Bud Powell's Jazz Style: Bebop

Bud Powell falls into the category of the jazz style of bebop. This style began in the 1940s and was something totally unexpected. It had really fast tempos, which were unusual for jazz at the time.”This was not dance music, and it was never really intended to be popular. It was jazz for the artists themselves and for the true jazz lovers.”(Hopkins Lesson 7). But become popular it did. Not only that but it “established the primacy of virtuosic solo improvisation” (Hopkins Lesson 7). In this sense, bebop established the bar for future practitioners of jazz since after the creation of this new style, jazz players started aiming for solo improvisation. The lyrics themselves weren’t as important as the unpredictability of the rhythms and the intricacy of the harmonies. A typical bebop style tune would usually consist of something like this: first the main theme would play, then there would be extended solos over the main theme’s harmonic structure, and the main theme would play again in the end. This differed from the swing that came before in the sense that swing had composed sections, where each section was either designated for improvisation or not.
One of the things Powell is known for is for using Parker’s style, but with the piano. Powell played chords with his left hand to accompany improvisations with his right hand. This made Powell unique in the sense that earlier piano styles included mostly non-stop left-hand playing. Not only did he play with both hands, but his right hand was extremely fast, amazing his listeners. Powell had a linear style, focusing more on single melodic lines rather than emphasizing chords (Lesson 8). “No one was more influential than Powell on the generation of modern pianists who followed.” (Lesson