Allen and his Naropa class continue to listen to Kerouac reading – this time from “The Beginning of Bop.”
For “The Beginning of Bop” see also here
“Bop began with jazz but one afternoon somewhere one a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking down past a men’s clothing store on 42nd or South Main in L.A. and from the loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art.”
AG: Okay, “wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head,” – that was the method – “a wild impossible mistake in” compositional prose, or poetry, like “gotta rub-a-dub-dub, bub.” What was that, “Got a match, bub?”
Student: “Ceegiboo”?
AG: Yeah, or “anybody got a ceegiboo?”, or “I gotta “wash my conduct”. Or some little mistake that all of a sudden he heard the sound of as music, or the subconscious meaning.
Student (Andy Clausen): “Taxi crabs and murdercycles.”
AG: Pardon me?
Student (Andy Clausen): “Taxi crabs and murdercycles.”
AG: Yeah. That was my line. That was my line. “Taxi crabs and murdercycles. Just stupid things we were saying to each other. Or little mistakes that we caught ourselves making and said and then recycled through our mouths, mistakes that you might have thought and then recycled through your mouth outloud because fun and interesting, like “The moon is a piece of tea,” or “taxi crabs & murdercyles.” That was a conversation of a New Years Eve, I think.
But then, this next piece is a description of how be-bop arrived, and he’s attributing the same shot to be-bop. That is to say that people heard these weird little sounds in their head that didn’t exist in music before, and so manifested them outwardly just because it was their own head, actually, and they did hear them and it sounded right in some funny way, like “salt peanuts, salt peanuts” – so it’s a description of his method, but projecting it on jazz, or bop.
“Bop. The name derives from an accident, America was named after an Italian explorer and not after an India king. Lionel Hampton had made a record called “Hey Ba-Ba Ree-Bop” and everybody yelled it and it was when Lionel would jump in the audience and whale his saxophone at everybody with sweat, claps, jumping fools in the aisles, the drummer booming and belaboring on his stage as the whole theatre rocked. Sung by Helen Humes it was a popular record and sold many copies in 1945, 1946. First everyone looked around then it happened- bop happened – the bird flew in – minds went in – on the streets thousands of new-type hepcats in red shirts and some goatees and strange queerlooking cowboys from the West with boots and belts, and the girls began to disappear from the street–you no longer saw as in the Thirties the wrangler walking with his doll in the honkytonk, now he was alone, rebop, bop, came into being because the broads were leaving the guys and going off to be middleclass models. Dizzy or Charley or Thelonious was walking down the street, heard a nose, a sound, half Lester Young, half raw-rainy-fog that has that chest-shivering excitement of shack, track, empty lot, the sudden vast Tiger head on the woodfence rainy no-school Saturday morning dumpyards, “Hey!” and rushed off dancing.
On the piano that night Thelonious introduced a wooden off-key note to everybody’s warmup notes, Minton’s Playhouse, evening starts, jam hours later, 10 p.m., colored bar and hotel next door, one or two white visitors some from Columbia some from Nowhere–some from ships–some from Army Navy Air Force Marines–some from Europe–The strange note makes the trumpeter of the band lift an eyebrow. Dizzy is surprised for the first time that day. He puts the trumpet to lips and blows a wet blur–
“Hee ha ha!”
AG: That was interesting. There was a strange note that makes somebody in the band lift an eyebrow. It’s like hearing those funny things of Pierre – like the peach juice and the leaves of lilies – everybody lifted their eyebrow because it was so strange and amazing. So it was the introduction of some little piece of intelligence suddenly into the sentence, for instance a musical phrase, so people began to responding and digging each other. So this is actually a good psychological description of the cultural change that led to what was called hipness of that day. Really hip to the fact that everything was alive and that you could actually communicate some little strange thing from the back of your head – you didn’t have to rely on, how are you, yes, how do you do. What is the price of eggs? Non-linear thinking, let us say…. If you want to put it in that funny context.
“The strange note makes the trumpeter of the band lift an eyebrow. Dizzy is surprised for the first time that day. He puts the trumpet to lips and blows a wet blur –
“Hee ha ha!” laughs Charlie Parker bending down to slap his ankle. He puts his alto to his mouth and says “Didn’t I tell you?”- with jazz of notes … Talking eloquent like great poets of foreign languages singing in foreign countries with lyres, by seas, and no one understands because the language isn’t alive in the land yet – Bop is the language from America’s inevitable Africa, going is sounded like gong, Africa is the name of the flue and kick beat, off to one side – the sudden squeak uninhibited that screams muffled at any moment from Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet – do anything you want – drawing the tune aside along another improvisation bridge with a reach-out tear of claws, why be subtle and false?
