Bebop: The Controversy, Part 1: Complex Arrangements (+ Bonus)

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will enjoy two recordings of “Salt Peanuts,” one from a rare Bird broadcast, and one done by “chipmunk” voices, plus a little-known related recording featuring a very young Zoot Sims at age 18.)

We all know that bebop, the new style of jazz that developed during the early 1940s, was controversial. Many older musicians and fans rejected it when they first became aware of it in New York City in early 1944. And already by 1945, bop fans were humorously calling those who stuck to swing music “moldy figs.” This controversy is so well known that I’m sure that I don’t have to document it for you. But what I’d like to do in this series of essays is to try and explain exactly what caused it. It’s not helpful to say that people rejected bop because it was new. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were doing new things in the 1920s, and they were wildly popular, and got mostly glowing reviews. And it’s certainly not helpful, nor is it respectful, to say that everyone who disliked bebop was “closed minded,” “couldn’t accept change,” or anything like that.

So what were the issues, exactly? I’m going to post several essays about this. Today I will talk about the complex arrangements that made bebop hard to follow—even for musicians. Even for you and me!

In general, swing musicians were born a few years before and after 1910, say between about 1907 and 1914, whereas the boppers were born before and after 1920. Drummer Dave Tough (1907-December 1948) was from that older generation and had been recording since 1927. He gave a colorful description of his first experience seeing the new music in person. His words are often quoted to illustrate how hard it was for people to understand bop. But nobody has ever gone further to analyze just what he was saying. Let’s try to do that:

Marshall Stearns (1908–1966) was an English professor and a significant jazz historian and advocate. In his book The Story of Jazz, he quotes from a conversation that he had at Cornell University during 1948 with Tough. Stearns was on the English faculty there from 1946-1949, and it’s no accident that some major jazz concerts were held on campus during that period. Evidently, Tough was there to perform in one of them.

Tough was something of an intellectual, had written witty columns for jazz magazines, and hoped to pursue a second career as an author. He told Stearns that when he first joined the Woody Herman band, he and some of his fellow band members went in 1944 to see the Dizzy Gillespie/Oscar Pettiford quintet at the Onyx Club on Manhattan’s 52nd Street. The quintet, sometimes called the first gigging bebop group, was there from December 1943 through about March 1944, after which Gillespie left and Pettiford stayed on with different musicians. This is Tough’s famous description:

As we walked in, see, these cats snatched up their horns and blew crazy stuff. One would stop all of a sudden and another would start for no reason at all. We never could tell when a solo was supposed to begin or end. Then they all quit at once and walked off the stand. It scared us.

But to say that this simply shows that people were confused, or even scared, by bop, is missing the point. Tough is actually saying something very specific—that it was difficult to hear the form. As you know, if you can follow the form of a jazz performance, for example a 12-bar blues or a 32-bar AABA form, then you’ll know exactly why one person “would stop and another would start”—because it’s the end of a chorus. You’ll know when a solo is “supposed to begin or end,” because solos almost always start at the beginning of a chorus, or at the beginning of a section if two people are each playing a half-chorus.

It “scared” Tough and his friends because it was absolutely clear that these were very capable musicians, not charlatans. The fact that “they all quit at once” was yet another indication to the older musicians that the performers were extremely well rehearsed and knew exactly what they were doing. If they had been simply incompetent, there certainly would have been nothing scary about them!

But why did experienced professional musicians have trouble hearing the form in bebop? To understand this, let’s dive into one of the early bop compositions, “Salt Peanuts.” According to Gillespie’s biographer Alyn Shipton, the piece was probably developed by Dizzy and Kenny Clarke when they were both working behind Ella Fitzgerald in late 1941, and although Clarke is not always listed on record labels, his name is second on the copyright.

As you might imagine, the little half-step riff of the song, and the octave leap (on the words “Salt Peanuts”) are both fairly common in music, and you will find references online to some of the earlier pieces that used one or the other. Our late friend, jazz historian Phil Schaap, summarized here all the recordings that people have cited. But please note!, some of them are pretty far-fetched. For example, the trombone solo on Earl Hines’s recording of “Copenhagen” only vaguely resembles what Armstrong plays. And not one of these recordings is the same as Dizzy’s and Clarke’s tune. Phil was semi-joking (I hope) when he wrote that Armstrong is the composer of “Salt Peanuts.” Each recording that he cites has just a few of the notes that occur in “Salt Peanuts,” from as few as 3 to no more than 8 notes. And nobody has ever mentioned the “The Dipsy Doodle” by Larry Clinton, a big hit recorded by many bands in 1937 and ‘38, which is also similar to the main riff (not the octave leap), maybe more so than most of the examples usually cited. Overall, at least for now, I tend to think that the ingredients of “Salt Peanuts” could have come from any number of sources, including outside of jazz, and that Diz and Clarke were not inspired by just one source.

