Liner Notes
Cat. No. 80242
Release Date: 1977-01-01
The decade (1955-1964) represented by this anthology was one of the most richly creative and exciting periods in the history of jazz. At no other time in the sixty-year documented history of the music were there more major contributors—ranging from Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins to Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman—all actively performing and recording. At no other time did as many varied styles coexist.
The recordings included here fall significantly between the death of Charlie Parker in 1955 and the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. With the acceptance of the Beatles and the entire rock phenomenon, jazz began a decline in popularity that was not reversed until the seventies, when Miles Davis, as he had so many times in the past, steered the music in an entirely new direction, this time by absorbing the electric instruments and the rhythms of rock. Concurrent with the development of what has come to be known as jazz-rock a new interest in earlier styles was brought about by the record industry's initiation of a massive jazz-reissue program concentrating primarily on the post-1945 period. Since there has been such a phenomenal quantity of jazz recordings reissued from the fifties and sixties, we have endeavored to present a representative anthology of material not available elsewhere. Given this limitation, this collection follows chronologically New World Records NW 271, Bebop and NW 284, Jazz in Revolution: Big Bands in the 1940s. Here you will find those musicians who effectively consolidated the developments of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, choosing to modify, though not radically alter, what had come before, as well as those musicians who began to find new directions that were to be further explored by the most advanced musicians of the next period….
The recordings included here fall significantly between the death of Charlie Parker in 1955 and the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. With the acceptance of the Beatles and the entire rock phenomenon, jazz began a decline in popularity that was not reversed until the seventies, when Miles Davis, as he had so many times in the past, steered the music in an entirely new direction, this time by absorbing the electric instruments and the rhythms of rock. Concurrent with the development of what has come to be known as jazz-rock a new interest in earlier styles was brought about by the record industry's initiation of a massive jazz-reissue program concentrating primarily on the post-1945 period. Since there has been such a phenomenal quantity of jazz recordings reissued from the fifties and sixties, we have endeavored to present a representative anthology of material not available elsewhere. Given this limitation, this collection follows chronologically New World Records NW 271, Bebop and NW 284, Jazz in Revolution: Big Bands in the 1940s. Here you will find those musicians who effectively consolidated the developments of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, choosing to modify, though not radically alter, what had come before, as well as those musicians who began to find new directions that were to be further explored by the most advanced musicians of the next period….