African-American music Ruth persuaded a gospel group to sing in a secular setting, the Apollo Theater, with such success that he subsequently arranged gospel caravans that traveled around the country, playing the same venues that rhythm and blues singers had popularized. Meanwhile, jazz performers began to push jazz away from swing, a danceable popular music towards more intricate arrangements, improvisation, and technically challenging forms, culminating in the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the cool sounds and modal jazz of Miles Davis, and the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. African-American musicians in the 1940s and 1950s were developing
Frank R. Fisher One of the most famous jazz spots in the Fillmore was Jimbo's Bop City. Many famous jazz artists performed at Bop City, and at the clubs in the Fillmore district. Such artists as; Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Lionel Hampton, Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz, Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Billy Eckstine, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Dinah Washington, Art Tatum, Pony Poindexter, Charlie Parker, Kenny Dorham, Jimmy Heath, Woody Herman, John Handy, Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Zoot Sims. Mr. Fisher was a part of the Great Migration (African American)s, to the West Coast in the 40s. The