With dance halls and ballrooms in decline, the music found a new home in nightclubs and concert halls, where the emphasis was on listening rather than dancing.
Bebop’s growth in the years immediately following World War II as both a musical and cultural phenomenon (the latter expressed through the emulation of Gillespie’s goatee and horn-rimmed glasses) paralleled a change in the way in which jazz was presented. With dance halls and ballrooms in decline, the music found a new home in nightclubs and concert halls, where the emphasis was on listening rather than dancing. As often occurs when such transformations take place, more traditional musicians took offense. Bandleader Cab Calloway disparaged bebop as “Chinese music,” while guitarist Eddie Condon, referring to a musical interval indicative of the new style, emphasized that he and his colleagues did not flat their fifths, they drank them.