Bop Quotes & Sayings

I think the people are just looking for freedom in music ... There's a lot of she-bop she-bop going on out there. Maybe they're tired of that same old thing. — Rick James

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz. — Gunther Schuller

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a -

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a -

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!
Dream Boogie

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h! — Langston Hughes

I'm not leaving."

"I want you out of the city, and now. If the chalet doesn't suit you, go where you like. But you will go."

"I have no intention of going anywhere."

"Fuck it. You're fired."

"Very well. I will remove my belongings and book a hotel until -- "

"Oh, shut up. Both of you shut the hell up." She fisted her hands in her hair, yanked fiercely. "Just my luck, you finally say the words I've been waiting over a year to hear and I can't do my happy dance. You expect him to put his tail between his skinny legs and hide?" she demanded of Roarke. "You think when you're in the middle of this kind of mess he's just going to bop over to Switzerland and yodel, or whatever the hell they do there? — J.D. Robb

Vhat is your nom?" Preston had a lazy eye, and the alcohol added to the lopsided effect of his gaze.
"Shannon Tinker, and I watch you like you're a TV show." Shannon added a bop to her stance, unconsciously dancing to the beat of the song constantly playing in her head. — Debra Anastasia

Dave Rocha is a modern player out of the hard-bop tradition, with a beautiful sound and tremendous facility on the horn. You can hear the influence of Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and others in his playing, but Dave has his own voice, and it's a nice one! — Dan Feiszli

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music. — Dizzy Gillespie

Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights. — Julie Burchill

Chris Washburne is a superior hard bop player ... — Scott Yanow

Darlin ... be-bop is the music of the future. — Dexter Gordon

And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues. — Kurt Vonnegut

I've always wanted to do non-comedies. I've always done dramas, comedies, music, and I always like to bop around and do different things. — Frank Oz

I call my it "the Book of Paula" or BoP for short. Those are my own opinions, based on experience. — Paula Heller Garland

When the poor at the BOP are treated as consumers, they can reap the benefits of respect, choice, and self-esteem and have an opportunity to climb out of the poverty trap. — C. K. Prahalad

It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible. — Charlie Parker

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom. — Thelonious Monk

Back in the days when I was a teenager,
Before I had status, and before I had a pager,
You could find The Abstract, listening to hip-hop,
My pops used to say it reminded him of be-bop.
I said, 'Well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles.
The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin' like Michael.
It's all expected, things are for the lookin',
If you got the money, Quest is for the bookin'. — Q-Tip

On January 28th, 1982, I wrote in my diary, "Rock and roll is a king-sized version of jazzy, puck, swing, and be-bop. I don't want that. However, rhythmic beat's fine. — Rebecca Rose Orton

But I don't really listen to much be-bop at all at the moment. — Tom Jenkinson

It was always right in front of me. The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats and full-length fur-collared leathers, which was their armor against the world. They would stand on the corner of Gwynn Oak and Liberty, or Cold Spring and Park Heights, or outside Mondawmin Mall, with their hands dipped in Russell sweats, I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear, and all I see is them girding themselves against the ghosts of the bad old days when the Mississippi mob gathered 'round their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tell them we'll be dancing, dancing 'til we drop, it's time to get down and do the Horizontal Bop. — Bob Seger

Rob Mullins is a diverse keyboardist capable of both crossover and bop. — Scott Yanow

A loud song with a thumping beat rang from Jay's pocket. He gave me a goofy grin and began to bop his head back and forth to the rhythm. Oh, no-not the crazy booty dance.
"Please don't," I begged.
Jay broke into his funky ringtone dance, shoulders bouncing and hips moving from side to side. People around us stepped away, surprised, then began to laugh and cheer him on. I pressed my fingers against my lips to hide an embarrassed smile. Just as the ringtone was about to end, he gave a little bow, straightened up, and answered the call. — Wendy Higgins

The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope. — Maya Angelou

It's important to tell your story. It's important to listen. — Francesca Lia Block

We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop. — Ishmael Reed

Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop. — Jack Kerouac

There's no such thing as bop music, but there's such a thing as progress. — Coleman Hawkins

Bop is no love-child of jazz. — Charlie Parker

Be-bop wasn't developed in any deliberate way. — Thelonious Monk

I was washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station at the time and I said, 'Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!' — Little Richard

I hate to blow the mystique, but at the time we really liked bubblegum music, and we really liked the Bay City Rollers. Their song 'Saturday Night' had a great chant in it, so we wanted a song with a chant in it: 'Hey! Ho! Let's Go!'. 'Blitzkrieg Bop' was our 'Saturday Night'. — Joey Ramone

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind. — Francesca Lia Block

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. — Duke Ellington

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know. — Miles Davis

I'm not going to be dancing with the stars at this stage in my life. But I want to dance and bop around, and I did, and I can. — Angela Lansbury

Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple. — Langston Hughes

My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed. — J. D. Souther

To the Red Drum for sets, to hear Bird, whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos - not a challenging look but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging the eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work, — Jack Kerouac

Zip zop wop boopity bop. — Bill Cosby

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul. — Count Basie

Poor L.
We are sorry that you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid into a naughty prank. That sort of game will never again be played with you, firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers ans membranes of beauty make artists and morons loose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous air ships and coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP [Bird of Paradise]. We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours,
A & V (in alphabetic order). — Vladimir Nabokov

As a drummer my job is to reproduce what made the people bop their heads when they first heard the album on the radio, or when they watched the music video. — Eric Hernandez

Some guys said 'Here's bop!' Wham! They said, 'Here's something we can make money on!' Wham! 'Here's a comedian!' Wham! Here's a guy who talks funny talk!' — Charlie Parker

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background - even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes. — Piper Kerman