BEBOP - photo 1

BEBOP

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£ 1 512
Auction dateClassic
29.09.2023 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1029158
Lot 507 | BEBOP
Rare pamphlet What is Be-Bop? by Walter ‘Gil’ Fuller, signed on the front cover by Dizzy Gillespie, 1948, and a concert handbill for ‘Symphony Sid’s ‘Bop’ Concert’ at the Royal Roost, Sunday Afternoon, 10 October, 1948, the line-up featuring bop greats Tadd Dameron, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Allen Eagers [sic], Max Roach and Art Blakey.

In the late 1940s the Royal Roost, which had originally opened as a fried chicken restaurant, became a key location in the development of bebop when owner Ralph Watkins persuaded New York jazz DJ Sid Torin to present a show from the Roost, beginning 6 April 1948. ‘“Symphony Sid’s Bob Concert” was an immediate success, with an overflow crowd on the very first night,’ writes Paul Combs. ‘On the strength of this, bop performers were added on the weekends starting Friday, April 30’ (Combs, Dameronia, 84). Instrumental in the popularisation of the new jazz style, the Roost began billing itself as ‘The House That Bop Built’ or ‘The Metropolitan Bopera House’. Demand was so great that a weekly Sunday matinee session was added from September 1948. As a guide to the new progressive jazz, Sid and concert promoter Monte Kay asked arranger Gil Fuller – best known for his work with Gillespie – to write this pamphlet, which was offered free of charge: ‘if you’d like to get this wonderful little pamphlet, just drop a self-addressed envelope to your boy Symphony Sid’. The pamphlet opens ‘It is impossible in one session to give a complete and comprehensive picture of Be-Bop… I think I can give you a verbal picture on the subject which will enable you to talk to your musical friends… If you feel something when you hear Be-Bop, you feel something because something is there. No one has ever been quiet about Be-Bop, they either like it or dislike it, violently. They never sit still on the question and I’ll tell you why’.

The handbill 227 x 150 mm, tipped at the corners to mount board 254 x 190 mm. The pamphlet 215 x 139 mm. Provenance: The Norman R. Saks Collection (Vail, pl.248-9). Literature: Driggs & Levine Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz, 1996, p.327 (the handbill illustrated).

[With:] a 1947 Dial Records promotional leaflet bebop Jazz: a catalog of contemporary american music, 229 x 101 mm, folding out to 229 x 406 mm. Ross Russell’s Dial Records was one of the foremost proponents of the bebop craze. Provenance: The Collection of Norman R. Saks.

[With:] a handbill for a one-off Sunday evening jam session at the Downbeat Club, New York, featuring Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, Allen Eager, Red Rodney, Fats Navarro, Art Blakey and others, 19 October 1947, 228 x 102 mm. Provenance: The Collection of Norman R. Saks.

[With:] [DODO MARMAROSA] VON PHYSTER, George (1909-1986). Original pen and ink concept cover artwork by George von Physter for an unidentified record by bebop pianist Dodo Marmarosa on Lyle Griffin’s small but influential Atomic Records label, signed by the artist, c.1946, 282 x 340 mm.

[With:] GRIFFIN, Nard. To Be or not to Bop. New York: Leo B. Workman, 1948. Third printing, with authorial inscription on the title page to jazz historian Rudi Blesh. Octavo (235 x 156 mm). Wire-stitched in the original yellow card pictorial wraps. One of the earliest detailed appreciations of bop and its personnel.

[And:] GILLESPIE, John Birks “Dizzy” (1917-1993) with Al FRASER. To Be or not to Bop. Durden City New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1979. First edition, signed and inscribed in black ink by Dizzy Gillespie on the front pastedown ‘To Avi, much, much love, Always, Sholem, Dizzy Gillespie, ‘79’’. The recipient was Avi D’lugoff, wife of Art D’lugoff who ran the Village Gate on Bleecker St., Greenwich Village, for almost 40 years. Octavo. Original cloth backed paper covered boards with dust-jacket; accompanied by six part-printed documents, retained carbon copies of Associated Musicians of Greater New York contracts for engagements at the Village Gate, New York, signed by Chico Hamilton, Yuseef Lateef, Horace Silver, Stan Getz, Ramsey Lewis, and Michael Olatunji, 1959-62, each 280 x 218 mm.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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