Reading Texts
 
 
 
 

ISSUES:

MUSIC

RACE

CULTURE

Number eleven: that beboppers acted weird and foolish is a damned lie.  They tell stories about people coming to my house at all hours of the day and night, but they didn’t do it.  They knew better than to ring my bell at four o’clock in the morning.  Monk and Charlie Parker came up there one time and said, "I got something for you."

I say, "O.K., hand it to me through the door!"  I’ve been married all my life and wasn’t free to do all that.  I could go to most of their houses, anytime, because they were always alone or had some broad.  Lorraine never stood for too much fooling.  My wife would never allow me to do that.

Beboppers were by no means fools.  For a generation of Americans and young people around the world, who reached maturity during the 1940s, bebop symbolized a rebellion against the rigidities of the old order, an outcry for change in almost every field, especially in music.  The bopper wanted to impress the world with a new stamp, the uniquely modern design of a new generation coming of age.