Like many aspects of American culture, jazz emerged from World War II with a renewed energy. A wartime recording ban conspired with the efforts of a remarkable group of pioneers to strip the 1930s big band down to smaller groups. Such groups revolutionised the harmonic vocabulary of jazz, and transformed it from a dance music into a pure art form known as
bebop
.
The existing culture of jazz—New Orleans jazz and swing , in particular—was fertile soil for the development...