DescriptionThis study is a close reading of the influential Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition of Jazz in the 1940s by Ira Gitler. The first section addresses the large role oral history plays in the dominant bebop narrative, the reasons the history of bebop has been constructed this way, and the issues that arise from allowing oral history to play such a large role in writing bebop’s history. The following chapters address specific instances from Gitler’s oral history and from the relevant recordings from this transitionary period of jazz, with musical transcription and analysis that elucidate the ofen vague words of the significant musicians. The aim of this study is to illustrate the smoothness of the transition from swing to bebop and to encourage a sense of skepticism in jazz historians’ consumption of oral history.