[78-L] Jazz as Dance Music

[Geoffrey Wheeler]

We all know that early jazz, like most forms of popular music, was 
intended for dancing. What we don’t think about is people dancing in 
the late 1950s to hard bop. I went several times to Small’s Paradise to 
hear the Jazz Messengers. Johnny Griffin was on the band at the time, 
and they would be playing loud and fast, and dancers would be out on a 
small dance floor jiving away. IK was really quite amazed people would 
even attempt to keep up with Messenger tempi.