Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs

by Martin Torgoff Narrated by Roger Wayne

Overview

Bop Apocalypse, a narrative history from master storyteller Martin Torgoff, details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric.



Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Reefer Madness, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the launch of heroin in Harlem.



Having spent a lifetime immersed in the overlapping worlds of music and drugs, Torgoff reveals material that has never been disclosed before. Bop Apocalypse is a truly fresh contribution to our understanding of jazz, race, and drug culture.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

12/19/2016
Well before the hippies hit the scene, a drug-soaked, music-mad bohemia was birthed in the 1930s, according to this intoxicated history of the first American counterculture. Journalist Torgoff (American Fool) entwines several cultural turning points and the circles that nurtured them: the shift from popular big-band jazz of the 1930s to avant-garde bebop of the 1950s, with its inward, psychological bent, featuring musicians Lester Young, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane; the crafting of the jazz-inspired Beat movement by anti-establishment writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Borroughs; and the drugs that fueled both groups: mellowing marijuana, ravaging heroin, and hallucinogens that unlocked the doors of perception. Torgoff’s account celebrates the jazz-beat confluence as a breakthrough into the beginnings of a multiracial, anti-square society. It’s also a fervent critique of the war on drugs—his villain is Harry Anslinger, chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics—that shades into drug romanticism as he insists, unpersuasively, that drugs crucially enriched artistic achievements. (A stoned Ginsberg, he gushes, beheld “the infinitude of the blue sky” and “saw the river of life flowing past” on Broadway.) This exuberant appreciation, made luridly entertaining by all the intoxicants, captures the wild energy and fertility of these seminal movements. Photos. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

"Luridly entertaining."—Publishers Weekly

A comprehensive and compassionate account of the intersections of jazz, race, and drugs in mid-20th-century America...from first page to last...Torgoff's descriptions of the music are excellent...Listen and read and weep. A textured story of human hope and hopelessness, of artistry that blossomed in the most daunting and, in some cases, demeaning circumstances.

—Kirkus

"[Torgoff] follows the birth of jazz in New Orleans, its development as the original soundtrack for drop-offs and underworld underlings, and its eventual progeny, the Beat generation."—The New Yorker

"Bop Apocalypse dissects how American drug culture was born and how it shaped American music...Torgoff seamlessly weaves one decade into the next."

—Wall Street Journal

"Bop Apocalypse dissects how American drug culture was born and how it shaped American music...Torgoff seamlessly weaves one decade into the next."
—Memphis Flyer

"Astutely reported...compellingly written...Torgoff cuts between scenes with the skill of a consummate filmmaker...A sometimes harrowing but essential read."

—Buffalo News

"Torgoff reveals material that has never been disclosed before."—East Bay Express

"[A] fascinating book - part musical and literary biography and part fast-moving sociological treatise...Bop Apocalypse is kind of three books in one as Torgoff weaves the narrative strands that bring the whole story together. Dig it, readers."—Houston Press

"It is a bold and fascinating book...incredibly evocative...vivid...well-researched...entertaining...enjoyable for anyone interested in jazz or the Beats."—Beatdom

"[C]lear-eyed... illuminating and entertaining."—Spectrum Culture

"Martin Torgoff's 'Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, The Beats, and Drugs' is an addictive look at America's early drug use...and the music that went with it."—The Entertainment Report

"Torgoff has written the first authentic history of how drugs became part of American culture...highly readable...fascinating." —Washington BookReview

"An intriguing look at the early rise of American drug culture and its relationship to the Beat poets and jazz."—People magazine

"An engrossing tale... Bop Apocalypse benefits greatly from a narrowed focus. There are a lot of stories to tell, and Torgoff does a masterful job of telling them."
—PopMatters

"[A] wide-ranging stud[y]."—American Literary Scholarship

Kirkus Reviews

2016-11-15
A comprehensive and compassionate account of the intersections of jazz, race, and drugs in mid-20th-century America.Journalist Torgoff (Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000, 2004, etc.), who has also worked in film production, focuses on a number of iconic characters, including Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, John Coltrane, William Burroughs, Miles Davis, and numerous others, exploring not only their artistry, but also their histories—and difficulties—with addictive drugs. Their stories are more or less familiar to fans of jazz and the Beats, but the author also tells us about Henry J. Anslinger, fierce head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Herbert Huncke (a lesser-known Beat writer and notorious junkie), Ruby Rosano (a heavy drug user who hung with Holiday), and others. Torgoff is a patent admirer of most of these artists, but sometimes his admiration soars a little too high: in one place, he notes (sans contradiction) that some compared Kerouac's work to "Proust's and Melville's and Shakespeare's." The author is interested not just in explication of these often tormented yet astonishing lives, but in highlighting the cultural clashes that accompanied them. The early public disdain for jazz, the fierce and pervasive racism of the era, the demonization of drug users (he mentions some severe penalties for possession), the reluctance of traditional music and literary critics to recognize the value of what was slapping them in the face—these issues lie at the heart of the text, from first page to last. Torgoff's descriptions of the music are excellent, yet many readers will probably wish for an accompanying CD. Listen and read and weep. A textured story of human hope and hopelessness, of artistry that blossomed in the most daunting and, in some cases, demeaning circumstances.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171010959
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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