SOMEBODY upstairs in Simple’s house had the combination turned up loud with an old Dizzy Gillespie record spinning like mad filling the Sabbath with Bop as I passed.

“Set down here on the stoop with me and listen to the music,” said Simple.

“I’ve heard your landlady doesn’t like tenants sitting on her stoop,” I said.

“Pay it no mind,” said Simple. “Ool-ya-koo,” he sang. “Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop! Be-Bop! Mop!”

“All that nonsense singing reminds me of Cab Calloway back in the old scat days,” I said, “around 1930 when he was chanting, ‘Hi-de-hie-de-ho! Hee-de-hee-de-hee!’”

“Not at all,” said Simple, “absolutely not at all.”

“Re-Bop certainly sounds like scat to me,” I insisted.

“No,” said Simple, “Daddy-o, you are wrong. Besides, it was not Re-Bop. It is Be-Bop.”

“What’s the difference,” I asked, “between Re and Be?”

“A lot,” said Simple. “Re-Bop was an imitation like most of the white boys play. Be-Bop is the real thing like the colored boys play.”

“You bring race into everything,” I said, “even music.”

“It is in everything,” said Simple.

“Anyway, Be-Bop is passé, gone, finished.”

“It may be gone, but its riffs remain behind,” said Simple. “Be-Bop music was certainly colored folks’ music—which is why white folks found it so hard to imitate. But there are some few white boys that latched onto it right well. And no wonder, because they sat and listened to Dizzy, Thelonius, Tad Dameron, Charlie Parker, also Mary Lou, all night long every time they got a chance, and bought their records by the dozens to copy their riffs. The ones that sing tried to make up new Be-Bop words, but them white folks don’t know what they are singing about, even yet.”

“It all sounds like pure nonsense syllables to me.”

“Nonsense, nothing!” cried Simple. “Bop makes plenty of sense.”

“What kind of sense?”

“You must not know where Bop comes from,” said Simple, astonished at my ignorance.

“I do not know,” I said. “Where?”

“From the police,” said Simple.

“What do you mean, from the police?”

“From the police beating Negroes’ heads,” said Simple. “Every time a cop hits a Negro with his billy club, that old club says, ‘BOP! BOP!… BE-BOP!… MOP!… BOP!’

“That Negro hollers, ‘Ooool-ya-koo! Ou-o-o!’

“Old Cop just keeps on, ‘MOP! MOP!… BE-BOP!… MOP!’ That’s where Be-Bop came from, beaten right out of some Negro’s head into them horns and saxophones and piano keys that plays it. Do you call that nonsense?”

“If it’s true, I do not,” I said.

“That’s why so many white folks don’t dig Bop,” said Simple. “White folks do not get their heads beat just for being white. But me—a cop is liable to grab me almost any time and beat my head—just for being colored.

“In some parts of this American country as soon as the polices see me, they say, ‘Boy, what are you doing in this neighborhood?’