A blowing session????

@jafant Thanks for the suggestions. I have just about every OG Blue Note produced. So, i am familiar with these folks works.

My OP was wondering more along the lines if the particular genre at the time...mostly Bop, was pretty much a ’blowing session’ for a lot of these musicians. Which would lead me to my next question, perhaps this is why Miles Davis ’progressed’ into the discovery ( if you can call it that?) of fusion. Maybe ( and I don’t know this as a fact) he felt that these ’blowing sessions’ were somewhat limited in their scope and wanted to move the genre of jazz forward. This would be my guess, maybe someone knows more definitively about this theory??

I always thought of blowing sessions as some quick easy money, not the artists major work. But some are great and most are good 

@stuartk

One could also argue that there are "blowing sessions" that are equal to some well rehearsed recording dates. Both the quality of the material and its execution/interpretation are important. Great players can take a simple progression and "off the cuff" make it transcendent. Middling players can rehearse more complex compositions and be less compelling.

Let’s not oversimplify.

Agreed!! Spot on observation.

Charles

I concur with Charles1dad  about stuartk post ..

+1😊

"Which would lead me to my next question, perhaps this is why Miles Davis ’progressed’ into the discovery ( if you can call it that?) of fusion."

A reason (and not the only one,) is that Davis wanted to play music that would appeal to fans of rock music for bigger paydays. I have been searching (unsuccessfully, so far) for the attribution for the following event; In 1970, Miles Davis opened for the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West. He agreed to do this when he learned how much MORE money he could make filling 2000+ seat venues.

In a bigger scheme, by the late 1960s jazz was no longer "popular music." Steady paydays were getting harder to find for straight-up jazz musicians. This is why you had musicians like Wes Montgomery playing jazz versions of popular hits, and others leaving touring altogether to play as studio musicians, or tv and movie music ensembles.