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Due to the ever expanding jazz industry, the white population of America started to take notice of the direction this music was taking. Soon, ballrooms and dance clubs were filled with social dancing for this new set of audience. Although still racially segregated, large numbers of whites flocked to dance halls and the new hotel super clubs. The struggle lied in making jazz a distinct music over the standard dance musical genre that prevailed at that time. The chapter talks about the white jazzmen, such as Keppard, Noone, and Goodman. There are others, however, who wished to expand their music out the commercialized dance bands onto an orchestra level. They felt restrained with the rigorous ritual of daily dance music, which so much dampened their artistic freedom, they felt.

Hard Bop begins with the “badness” of jazzmen, both in music and their personalities, as illustrated through jazz trumpeteer Lee Morgan, bad because of his “dirty” solos and complicated loves, culminating in death by the hand of a woman. During Lee Morgan's time, jazz was flourishing: clubs everywhere, with owners and managers encouraging unknown talents to come to the clubs to play (regardless of them being too young to be in drinking places). However, these favorable circumstances did not remain consistent throughout Morgan's career. He struck a hit in 1946 with “The Sidewinder”—a success that he was unable to replicate; in fact, within a few years after “The Sidewinder,” jazz lost most of its popularity. By 1970, the scene was fast fading and those who didn't have as much success as Morgan early on were unable to make a living out of jazz. Since then, the decade spanning 1960 to 1970 remains unparalleled as the time that produced the best and the most records.

When jazz was divided in the 1950s between Traditional and Cool, “mainstream” became the collective term for all forms, united only by virtue of all jazz being expressive and swinging. These twin virtues were especially emphasized in hard bop. These twin virtues, however, are not enough to define hard bop, which contains many worlds and different types of muscians: experimentalist, popular, offbeat and gentler, more lyrical players. The chapter goes on to enumerate and describe the lives of the era's best jazzmen. The number and variety of ways with which these jazzmen innovated and expressed individuality actually questions the suggestion of them being made common by the term, mainstream. However, David Rosenthal points out that jazz in this period was mainstream because, “almost everyone good was playing it”.

This chapter describes the economical viability, i.e., prominence of jazz, among black neighborhoods. Critics assume that bebop put an end to jazz being popular in the 1940s, when actually, jazz remained prominent in black neighborhoods, until it was eclipsed by pop in the late 1960s. Looking at jazz labels' singles during this period will lend a view of blacks' tastes during the time. The time between 1945 and 1955 also drew a remarkable pool of creative talents, and bars and clubs reinforced the popularity of jazz. It was a scene of artists and experimentalists who had a rapport among themselves. However, the community wasn't just leaning towards music, it was also leaning towards bohemianism, which (while encompassing many attributes) predisposed people to turn to drugs. This, as well as the work of artists at that time being undervalued outside of the community, led many to turn to heroin.

This chapter dwells on the ways with which the players of the time approached jazz. Some of them, like Jimmy Rushing, generated sounds big enough “to be heard over seventeen wailing musicians.” These musicians were sometimes called honkers or screamers, and are the main focus of this chapter. Honkers and screamers literally caused riots. In fact, Paul Williams managed to close down “every dance hall in Baltimore,” further adding that “there wasn't one that closed without a riot.” This elemental, raw energy, was characteristic of jazz during the period, as exhibited by the many names and incidents narrated throughout this chapter. In the end, Rosenthal wraps up his discussion of the uncompromising honkers and screamers with, “not only musical basics but also emotional ones can be found in their work: the joy, tenderness, and pain of existence, and the hard battle to wrench transcendence out of daunting circumstances.”

Four superbad jazzmen, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane, were the embodiment of jazz that is at once earthy and exalted. These four giants were superbad because they tried to work out a jazz style that was their own, shaking off tired bebop clichés, breaking free from traditional jazz harmonies and changing a few things that did not fit with the personal ways they wanted to leave a stamp on the genre. These four musicians had their own styles, but in the idea that jazz could not be created by sticking to a formula, they were united. These four musicians would go on to influence many, many artists and contribute significantly to the already multilayered art form that is jazz music.

Jazzmen (1939) was the first book to place New Orleans at the origin of jazz. Written by Frederic Ramsey Jr., Bill Russell, and Charles Edward Smith, the book relied heavily on what jazz musicians themselves said. La Nouvelle-Orléans Capital du Jazz, by Robert Goffin was published only in French in 1946. Goffin also interviewed New Orleans jazz musicians. This book has been less widely discussed, but contains valuable insights into the early years of jazz. Wilder Hobson, in American Jazz Music 1939, questioned how jazz counterpoint functioned. This issue is still unresolved. This chapter introduces the argument that jazz counterpoint is the product of the application of the principles of barbershop harmony as applied to the instrumentation of a jazz band.

In the late 1930s a new perception of New Orleans jazz and its history emerged. Two casual conversations that took place at about the same time, but in different locations, gave birth to the New Orleans Jazz Revival. The first was between cornet player Bunk Johnson and Louis Armstrong, who, along with his touring band, was making a series of one-night appearances in Louisiana at the time. The second conversation occurred between Fred Ramsey and the senior editor of Harcourt Brace & Company, which culminated in the publishing of the book Jazzmen in 1939. Interest in the revival of older jazz styles had its parallel universe in the Bourbon Street world of white New Orleans musicians. The record companies involved in the first years of the revival were small and with virtually no distribution, such as Delta Records. The revived recordings immediately became the subject of intent listening and heated discussions among the new generation of jazz writers and musicians.