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
Horn in jazz compete directly with Basie's hard-swinging blues, the duo capitalized on their contrast from Basie’s sound, playing with a soft and mellow sound. By showcasing their different sound, Ruff and Mitchell continued to get bookings from Birdland to play intermission for other big name groups like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Lester Young, Dinah Washington and others. After working with Claude Thornhill and arranging for his orchestra, he began arranging for Miles Davis. In 1948 the Miles Davis Nonet was formed with a sound completely unlike anything jazz listeners had heard before. The original idea for the nonet was to