Jazz in the post-war years: In the early 1940s, bebop-style performers began to shift jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music." The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach. Divorcing itself from dance music, bebop established itself more as an art form, thus lessening its potential popular and commercial appeal. Composer Gunther Schuller wrote, "In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted
Charlie Parker on Dial material from 1948, including a session with Tadd Dameron's Orchestra, featuring performances by tenor saxophonists Allen Eager and Wardell Gray. The first volume features several sessions. In one, Parker and Dizzy Gillespie perform "Diggin' Diz". In another, described by Yanow as "superior", Parker and Miles Davis on trumpet lead a West Coast septet through several Parker standards, with variant takes. The final session on the album features Parker in performance with a Howard McGhee-led quintet where, according to Yanow, Parker's performance is seriously hampered by his poor physical condition. This volume features the first session, including alternate takes, that Parker