Seeds in the Swing Era from "Modern Jazz" by Morgan and Horricks

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The swing musician wanted to be the individualist in his solo work—to have instrumental ability wedded to a natural feeling for the music. The swing age is often referred to as the middle period of jazz, through the way its musicians effected a compromise between the untamed emotion of New Orleans jazz and the increased technical research later to grow with modern jazz.”

- Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks

I’ve posted previous chapters from Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks Modern Jazz: A Study of Its Development Since 1939” [1956, Gollancz; Greenwood, 1977] on the subject of “The Miles Davis Group 1948/49” [which has subsequently become better known as The Birth of the Cool Band”], “The West Coast School of White Musicians and Its Soloists” and “The Composers of the West Coast School.”

I focused on those particular chapters as a way of further researching the origins and development of a style of Jazz that’s near-and-dear to my heart and one that I experienced directly both as a fan and as a musician: Jazz in California from 1945 -1965.

But where did the modern style of Jazz originate and why before aspects of it migrated to the Left Coast and became what is often referred to as The Cool School?

This subject is discussed in the earlier chapters of the Morgan and Horricks and I thought it would be fun to share their observations with you.

By way of background, regular readers of the standard Jazz periodicals in the 1950s, when their book was published, already knew that Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks were two of the best and most consistent of the, then, “younger generation of critics.”

And keeping in mind the 1950s - a caveat at the outset: in these racially sensitive times, one wonders about categorizations such as “White Musician” and “Negro Musician” with the connotation that the latter is superior to the former.

I suppose that it is too much to be hoped for that one day, those who play this music will simply be referred to as Jazz musicians, but in the context of the times in which the Morgan-Horricks book was written - the mid-1950’s - these distinctions were still in vogue.

On the other hand, in fairness to the authors writing about a time in Jazz when it like many other aspects of American society was segregated, the race distinctions are central to their argument that Jazz is a socio-cultural phenomena unique to the Negro whereas I view it more as a musical process that can be played by anyone regardless of race, gender or ethnicity.

However, in the main, the following piece is a much more nuanced piece of writing than the colors of black and white would suggest: this a well-reasoned explanation of the musical elements involved in the transition from Swing to Bop.

“HISTORY BOOKS so often tend to arouse the reader's suspicions with regard to their sincerity. The detailed lay-out of cold facts may appear innocent enough on the surface, but behind it all may lurk the personal inner prejudice of the writer. A historian dealing with the French Revolution can dangerously divert the blame upon the shoulders of the philosophers, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, by deliberately suppressing the facts about the French monarchy's excesses. He can promote Sir John Hawkins as a national hero by heaping glory upon his sea victories and neglecting to mention the man as a prime mover behind the slave trade. It is too easy for a writer's feelings to creep through his precis of the factual matter. The effect may not come through any malicious intent; usually it is an unconscious result of his general attitude to the subject. Nevertheless, that effect is sufficient to cause a distortion of the truth, a lack of balance in the relation of events.

This book lays no claim to be a historical reference work on modern jazz. It is instead a survey of the modern movement and of the contemporary jazz scene as viewed by two writers. It is a collation of our opinions and a direct statement of our feelings with regard to the various major events in the evolution and development of modernism. The survey is personal because it expresses an attitude to jazz. The book has been completed because we have been able to find agreement over an evaluation of the modern jazz school and its musicians. It is an impression—not a textbook.

Modern jazz is not a term merely to describe the existing scene. It is a loose coverage for a whole movement which grew out of the swing era of the nineteen-thirties and early forties. A movement that has spread itself over the entire course of jazz evolution, and which, even in the fifties, is continuing to unfold new facets of the music. In this and subsequent chapters the object has been to elucidate the key figures and influences of the various schools caused by a progression out of the swing period. To sift the wheat from the chaff; to distinguish between the bloodstream and the backwaters. [Emphasis mine]

The swing period in jazz can be described in its broadest sense as the exertion of an organised state upon the authentic Negro style which emerged as jazz from New Orleans about the turn of this century, and which reached its peak in the nineteen-twenties. It was not so much a dilution of the New Orleans conception—rather more a hardening of the attitude to ensemble work, and a tendency for the soloist to strive more towards the creation of a virtuoso style. 

