Jazz Of The Beat Generation.

This is turning into jazz week in my house. It is Wednesday, showery and quite cold. The heat wave is well and truly over. I am listening to an album called Jazz Of The Beat Generation which I came across on eBay recently. It only cost £3.50 inc p&p, a bargain. It arrived in a neat little box containing a booklet and the CD. I recognised the tasteful artwork on the front cover immediately. It is from the UK Pan paperback edition of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I had a first edition of this paperback many years ago. I see copies of that book change hands for £75 these days, so I wish I hadn’t sold my copy. The booklet is packed with information. There is an introduction by Keith Shadwick who did a great job of compiling the 22 tracks on this album for the Jazz fm label in 2003. 

He explains why Jack Kerouac was the Beat writer most enthused by jazz. Jack’s books are littered with references to the jazz sounds of the 1940s & 50s. Keith relates where the music and artists are written about by Jack in such books as On The Road, Desolation Angels & The Subterraneans. Some of my favourite passages in Jack’s books are descriptions of seeing musicians performing live, such as when Sal and Dean see Slim Gaillard and George Shearing in On The Road. Van Morrison fans might recall seeing Van read from On The Road accompanied by Slim playing bongos. The booklet also contains two great essays written by Jack. The first is the eponymous Jazz Of The Beat Generation first published in 1955 which later was adapted as part of On The Road. It shows how Jack’s spontaneous bop prosody (as he called his writing style) was literatures equivalent of Jazz, and Jack’s instrument was the typewriter. The second essay called The Beginning Of Bop first appeared in Escapade magazine and was later included in a book called Good Blonde & Others. Jack recorded this essay for an album released in 1960. The recording is divided into sections and included on this album. I must say Jack’s reading voice perfectly compliments the jazz music included here.

The opening track The Beat Generation is Jack reading a piece that later became chapter 77 of book 1 of Desolation Angels. Then we have The Gasser by Roy Eldridge recorded in 1943. I won’t mention every track because I’m no expert and there are 22 tracks here. I’ll just mention a few I particularly like, such as In A Little Spanish Town by Lester Young, Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie, Scrapple From The Apple by Charlie Parker, Slim’s Jam by Slim Gaillard who is the only one of all these musicians who I had the good fortune to see playing live which was in Plymouth back in 87. The only song included here is I Only Have Eyes For You by the great Billy Eckstine recorded in 1946. I also like Hackensack  by Thelonious Monk featuring the great drumming of Art Blakey. There is a track called Sub-Conscious Lee by The Lennie Tristano Quintet recorded in New York in 1949. I saw a photo recently of Jack Kerouac at a Lennie Tristano gig in New York. I wonder if this number might have been recorded that night? Stella By Starlight with Stan Getz is also wonderful, as is Line For Lyons by Gerry Mulligan, and the final track Nutty by Thelonious Monk. I have really enjoyed listening to every track of this music on this rainy Wednesday afternoon and hearing the bop sounds that so inspired the writing of the one and only Jack Kerouac.