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
Charlie Smith (drummer) Charlie Smith (drummer) Charlie Smith (April 15, 1927, New York City – January 15, 1966, New Haven, Connecticut) was an American jazz drummer. Smith played locally in New York in the late 1940s before taking a position accompanying Ella Fitzgerald. He worked briefly with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1951 before being replaced by Louie Bellson, and also played with Joe Bushkin, Erroll Garner, Slim Gaillard, Benny Goodman, Hot Lips Page, Oscar Peterson, Artie Shaw, and Slam Stewart. He performed on television with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1952, and later in the 1950s worked with Billy Taylor, Aaron