Word: bopping
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...cover artist first met this week's cover subject, neither quite knew what to make of the other. Painter Boris Chaliapin, son of the late, famed Russian basso, is somewhat more at home in the hot world of opera than in the cool domains of latter-day bop. In answer to requests, Jazz Pianist Thelonious Monk would mutter, "All reet," greatly confusing Chaliapin. When he finally caught on, Chaliapin replied in Russian-accented retaliation: "All root." During four sittings Thelonious had a disconcerting habit of dropping off to sleep. Chaliapin would yell at him, "Monk, Monk, wake up!", then...
...Sound. All the best players of the time would drop by to sit in at Minton's. Saxophonist Charlie ("Bird") Parker, Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Drummer Kenny Clarke and Guitarist Charlie Christian were all regulars and, in fitful collaboration with them, Monk presided at the birth of bop. His playing was a needling inspiration to the others. Rhythms scrambled forward at his touch; the oblique boldness of his harmonies forced the horn players into flights the likes of which had never been heard before. "The Monk runs deep," Bird would say, and with some reluctance Monk became "the High Priest...
...this bleak time by his friend, mascot and champion, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, 50. The baroness had abandoned the aseptic, punctual world of her family* for the formless life of New York's night people. In 1955 she acquired undeserved notoriety when Charlie Parker died in her apartment (BOP KING DIES IN HEIRESS' FLAT); she had merely made an honest stab at saving his life with gifts of money and medicine in his last few days. From then on, though, Nica cut a wide swath in the jazz world...
Monk was making a small but admired inroad into the "funk" and "soul" movements that had superseded the "cool." Funk was a deeper reach into Negro culture than jazz had taken before, a restatement of church music and African rhythms, but its motive was the same as bop's?finding something that white musicians had not taken over and, if possible, something they would sound wrong playing...
...jazz vocabulary like a teacher running a spelling bee; posing questions in rhythm and harmony, she would close her eyes to listen for the answers on bass and drums. Often she seemed concerned with cliches. But somehow, when her fingers sounded the familiar oo-bla-dee and ba-ree-bop, the old phrases rang like new coinage. Which was only right, since Mary Lou minted them first. In the old days when she played "zombie music" and early bop, her style was constantly in transition, constantly a skip ahead of jazz. Now, "playing in the tradition" is a high ideology...