How to Speak Hip (1959/1961??*)
13 tracks, 36 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes
Learning different languages is essentially essential in our globalised world; not only does it allow you to communicate with a wider number of people, but it also allows you to view life and the world from a different perspective – by expanding your vocabulary into different languages, it opens up entirely new emotional resonances.
To that end, today’s album is an instructional record. How to Speak Hip offers valuable guidance ‘for English-speaking people who want to talk to – and be understood by – jazz musicians, hipsters, beatniks, juvenile delinquents and the criminal fringe.’ It is filled with language instruction and vocabulary building, as well as deeper dives into the wider culture, and we’re helped down this path by esteemed linguist Del Close and ‘actual hipster’ Geets Romo. Along the way, we discover the key differences between ‘cool’ and ‘uncool,’ learn how to properly identify the differences between ‘put ons,’ ‘put downs,’ ‘come ons,’ ‘come downs,’ and ‘bring downs,’ and really get to the bottom of the nuances inherent in the concept of ‘dig.’ We also learn about the hipster lifestyle on a series of field trips and exclusive access to a real hipster gathering to observe the spinning of a live riff or three. At the end of the journey, you should have all the starting tools to ‘convince a real hipster that hip is your language.’
Yes, this is a comedy record. It is devilishly funny and that it still holds up so well 60 years* after its first release is an amazing feat. Where a lot of the contemporary lampoons of hip culture really do seem naff and dated today, I think the reason that How to Speak Hip still works is that it is a lampoon made with love. Both Close and Brent were members of that same bohemian fringe, meaning that this album is comedy about hipsters, by hipsters and for hipsters – the joke is as much on straight society as it is the hip. In that way, it does actually offer a window into the hip scene in a ‘satire is a mirror’/‘many a true word is spoken in jest’ sort of way.
I consider How to Speak Hip to be one of the coolest records I own. Not only is it hilarious and eminently quotable (samples from this album show up in many unexpected musical surroundings, and I’ve slipped in Geets Romo quotes in lots of my professional writings too), it also has the feeling of being a real cultural artefact direct from one of the coolest subcultures of them all, just as much as a Charlie Parker record or a Beat novel.
Del Close and John Brent are laying down these riffs, and if you’re into jazz, hipsters or anything cool, you better pick up on it – let these cats hang you up. And above all: dig it.
* Time for me to get a bit nerdy about dates. This is a mystery I have yet to solve and I wonder whether it ever could be, if it’s even possible. Almost all sources – even bona fide academic texts – list the album as being released in 1959. 1959 was so important for jazz and it would stamp this album as being one of the many scene-defining works of that year. However, near the end of the album is a really short clip – just four seconds – of the solo from ‘We Free Kings’ by Roland Kirk…which was recorded in 1961. Therefore, in this particular state, How to Speak Hip couldn’t have been released in 1959. A few places, such as discogs or the British Library list the record as being from ‘1961?’ but those revisions only happened after I sent emails/comments to the same effect. So who knows when this is from? Not I. It doesn’t really matter. But it’s definitely a puzzle!
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