A variety of sounds from Dixieland to Swing could be heard at the 52nd Street clubs during the 1940s, and it was here that the serious music frivolously dubbed “bebop
” was born. Parker, Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others began experimenting with a new formula for jazz improvisation—extremely fast tempos, chord substitutions and alterations, the use of new intervals, and extended melodic lines. Solos were much longer, and bebop was meant to be listened to and was not dancing music...