Blues for Ti Jean

by novalark

Posted to WritersAndGenres on 2001-08-22 23:27:00

Bop began with jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk
maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious
Monk was walking down past a men’s clothing store on 42nd Street
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. Bop. The name derives from an accident, America was named for an Italian explorer and not after an Indian king.
Lionel Hampton had made a record called “Hey Baba 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 theater rocked…”Skidilibee-la-bee you, -oo, -e bop she bam, ske
too ria–Parasakiliaoolza–menooriastibatiolyait -oon ya koo.” They came into their own, they jumped, they had jazz and
took it in their hands and saw its history vicissitudes and developments and turned it in to their weighty use and heavily
carried it clanking like posts across the enormity of a new world philosophy and a new strange and crazy grace came
over them, fell from the free air, they saw pity in the hole of heaven, hell in their hearts, Billy Holiday had rocks in her
heart, Lester droopy porkpied hung his horn and blew bop lazy ideas inside jazz had everybody dreaming (Miles Davis
leaning against the piano fingering his trumpet with a cigarette hand working making raw iron sound like wood speaking
in long sentences like Marcel Proust)—“Hey Jim,” and the stud comes swinging down the street and says he’s read
bent and he’s down and he has a twisted face, he works, he wails, he bops, he bangs, this man who was sent, stoned
and stabbed is now down, bent and stretched-out–he is home at last, his music is here to stay, his history has washed
over us, his imperialistic kingdoms are coming. (On the Road, 1955)


Dean stands in the back, saying, “God! Yes!–and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. “Sal, Slim knows time,
he knows time.” Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and
suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing “C-Jam Blues” and he slugs in
his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as
sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half and hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays
tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every
language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages.
-Kerouac