a narcotics plague to the jazz community, and when he dies, wasted by heroin at age 34, drugs are as much a part of his legacy to jazz as the genius of his music.
 |
| Miles Davis |
But Parker is not the only bebop innovator. His longtime partner, Dizzy Gillespie, tries to popularize the new sound by adding showmanship and Latin rhythms, while pianist Thelonius Monk infuses it with his eccentric personality to create a music all his own. Except for jazz initiates, however, few people are listening. Teens now swoon for pop singers and dance to rhythm and blues.
Students, in 2-3 complete sentences, post your comment on the video clips we watched in class below.
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