Jazz is improvised, but jazz is also a language. Every phrase by every major stylist is in conversation with a lineage.
Miles played with Charlie Parker, the avatar of bebop. As a generic term, “bebop” can cover a lot of terrain, but Parker himself created a specific melodic language, a specificity only matched by Bud Powell. Bird and Bud do not play the same phrases, but they share some mysterious higher ideal when it comes to the improvised line. I don’t know what it is, and I have never seen an accurate description of it, either … for myself, I call it “high bebop” or “true bebop.”
I would love to know what Iverson means by this. It would be fun to hear him play a few phrases illustrative of this “mysterious higher ideal.” ♫