Alyn Shipton
The History of Jazz, Part 3: Birth of Bebop and Modern Jazz
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Summary
This lively lecture series moves on into the sounds of New York’s 52nd Street, the early 40s recording ban, and pioneer bebop soloists (Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell). We’ll also dive into changes in the rhythm section (Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey); hard bop and soul jazz (Blakey, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan); and take a retrospective look at record companies and labels, leading to the development of tape recording and long playing discs.
Alyn Shipton
Alyn Shipton has worked in music for many years as a writer, editor, and player. He was the publisher of the New Grove Dictionary series in the 1980s working on musical instruments, American music, jazz, and opera, in addition to commissioning the Grove handbooks in musicology. His own books include numerous biographies, mainly of jazz musicians, including Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Ian Carr, and Cab Calloway, as well as the songwriter Jimmy McHugh. His other books include the award-winning life of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, and a study of the relationship between visual arts and jazz. He has edited six volumes of oral history, including the memoirs of pianist George Shearing and of the New Orleans musician Danny Barker. His New History of Jazz (2001, revised 2007) won awards on both sides of the Atlantic and is now well established as one of the standard works on the subject. Since 1989 he has presented and produced programmes on music and history for BBC Radio. As a double bassist, he has played with many leading British jazz groups, and he currently co-leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band.