Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms.
Musical style A study conducted by Anthony Belfiglio at the University of Texas, Austin analyzed the music of Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, Wynton Marsalis, and Marcus Roberts in order to determine key features of straight-ahead jazz that distinguish it from other genres. Belfiglio concluded that the walking bass, a 4/4 bass pattern in which a bassist plays one note to each beat, synchronized with a ride-based drum pattern was a defining component of straight-ahead jazz.
Background Often called "America's classical music", the subgenres of mainstream jazz have been less "subject to the whims of fashion", according to Scott DeVeaux, than other genres, with jazz reaching its modern form across "a long process of maturation". During the 1960s, however, two opposing subgenres emerged, the avant-garde and fusion, with neoclassicists emerging in the 1980s to oppose both of these factions. Free jazz largely questioned the traditional understanding of jazz harmony and played "outside" chord structures, and jazz, which had already become organic following the development of bebop, became increasingly chaotic as the former structures within bebop evolved into free improvisation and, according to some critics, "functional anarchy." Meanwhile, another strain of jazz musicians drew from pop and rock influences to develop jazz fusion and the first seeds of what later became smooth jazz. One of the founders of this camp was producer Creed Taylor, who turned obscure jazz musicians such as George Benson and Grover Washington Jr. into popular stars by incorporating pop music influences into jazz melodies and improvisation.
Purists of the era did not see the new jazz fusion subgenre as jazz due to its heavy pop music influences. Hence, the term "straight-ahead" jazz was formulated by critics and academics to describe music that did not employ fusion's innovations, such as rock beats and electric instruments. For example, Tanner, Gerow and Megill trace the straight-ahead aesthetic back to the hard bop era, after which some musicians would continue to be guided by jazz tradition when faced with boundary-pushing innovations.
Although bop "never died" during the 1970s, it had "a much lower profile" and "was overshadowed by other trends" as fusion's popularity skyrocketed. By the time Chuck Mangione joined the Jazz Messengers, there had taken place a "breakdown in the cultural consensus about the elements of authentic jazz." The few musicians who were determined to maintain the acoustic jazz tradition went to small independent labels like Concord and Chiaroscuro, with the latter label producing both swing music and bop, two genres once at odds with each other over bop's modernism.
The impact of the diverging styles was that, rather than "a succession of stylistic periods", jazz was now "an international language" and "it became difficult to describe the direction [of] jazz", making the primary branch of the genre difficult to identify.
History
1960s: Roots in bop
Critic Scott Yanow in his "Hard Bop" essay noted that the decade witnessed the evolution of soul jazz and the merging of modal jazz, soul jazz, hard bop, and avant-garde into the broader hard bop identity. However, as the decade progressed, experimentation with the mainstream notion of modern jazz became popular, first with the avant-garde styles developed by Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, and later with experiments by leading mainstream musicians John Coltrane and Miles Davis. As rock gained popularity and swing maintained its audience, Coltrane's simultaneous death severely impacted innovation in the jazz world, with Coltrane's album releases maintaining utmost significance in the jazz world long after his death. In fact, in the mid- to late-20th century, there were so many young deaths among jazz musicians that a study conducted at the University Hospital of London, Ontario concluded that "jazz musicians ... have lost a combined 461 years of jazz productivity as a consequence of cirrhosis" alone. The shifts in the jazz world and the rise of free jazz correlated to the Black power and spiritual movements, along with the ideas of freedom of expression associated with the 1960s movement more broadly. But the new genre struggled to gain prevalence throughout the jazz genre, having been "ultimately ambushed by its naiveté."
1970s: Jazz fusion era
Following the rise of jazz fusion, a number of hard bop or "straight-ahead" jazz musicians died or retired: Lee Morgan was shot and Kenny Dorham died in 1972, Hank Mobley retired due to lung disease following Breakthrough (1972), Cannonball Adderley died in 1975, and Charles Mingus died of ALS in 1979.
Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner was one of the few remaining jazz musicians to reject the electric style of jazz fusion, with the former young star at one point contemplating a part-time job as a taxi driver to make ends meet. His album Sahara (1972) received two Grammy nominations, reviving his career and critical acclaim and encouraging Blue Note to release his old material. In the mid-1970s fellow jazz pianist Cedar Walton founded Eastern Rebellion, an ensemble with the traditional saxophone/piano/bass/drums format, with primarily acoustic instrumentalists ranging from George Coleman to Curtis Fuller and Billy Higgins joining the band on rotation. In contrast to Walton's hard-bop style, introspective pianist Bill Evans maintained piano trios throughout the 1970s, and after some experimentation in the fusion and electric subgenres starting in 1969, Evans returned to the acoustic trio format with Marc Johnson and Joe La Barbera during the 1970s.
