The Jazz Showcase The Jazz Showcase The Jazz Showcase is the oldest jazz club in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1947 by NEA Jazz Master Joe Segal, who still owns and operates the venue. Thousands of people have had their first live jazz experience at one of Segal's showcases. They have served as a launch pad for individual careers, and have brought some of the biggest names in the music to Chicago. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie is said to have celebrated his birthday performing there for many years. Many famous musicians play at the Showcase, including: Eddie Harris (jazz saxophonist) Having changed location numerous times
1940s in jazz 1940s in jazz In the early 1940s in jazz, bebop emerged, led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. It helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it used faster tempos. Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz; the dissonant tritone (or "flatted fifth") interval became the "most important interval of