various artists - Bop Lives!

When bebop came along in the mid-'40s, the style encountered more than its share of hostility; some swing and Dixieland musicians had difficulty comprehending the innovations of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. Regardless, bop remained, and when Delmark assembled this bop-oriented compilation in 2003, the style had been around almost 60 years -- which is saying a lot when you consider that bop's early detractors hoped that it wouldn't live to see the '50s. Spanning 1944-1998, Bop Lives! offers a 32-minute sample of the contributions that Delmark and Apollo (whose catalog Delmark owns) have made to bebop and hard bop. This CD is hardly the last word on Delmark's bop output; Delmark, after all, has been around since the early '50s and has turned out to be one of the most enduring labels in the history of jazz and blues. But if Bop Lives! barely scratches Delmark's surface, it's a generally impressive surface.

The disc gets off to an exciting start with Coleman Hawkins' 1944 recording of "Woody 'n You," which features trumpeter Gillespie and has often been cited as one of the earliest bebop recordings -- and Delmark keeps the momentum going with tracks by heavyweights like Donald Byrd ("Blues Walk" from 1955), Jimmy Forrest ("All the Gin Is Gone" from 1959), and Bud Powell ("Rifftide" from 1962). Most of the selections are instrumental; the exceptions are Babs Gonzales' 1947 recording "Ray's Groove" and the obscure Francine Griffin's 1998 performance of "Anthropology." It should be noted that the delightfully quirky Gonzales was quite daring for his time; in the '40s, he was among the first singers to bring the complexities of early bebop to the vocal realm. Although solid, most of Bop Lives! falls short of definitive; this CD is nonetheless an enjoyable, if brief, celebration of Delmark and Apollo's contributions to bop.