The cool style of jazz is as popularly associated with the 1950s as
bebop
is with the 1940s but, in fact, both prototypical modern jazz styles arose from the unprecedented musical ferment that began in New York City in the early 1940s. Bebop, having been burdened from the start with sensational media coverage focusing on the extramusical, was quickly categorised, stereotyped, then slavishly imitated; thus leaving the cool
—yet to run through similar stages—on the cutting edge of modern jazz...
