Classic Beat Language The 1950s Beat Counterculture
Three of the great voices of the 1950s put their words to ink, offering glimpses of the creative use of the Beat brand of jive. In Hiparama of the Classics, Lord Buckley reworked Marc Antony's eulogy for Caesar as follows:
...The Roman Senate is jumpin' salty all over the place so Mark the Spark showed on the scene, faced all the studs, wild and other wise, and shook up the whole Scene as he BLEW:
Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger-Poppin' Daddies
Knock me your lobes!
I came here to lay Caesar out,
Not to hip you to him.
The bad jazz that a cat blows,
Wails long after he's cut out.
The groovy, is often stashed with their frames,
So don't put Caesar down.
Dan Burley, author in 1944 of the Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, visited the language on "Beatnik, Bop, Cool and Jive Talk" with the self-publication in 1959 of Diggeth Thou? From "Was Red Riding Hood That Good?" in that book comes this passage:
She felt like a droop as she sat on her stoop and bemoaned her lack just as her Maw Squaw laid this shot on the rack: "Honeychile," she gummed as the Hi Fi hummed, "I got a basket that'll blow Ol' Granny's gasket. It's loaded with meat and lots of things sweet. There's an apple and mess of scrapple. I put in some eggs and fried frog legs; some jello real mellow and a brief bit of beef as a spell of relief. There's cake and a milk shake, like soda pop and a scallop; a drip of suds for her thirsty old buds; some wine from a dandelion vine. I want you to beat out a light trot to Granny's pad-and don't you dare to speak to nary a lad-while hitting the track to the Old Lady's shack."
The third voice was Steve Allen whose appreciation of jive and the art of the Beat movement were both great. In Bop Fables, Allen takes a stab at "Goldilocks and the Three Cool Bears:
Shortly thereafter the downstairs door banged open and in walked three bears. "I smell Arpege," said the mama bear to her mate. "Gus, you've had a broad here." "You're out of your skull," said papa bear, "although it does look as if somebody had eyes for the soup over there." "I'm hip," said the mama bear. "And dig! The upstairs bedroom door is open." "Weirdsville," said the baby bear. "This whole thing is real nervous!" "Let's fall upstairs," said the papa bear, "and find out what the skam is."
Are these guys cool or what?