It was the first definite sign that the unconscious jazz musician of the New Orleans school, concerned only with an improvisation from his moods, was being replaced by the self-centred musician. While the New Orleans jazzman was concerned completely with emotion, the swing man was more conscious of his art and of himself as a musician. His playing brought little change in the essential elements of jazz: the rhythmic impetus, the feeling expression and the inspired freedom to invent and to portray. In the jam session he would still improvise with the same heat and the temperament of attack. The acute sensitivity of jazz remained. Only the attitude to creation had changed.

The swing musician wanted to be the individualist in his solo work—to have instrumental ability wedded to a natural feeling for the music. The swing age is often referred to as the middle period of jazz, through the way its musicians effected a compromise between the untamed emotion of New Orleans jazz and the increased technical research later to grow with modern jazz. 

Swing brought the virtuoso musician. The man who would stand as a complete voice and who preferred the background support of a large band or even just a rhythm section to the collective improvisation of the New Orleans front-line. It brought Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Jonah Jones, Lionel Hampton, Art Tatum and others. Jazz soloists equipped with the technical ability to allow their imagination unlimited powers. Joe Oliver in the golden era of New Orleans jazz utilized his technique to carry a whole front-line; his ability as a musician being as much concerned with ensemble work as with the solo chorus. Turning to the playing of essentially swing trumpeters such as Buck Clayton or Jonah Jones, it is at once noticeable how aware they are of their own ability. This is not to be confused with any form of conceit. It is a case of the musician making use of his executive power to further the range of his imagination. 

In other words to widen the channel through which the feeling will flow. Oliver played from a mood, or perhaps a sense for a certain melody, and on occasions the pent-up emotion might outstrip the technique. With swing the musician with an inherent feeling for improvised jazz sought to ally the emotion with the most logical presentation. The sense of the beat remains, but the phrasing will become more eloquent, seeking to develop each idea to the utmost, instead of snatching at the many thoughts arising from a mood. 

The desire to play as an individual instead of with a collective improvising team is most apparent. The swing musicians increased the use of the written theme a hundredfold. They seemed anxious to open with a plain, direct statement of the theme in orchestrated form, then to turn the melody over to improvised solo choruses. The ensemble became more and more a unified rock — a foundation chorus for the musician to take a firm grip of the rhythm pattern and the theme before launching forth upon his improvisation. It began to serve as a pace setter. 

Improvised jazz was broken apart from the traditional collective approach and isolated as a portrait for the individualist.

As the swing period progressed through the thirties so the degrees of organization were increased. Having found his new level as an individualist, the jazz soloist was largely content with the improvised aspects of his music. The new jam session, with its string of solo choruses as opposed to the collective New Orleans session, remained a constant with the swing musicians. Yet the swing men grew less and less satisfied with jazz in the collective form of a band. Further modifications were introduced to the New Orleans conception. The scored theme became more and more a vehicle for the drilled, unison voicing of the ensemble or section.

When Jelly-Roll Morton, in the concluding years of the New Orleans period, had commenced transcribing the familiar melodies of stomps and blues to the scoresheet, he sought to retain the outward impression of a New Orleans front-line. To stabilize the contrapuntal designs which had grown with free improvisation. Ellington had started to compose jazz with a similar ideal, although the richness of his imagination quickly carried the style through to the experiment with "jungle" sounds and then on to further evolution. The course of Ellington's composition has unfolded in the same natural way as a purely improvised solo. It has been immense and almost isolated from the general trends in jazz development. During the swing age it remained egocentric, a force complete in itself. Ellington progressed through these years, yet succeeded in touching the bulky main development of swing only lightly. His orchestra remained principally an outlet for the racial and other impressions of the composer.

The central course of swing development exerted an almost industrial influence upon ensemble work. The original conception of the front-line in jazz was pruned and streamlined beyond all recognition. Unison passages replaced the contrapuntal patterns. The twelve-bar blues, long a source of expression for the outpouring of emotion, underwent a startling change with the introduction of the riff in jazz. (The riff meant the introduction of a repetitive phrase to cover the twelve-bar measure — a piece of mechanical unison work.) Opening and concluding ensemble choruses became purely the material for theme statements. The scoring of the ensemble would often be imaginative, but it nevertheless tolled the curfew for the improvised front-line. Single instrumental voices in a band passage were replaced by sections of instruments; trumpets, trombones and a balanced complement of reeds.   Collective jazz was gradually enlarged in its orchestral shape.   Swing brought the age of the big band as well as of the virtue musician. It produced the bands of Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, Erskine Hawkins, Cab Calloway, and then from Kansas City, Andy Kirk, Benny Moten and the most important of the large swing units, Count Basie.

