Beat Soundtrack #1: Ann Charters
In which prominent Beat figures, writers and critics, historians and academics, fans and followers, talk about the relationship between that literary community and music
TO LAUNCH our new series, Ann Charters, the grande dame of Beat Studies and the first biographer of Jack Kerouac, wife of the late, great blues scholar Sam Charters and now Professor Emerita of English, University of Connecticut in Storrs, offers some thoughts on her links to the literary movement and its musical associations
Tell us something about your life as an academic…
I taught English at the University of Connecticut in Storrs from 1974 to 2017. My academic subjects were the short story and Beat Generation literature. Besides teaching, I edited textbooks, including The Story and Its Writer for ten editions (1983-2016). My experience with textbooks was of inestimable help in the 1990s when I compiled several Beat anthologies, including two volumes of Kerouac’s letters, for Penguin Books.
How did your interest in the Beats arise?
I started with my bibliography of the works of Jack Kerouac, compiled with his assistance in 1966, the year after I completed my doctorate in English & American literature at Columbia University. I first read Kerouac in 1958 and began to collect his books in 1962. In 1973 I published his first biography, Kerouac, written in Sweden with my husband Samuel Charters.
Pictured above: Ann Charters and Allen Ginsberg in a 1966 photograph, used on the cover of the magazine Beat Scene in 2019
Where do you feel the link between Beats and music is evident?
The first music associated with the Beat writers was the jazz of Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, Brew Moore & others, all beloved by Kerouac & his close friends John Clellon Holmes & Neal Cassady. For me the greatest music of the Beat writers is the sound of Kerouac’s voice on record, as he reads his writing.
Do you feel the connection extends beyond jazz and how would you characterise that?
The next music for the Beats was rock. Starting in the 1960s, Allen Ginsberg greatly admired Bob Dylan & enjoyed working with him. Also in the 1960s, the New York poets Ed Sanders & Tuli Kupferberg founded their own successful rock band the Fugs.
In California, Ferlinghetti read in jazz clubs and Michael McClure later went onstage to perform his poetry to rock music. But initially it was the prose & poetry of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Snyder, Burroughs & others on the printed page that caused me to dedicate my career to studying & collecting Beat Generation writing instead of becoming a Herman Melville scholar.
What do you consider your most important achievement as a Beat scholar?
Establishing two library archives of Beat & related books, 5,000 items in all, covering more than fifty years after Kerouac’s death in 1969. The first archive, about 3,000 items, is in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, deposited in 1994. The second, roughly 2,000 items, is in the Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, deposited in 2019.
The items in these two Beat Archives include books, small press publications, periodicals, manuscripts, recordings, photographs, various works of Beat art, etc.
I hope to continue collecting Beat writing & books with reference to Beat writing as they appear, & gift these items to the Dodd, until I can collect no more!