As the newest, most unorthodox brand of jazz, be-bop has been a both precocious and pungnacious baby. With Dizzy Gillespie as their Grand Lama, bopsters have proceeded to produce some mighty strange music. They've also given the language some new, very expressive superlatives ("crazy," cool," "the most," "the greatest," "the end"), given humor a thing called the bop joke, and the world of fashion Dizzy's own beret, goatee and bop glasses.
Bop fans are as extreme as their special language. To them, there is no real music besides be-bop, and other kinds of jazz are as dated and old-hat as the minuet. Anybody who doesn't dig their new sound is, in bopology, a "cube" (a 3-D square), but they've a special name for those who still enjoy dixieland jazz: Fig.
Last month at the Blue Note in Chicago, Louie "Satchmo" Armstrong, the most fabulous dixieland jazzman of them all, had a few words for bopsters everywhere. And, as might be expected, Satch said it with music. After blowing through a few fine standards like Muskrat Ramble and High Society with his All Stars, Louie stepped up to the mike and gave out with a special version of "The Whiffenpoof Song" that brought down the house.
This month he's repeating the performance to packed houses at the Basin Street in New York and a Decca recording of the tune promises to make it one of the big novelty numbers of the year.
"The Whiffenpoof Song" by M. Minnigerode, G. S. Pomeroy, T. B. Galloway, R. Vallee Copyright, 1936, 1954, Miller Music Corp Used by special permission of copyright proprietor.
"From the tables up at Birdland, To the place where Dizzy dwells, In their beards and the funny hats they love so well."
"All the boppers are assembled, And when they're really high, They constitute a weird personnel!"
"They are poor little cats Who have lost their way. Baaaa, baaaa, baaaa."
"They are little lost sheep, Who have gone astray. Baaaa, baaaa, baaaa."
"There's dixieland music they condemn, But every wrong note they play is a gem. So Lord, have mercy on every one of them. Baaaaa, baaaaa, baaaaa."