Had swing as an orchestral force remained a style peculiar to this set of fine Negro groups, then it might have continued to gain uninterrupted support from the musicians up to the present day. Through the medium of these orchestras the outward shape of jazz had been altered but the basic ingredient had been retained. The essentially hot, direct approach to the music was still in evidence even with the written parts.  The emotional excitement, allied to the full rhythmic force of jazz, had not been diluted in any way. 

The riff, or repetitive phrase, might tend on the sheet of music to appear monotonous, but the Negro band injected a tremendous fire into the ensemble work. Scored themes became their spearhead of attack and at the same time acted as a driving force for the soloist. When the Basie band generated a powerful riff, the emotional impact would be as impressive as the expression of the New Orleans front-line, though through a different format. The large Negro bands cannot be held responsible for the dissatisfaction which had grown amongst jazz musicians by the late thirties.  Their side of the swing movement always contained the true spirit of jazz.  In fact, the success of Count Basie's Orchestra in the fifties, when still fundamentally a swing unit, testifies that the doldrums of the late thirties sprang not from a Negro band but from an outside influence.

It sprang from commercialism and the distorting effect of Tin Pan Alley, surely the bane of every form of existence in jazz. When swing as a movement lay in the hands of the Negro musicians it was comparatively safe from commercial dilution by reason of the colour bar, the Jim Crow attitude towards Negro jazz which has always flourished in the States, However, once the large white bands of Goodman, Shaw and other lesser minions began to feature a type of swing, the inevitable dilution of the commercial music market began to infiltrate through to the style. A link was quickly established with the field of popular dance music. Section work became glib, and just too smooth in texture. Ensemble sounds were rendered sweeter in the arrangements, and the fire, the attacking emotionalism of the leading Negro bands, slumped into a pale flicker. 

Solos were delivered by suave, often technically facile musicians, though without any vestige of feeling for the music with which they were concerned. The Benny Goodman Orchestra was not the worst offender over this gradual loss of emotion in swing. Though its sections performed without the simple vigour of, say, the Basie or Lunceford bands, it did retain a collection of fine soloists, and often the arrangements of Fletcher Henderson kindled afresh the spirit of hot jazz. It was a sincere band even if it did not portray a particularly strong illustration of jazz. Goodman is cited here because his band unconsciously began the chain reaction which crashed swing down into the spider's web of the commercial field. He served to draw attention to mediocre swing and to dictate a popular version quite out of context with the true protagonists of the style.

With the degeneration of the white side of the swing movement into a musical equivalent of the sweet music of the popular music market, it became obvious that jazz must either seek a further evolutionary progression or struggle vainly against the creeping barrage of Tin Pan Alley. 

The financial success of Goodman and the large white bands had undermined the already limited field of the Negro swing bands. To remain in existence some of the better coloured groups were forced to move on a parallel with white swing. Others succumbed before the style. Ellington's isolation and singular path in music carried him through. Basie also survived the fray without a modification in policy. In the main, however, the Negro swing band suffered heavily. Many creative jazz soloists became the victims of musical frustration as they were forced to earn their livings through the new order. To cope with cloying ensemble work and the written solo lines instead of being able to portray a natural emotion through improvised jazz. 

