The Beginning of 'Black Is Beautiful'

 In 1954 Senator Joseph McCarthy's 'witch-hunt' was repudiated by the Senate, and the United Stated moved toward a relatively liberal period. Under the influence of Martin Luther King,Jr., who preached non violence, Africans-Americans found a faith in their struggle against racism. To their demand for integration was added the demand for the right to be different. 'Blackness' began to be lived with pride, and the late-sixties slogan 'Black is Beautiful' was already present in the minds of many.

Marthin Luther King, Jr.

  In the middles of the fifties, the trumpet player Clifford Brown could be seen as the perfect incarnation of this beauty. Stylistic heir to Fat Navarro, he stunningly articulated  his phrases, with a fabulously limpid melodic sense, in spite of the complex harmonic detours with which his compositions were strewn. His style, sharp as a blade. was the complete opposite of the introspective, lighthearted and experimental tone of West Coast jazz. In this way Clifford Brown laid the groundwork for hard bop. Sadly, he would die too soon to enjoy the effects of his own contributions.

Clifford Brown

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Big Band Bebop

With Dizzy Gillespie's big band,especially on 'Cubana Be' and 'Cubana Bop',the revolutionary nature of bebop language exploded on wider scale.

Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band

In his quest for modernity Dizzy Gillespie chose his collaborators judiciously. Among them, Tadd Dameron created a sensation. A composer-arranger trained in the school of swing, Dameron allied himself very early with the bebop aesthetic through the daring of such tunes as 'Hot House'. He begrudged his white colleagues on the West Coast nothing.

Gladly citing French composer Maurice Ravel among his influences, he attached equal importance to the resonant beauty of the whole and to the melodic quality of each part, at a time when many others were concerned only with the lead voice.

Tadd Dameron & Fats Navarro

Dameron's skill in preserving melody through even the most 'dissorted' harmonies was shared by one of his closet friends, trumpet player Fats Navarro. A soloist who use uncommon imagination to avoid the harmonic traps of bebop, Navarro chiseled melodic lines of such density and pertinence that they were a decisive influence on future generations.

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