Many jazz musicians of the fusion era explored the pop-influenced trend while remaining attached to traditional roots. Members of the Charles Lloyd Quartet, including drummer Jack DeJohnette, believed in "the flame of creativity and exploration" in avant-garde and fusion experiments through the decade. Guitarist Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life (1976) with Jaco Pastorius is a further example of the blending of fusion with the music of a relatively straight-ahead musician. These explorations coincided with the rise of the ECM jazz label. With the rise of ECM and political tension in the United States, an increased number of jazz musicians moved from the U.S. to Europe, with Scandinavia and France moving the "centre of gravity" of jazz toward the continent. This shifted once again, however, in 1976, when Dexter Gordon, an important figure in bebop since the 1940s, returned to New York from Europe. His "homecoming" generated a great deal of enthusiasm, reviving interest in musical forms he and others had kept alive in Europe while they had fallen out of prominence in North America. Gordon released a series of live and studio recordings through the late 1970s and the Savoy and Blue Note labels re-released recordings from their Gordon catalogs.
Young straight-ahead tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton recorded his first album in 1977, with the album's title, Scott Hamilton Is a Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill, coming from a Leonard Feather quote. Sidemen on the album included trumpeter Bill Berry, pianist Nat Pierce, bassist Monty Budwig, and drummer Jake Hanna. Scott Yanow noted that Hamilton's neo-straight-ahead effort predated the Young Lions Movement despite its similar musical approach.
1980s: Revival With the rising star of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Art Blakey's hard-bop style once again became a major force in the jazz world, and during the 1980s, this led to the popularization of straight-ahead jazz in jazz circles. Blakey released a number of albums, including Album of the Year (1981) and Blue Night (1985) with his Jazz Messengers band before he died in 1990. Jazz Messengers alumnus Woody Shaw, however, died at age 44 in 1989 following complications from a subway accident, following collaborations with a range of bop-oriented jazz musicians for over two decades. Before his death, Shaw had recorded albums such as Solid (1987) with progressive but bop-rooted saxophonist Kenny Garrett, pianist Kenny Barron, Shearing alumnus Neil Swainson on bass, and Victor Jones on drums. He would follow this album with Bemsha Swing (1997), recorded live on Detroit with pianist Geri Allen, bassist Robert Hurst, and drummer Roy Brooks; and a couple more albums prior to his death, with Yanow noting his high standard of playing despite declining eyesight and other health problems.
In the mid-1980s, a film about jazz in the 1950s and 1960s, Round Midnight, was made based upon the life of Bud Powell, with the score being nominated the "Best Original Score" in 1986. It starred Dexter Gordon, who was nominated for "Best Actor," as an aging jazz musician.
In the mid-1980s, saxophonist Stan Getz led a quartet including pianist Kenny Barron, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Al Foster. In 1987, Getz was diagnosed with cancer, dying a few years later. Preceding his death he had continued to play with a number of albums, including Anniversary!, with these 1980s albums receiving critical acclaim. Fellow cool jazz musician, trumpeter Chet Baker, died in 1988 in the Netherlands, having made a successful comeback from a period out of jazz in the late 1960s. Baker's album My Favourite Songs, Vols. 1-2: The Last Great Concert (1988) was met with praise from critic Yanow, who noted his "inspired form" at the final recording before he landed, dead, outside a window in Amsterdam.
Trumpet and flugelhorn player Tom Harrell, after spending some years in the Horace Silver Quintet during the 1970s, became one of the prominent jazz trumpet players in the 1980s after recording a series of albums and collaborating extensively with alto saxophone player Phil Woods. Woods had formed his quintet/quartet following a brief foray into electronic jazz, and had expanded it to include Harrell, who was later followed by trombonist Hal Crook and trumpeter Brian Lynch.
Young Lions Movement
By 1980, Wynton Marsalis had become widely associated with the straight-ahead concept and was one of the pioneers of neo-bop jazz, a modern revival of straight ahead jazz, bebop, and hard bop. A member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, trumpeter Marsalis appeared on the album Straight Ahead (1981) as a member of Blakey's then-11-piece band.
Following the rise of a number of young artists known as the "Young Lions," the neo-bop movement branched into its own subgenre based upon its "straightahead roots."
1990s: Hard bop and neo-bop