Quite clearly the course of jazz had reached one of its situations of stalemate—a period between schools, when musicians were torn between a dissatisfaction with the existing forms and a suspicion of the future. Nostalgia for the age of New Orleans jazz could hardly prove a solution for jazz musicians trained with the technical elements and feeling of the swing age. Swing itself was a dying force; a style finding the struggle against commercialism increasingly difficult. The great virtuoso soloists and the monument of an organization known as Basie remained a hard core of defiance. Their struggle was to preserve improvisation and to fight against the lack of emotion in the white bands. All the lesser shoots had been peeled away. It was a defensive fight to maintain ideals and not a campaign conducive to the building up of a new and powerful school. The restoration of grandeur with a large, active body of musicians projecting a collective style required a further musical progression. A style to defy the clinging tendrils of commercialism, with an influx of new material to stimulate the interest of the younger musicians. It had to be a logical development from the existing forms, coordinating the basic elements of authentic jazz into the forward movement. Otherwise it would echo the foolish architecture of the man who built his house on the sands, without any safe foundation, and then watched his work being washed away by the incoming waves. In any new trend nothing may be achieved without experiment, yet for obvious reasons jazz cannot be produced unless it contains certain properties. An experiment without the feeling and the rhythmic force would become as pointless as the degenerate white swing. It was necessary for the progression to be a logical paving stone in the causeway. In the late thirties many jazzmen were thinking in the terms of a new movement. They were searching for musicians who would point the guiding fingers towards the realization of a strong style. 

Obviously it would not begin as a collective jazz form. For this it would be necessary to wait until a secondary stage. In jazz every seed of evolution has been sown in the solo styles of a scattered handful of musicians, and only with the final co-ordination of their principles has the new school been wrought. First it would be imperative to ferret out the musicians capable of providing the lead; in certain cases men who were unconscious of the fact that their creative styles held a key to future development. Although superficially the close of the thirties registered no relief of the stalemate situation to the average onlooker, signs were already registering within the sensitive ranks of the musicians. Certain men had been singled out as the potential leads, and attention was keenly focused upon their styles and general approach to jazz. At last it was felt that the oncoming force had made its preliminary moves. 

By 1939 the seeds were germinating. The pioneers had been brought into the open and their conception clearly understood. As with every previous form of progression in jazz, it was again noticeable that the foundation measures were carried out by a handful of Negro musicians. Throughout the fifty years or so that jazz has been an active force, the work of development has always remained a task peculiar to the Negro. In fact, the application of a major advancement to the playing of the white musicians has largely become a secondary issue behind the real innovation. 

Moreover, it has been further revealed that whenever the white musicians have sought to create a further step in jazz, they have proceeded at a tangent from the logical evolutionary tree, either wandering outside the realms of jazz or else enveloping their music in an ever-decreasing circle of frustration. The white musician has often produced music of interest within the existing material, but he is forced as an innovator to halt at the elbow of the Negro jazzman. Jazz cannot proceed without the Negro because he is its personification. He is able to sense the length to which the vital elements of jazz may be stretched without losing their substance — to test the ground in the manner of a mine detector. Basically the music is his culture and his inherent possession. The Negro jazzman can feel when the music is losing its true nature, and thereby he retains the keys to its progression.

In 1939, whilst the white musicians were still concerned with the spread of mild swing, the Negro jazzmen had just discovered their leads. In fact, the year could be termed as the first foothold of the new front. The leads revolved about six principal sources of inspiration. Tenorman Lester Young and trumpeter Harry Edison with the Count Basie Orchestra; Jimmy Blanton playing bass with Duke Ellington; the piano style of Clyde Hart; the trumpet style of Roy Eldridge; and finally through Charlie Christian, a young guitarist developing under the very nose of white swing in the Benny Goodman Orchestra.

It is emphasized that with the exception of Charlie Christian these men did not actually innovate through their styles the modern jazz forms. The crystallized version wasn't really evolved until the early forties, when Christian began to collect the disciples and younger musicians at New York's Minton's Playhouse, experimenting with the new ideas until a crude collective form had been shaped. The other five men served purely to propagate the theories for the breaking down of the limitations caused by the swing period. 

Their natural styles pointed to the opening of a fresh avenue for jazz expression, in the same way that a politician's oratory might influence a revolution though he personally abstains from the bloodshed. Only when the isolated trends in their work had been collated did the modern jazz seeds produce a definite result. Eldridge and Edison, though conscious of their own solo styles, were barely aware of their position as pioneers and did not adopt the modern style on its final emergence. Blanton and Clyde Hart might have contributed further, but death cut short their active parts. (Christian was also fated to die before the completion of his work.) Lester Young took an active interest in the preliminary stages, then finally dissociated himself from the movement. Through Charlie Christian's teaching and personal aid it was the destiny of a younger generation of jazz musicians to accomplish the practical side of the progression. Once the ideas had been set in motion the production was gently eased into the hands of Parker, Gillespie and the other members of Christian's administration in New York.

