23 April 2024
Birth of the Cool
Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde
Lewis MacAdams
The Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2001. 287pp. 40 great B&W photos. References (20pp). Index.
This is a very easy read since it’s well-written and has a lot of section breaks within each chapter, so it’s easy to sort of pick up and put down without having to finish the entire chapter.
Basically starts up in the 1930s and follows the jazz scene (esp. Miles Davis, Cab Calloway) until we get to the avant-garde and “pop art” scenes with folks like Andy Warhol and then the beat generation with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and then the hippie/folk scene with Seeger, Guthrie, Dylan, Joan Baez.
“The birth of cool took place in the shadows among marginal characters, in cold-water flats and furnished basements” (23). However, “as soon as anything is cool, its coolness starts to vaporize” (19).
Peter Stearns: Cool conveys an air of disenchantment, of nonchalance, “shattering the personality from embarrassing excess” (19) — which is the overall theme of the book.
Slanguage
“Beat” came from conflating ‘beatific’ (as in “beat down”) and ‘Sputnik’ (14)
“Cool” first comes from an 1825 satirical magazine – “right cool” as in impudent, insolent or daring. Supposedly the modern term is from the Mandingo word for “gone out” or “trippin’” and was used by Afro-Americans in Florida as early as 1935 (16-17). But maybe coined by Lester Young (19). “For black men, ‘cool’ essentially defines manhood. Only one’s peers can bestow cool” (19).
“Bebop” was a kind of code, used by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie in 1942 (though no one knows for sure how it was coined. But Dizzy said, “If you’re doing boom-boom, and you’re supposed to be doing bap on a boom-boom, that’s just like beeping when you should have bopped” (45). Beboppers were the 1st generation of thoroughly schooled black musicians. They could read music and some had gone to college. They presented themselves with berets, goatees and horn-rimmed glasses to show a rejection of rural roots and affinity with the European avant-garde. (45)
A “Johnson” — a good person/good people (112)
“Drag” “jive talk,” “scram,” “palooka,” “pushover” – you had to know which words were in vogue at any given time. (116-19)
“I dig/dig it” — maybe coined by Norman Mailer. “A ‘cool cat’ said ‘I dig’ because neither knowledge or imagination comes easily and one must exhaust oneself by digging into the self. If you do not dig you lose your superiority over the Square…and less likely to be in control of a situation” (200).
“hootenanny” — Seeger says he first heard the word at rent parties in Seattle, c. 1941 (255), though the origin might be Scots/Appalachian for open-mic folk or country music parties. The term became well known in early 1960s with an ABC musical variety show (which later became Shindig as tastes changed)
Pop Art & Folk Rock
The last part of the book deals with new wave cinema of Belmondo and Godard and “American cool” with Jimmy Dean, Lenny Bruce, Lelia Goldoni (Shadows), Kerouac, Warhol and The Factory. Seems like everyone was either a drug addict or alcoholic. “Heroin was our badge” (trumpeter Red Rodney) (56). The book closes with an extensive treatment of Bob Dylan—his rise and his fans’ consternation when he went electric.
The American folk music renaissance can be dated from when Pete Seeger met Woodie Guthrie at a benefit for migrant farm workers in March 1940. (255). Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” was written while he was awaiting trial for “contempt” during his trial for supposedly being a Communist (256)
Featured photos:
Gil Evans, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Jean-Paul Sarte, Juliette Greco, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine, Theolonius Monk, Billie Holiday, Chano Pozo (Afro-Cuban), Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Joan Vollmer, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Cage, Alan Watts, Marlon Brando, Gregory Corso, Norman Mailer, James Dean, Lenny Bruce, John Cassavetes, Jean Seberg, Andy Warhol, Nico, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger
Birth of the Cool is also a 1957 compilation album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
Books In Action 