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Real Cerebral

Cabbages & Kings

We are living in a very close-knit community. I say this because no sooner had a column on Illinois Jacquet appeared than a friend of mine showed up--looking agitated and somewhat annoyed.

"You shouldn't do that," he said.

"What?"

Write about Jacquet."

"Why?" I asked.

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"That stuff's nowhere," he said. "That's why, it's just nowhere."

"People like it," I said, somewhat dumbfounded at his approach.

"People who don't know," he said. "That's who like it, people who don't know."

"And what do people who know like?" I asked.

His answer was short and to the point, "Bop," he said.

Bop is a word I'd heard many times before. Unlike Dixieland addicts, though, those who prefer bop seem to hold themselves intellectually aloof from the emotionally throbbing outpourings of the earlier jazz cults. This bespectacled friend was no different from the rest in this respect. I discovered this five days later when he called me on the phone.

"It's happening," he said.

"What's happening?"

"Konitz has moved into Storyville."

"Who?"

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