Anyone Have A Prior Essay About A Singer/band?

[jrok]

I have a paper due in one of my classes on Monday that has to be on a singer/band post 1955..if there is at least one reference from a book that would be great.. if anyone has anything at all it would be appreciated..i figured i would just give this a try....

 

Thanks

[no yu begin wher i end]

Does it have to be a singer/band? I just did a 4000-word essay on jazz-trumpeter Miles Davis, try and get his biography (by Ian Carr) or autobiography (written with Quincy Troupe). The thing about Miles was that he was constantly changing his music, he must've gone through 7 or 8 different styles from 1945 to 1991. But since you want post-1955, I'll try to break it down very generally:

 

1955-58: First Great Quintet with John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums). Key albums: Cookin', Workin', Steamin', Relaxin'. These were all recorded in two seperate sessions, and most of the songs are first takes.

 

1957-59: Orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans. Sketches of Spain, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess are the albums. Orchestral jazz such as this pretty much didn't exist until this.

 

Late 50s-early 60s: Modal jazz. Kind of Blue was the first record to make soloing over scales (modes) instead of chords popular and is probably Miles' single greatest contribution to jazz (in my opinion).

 

Mid-to-late-60s: "Free bop" with Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums). This group was pretty experimental for jazz of the day. In many songs there is little or no swing (when eighth-notes are played in a long-short long-short pattern) and the drumming actually starts to resemble rock in some ways (which is where Miles was heading).

 

1968-1975: Fusion - Essentially combining jazz and rock into one. It started with electric instruments on some songs from Miles in the Sky and continued to the fully electric In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew (probably the definitive fusion album), and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (Jack Johnson was a boxer in the early 20th century). Later in the 70s, the music started to turn farther away from jazz and more towards African-influenced rhythms and melodies. On the Corner is a good album for that. From 1975 to 1980, Miles was just a druggie who holed up in his home and pretty much wasted away until 1980.

 

1980-1991: Disco/funk - Developing more of a disco-inspired sound and beats, it's pretty self-explanitory. Synthesizers and electric guitars drive the songs. Personally, it's not my favourite but there are some good songs there. Aura is a good album. When he died in 1991, he recorded a hip-hop album called Doo-Bop.

 

Anyways, there's a brief overview of Miles Davis 1955-onwards. Hopefully that helps. Some of the later material (1970-onwards) is a little hard to find over file-sharing services.