author here! sorry for the broken footnote links, i fixed 'em.
There's a lot of documentation of those players' heroin and alcohol use. Miles Davis' autobiography has a list in it somewhere of all the players that were abusing substances; a lot of it had to do with their need to play gigs back-to-back through the night to make a living. As for the schedules, I think it was Miles' book, but I can't find it exactly ... because they played all night, and rehearsed early in the morning after the clubs closed, it was hard to keep a group on a predictable recording schedule. The majors wanted big names with well-known hit songs, and the loose ensemble nature, original compositions, and unpredictable improv of bebop was pretty much the opposite of commercially viable at the time.
Scott DeVeaux's The Birth of Beebop is a great source, too.
I enjoyed the article, but I think this particular part is sloppy writing and connecting two things without proof. Despite substance abuse issues, it doesn't necessarily track that that's why majors avoided them. It could just as easily be because of these artists not being well known enough at the time. Or even other factors. If you're going to make such assertions about these people, I'd have the citations to back it up.
Plus, Bird had many labels release his music, including Savoy, Columbia, and Mercury. Dizzy was notoriously straight-laced, especially because of what happened to Bird. He lectured musicians about this all the time. He also preferred dealing with independent labels as opposed to the majors (although Bluebird was a subsidiary of RCA).
I know you don't include Miles in the list of people that labels avoided, but he didn't exactly have a reputation of being easy to deal with, and he signed with Columbia in 1955.
As for Trane, if I recall correctly, he was constantly panned by critics in the earlier years. He was signed to Atlantic in the late 50s before Giant Steps was released. They were certainly a major, no?
There's a lot of documentation of those players' heroin and alcohol use. Miles Davis' autobiography has a list in it somewhere of all the players that were abusing substances; a lot of it had to do with their need to play gigs back-to-back through the night to make a living. As for the schedules, I think it was Miles' book, but I can't find it exactly ... because they played all night, and rehearsed early in the morning after the clubs closed, it was hard to keep a group on a predictable recording schedule. The majors wanted big names with well-known hit songs, and the loose ensemble nature, original compositions, and unpredictable improv of bebop was pretty much the opposite of commercially viable at the time.
Scott DeVeaux's The Birth of Beebop is a great source, too.