Of all the terms that critics have used to try to categorise jazz styles and movements,
hard bop
is one of the most difficult to define with any clarity. It functions, in part, as a catch-all for much of the music that followed bebop (or simply bop
) in the 1940s. Hard bop itself is historically centred in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s, and is perhaps best thought of as a bridge between the somewhat esoteric, elitist music of bebop...
