New Kerouac sleeve notes #1: Pat Thomas

A prominent historian of the US counterculture shares exclusive access, via Rock and the Beat Generation, to his latest Beat album liners with Poetry for the Beat Generation to commence

WHEN REAL Gone Records decided to release new vinyl editions of Jack Kerouac’s first two long players, in the novelist’s Centenary year, they commissioned long-established music journalist and reissue specialist Pat Thomas to pen a fresh set of sleeve notes. But the label made a last-minute decision not to include text with the releases.

The LA-based Thomas has now allowed access here to his two previously unpublished essays. First, he delivers his intended commentary on Poetry for the Beat Generation by Kerouac and pianist Steve Allen, recorded in 1958, originally released in 1959 and to be reissued next month. Look out also for his second piece conceived for the writer’s follow-up recording Blues and Haikus, featuring saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims…

Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen – Poetry for the Beat Generation

‘The Sounds of the Universe coming in my window’

By Pat Thomas

Although the exact date is unknown, Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen’s Poetry for The Beat Generation was probably recorded in March 1958 – and released by Hanover Records in June 1959. The 14 selections were all written and read by Kerouac accompanied by Steve Allen on piano, who also composed the music.

On the Road had caught the attention of Steve Allen who went down to New York City’s Village Vanguard club in December 1957 to check out a reading by Jack. Sitting in the audience, Allen immediately felt that Kerouac could use some accompaniment and suggested that he join in for Kerouac’s second set that evening. Steve played tenderly around Jack’s words and both men were pleased with the outcome.

Record producer Bob Thiele suggested they take this act into a studio. Thiele later became the coordinator of the iconic Coltrane albums on Impulse! He then founded the Flying Dutchman record label in 1969 resulting in releases by Gil Scott-Heron, Leon Thomas, Oliver Nelson, and Lonnie Liston Smith amongst others.

Although primarily known as a jazz imprint, Flying Dutchman dove into politics with Massacre at My Lai (documenting the atrocities of the Vietnam war), A Night at Santa Rita (a commentary on prison conditions) and Murder at Kent State University – all three based on essays written by New York Post columnist Pete Hamill, featuring narration by NYC radio personality Rosko accompanied by bassist Ron Carter and flutist James Spaulding.

At the time of the Poetry for the Beat Generation recording, Kerouac was living in Florida and arrived at the New York studio with suitcase full of manuscripts – both poetry and prose – of various lengths and states of completion. Steve Allen began to play while Jack randomly fished out some papers (to read from) and the collaboration began.

Between sips of Thunderbird (by both men), they vamped on various pieces for about an hour. There was ‘October in the Railroad Earth’ – an epic poem that had been recently printed in a new literary magazine called Evergreen Review. There were several sections from Mexico City Blues – a book length collection of choruses that Grove Press published in 1959. There were a couple of things, ‘Bowery Blues’, ‘Abraham’, and ‘I had a slouch hat too one time’ that never came out elsewhere. Some others were published posthumously.

The recording engineer assumed all this was merely a warm-up and suggest the duo perform everything a second time – but for Jack, it was ‘first thought, best thought’ and neither he nor Steve felt like doing it again. Brilliant spontaneity, instant compositions.

Although it’s not included here (you’ll need to look elsewhere), Kerouac appeared on Steve Allen’s NBC television show in November 1959 and read from On the Road and Visions of Cody while Allen tickled the ivories – there’s video and audio circulating of that.

David Amram (born in 1933) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist (piano and French horn amongst others). He wrote and recorded the scores for such classic films as Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. He is best known to Kerouac scholars for appearing in and composing the music for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy.

But his connections to Jack run deeper than that – they performed together in Manhattan jazz clubs and art galleries in the late 1950s. Amram recalled just after Jack’s death in 1969, ‘He would sing while I was playing the horn, sometimes making up verses. He had a phenomenal ear. It was like playing duets with a great musician.’ And they socialized at Amram’s home, ‘He used to come by and play the piano by ear for hours. He had some wonderful ideas for combining the spoken word with music.’  Amram has written extensively about his relationship with Kerouac, most notably in his book Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac.

In April 2017, I spoke with David about Jack’s musical recordings. He told me,

‘The album Jack did that was terrific was the one with Steve Allen playing. Steve’s thing was, is he would just sort of play his wonderful, almost like cocktail piano, and then Jack would just read over that and use that as the atmosphere to make you feel like you were just sitting somewhere and suddenly Jack started talking to you or making up a poem on the spot, even though he was reading stuff that he had already written, it was just so beautiful. But he used Steve’s sort of cocktail piano the way if the radio was on or he just started reading, because he liked to do that as well.

When I played with Jack, I tried to have my music accompany the music that was already in his words because Billy Collins told me once, “I usually play with musicians because the music’s already there in the poetry.” In Jack’s case, he could do it either way so when you hear the one with Steve Allen you see another side of Jack, of how he was, as if he was reading a poem in someone’s place in the middle of a party and there was a lot of talking going on, and he used the background sounds of something else to accompany – he was accompanying and enriching the ambiance that was already there. That’s a wonderful recording.’

