Gdoodle: I happen to be listening to Mingus as I type this, and I have almost all of John Scofield's discography in my collection. He happens to be my favorite guitarist. I did not post all the jazz I enjoy listening to. I don't have any Ornette Coleman yet. I haven't heard much of his work and not been grabbed by what I have heard. No need to cringe Gdoodle, I'm not trying to pigeonhole these artists- I'm trying to understand these genres and how one differentiates them. I greatly enjoy what I hear; I'd like to be able to tell the differences as I move hear these genres. Re-reading my post, I think I did a poor job of communicating that. It would be slighting their art to try to pigeonhole them. That is definitely not it for me.
Jazz guys: Bebop, Hard Bop etc.
I've been seriously into Jazz since I seriously became interested in high end gear (about 4 years). I listen primarily to jazz and primarily to Miles, Monk, Coltrane, and Rollins. I have many of the classic discs by these guys as well as some discs by Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Gene Ammons, and Wayne Shorter. I have discs by Clifford Jordan, Andrew Hill, Dexter Gordon and Eric Dolphy. I think of these guys primarily as hard bop players. I also now that their playing spanned the genres of bebop, hard bop, and post bop. But as a jazz novice, I wonder, do the jazz classics by these artists generally fall into the hard bop genre or a combination of these other genres? Thanks for your insights.