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
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman is a 1963 studio album featuring John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013. Although it is often reported that Coltrane and Hartman had known each other since their days playing with Dizzy Gillespie's band in the late 1940s, the truth is that their time in the band never overlapped. Coltrane might have heard Hartman sing at a 1950 Apollo Theater performance at which they shared the stage. Hartman is the only vocalist with whom the saxophonist would record as a leader.