Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs
The gripping story of the rise of early drug culture in America, from the author of the acclaimed Can't Find My Way Home

With an intricate storyline that unites engaging characters and themes and reads like a novel, Bop Apocalypse details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new and revolutionary segment of the American social fabric.

Drawing upon his rich decades of writing experience, master storyteller Martin Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Harry Anslinger and 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 coming of heroin to Harlem. Aficionados of jazz, the Beats, counterculture, and drug history will all find much to enjoy here, with a cast of characters that includes vivid and memorable depictions of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Borroughs, Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, Terry Southern, and countless others.

Bop Apocalypse is also a living history that teaches us much about the conflicts and questions surrounding drugs today, casting many contemporary issues in a new light by connecting them back to the events of this transformative era. At a time when marijuana legalization is rapidly becoming a reality, it takes us back to the advent of marijuana prohibition, when the templates of modern drug law, policy, and culture were first established, along with the concomitant racial stereotypes. As a new opioid epidemic sweeps through white working- and middle-class communities, it brings us back to when heroin first arrived on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s. And as we debate and grapple with the gross racial disparities of mass incarceration, it puts into sharp and provocative focus the racism at the very roots of our drug war.

Having spent a lifetime at the nexus of drugs and music, Torgoff reveals material never before disclosed and offers new insights, crafting and contextualizing Bop Apocalypse into a truly novel contribution to our understanding of jazz, race, literature, drug culture, and American social and cultural history.
"1123408793"
Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs
The gripping story of the rise of early drug culture in America, from the author of the acclaimed Can't Find My Way Home

With an intricate storyline that unites engaging characters and themes and reads like a novel, Bop Apocalypse details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new and revolutionary segment of the American social fabric.

Drawing upon his rich decades of writing experience, master storyteller Martin Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Harry Anslinger and 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 coming of heroin to Harlem. Aficionados of jazz, the Beats, counterculture, and drug history will all find much to enjoy here, with a cast of characters that includes vivid and memorable depictions of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Borroughs, Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, Terry Southern, and countless others.

Bop Apocalypse is also a living history that teaches us much about the conflicts and questions surrounding drugs today, casting many contemporary issues in a new light by connecting them back to the events of this transformative era. At a time when marijuana legalization is rapidly becoming a reality, it takes us back to the advent of marijuana prohibition, when the templates of modern drug law, policy, and culture were first established, along with the concomitant racial stereotypes. As a new opioid epidemic sweeps through white working- and middle-class communities, it brings us back to when heroin first arrived on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s. And as we debate and grapple with the gross racial disparities of mass incarceration, it puts into sharp and provocative focus the racism at the very roots of our drug war.

Having spent a lifetime at the nexus of drugs and music, Torgoff reveals material never before disclosed and offers new insights, crafting and contextualizing Bop Apocalypse into a truly novel contribution to our understanding of jazz, race, literature, drug culture, and American social and cultural history.
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Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs

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

by Martin Torgoff
Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs

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

by Martin Torgoff

Hardcover

$32.00 
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Overview

The gripping story of the rise of early drug culture in America, from the author of the acclaimed Can't Find My Way Home

With an intricate storyline that unites engaging characters and themes and reads like a novel, Bop Apocalypse details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new and revolutionary segment of the American social fabric.

Drawing upon his rich decades of writing experience, master storyteller Martin Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Harry Anslinger and 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 coming of heroin to Harlem. Aficionados of jazz, the Beats, counterculture, and drug history will all find much to enjoy here, with a cast of characters that includes vivid and memorable depictions of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Borroughs, Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, Terry Southern, and countless others.

Bop Apocalypse is also a living history that teaches us much about the conflicts and questions surrounding drugs today, casting many contemporary issues in a new light by connecting them back to the events of this transformative era. At a time when marijuana legalization is rapidly becoming a reality, it takes us back to the advent of marijuana prohibition, when the templates of modern drug law, policy, and culture were first established, along with the concomitant racial stereotypes. As a new opioid epidemic sweeps through white working- and middle-class communities, it brings us back to when heroin first arrived on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s. And as we debate and grapple with the gross racial disparities of mass incarceration, it puts into sharp and provocative focus the racism at the very roots of our drug war.

Having spent a lifetime at the nexus of drugs and music, Torgoff reveals material never before disclosed and offers new insights, crafting and contextualizing Bop Apocalypse into a truly novel contribution to our understanding of jazz, race, literature, drug culture, and American social and cultural history.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780306824753
Publisher: Hachette Books
Publication date: 01/24/2017
Pages: 448
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Martin Torgoff has been at the forefront of major media trends and cultural currents for more than thirty years, documenting and telling the story of America through the evolution of its popular culture as an award-winning journalist, award-winning and bestselling author, documentary filmmaker, and Emmy-nominated television writer, director, and producer. His book American Fool: The Roots and Improbable Rise of John "Cougar" Mellencamp was the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award. He is also the author of Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000. Today Torgoff applies his understanding of American pop culture to projects that include articles, books, film, television, lectures, multimedia events, and advertising/promotion.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

1 Red-Dirt Marijuana 1

2 Stompin' at the Savoy 9

3 The Paranoid Spokesman 13

4 Two Hits of That Stuff, and Jack, You'd Be Mellow 25

5 The White Mayor of Harlem 29

6 Pops 38

7 The Misdo Gets Meanor and Meanor (Jailhonsely Speaking) 49

8 The Great Tenor Solo in the Shoeshine Jukebox 57

9 You Mean There's Something Like This in This World? 84

10 Once Known, Never Forgotten 94

11 The Shot Heard 'Round the World 105

12 You're Buzzing, Baby 112

13 And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks 116

14 Parker's Mood 130

15 A Ghost in Daylight on a Crowded Street 138

16 Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do 146

17 The Sacralization of the Mundane 157

18 That Was Our Badge 167

19 Blues for a Junkie Whore 183

20 Wild Form, Man, Wild Form … 197

21 Trust the Germans to Concoct Some Really Evil Shit 212

22 Holy the Bop Apocalypse! 223

23 'Round Midnight 238

24 Why Are All These Young Boys Being Hanged in Limestone Caves, Bill? 256

25 The Empirical Soul of Jazz 265

26 Peyote Solidities of Halls 277

27 A Readily Recognizable Stigmata 284

28 Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 299

29 It's All a Part of Their Poetic-No, Their Metaphysical-Education 308

30 Let Lady Live 315

The End of the Beginning: An Epilogue 337

Acknowledgments 349

Bibliography 353

Notes 369

Permissions Acknowledgments 395

Index 397

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