AFTER HOURS is an excellent live document of the early roots of bebop, capturing this exciting music in the process of being built by its pioneering architects. Recorded live in New York City at jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House in 1941, these tapes feature young modernists Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and Don Byas as they pushed the structural materials of swing toward something new and intense.