Do You Get It?

For its French readers, Paris' Le Jazz Hot review was trying to explain the artistry of U.S. Bebopper Charlie ("Yard-bird") Parker. Excerpt:

"And then after the fa (that's really the incredible moment when one can say Charlie is great . . .), Charlie returns to the sol. Do you get it? No, you don't get it. A moment and you will see: sol, mi, fa, sol. . . there it is, in the groove, the true groove. Ah! that second sol . . ."

Last week, while Jazz Hot was doing its best to unfuddle bop, curious and carefully shellacked socialites, fringe-faced Left-Bank intellectuals, and, of course, les zazous eternels (hepcats) were packing Paris' big, modern Salle Pleyel to dig the "true groove" for themselves.

They had plenty to dig. French Jazzman Hugues Panassie had been applauded for bringing Louis Armstrong to blow at his Nice festival last year (TIME, March 8, 1948), but criticized for leaving out U.S. boppers. For this year's International Jazz Festival, rival Jazzman Charles Delaunay was playing it safe by inviting both the bop artists and two-beat specialists from half a dozen European countries and the U.S. The French radio blared out the goings-on for ten days.

Switzerland's studious, bespectacled Hazy Osterwald led a "moldy fig" (bop-eese for Dixieland) combo into town, proclaiming that his life was devoted "to imposing good music on the Swiss dance hall." He got more sympathy than applause. But French Clarinetist Claude Luter, who learned his style from old King Oliver records, got his usual stamping raves. And when Goesta Toerner's All-Star

Swedes stepped from the stand, exhausted, they had the zazous mopping their brows too. "Who would have thought those cold Nordics could burn so hot?" they marveled, and "hot enough to crack those icebergs!"

But pandemonium was saved for the old masters. Trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page's "emotion authentique" blues soon had them breaking their hands for joy. Grizzled Sidney Bechet, who has been nozzling out New Orleans classics on clarinet and soprano sax since 1911, got a Toscanini's wild and respectful ovation, And when Yardbird Parker cut loose, puffing his tenor sax like a big cigar, the zazous drooled, twitched and finally screamed.

What did Paris think of Parker's bebop? Said one Paris paper: "A force of nature."

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