While all six of the musicians directly concerned with the seeds of the new movement had their personal roots as soloists deeply entrenched in the swing era, it was the tenor-saxophone player Lester Young who exhibited the first tendencies of a breakaway style from the accepted swing approach. 

Lester was an unconscious innovator in so far as the style that he produced was his personal approach to swing, and not an attempt to forge a new school of jazz. Even today he clings to the belief that he has remained essentially a swing tenorman, and certainly his style, though revolutionary in phrasing and tonal presentation, adheres to the direct beat of the pre-1940 jazz as opposed to the broken rhythms which for several years became the instrument of effect with the Minton pioneers. It is necessary to mention that Lester's style was purely a personal avenue of jazz expression in order to point out a fallacy in the work of the many younger white tenormen who have allowed the cool attitude to completely dominate their styles. With Lester the style was a part of his inspiration to play jazz. The younger white musicians, in their attempt to echo parrot-like his every thought, succeeded only in producing an affectation in jazz.

Lester Young's playing as a jazz soloist made no direct contribution to the harmonic progression of the modern movement, which widened the scope of jazz from the fixed chords used in the swing era to a fuller technical exploitation. His influence came purely through the approach to jazz, the method of expression evolved by the soft, flat tenor tone and the devious, exploring style of phrasing as distinct from the direct, attacking phrases of his contemporary swing tenormen. Lester was not only responsible for the creation of a new school of tenor-saxophone playing, but also for the gradual transition which occurred away from the hot approach of the music's traditional principles to the more relaxed, subtle approach of the modern movement. Lester found that he could still express emotion and swing despite this change in methods. The fact that some of the modernists were later to relegate emotion completely from their work shows how little they really understood or cared for Lester's ideal of the cool approach to jazz. 

Even before joining Count Basie in 1936, Lester Young had already turned to the soft, smaller tone, clean and pure in sound. His phrasing took on a noticeable ease of delivery as he sought to express subtlety in place of the almost dramatic force previously exhibited by the tenor players in jazz. If he conceived a new idea to interpolate into the melodic line he would carefully make his insertion through the less-likely phrases, concerning his outflow more with the incidental beauty than with the direct path. The devious approach naturally served to show the thematic source of inspiration in a new light, often revealing facets of a melody hitherto undiscovered by jazz musicians whose playing had chosen the more obvious sequence of notes and phrases. Coleman Hawkins, whose tenor style had previously dominated jazz and who has been able to express more outward emotion through his playing than any other jazzman on this instrument, would rhapsodize over a theme, improvising with great invention, but was always concerned with the central figure of his portrait. In turn Lester would sketch out a hazy central subject, and then proceed to shine a piercing light through the shadows around it.

It was to be expected that the introduction by Lester of these qualities — the very antithesis of the style inaugurated by Hawkins — would not cause an immediate acceptance by other jazz musicians. Hawkins had been the first musician in jazz to conceive the tenor-saxophone as a solo instrument. 

Whilst with the Fletcher Henderson band, he'd taken the tenor out of its context as a heavy section instrument and flown it alongside the alto and clarinet as a vehicle for solos. Coleman had the technical facility and the endless improvised thought to create a definite style for this instrument, and his conception dominated all the tenormen of the swing era prior to Lester's departure from the accepted pattern. Hawkins played with a big, full tone, rich in sound and forceful in its attack. When ranked by his side Lester superficially appeared to have a lack of intensity and his tone seemed insignificant. It was only upon a more objective inspection that his value was brought to light, and the fact understood that a jazz musician could seek relaxation and still possess a feeling in his creation. When Hawkins had left the Henderson Orchestra in 1934 to undertake prolonged work in Europe, Lester had been hired to take over his position with the band. Immediately the other musicians noticed the change in approach and expressed distaste over Lester's variation from Hawkins' conception for the tenor. 

Upon joining Count Basie, however, Lester's style began to affect the younger jazz musicians in a more favourable light. The solos he made in these years up to 1940—Lady Be Good., Shoe Shine Swing and You Can Depend On Me with the Basie Quintet, and Taxi War Dance with the full band, Back in Your Own Backyard and Sailboat In The Moonlight with Billie Holiday and many others— reveal the advance which Lester had made in the direction of a new approach to jazz. Even in the fifties his recorded solos with Basie, swinging above the fine rhythm section or over the supple section passages, do not sound outmoded by contemporary standards of tenor playing. When he left the Count in 1940 to play with his own small group in New York, Lester had already proved his contention to the rising school of younger jazz musicians.

