OT: What's a hepcat? :-)

JeffinMich

Anyone?

BSqr

lol

you should ask the person who uses that term as they would be best equipped to answer your question

GaCoinGuy

I humbly defer this question to our resident HepKitty........

















Mainly, cause I have no idea......being born in 1969. By 69, most everyone was too stoned to be hep.

python

Think Fonzie

Clankeye

I would say a hepcat would be like Mickey Rourke's character in the movie Diner.
Gene Vincent was a hepcat.
Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats is a hepcat.

Kenny G is not a hepcat.
Barry Manilow... no.
Richard Simmons, goes without saying.

BNE

How old are you, JeffinMich?

I'll let LucyBop answer the question, but will ask her the bonus question, too, to test her copaceticity: what was the origin of the term?

Edited to add: The "Louies" (Prima and Satchmo) were hepcats, too.

leothelyon

How old are you, JeffinMich?

That cracked me up. LOL

Leo

ClarkOfKent

You gotta be hip-to-be-hep-to-be-cool-to-be-popular. <- (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)

lathmach

Hepcat was a jazz musician from the 1930's. Louis Armstrong is generally credited with the word's origin.

Ray

BNE

But what was Louie referring to?

Clankeye

Wow, you guys are going back to the root, eh? I guess I'll stick around and learn something.

gemseeker

I thought the term referred to someone who is a connoisseur of the music back in the 1950's.
HEPCAT SITE

clw54

Maynard G. Krebs is a hepcat.

clevegreg

Man if ya gotta ask you aren't one

Greg

SarasotaFrank

obviously not me - I wasn't buying my intercepts from Wayne!

thebestMAX

Hep = Cool, rightgous, with it, informed
Cat = Dude
And dont forget the real "reet zoot suit"

Guess even these terms are dated though.

BNE

"Hep" is a corruption of "hepped," which is, in turn, a corruption of "hopped" -- as in "hopped up." The "vipers" who smoked marihuana (as it was spelled back then) got "hopped up" before they played their crazy jass (as it was spelled back then) music. But the heat was starting to come down. Anslinger of the FBI was working hard to convince the public that smoking marihuana would cause -- not to put too fine a point on it -- miscegenation with Mexican immigrants. So it was important for musicians to make sure, before breaking it out, that someone was a "hep cat," to avoid unwanted repercussions. Hep cat led to hepcat, which in turn led to today's "hip." The overtone is gone, but the history's neat.

And clw is right -- Krebs was a hepcat, but of the late, beatnik variety.

wingedliberty

Can one say that James Dean was the ultimate hepcat?


Brian.

Russ

thebestMAX is a Hepcat.

Russ, NCNE

Placid

Hep Kitty ->
Hep Cat ->

Clankeye

Robert Mitchum was definitely a hepcat.

thebestMAX

Thanks for the laugh, Russ. I really needed it tonight.

LucyBop

Here is Lucilles definition of a Hepcat or HepKitty and it may not fit other 'so called' sources but it apllies for those from 56! A Hepcat was cool, greased his hair pompadour style or a marcel, had sideburns, dressed in jeans which are rolled up, wore t-shirts, but could also of dressed with wild shirts tucked into baggy pants, a hepcat embraced Elvis, Rockabilly and Vocal group harmony, the music always has to be playin baby. Gotta have a cool car, 56 chevy, 55 olds, 56 ford to name a few. A hepcat dragged his car on the weekends, and took his Kitty up to nine mile hill to 'watch the submarine races'. A Hepcat would name his car and the car has to be female. And a Hepcat had the cool lingo daddy-o, none of the square establishment stuff. A hepcat could really dance and bop all night, the bop is a cross between swing and rhythm n blues type 50s dancing and Lucy can be seen boppin in her website in the Viva Las Vegas pictures. A Hepcat also song or had a garage band. Money, music, kitty's and havin' a good time is what was important to him. A hepkitty was his girl, she worn his pin and also wore her date buckle saddles (see photo). if they were unbuckled the kitty was available, if buckled she is going steady. A Kitty has the same interests and wore jeans as well and also poodle skirts and any skirt with a petticoat. And a kitty chews lots of gum baby, you should see the size of bubbles this one can blow. The Hep'sters loved Rock n' Roll while all the square cats were trying to kill it and Ban Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino etc. Lucy tends to call the cool people Hepcats, much come to my Rockin' radio, to remember a time that was the best to be a teenager.

This is a Hep'ster from the 50s, the term orginated in the 40s and was associated with swing and jump and jive music.

LucyBop

as far as Lucy refering to Wayne Herndon as a Hepcat, he gives board members a great deal on the intercept shields and is a Hep Daddy in my book! And I'm SURE he digs the 50s Rock'n Roll!

