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“The Cult of Bebop”
Number three: that beboppers spoke mostly in slang or tried to talk like Negroes is not so untrue. We used a few “pig Latin” words like “ofay.” Pig Latin as a way of speaking emerged among blacks long before our time as a secret language for keeping children and the uninitiated from listening to adult conversations. Also, blacks had a lot of words they brought with them from Africa, some of which crept over into general usage, like “yum-yum.” Most bebop language came about because some guy said something and it stuck. Another guy started using it, then another one, and before you knew it, we had a whole language. “Mezz” meant “pot,” because Mezz Mezzrow was selling the best pot. When’s the “eagle gonna” fly, the American eagle, meant payday. A “razor” implied the draft from a window in the winter with cold air coming in, since it cut like a razor. We added some colorful and creative concepts to the English language, but I can’t think of any word besides bebop that I actually invented. Daddy-O Daylie, a disc jockey in Chicago, originated much more of the hip language during our era than I did. We
didn’t have to try; as black people we just naturally spoke that way.
People who wished to communicate with us had to consider out manner of
speech, and sometimes they adopted it. As we played with musical
notes, bending them into new and different meanings that constantly changed,
we played with words.
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