The two trumpeters, Eldridge and Edison, were similar to Lester in that their styles were a natural creation, concerned with personal creation and improvement rather than designed to achieve a progression. Both represent the virtuoso musician of the swing period. However, beyond this point the influence they extended towards modern jazz was material rather than an emphasis of approach. They remained adherents to the surface intensity of hot jazz in tone and in the direct swinging attack of their presentation. Their music is improvised with the beat, not around it. 

Yet while Lester advocated a change to the mode of relaxation, Eldridge and Edison gave a practical clue to the new jazz in their executive playing. Though not intended, technique became an important concern of their styles. It began to introduce the first touches of complexity to the long, simple lines and sparse, decisive phrases of the original New Orleans conception. Other trumpeters in the swing age, like Henry Allen and Charlie Shavers, had shown slight signs of the same thing, but with Eldridge and Edison it became blatant in their styles. It began to give the substance of the phrasing a wider range as they swept through the note cascades and interspersed short, staccato runs between the longer, flowing phrases. Contrast Harry Edison's solos on the Basic recordings of Texas Shuffle, Jive At Five or Panassie Stomp with any of the solos from the same period by Buck Clayton, the Count's other great trumpet stylist. 

Buck's playing-belongs to the age of hot, intense jazz in its entirety, and with certain phrase modifications to suit the pattern of the swing band his playing may be traced directly to Louis Armstrong. Harry Edison belongs to the hot style through his tone and direct, rhythmic attack, but his phrasing is more modern, wider in its range of technical construction. He built from Eldridge and then proceeded on a parallel though with a fuller tone. Roy's own recorded work at this time flourishes a similar trend in construction. 

Neither ultimately became modernists as distinct from swing men because their lead was a personal growth and maturity, not a radical change of ideals. However, though a natural thing and small in its way, their pointer grew to be a major ideal with the modern movement, namely the influx of technical progression in coordination with the feeling for jazz. Quite different, of course, from the search for personal technical artistry in the swing age. Through the Minton sessions in the early forties trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was to exploit this characteristic in the playing of Eldridge and Edison more fully in conjunction with a new harmonic and rhythmic evolution.

However, while the influence of Lester, Edison and Eldridge resulted from natural traits in their solo styles, it is in turn noticeable that Clyde Hart, Jimmy Blanton and Charlie Christian were true radicals who openly sought to introduce changes to the existing regime — musicians who took a more active part in the breaking down of the swing patterns.

Clyde Hart [1910-1945] has often been overlooked by those plotting out the story of evolution in jazz, yet he was the first of the piano thinkers to influence the modern movement and certainly made a practical contribution to both the modern piano solo style and the general harmonic development of the Minton stage. Even on his recordings in the thirties with various Lionel Hampton small groups, Clyde was already exhibiting the tendency to improvise over the chord sequence instead of the melody, and to imply subtle variations to the basically simple harmonic patterns. Though this book is not designed to be a technical treatise on modern jazz, this facet of Clyde's playing is mentioned because the change from a melodic to a harmonic source of inspiration became a major feature of modern jazz. 

In addition, he was the first modern pianist to realize the potential source of power in the alliance of bass and piano as an improvising unit. Clyde found that by allowing the bass to take over the entire rhythmic content during a piano solo, his left hand was then left free to imply the chord changes and punctuations to an improvising treble. It gave the pianist further scope to broaden the range of harmonic deviations from the simple sequences, and later the style was adopted in its entirety by Al Haig, Powell and many of the younger disciples. Clyde Hart joined Lester Young's small group in New York in 1940, and up to his death continued to work and record with Oscar Pettiford, Parker and other musicians of the post-embryo stage in modern jazz. All testified to his ability and importance as a teacher.

Jimmy Blanton [1918-1942] had even less time to impress his theories and practical constructions upon the younger jazzmen for he was to die in 1942. In fact, the full effect of Jimmy's work was only really felt after his death when his conception was projected through the playing of Pettiford and the bassists who followed. Blanton (with Christian) was the man to show that instruments previously employed purely for rhythm could in fact be used as solo voices within a jazz group, and that the rhythm could be remoulded to suit the phrasing of the front-line soloists. This breaking of the rhythm to work more closely with a melody instrument was an important step. During the Minton experimental sessions Christian's guitar, Pettiford's bass and Kenny Clarke's drums were all to raise the status of the rhythm instruments in the jazz group.

