In a chapter on the significance of jam sessions, the author reveals how late-night sessions so frequent in the '30s led to the development of small swing groups playing in nightclubs. This became more common in the '40s as the big-band era waned. Small nightclubs featuring jazz became widespread in big cities. This provided the young modernists a means of employment and an avenue to present their music to other musicians and the public. Kuhn suggests that as evidence for a new paradigm increases, it finally displaces the old paradigm, and the old paradigm is discarded as invalid.
Most jazz musicians play a mixture of bebop and swing.
DeVeaux blends his coverage of social and economic factors with technical analyses of the music. Although some knowledge of music may be helpful, the lay reader is not disadvantaged, because the author's analyses are not a large part of the narrative. This is a marvelous book. The research is exhaustive in both breadth and depth, and many notes are provided to indicate the source of the information. Scott DeVeaux's combination of social, economic and musical analysis illuminates the birth of bebop and should provide a model for the writing of jazz history in the future.