The actual tune “Salt Peanuts” was first recorded by the Georgie Auld, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster “Saxtet” (actually an octet assembled for this one recording session) on May 17, 1944. But as I just noted, Gillespie and Clarke had written it earlier. In fact, Leif Bo Peterson’s research on Charlie Parker shows that the piece is mentioned in reviews of the Earl Hines big band as early as January 1943, when Dizzy was also a member. So it is very likely that Gillespie was playing it in early 1944 when Tough and his friends were present. And, regardless of whether he was playing it then, it is relevant for our discussion about bebop in general. So let’s continue:

It was probably Hawkins who brought Dizzy’s tune to the “Saxtet” recording date. He was deeply interested in the new music and had already recorded with Diz in 1939 and in February 1944. The Saxtet used a simple arrangement, and the words “Salt Peanuts” are heard only once, at the 10-second mark (possibly Auld’s voice). The label did credit the song to Gillespie and Clarke:

Gillespie first recorded it himself with Pettiford and friends in January 1945. Now he sang “Salt Peanuts” in his distinctive voice, and this version includes parts of his unique arrangement. The label staff credited it to Gillespie only, and they “corrected” the title to “Salted Peanuts”:

But Dizzy wasn’t aiming for grammatical precision. He wanted to represent what street vendors called out. He was already well-informed about Latin music, and he knew “The Peanut Vendor” (“El Manisero”), which, about 15 years earlier, had been the first Latin number to cross over and become a hit among the mass audience. “Salt Peanuts” has no musical connection with that earlier piece, but shares the idea of taking a street peanut vendor’s call and making it into a song.

When Gillespie recorded the piece again with Charlie Parker and friends in May 1945, the label correctly read “Salt Peanuts.” And this time Clarke’s name is not only included, it’s listed first:

I wonder if that was an error by the label. Or did Dizzy say to Clarke something like this?: “I’m sorry that the Manor record company screwed up and left you out. I’ll tell Guild to put you first to make up for that.” (Clarke was in and out of the Army between 1943 and 1946, but was still in touch with Dizzy on occasion.)

This version with Parker is the one we will analyze, because this features Dizzy’s complete virtuoso arrangement, the one that he used in the future. (As far as we know Clarke did not have a part in the arrangement, only in the AABA theme itself.) The arrangement on the earlier recordings was simpler, probably because it would have been too hard for the musicians to learn the full version. (It’s also possible that Dizzy hadn’t worked it all out yet.) Even with those simpler charts, there are errors in the theme statements on both previous recordings. But with Bird, it seemed that anything was possible, and Diz knew that he could ask for anything that he wanted.

SO—let’s listen. Regardless of whether you have heard it before, please remember, in performance you only got to hear it once—no chance of hearing it again, stopping, and so on. Would you, or I, or anybody, be able to recall this arrangement after hearing it just once? And remember, if you were there at the time, you had only heard swing era arrangements, nothing like this. And it goes by quickly—about quarter note = 300. In truth, even if you bought the recording, it would take a number of hearings to grasp what happens here. Please listen with fresh ears:

What did we just hear? To start with, any unfamiliar piece with an introduction presents the listener with the question—when do you start counting? When does the introduction end and the form begin? When you hear the 8-bar drum intro, followed followed by an 8-bar passage by the whole band, you’re thinking, “Is that the theme? An interlude I guess?”

Next you get a 32-bar AABA theme statement. The theme is the riff with the “Salt Peanuts” octave leap. But each A section is comprised of the exact same riff played twice, so one hears it played 4 times, with no markers for the beginning or end of the second A. Once you hear the fast-moving B theme at 0:29, you realize that this is an AABA form.

But that realization is upended by what happens next: At the end of that chorus, there’s an 8-bar written solo for trumpet and sax, based on the A section. It builds up some momentum, then abruptly stops and goes into: Another entire AABA chorus. But this time Dizzy sings “Salt Peanuts” every time that leap comes around; and for the B section, Parker improvises.

But still it doesn’t stay with the AABA form. The next 16 bars are confusing: First, 8 bars of just the rhythm section comping on the A section. Then an 8-bar ensemble passage—another interlude?

If you had bought the recording in 1945, by now it was already half over. Will we finally get some uninterrupted blowing on the AABA form? Let’s see: Yes, now there’s one chorus of Al Haig’s piano. Then one chorus of Bird’s saxophone. And then—yet another interlude!

What happens at 2:15? Yet another surprise—this interlude is only 6 measures long. And then it seems that Dizzy plays a break for—more than 4 measures? Here is something that would be impossible to figure out at one listen. Dizzy jumps in and takes a 4-bar break and then keeps playing, following the AABA form. But drummer Sid Catlett (misspelled “Sydney” on the label) plays a fill on the 5th bar and he and bassist Curly Russell return to the groove on the 6th bar. This was obviously pre-arranged and rehearsed. Why? Probably just for fun, to make it even trickier!

Now, Diz takes a whole spectacular chorus. Then the drum solos for 16 bars, but at the end of that, he immediately plays the 8-bar intro again. So it’s a total of 24 bars of drums. The band then plays the same 8-bar passage they played after the drum introduction at the beginning—and it’s suddenly over!

Tough’s description of the music was not silly or foolish. In fact, it was exactly right and accurate! To be fair, “Salt Peanuts” is one of the more complicated bop pieces, but it was common for bebop compositions to have interludes that made it more difficult for listeners to follow the form on first hearing.

But what about Tough’s comment that they blew “crazy stuff”? Couldn’t he hear that they were playing over chord changes? Let’s talk about that next time—Soon!

All the best,
Lewis

P.S. Paying Subscribers, keep going for two recordings of “Salt Peanuts,” one from a rare Bird broadcast, and one done by “chipmunk” voices, plus a little-known related recording featuring Zoot Sims at age 18.)