A style of jazz music that is an extension of bebop (or bop) music, incorporating influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. Its bass playing is more varied than in bebop, due in part to the prominence of such virtuosos as Charles Mingus and Ray Brown, and is in part intended to be more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with or not fond of bop. It may also in part be regarded as the natural creation of a generation of black American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music.

Musicians who contributed to hard bop include Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver.

Hard bop was developed in the 1950s and 1960s and enjoyed its greatest popularity in that era, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz.