The Boppenpoof Song
Pops vs Dizzy
The history of jazz is rich and complex. Many cultures and musical traditions were fused through proximity in the American south in the late 19th century. Most historians trace jazz up the Mississippi River at the beginning of 20th century starting in New Orleans and moving up to Kansas City, Memphis and Chicago. Then the musical forms being developed in late night clubs and music halls moved east, on to New York City.
Trumpeter Louis Armstrong was a younger trumpeter who rose out of poverty in New Orleans. His physical movements followed and traced the spread of jazz, but his musical style and vision lead the movement. Armstrong who saw the importance of personality and of developing soloists who demonstrated star power with audiences. He developed his own style, his own persona, and he was able to find common ground with audiences through his music and personality.
By the mid-1940’s, jazz musicians were looking to expand the complexity and vocabulary of jazz. Many felt that jazz had been surrendered to swing, and was at a dead end, and was not recognizing the complexity and diversity of its own origins.
Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie stepped into this controversy determined to take jazz in new directions. Together with musicians such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and many others, Gillespie developed the new form of jazz, Bebop. The new music required speed, dexterity and virtuoso skills from its musicians. Players were tested in ‘cutting sessions,’ after-hours jam sessions where musicians demonstrated their skills. The music often used uncommon harmonies, unusual rhythms, and wild free-form playing, over the chord changes of familiar pop-culture songs.
Proponents of the new music were critical of their predecessors for a variety of reasons, and the criticism was widely returned, in kind. The controversies represent an important time in American Jazz, as it felt its way in new directions, gained new respect, and reached out into the world.
In the early 1950’s, Armstrong recorded a song that fired a salvo at the bebop movement. “The Boppenpoof Song,” sung to the tune of ‘The Whiffenpoof Song,’ calls Gillespie out by name. This clip is from the Colgate Comedy Hour, September 19, 1954.