The roots of the Blues & Jazz

El juny de 2009 recollia en aquest Blog la següent descripció de l’estil Hard Bop:

“Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or “bop”) music. Hard bop incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing.
David H. Rosenthal also contends in his book Hard Bop that it is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of black American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music and prominent jazz musicians like Tadd Dameron worked in both genres.
Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz that became popular in the early 1950s. A simplistic definition states that cool jazz, or “west coast” jazz, emphasized the more European elements of the music, deriving to a great extent from the “chamber jazz” experiments of the Miles Davis nonet, while hard bop brought the church and gospel music back into jazz, emphasizing the African elements. In fact, both cool and hard bop contain European and African elements, but the simplistic definition offers a short-hand way of addressing the difference. The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the rise of rhythm and blues, the latter developed by African-American musicians in part as a means of giving their audiences dance music in the wake of the decline of the swing bands, and the abandonment of jazz as a music to dance by as bebop emerged, with its intricacies and emphasis on being a serious listening experience.
In 1954, Davis’ performance of the title track of his album Walkin’ at the very first Newport Jazz Festival, held that same year, announced the style to the jazz world. Davis would form his first great quintet with John Coltrane later in the year to play hard bop, before moving on to other things. Other key documents were the two volumes of the Blue Note albums A Night at Birdland, also from 1954, recorded at the legendary jazz club months before the Davis set at Newport. The quintet by Art Blakey featured pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Clifford Brown, all of whom would be leaders in the hard bop movement along with Davis. Blakey and Silver would start the seminal band The Jazz Messengers, although Silver would leave to front his own hard-bop groups in 1956, and Brown formed the other trend-setting hard bop band with drummer Max Roach, the Brown-Roach Quintet.
The hard bop style enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz. According to Nat Hentoff in his 1957 liner notes for the Blakey Columbia LP of the same name, the phrase “hard bop” was originated by critic-pianist John Mehegan, jazz reviewer of the New York Herald Tribune at that time. Soul jazz developed from hard bop.
Other musicians who contributed prominently to the hard bop style include Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, and Sonny Rollins”.

Actualment, o sigui desprès de més de cinquanta anys d’haver sorgit aquest nou estil penso, i que em perdoni l’Hugues Panassié,  que no tenen cap fonament els prejudicis i exclusions tant injustos i immerescuts que se’ls hi van dedicar a aquests grans musics per haver empés aquest interessant camí que per poc que si profunditza es reconeix el bo i millor de les arrels més profundes del Jazz. Des de fa molts anys el Hard Bop és el “Mainstream” del Jazz i tots els musics s’han format en les seves bases i pel que sembla això encara donarà molts fruits durant molts anys.

En aquest apartat intentaré fer una selecció dels temes més característics d’aquest estil. De moment comencem amb el gran Art Blakey (Abdullah Ibn Buhaina). L’emblemàtic “Moanin’ “del 1958, de Jon Hendricks i Bobby Timmons, tema amb una estructura amb pont de 32(AABA) i una interpretació magistral en directe amb els grans Jazz Messengers: Lee Morgan(tp), Benny Golson(ts), Bobby Timmons(p), Jymie Merrit (b), Art Blakey (dm).

Del mateix concert “Whisper Not”:

En un concert en el Jazzfest Wiesen 1989, Art Blakey & The New Jazz Messengers format per Bryan Lynch(tp), Terence Tony(as), Javon Jackson (ts), Frank Lacy(tb), Bennie Green(p), Essiet Okun Essiet (b), Art Blakey(dm). Intrepreten el legendari “Blues March” que torna a les arrels de New Orleans. Brutal!

“Harlem legend dead Bobby Robinson, owner of Happy House on 125th St.”

By David HINCKLEY, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER. Saturday, January 8th 2011, 10:33 AM

Foto de Roberts for News

Musician, personality and business owner Bobby Robinson owned Happy House Records for more than 60 years.

BOBBY ROBINSON, whose tiny record shop on Harlem‘s 125th St. spawned No. 1 national hits and made him an uptown patriarch for six decades, died yesterday.

He was 93 and had been ill for several years – though he regularly went to work at his shop until it was forced to close in January 2008.

Impeccably dressed, well-spoken and ambitious to make his mark in the entertainment business, Robinson opened Bobby’s Happy House in 1946.

His shop was the first black-owned business on 125th St., and within five years he used it to launch a series of record labels.

Sometimes working with his brother Danny, who also had an office on 125th St., Robinson recorded hundreds of artists from Gladys Knight and the Pips to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Knight’s first hit, “Every Beat of My Heart,” was released on Robinson’s Fury label.

Robinson, a South Carolina native, had a No. 1 national hit in 1959 with Wilbert Harrison‘s “Kansas City” – and said years later that a hit of that magnitude crippled his business because he had to press so many copies he couldn’t promote any other artists.

But his Red Robin, Whirlin’ Disc, Fire, Fury and Enjoy labels became legendary in the rhythm and blues world, and his releases by artists like the Channels, Teenchords and Scarlets helped define the sound of the New York streets through the 1950s.

Robinson ultimately recorded a wide range of artists that included the great bluesman Elmore James, whom Robinson inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the late 1970s, Robinson became one of the first label owners to record rap music, cutting artists like Flash, Doug E. Fresh and Spoonie Gee.

Robinson eventually had to move the shop around the corner in the late 1990s, and he closed for good on Jan. 21, 2008, when his new landlord decided to raze the building for a development.

“I’ve seen 125th St. at its best and worst,” Robinson said in late 2007. “And I’ll tell you, there’s no more exciting place in the world.”

Font “New York Dailynews”

Visitar “Bobby Robinson Tribute”

Veure la ressenya complementaria i prou interessant de Fernando Navarro “Muere Bobby Robinson, legendario productor de música negra de Harlem” publicada el 10/01/2011 en el seu blog “Route 66. La Ruta norteamericana” de “El País”

Veure la extraordinària ressenya de Douglas MARTIN “Bobby Robinson, Harlem Music Impresario, Dies at 93” publicada el 12/01/2011 al New York Times