I replied to Amram,

‘I want to talk about the musicality of Jack’s writing. You hear rhythms in poems like “Mexico City Blues” and then in Vision of Cody, he’s describing in one spot having breakfast in the diner of having bacon and eggs and toast in the same way a musician might solo. His “first thought, best thought” is very much like a jazz improv.’

David answered,

‘He was just being conversational… [one evening I went to visit Jack] – He sat down, and I got out my piece of paper and pen and music and I started copying. He started telling me a story about when he was over visiting William Burroughs, and the Algerian struggle was still going on and that French barracks were still there. He was in the French barracks with all these French cats speaking this Quebecois. He was talking to them then all these kids who were also sort of the equivalent of draftees in the other army, they were young guys, off-duty, they were hanging out with the French guys. They were just kids, teenagers or in their twenties. They didn’t care about the politics, they didn’t want to go to war with each other, they were just young guys in the army. They were hanging out together drinking tea and talking and telling jokes. Jack, speaking French, Quebecois-style, they spoke French – a lot of kids at that time in Algeria also spoke French – so they were having a good time. Jack told all these amazing stories and I’m sitting there copying away. I could listen to him because I was just copying at the same time. Suddenly, he ends this fantastic story and I look out and it was light out. It was already daytime. It was seven in the morning! I said, “My God, Jack, you’ve been talking for like seven and a half hours. I wish I had a tape recorder. That was a whole book you just rapped out!”’

‘He [Kerouac] said, “That’s what I try to do when I’m writing. To have people feel that I’m talking right to them, telling them a story.” He said, “I can never quite get it but that’s what I try to do.” And that blew my mind. That was, I thought, so much more important than so many things I read about what his literary style was. It was just that simple: He was telling a story…He said, “Write the way you talk.” In other words, Jack was showing everybody that the idea is just what Lester Young – one of Jack’s favorites – said to someone when they came out and played ten minutes of fantastic solos setting new Olympic world records for speed, more notes than were necessary in a lifetime and blasting down the house, and Lester Young, in his inimitable, gracious style, said, “That was most impressive. Now I’d like to hear your story.” It was always a thing about the idea of telling your story. Since we all realize everyone has a story, everyone has a song in their heart, everyone has a heartbeat, everyone has a heritage, everyone has something precious to offer, Jack and a lot of these people’s stuff we revere told their story just as the first great jazz poet Homer did when he rapped out the whole Iliad and the Odyssey accompanied by whatever guy or gal – or guys or gals – had to back him up playing the lyre, that little lap harp they used to play. Or when King David did his song to Solomon accompanied by a harp player or maybe two or three harp players if two of them got tired, or when Socrates was sitting under that olive tree and Plato wrote a bunch of stuff down that Socrates had said – I don’t know if he had a backup player or not – but the idea of telling stories… Jack even used to say, “I guess they haven’t read Cervantes. They haven’t read Don Quixote. That’s just like two guys wandering around hanging out having these crazy adventures. There’s nothing new about that!” He said, “It’s always interesting because it’s telling stories of stuff.”

‘Of course, the Eastern seaboard establishment in the 1950s were so horrified when Jack just broke it all down and tried to explain it. He was just someone from Lowell, Massachusetts who’d been all over the world, voluminous reader, lover of life, of people, of art, of music, of everyday people, telling his stories. Of course, that’s what all the wonderful writers had done, and I think he understood, somehow, that all those lyric artists who were not trying to be mysterious Dr. Frankenstein, but just simply telling a great, great story were really the artists whose works survive and that’s the greatest art of all. He didn’t fulfill the role of the Great American Novelist of the minute, or the month, or – in his case – the year by putting on a tweed coat, having a fake British accent, having a nervous breakdown, and getting writer’s block. He was just someone who could go hang out with anybody and everybody, listen to their stories, tell his stories, and then lock himself up in a room and write until he would just about drop dead, finish a book, be exhausted, and then start on his next book. He wrote up until the day he died, he was still writing. He never stopped writing!’

I told Amram,

‘I think for me, and many Kerouac fans, you’re the living legacy. You and when Ginsberg was still alive, you guys are both incredible artists in your own right and both of you have been very generous in talking about Jack. Obviously, when Allen passed that was the end of that. Whenever I saw documentaries in the 70s and 80s and 90s, the two guys that you could always count on who actually really truly knew Jack were you and Allen. I think it’s great that after all these years you’re still willing to share all this Kerouac knowledge with the rest of us.’

He closes with,

‘I was just blessed. I was just lucky. Allen was lucky; we were all lucky just to know him. Thing about him is that he shared everything with everybody… I thank you for saying that about Allen and me because I think we both love Jack in a different way, and both share an appreciation of knowing such a wonderful guy.’

As I listen to Kerouac’s voice, as I write these notes, I’m reminded why he has captured the imagination of so many musicians – because it’s 20th Century ‘Wild West’ Americana, it’s sex and drugs and music (jazz), it’s a life without rules or restrictions. It’s simply ‘feeling free’!

PT

From the West Coast of America, April 2022

Author of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg (forthcoming, 2023) and a contributor to Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack check

See also: ‘New Kerouac sleeve notes #2: Pat Thomas’, published November 19th, 2022