Is there a point in history where bebop overtook traditional jazz?
The most convenient place you could point to would be the 1941 recording by Jay McShann’s big band that has Charles Parker in the saxophone section. And he did a solo. I don’t think anyone at the time realized that this represented a real break. Looking back, we can see that it did. We can see that as a real transition point. Do you think bebop makes a political statement? It’s always tough to distinguish politics from culture in the first place. I think a lot of it had to do with drugs and with the introduction of heroin. Like that famous scene in The Godfather, whether it’s true or not, when they decide to concentrate on black areas in distributing the stuff. It sounds like a sweeping statement to say that most of the important players had a period in which they were hooked on drugs, but I think it might even be true. A large number had gone through that and some of them didn’t survive. It seems part of the romance of the music–part of the romance both then and now. The rebellious j
