1959: The Year That Changed Jazz Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards based on the lecture 1959: The Year That Changed Jazz, covering key albums, figures, and the intersection of jazz with the Civil Rights Movement.

1959

The year known as the one that changed jazz and when the genre reached white America in a big way.

Civil Rights Movement

A movement that jazz musicians did not necessarily join; rather, the movement joined the musicians.

Kind of Blue

An album by Miles Davis that is the biggest selling jazz album ever made and regularly tops lists of the greatest albums.

Take Five

A single released by Dave Brubeck that became the best selling jazz 45 ever released.

Dave Brubeck

A white American jazz musician who was easy to sell to middle America but was accused by some in the jazz community of being a sell out and a racist.

Cool Jazz

A jazz style in the 1950s where the musicians who achieved actual success were primarily white.

Eugene Wright

A black bassist whose presence led a Southern university to refuse a performance, resulting in Dave Brubeck refusing to go on stage.

Charles Mingus

A jazz musician referred to as the angry man who also called himself a mongrel or a mutt.

Ornette Coleman

A jazz musician who had a new far out and unorthodox approach that initially made it difficult to find interested listeners.

Soapbox

The way Charles Mingus utilized his bandstand to express political views.

Little Rock, Arkansas

The location where an attempt was made to integrate a high school, which served as the context for political jazz works.

Columbia records

The record label that would not allow Charles Mingus to include political words on the album version of Fables of Faubus.

Fables of Faubus

A song that opened up many pent-up feelings African American musicians held against racism in America.

Barack Obama

The U.S. President whose election is credited in part to the atmosphere created by jazz, which led to respecting people beyond the distinction of color.

Miles Davis

A musical pioneer and a pioneer of American culture in general who reached white Americans in a big way.