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2010012010021520111114 (R3)Bebop! It's a rather silly word for a crucial chapter in jazz history. It didn't just come out of nowhere but evolved, fizzed and bubbled into existence in the USA in the early 1940s, as a result of a gloriously rich and complex musical chemistry involving different combinations of musicians, styles and places. All week, Donald Macleod and his special guest, the writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith, have some serious fun investigating this amazing musical phenomenon.

In Monday's programme they start by exploring the roots of Bebop in the work of a varied cast of pioneers: pianist Art Tatum, guitarist Charlie Christian, tenor sax players Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins and trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Then it's off to Minton's Playhouse, the after-hours Harlem club and all-purpose Bebop laboratory, where some of the most innovative jazz musicians of the day let their hair down and jammed together into the small hours, gradually forging the new style through their collective experimentation. Finally, the two central figures of the Bebop revolution emerge from the crowd - alto sax player Charlie 'Yardbird' Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie - first separately, in earlier, pre-Bop incarnations, then playing together, explosively, in two early Bebop classics, 'Groovin' High' and 'Salt Peanuts'.

Donald Macleod explores bebop's roots in the work of pioneers such as Tatum and Hawkins.

2010022010021620111115 (R3)Bebop! It's a rather silly word for a crucial chapter in jazz history. It didn't just come out of nowhere but evolved, fizzed and bubbled into existence in the USA in the early 1940s, as a result of a gloriously rich and complex musical chemistry involving different combinations of musicians, styles and places. All week, Donald Macleod and his special guest, the writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith, have some serious fun investigating this amazing musical phenomenon.

In Tuesday's programme, they focus on the 'yin and yang' of Bebop, Charlie Parker and the man he once referred to as 'the other half of my heartbeat', Dizzy Gillespie, starting with three studio recordings - 'Dizzy Atmosphere', 'Now's the Time' and 'Koko' - that galvanized the jazz world, both with the freshness and inventiveness of the musical language and the sheer virtuosity of the playing. Next we follow Parker and Gillespie on a trip to Los Angeles - an occasion notable both for the thrilling live concert they played there and for Parker's ensuing breakdown and stay in Camarillo State Hospital, where, after years of drug abuse, he underwent six months' psychiatric treatment; it would be several years before the two men collaborated again. In the meantime, Gillespie formed a big band and made a string of dazzlingly extrovert recordings; Parker's more reflective, introspective work from this time stands in stark contrast. Finally, we hear them together again in their last studio outing, from June 1950. Parker, always sailing close to the wind, would be dead within five years; Gillespie carried on playing Bebop for another 40, even becoming a cultural ambassador for the US State Department along the way.

Donald Macleod focuses on the 'yin and yang' of bebop, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

2010032010021720111116 (R3)Bebop! It's a rather silly word for a crucial chapter in jazz history. It didn't just come out of nowhere but evolved, fizzed and bubbled into existence in the USA in the early 1940s, as a result of a gloriously rich and complex musical chemistry involving different combinations of musicians, styles and places. All week, Donald Macleod and his special guest, the writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith, have some serious fun investigating this amazing musical phenomenon.

In Wednesday's programme, they visit the engine-room of jazz - the rhythm section - and in particular, Bebop's two key drummers, Kenny 'Klook-Mop' Clarke and Max Roach. Clarke's innovation was to shift the drummer's time-keeping function to the ride cymbal, leaving the snare and bass drum free to 'drop bombs' - unexpected offbeat accents - that perfectly complemented the way that the most innovative jazz musicians were beginning to play. In the event, Clarke was shipped off to Europe as part of the US contribution to the war effort, and he missed Bebop's explosion onto the scene in 1945. His shoes were filled by Max Roach, a percussion virtuoso who absorbed and extended Clarke's innovations. Donald Macleod and Geoffrey Smith explore the contributions of both men to a stellar sequence of recordings, with Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Clifford Brown.

Donald Macleod focuses on bebop's two key drummers, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach.

2010042010021820111117 (R3)Bebop! It's a rather silly word for a crucial chapter in jazz history. It didn't just come out of nowhere but evolved, fizzed and bubbled into existence in the USA in the early 1940s, as a result of a gloriously rich and complex musical chemistry involving different combinations of musicians, styles and places. All week, Donald Macleod and his special guest, the writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith, have some serious fun investigating this amazing musical phenomenon.

Thursday's programme homes in on the 88 keys of the piano, under the phenomenal fingers of Bebop's two most influential pianists: Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk. The classically-trained Powell had a ferociously virtuosic style of playing. His personality, though, was shy and introverted, and there was something almost helpless about him. He had a tendency to drink to excess, and a formidable knack for getting into trouble. In 1945 he was beaten senseless by the Philadelphia police, an attack whose savagery left him with mental problems that dogged him for the rest of his all-too-brief life; he died in 1966, a couple of months short of his 42nd birthday. Powell and Monk met at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where Monk was house pianist in the early '40s, and they remained firm friends. We hear Monk's tribute to Powell, 'In Walked Bud', and Powell's reading of a Monk composition, 'Off Minor'. We also hear their very different readings of 'Tea for Two' - Powell's a wildly inventive hectic dash, like something from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Monk's much more spacious and angular. And to finish: 'Wee' from a celebrated live concert recording in which Powell played with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Max Roach; and a Monk tune, 'Little Rootie Tootie', in a magnificent arrangement for big band.

Donald Macleod on bebop's two most influential pianists - Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk.

201005 LAST2010021920111118 (R3)Bebop! It's a rather silly word for a crucial chapter in jazz history. It didn't just come out of nowhere but evolved, fizzed and bubbled into existence in the USA in the early 1940s, as a result of a gloriously rich and complex musical chemistry involving different combinations of musicians, styles and places. All week, Donald Macleod and his special guest, the writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith, have some serious fun investigating this amazing musical phenomenon.

To conclude the week they take a look beyond Bebop and explore the various shoots that have sprouted from the original stem, in the hands of such musicians as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Wynton Marsalis and finally Sonny Rollins, who brings us into the 21st century with his take on the Jerome Kern standard, 'Why Was I Born' - a live concert recording made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Donald Macleod looks at the musicians who emerged from the bebop mode.