Detroit's Slim Gaillard was a charismatic, jive-talking carnival of a man who was the quintessential bebop-era hipster in the 1930s and 1940s. Gaillard's frequent use of his own invented hip language was at once dizzyingly funny and warmly inviting. Gaillard, a multi-instrumentalist and composer, crossed musical paths at one time or another with countless bop heavies, from Ben Webster to Charlie Parker. In his compositions, he utilized humor not for cheap laughs, but rather for surprising and often surreal juxtapositions of sounds. Far from being slight, the results are richly humane, and have inspired everyone from the '50s Beat authors to '90s neo-swing bands.