A Quote by Charlie Parker

It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible.
I think the people are just looking for freedom in music...There's a lot of she-bop she-bop going on out there. Maybe they're tired of that same old thing.
My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed.
We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.
I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.
A-bop-bop-a-loom-op-a-lop-bop-boom.
If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.
All I want to say to people, man, is, "Yo, you see me walking down the street and I got a little bop in my walk, don't think because I've got a bop in my walk I'm trying to be all that. The bop in my walk is because I'm just like you, man. I bop when I walk." Know what I'm saying? I'm proud. If you see me smiling, standing straight up, gold around my neck, it's not because I'm conceited. It's because I'm proud of what I achieved. I made this. I worked hard for this. That's all this is about.
I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.
Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.
It's just music. It's playing clean and looking for the pretty notes.
When you use a metronome, you'll start to notice where the notes are falling, if they're on the beat, behind the beat, between the beat, and so on.
I was washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station at the time and I said, 'Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!'
Lee Morgan used to stand behind me when I was playing a ballad and he'd be hollering, "Play the pretty notes, man, play the pretty notes." I thought I was playing the pretty notes, but you know, things like that help you to reach a little further.
I'm pretty into music. Anything with music I love... I'm really big on lyrical content plus a good beat.
Rock & roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream...The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not for music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?
There's no such thing as bop music, but there's such a thing as progress.
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