Word: bop
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...vast pre-war array of hit music emporiums in this puritanical city, only the Savoy, on a moderate re-bop kick, and occasionally the Rio, featuring at present Andy Kirk and his atomic guitarist, Floyd Smith, are rocking to any other beat than three quarter time. Gone are the days when the respective hearts of the Boston Jazz Society, the Copley Terrace, the Ken, Maxie's, and the Tic-Toc were young and gay. O tempore, O mores! Some of us can be found of a gloomy week day eve crying in our beer at the Show Time where...
...bop is definitely not overheated jazz with dirty lyrics and doubletalk. It is a word for ultra-modern jazz, such as "Dizzy" Gillespie and others play. . . . The type of music played by Hipster Gibson, Slim Gaillard and others of that type is not really be-bop...
...such things usually do, it began on Manhattan's 52nd Street. A bandleader named John ("Dizzy") Gillespie, "looking for a way to emphasize the more beautiful notes in swing," explained: "When you hum it, you just naturally say 'bebop, be-de-bop.' " What be-bop amounts to: hot jazz overheated, with overdone lyrics full of bawdiness, references to narcotics, and doubletalk...
Today the bigwig of be-bop is a scat named Harry ("The Hipster") Gibson, who in moments of supreme pianistic ecstasy throws his feet on the keyboard. No. 2 man is Bulee ("Slim") Gaillard, a skyscraping, zooty Negro guitarist. Gibson & Gaillard have recorded such hep numbers as Cement Mixer, which has sold more than 20,000 discs in Los Angeles alone; Yop Rock Heresay, Dreisix Cents and Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? Sample lyrics...
Last week, in Los Angeles, be-bop got bebopped. Radio Station KMPC, outraged by both words and music, banned all Gaillard & Gibson records. Said Program Director Ted Steele: "Bebop . . . tends to make degenerates, out of our young listeners...