Post-Bop
A flexible modern-jazz label rooted in the mid-1960s: still connected to bop, but more adventurous in harmony, rhythm, and improvisation.
Origins and context
The label is tied to the mid-1960s modern jazz scene, especially the Miles Davis Quintet and later musicians building on hard bop with modal, avant-garde, and freer improvisational ideas.
History
AllMusic places post-bop in the arc of modern jazz that grew out of hard bop and the mid-1960s Miles Davis Quintet, later used as a label for an updated, more eclectic mainstream jazz language. In that sense, the style is less a neatly bounded school than a practical name for music that keeps bop’s bite while letting the form breathe wider and stranger. The label shows up most clearly around recordings associated with Miles Davis’s second great quintet, including Miles Smiles, and in later decades it broadens to cover a wide range of modern jazz players who balance structure with improvisational freedom. That loose, evolving usage is part of the genre’s story: post-bop has always been as much about attitude and method as about a fixed sound.
Notable artists
- MDMiles Davis
- WSWayne Shorter
- HHHerbie Hancock
- TWTony Williams
- BEBill Evans
- WSWoody Shaw
- JHJoe Henderson
- MTMcCoy Tyner
Essential listening
- 1
- 2
Miles Davis
- 3
Post-Bop Music Subgenre Overview
Explore connected genres
Sources and further reading
- allmusic.com
AllMusic describes post-bop as an updated variety of hard bop influenced by the mid-'60s Miles Davis Quintet and aspects of free jazz.
- Apple Music
Apple Music identifies Miles Smiles by Miles Davis Quintet as part of Miles Davis’s jazz catalog and notes its freer rhythmic approach.
- allmusic.com
AllMusic lists Miles Smiles among post-bop album highlights and calls it exemplary post-bop.
- Miles Davis on Apple Music
- Miles Davis Official Site — Releases