Soulful Hard Bop
tagStarted mid-1950sPeak 1958–1966Last big hit still active
Soulful hard bop pushes harder toward gospel feeling, church cadences, call-and-response riffs, and groove-centered emotional directness.
History
Where bluesy hard bop sounds lowdown, soulful hard bop sounds sanctified. Bobby Timmons, Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Lee Morgan helped make the style one of the most immediately lovable branches of modern small-group jazz.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- gospel-and-hard-bop studies
- hard-bop histories
- soulful modern-jazz references.