Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States, which features songs characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
"Donna Lee" is a bebop jazz standard attributed to Charlie Parker, although Miles Davis has also claimed authorship. Written in A-flat, it is based on the chord changes of the jazz standard "(Back Home Again in) Indiana". Beginning with an unusual half-bar rest, "Donna Lee" is a very complex, fast-moving chart with a compositional style based on four-note groups over each change.
"Love for Sale" is a song by Cole Porter from the musical The New Yorkers which opened on Broadway on December 8, 1930 and closed in May 1931 after 168 performances. The song is written from the viewpoint of a prostitute advertising "love for sale".
Jazz at Massey Hall is a live jazz album featuring a performance by "The Quintet" given on 15 May 1953 at Massey Hall in Toronto. The quintet was composed of several leading 'modern' players of the day: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It was the only time that the five men recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie.
"The Way You Look Tonight" is a song from the film Swing Time that was performed by Fred Astaire and written by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. Fields remarked, "The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful."
Joe Albany was an American modern jazz pianist who played bebop with Charlie Parker as well as being a leader on his own recordings.
"Salt Peanuts" is a bebop tune reportedly composed by Dizzy Gillespie in 1942, credited "with the collaboration of" drummer Kenny Clarke. It is also cited as Charlie Parker's. The lyrics have no meaning. However, they are a skat/bebop vocal which matches the octave note interval played predominantly throughout the song.
"Scrapple from the Apple" is a bebop composition by Charlie Parker written in 1947, commonly recognized today as a jazz standard, written in F major. The song borrows its chord progression from "Honeysuckle Rose", a common practice for Parker, as he based many of his successful tunes over already well-known chord changes.
"Autumn in New York" is a jazz standard composed by Vernon Duke in Westport, Connecticut in the summer of 1934. It was written without a commission or for a specific show, but was offered by Duke to producer Murray Anderson for his Broadway musical Thumbs Up! which opened on December 27, 1934 and was performed by J. Harold Murray. Many versions of the song have been recorded over the years by numerous musicians and singers. The only version to achieve chart success as a single in the USA was that by Frank Sinatra which reached No. 27 in 1949.
Brian Priestley is an English jazz writer, pianist and arranger.
"Anthropology" is a bebop-style jazz composition that is credited to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Parker stated in 1949 that Gillespie had played no part in its writing, and that others had added the trumpeter as co-composer.
"Yardbird Suite" is a bebop standard composed by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker in 1946. The title derives from Parker's nickname "Bird", respectively "Yardbird". Far from being a suite, the song follows an AABA form. The "graceful, hip melody, became something of an anthem for beboppers."
"Groovin' High" is an influential 1945 song by jazz composer and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. The song was a bebop mainstay that became a jazz standard, one of Gillespie's best known hits, and, according to Bebop: The Music and Its Players author Thomas Owens, "the first famous bebop recording". The song is a complex musical arrangement based on the chord structure of the 1920 standard originally recorded by Paul Whiteman, "Whispering", with lyrics by John Schonberger and Richard Coburn (né Frank Reginald DeLong; 1886–1952) and music by Vincent Rose. The biography Dizzy characterizes the song as "a pleasant medium-tempo tune" that "demonstrates...[Gillespie's] skill in fashioning interesting textures using only six instruments".
Dizzy Atmosphere is a jazz standard by Dizzy Gillespie originally recorded in 1945 with Charlie Parker.
Swingmatism is a jazz standard, composed by William Scott, and featuring Charlie Parker. It was originally recorded on April 30 1941 with Gus Johnson, though the best known version dates to 1942. According to author Dave Oliphant it "illustrates how, with a good 'swing' rhythm section, one can play bebop and still have it fit." The tune, composed in F Minor, is noted for its "sixteen-bar sections in the minor and modulation to the parallel major, through the use of a diminished chord".
"Relaxin' at Camarillo" is a composition by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. It is inspired by his six-month stay in Camarillo State Hospital in Ventura County, California, after serving a prison term for arson and resisting arrest. The tune is a blues in C major and has become a jazz standard.
"Now's the Time" is a composition by Charlie Parker. He led the first recording of it, on November 26, 1945.