JeffinMich

And I thought I would only learn about coins on this board.

For the record, I'm in my 30's, so maybe I should have kinda, maybe, sorta known this. But it was definitely BMT (before my time).

Okay, I'm off to trade the Acura in on a 56 Chevy!

leothelyon

Hey! Wait a minute!

Leothelyon.....and......Neil Diamond music.......equals.........HEPCAT.........
...........yea!

Leo

ccex

<< <i>For the record, I'm in my 30's, so maybe I should have kinda, maybe, sorta known this. But it was definitely BMT (before my time). Guess I'll trade my Acura in on a '56 Chevy. >>



Although I'm only 43, I recognize a '55 Chevy when I see one.

To me the quintessential hepcat was the trumpeter who got fired in 1941 for playing "Chinese music" (early Bebop) and too much clowning on the bandstand behind bandleader Cab Calloway. That is of course Dizzy Gillespie, who fired spitballs at the zoot-suited frontman. Dizzy said that getting fired from the "Hi-De-Ho" man's band was "the best move I ever made in music". Years later, a drunken comedian damaged Dizzy's trumpet in a dressing room, bending the bell upward, but Dizzy kept playing it and had his new trumpets designed that way for the rest of his life.

The first time I heard "hepcat" uttered on record was by Fats Waller, but vocalist Silm Gaillard (an inspiration behind Jack Kerouac's
"On The Road" used the term constantly, even on his jam sessions with Dizzy and Charlie Parker.

Now this expression sounds so old to me that I think someone who uses it is a "moldy fig" That term is what the beboppers of the '40s called someone who was stuck in the era of old (pre-WWII) music.

Since I seem stuck in the era of American cars with tailfins and jazz before it became academically respectable, then I guess I'm now a moldy fig. I don't even find many coins minted after the last Walker in 1947 that interesting. (I stick with Barber Dimes, Thelonious Monk, U.S. type coins, Bud Powell, Liberty Nickels, Art Tatum (no relation to Josh Tatum), classic commemoratives, and classic (pre-1980s) Miles Davis, to name a few.)

keets

man, after all that it makes me glad to be just an old hippie!! and as clevegreg said, if you gotta ask what that is.................

al h.

LucyBop

ccex has a more true to life definition, but we took this term for owr own in the mid50s when Rockabilly burst onto the scene. I have well over 50,000 songs from the 50s in my collection, and the majority of the Rockabilly tunes use the phrase's 'HepCat', Kitty, Kitten, Go Cat Go... Carl Perkins is an excellent example.

presleyh

50,000 hits? If they run 90 seconds each it would take 1250 straight hours to listen to them all! I cant even get through the long version of inagodadavida without being interupted.

RLinn

<< <i>mid50s when Rockabilly burst onto the scene...Carl Perkins is an excellent example. >>

Rockabilly lives even if some of the greats don't.

Twowood

If there's anyone out there old enough to remember, Cab Calloway and Louis Prima were the ultimate "Hepcat" symbols of the groovy era in the 40's and 50's. Twowood

halfnut

So Lucy are those date buckle saddles bucked or unbucked cain't tell from the pic. O-kay now I will craw back under my rock in my doghouse.


Dan

U S NAVY WITH PRIDE

LucyBop

<< <i>So Lucy are those date buckle saddles bucked or unbucked cain't tell from the pic. >>


Well, sometimes they are buckled, most of the time unbuckled.... When that photo was shot in April they were buckled. But that didn't stop Lucy from being a hit with some of the Rockabilly legends that showed up, you can see me hanging with some very famous acts and even performing on stage at the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly weekend section of my website. Check those pictures and you'll agree, that Lucy is a cool Kitty from HepCat city!

wallstreetman

BNE, Whats a Beatnik?

BNE

Wallstreetman: assuming you ain't pulling my leg --

The beatniks were the product of the media's co-option of of the beat movement, a principally literary group that included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso (Frank: any relation?) and various inspirational satellites like Neal Cassidy. Representing a backlash against the staid post-war, conservative society they lived in, they prized sponeneity and "authentic" feeling over artistic conceit. (Not that the Beats didn't have their own conceits.)

In the late 50's in areas like Greenwich Village, this movement began to be recognized for its outward appearance: sunglasses, "soul patches" or goatees, berets, etc., and for the locations where wannabes hung out (i.e., "coffeeshops" where poetry would be read to much finger-snapping of approval). It was easy to mock, and was, very much, in the early '60s. Maynard G. Krebs from "Dobie Gillis" (portrayed by Bob Denver -- later "Gilligan") exemplified the hip-talking, bongo-playing "beatnik." The New York media added the Yiddish diminutive "nik" to the term "Beat" (whose meaning is up for debate, there are several explanations), to distance and reduce the stature of these generally messy and lazy people.