The band of 10 P M Minton’s swings into action, Bird Parker who is only 18 year old has a crew cut of Africa looks impossible has perfect eyes and composures of a king when suddenly you stop and look at him in the subway and you can’t believe that bop is here to stay – that it is real, Negroes in America are just like use, we must look at them understanding the exact racial counterpart of what the man is-and figure it with histories and lost kings of immemorial tribes in jungle and Fellaheen town and otherwise and and the sad mutts sleeping on old porches in Big Easonburg woods where just 90 years ago old Roost came running calling “Maw” through the fence he’d just deserted the Confederate Army and was running home for pone – and flies on watermelon porches. And educated judges in horn-rimmed glasses reading the Amsterdam News.
..The band realized the goof of life that had made them be not only misplaced in a white nation but mis-noticed for what they really were and the goof they felt stirring and springing in their bellies, suddenly Dizzy spats his lips tight..”
AG: I thought that was really brilliant that the goof he was talking about make the Black misplaced in a white nation but also mis-noticed. It’s a really strange perception. Like a tea-head’s perception, that you just mis-notice something. It’s one of the best phrasings I’ve ever seen for that … what do you call it, “White Chauvanism” – mis-noticing. It’s almost in Black dialect, the way he pronounces it. The intelligence in this is really amazing. The historical intelligence is what I really dig, as well, as the phrasing. But it’s the same intelligence, which is historically correct, or historically insightful. But also the phrasing is so funny that anybody can understand it.
Student: Lost kings.
AG: Yeah, the lost kings of Afric. Actually, his swift reference, his little swift sketch, to all the ancient history – the Benin civilization of Africa and others. He’s talking the Blacks here actually just being the heirs of lost kings and lost civilizations that the whites mis-noticed.
“..(tight)-drum together and drives a high screeching fantastic clear note that has everybody in the joint look up – Bird, lips hanging dully to hear, is turning slowly in a circle waiting for Diz to swim through the wave of the tune in a tone-less complicated wave of his own grim like factories and atonal at any minute and the logic of the made, the sock in his belly is sweet, the rock, zonga, monga, bang- In white creamed afternoons of blue Bird had leaned back dreamily in eternity as Dizzy outlined to him the importance of becoming Mohammedans in order to give a solid basis of race to their ceremony, “Make that rug swing, mother, – When you say Race bow your head and close your eyes.” Give them a religion no Uncle Tom Baptist – make them wearers of skull caps of respectable minarets in actual New York–picking hashi dates from their teeth – Give them new names with zonga sounds–make it weird –
Thelonious was so weird he wandered the twilight streets of Harlem in winter with no hat on his hair, sweating, blowing fog – In his head he heard it all ringing. Often he heard whole choruses by Lester or Bird or Dizzy or Bags. There was a strange English kid hanging around Minton’s who stumbled along the sidewalk hearing Lester in his head too – hours of hundreds of developing choruses in regular beat ll day so in the subway no dissonance could crash against unalterable choruses in implacable bars – erected in mind’s foundation jazz.”
AG: That’s really nice.
….The tune they were playing was All the Things You Are ….
AG: Actually, that’s, in a way, a definition of what I’ve been talking about- that Shelley-an line – that rising, ascending, unobstructed breath. The description of Seymour Wyse on the subway, hearing in his head unalterable marching forward of foundation – mind foundation music. And the phrasing is really good and it’s one of those great long sentences. Play that again. The guy was Seymour Wyse, an Englishman, who was a friend of Kerouac’s from Horace Mann who first took Kerouac up to Harlem, to Minton’s, to hear what he was speaking of here. Some of you may not know “Lester” – meaning Lester Young. “Bird” meaning Charlie Parker. “Dizzy” meaning Dizzy Gillespie. Some people here probably don’t know that, actually.
“…by Lester or Bird or Dizzy or Bags. There was a strange English kid hanging around Minton’s who stumbled along the sidewalk hearing Lester in his head too – hours of hundreds of developing choruses in regular beat ll day so in the subway no dissonance could crash against unalterable choruses in implacable bars – erected in mind’s foundation jazz.”
AG: “(U)nalterable choruses in implacable bars – erected in mind’s foundation jazz.” It just follows that same line from Melville through Wolfe.
These tapes, (there are four tapes), are in the Naropa Library. Has anybody here heard them? Yeah, well, I would say, if you want to hear Kerouac, just go listen to those tapes — they’re in the library. There’s a machine there. You can listen to them. And it’ll completely tune your ear. I think his voice and his pronunciation, the intelligence of the vowels as he pronounces them, the humor of his mouthing of the language, is really useful for actually learning poetry, appreciating poetry, and appreciating how to pronounce it. All of my poetic style in pronunciation comes from Kerouac, actually. Just an extrapolation of the appreciation of the vowels and consonants and the rhythms, and the marching forward of the bars.
I think, let’s take a little time off now. It’s twenty of five….
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately one-hundred-and-nineteen-and-three-quarters in and concluding at approximately one-hundred-and-thirty-two-amd-three-quarter minutes in