When Blanton joined Duke Ellington's Orchestra in 1939 his conception for the bass and other rhythm instruments in jazz could not find an outlet with the full band due to Ellington's personal policy for a rhythm section. If one selects the three outstanding big bands of the late thirties—Lunceford, Basie and Ellington—it may be seen how each generated their drive behind the ensemble in a different fashion. Lunceford relied upon a tight integration of all four instruments in his rhythm section, whereas Basie had a close alliance between guitar and bass topping the balanced sock-cymbal style of drummer Jo Jones. In opposition to both Ellington pivoted his entire rhythmic structure upon the bass. (He once employed two basses rather than increasing the force of the drums.) Blanton filled this position perfectly, and his rich-toned bass may be heard as the rock-like anchor on all the Ellington 1940/41 recordings. There was no opportunity to vary the use of the bass. However, although the Duke was unrelenting over his composing policy for a full orchestral group, the talent of Blanton as an original stylist did not go unrecognized. Ellington recorded two special sessions of piano and bass duets, featuring Blanton's bass extensively. On just those six recordings — Blues and Plucked Again, Pitter Panther Patter, and Sophisticated Lady, Body And Soul and Mr. J. B. Blues — hinged the bassist's move towards a new instrumental evaluation in jazz. With both pizzicato and bowed work he proved that the bass could interpret a melodic line in solo fashion or on a parallel with a horn or reed instrument. The innovation of these few solos opened another portal of expression in jazz and led to the later exploitation at Minton's Playhouse, where Jimmy would occasionally visit when free from work with the Ellington band.

The guitarist Charlie Christian [1916-1942] died several months before Blanton in March 1942. In the time between joining Benny Goodman in mid-1939 and finally giving up his music in July 1941 through illness, he made the first moves in the collation of ideas and material for a definite style away from swing. Christian was to dominate the early Minton sessions, for while the other main pointers in the swing period thought in the terms of solo trends, Christian visualized a style for the group in jazz. He furthered the use of harmonic rather than melodic improvisation and introduced many of the ideas later to be incorporated into the forward harmonic progression of modern jazz. He taught his ideals to the younger musicians, illustrating that their imagination need not be confined to the simple, accepted structures. He also experimented with new ensemble voicings, sometimes filling out with his own guitar, or alternating lead parts amongst the other instruments. He taught the musicians that if they had the feeling to play jazz, then their emotion would not be throttled by the new concern with technique.

For the guitar Charlie Christian caused a revolution similar to Blanton's application to the bass. In playing some of his small group sides with Benny Goodman, say, Benny's Bugle, Stardust or On The Alamo it is comparatively easy to note the difference between Christian's work and that of his predecessors on this instrument. He has brought the guitar on to the level of the front-line, doubling the ensemble phrases instead of providing a steady rhythmic pulse. In the solos, both here and on Solo Flight and Honeysuckle Rose with the full Goodman band, he has broken away from the traditional full chordal style. Swift to realize the properties of the amplified guitar, he was soon introducing a large degree of single-note improvisation to the execution. His new technical facility pushed through the guitar a richness of invention quite different from the chordal variations of the traditional style,

Christian was the key figure between the searching musician of the swing period and the musician formed through modern jazz. He introduced the movement to musicians and brought a sense of direction to those jazzmen who were dissatisfied with the existing state of jazz in the late thirties.

Through this guidance the new men were ready to take up the experimental work when Christian had to leave off. Gillespie, Parker, Dameron, Monk and a further school of jazz musicians were brought within a stone's throw of their ultimate success by Christian and the trends exhibited by a handful of swing musicians. The swing style in jazz became its own worst enemy through the influence of commercialism, and was to be slain by the hands that it originally fed. Modern jazz, too, would suffer from commercialism, but only superficially, and the effect would not dam its progress. The big white bands in swing brought the cause for evolution. The Negro musician introduced it. Since 1940 modern jazz has unfolded many further pages of development, and always the Negro musician has engineered the vital passages.”