Word: yardbird
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...masters. Trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page's "émotion authentique" blues soon had them breaking their hands for joy. Grizzled Sidney Bechet, who has been nozzling out New Orleans classics on clarinet and soprano sax since 1911, got a Toscanini's wild and respectful ovation, And when Yardbird Parker cut loose, puffing his tenor sax like a big cigar, the zazous drooled, twitched and finally screamed...
...purpose of overnight passes, because "any fool knows it takes more than a coupla hours to make any decent broad." The company commander suffers terribly because his wife, who plays bridge with the adjutant's wife, always knows what is going to happen before he does. The eternal yardbird, the eager second lieutenant, the PX floozie and the latrine lawyer are all old stuff to anecdote audiences, but "At War With The Army" presents them with such freshman and realism that they come to life again. Even the jokes, aged as they may be, are still pretty consistently funny...
...green-tinted horn-rimmed glasses, talk about their "interesting new sounds." The high priest is Dizzy, 30, a South Carolina boy whose rapid-fire, scattershot talk has about the same pace-and content-as his music. Whether he, an obscure Manhattan pianist named Thelonius Monk or Saxophonist Charlie ("Yardbird") Parker invented bebop is a matter of learned dispute among beboppers...
...beat da rap." As the Marines expanded to war strength, Lou Diamond was the ideal liaison between crusty old-timers and impressionable recruits. He taught quick action by threats of .yardbird detail and the rough side of a corrugated tongue. His men swore by Lou, remembered the time he dared a colonel to court-martial him for filching extra food for his men. "I'll beat da rap," said he, "I did it for da boys...
...Come on, you mortar men, rise and shine," he says softly, before reveille. The ensuing scramble is pure bedlam, because the last two men of the platoon to answer roll call get the "yardbird" detail. When the Marines sailed for the Solomons, officers debated whether to take ancient Lou Diamond overseas. Lou bellowed orders to his platoon so boisterously that he sounded like all the sergeants in the Corps. He went along...