Jack Kerouac reads on The Beat Generation [1960] - Zerosounds
Zero G says:
Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation is the third and final spoken word album by the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, released in January 1960 on Verve Records. The album was recorded during 1959, prior to the publication of Kerouac's sixth novel, Doctor Sax.
"Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation" was the culmination of the author's short-lived recording career, a solo performance that transcends poetry and music -- it's literally spoken jazz, the artist improvising freely on the printed text of his own work in front of him.
Produced by Bill Randle, it was Kerouac's most musical performance, despite the fact that the recording contained only his voice and no accompaniment, using his voice and language the way a saxophonist might improvise on a particular melodic line or riff. He's spellbinding throughout, intense, focused, and even subtly changing voices with the work itself.
Kerouac - Blues & Haikus 1959 - Zerosounds
Zero G says:
Blues and Haikus is the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac's second album and was released in 1959. On the album, Kerouac's poetry readings are accompanied by jazz saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.
The art-soaked, kicks-filled life of Jack Kerouac produced three records, and the second one Blues and Haikus found him in the studio with post-bop saxophone mainstays Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. While the record only sporadically attains the heights of its rather lofty ambitions, it remains a fascinating document, for it illuminates Kerouac as an artist of beautiful if problematic vision, vindicates Cohn and Sims as a pair of true pros, and brings great perspective to the mindset and milieu of the ‘50s American hipster.
In the spring of 1958, just a few weeks after cutting "Poetry for the Beat Generation", producer Bob Thiele suggested making a second album - quite a daring notion, considering that the first album would prove so controversial that it wouldn't reach the public for a year - and Jack Kerouac agreed. Instead of pianist Steve Allen, however, Kerouac insisted that he be accompanied this time by two good friends, tenor saxmen Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. With Cohn doubling on piano, the resulting "Blues and Haikus" is a stunning duet between speaker and saxmen, working spontaneously in this peculiar mix of jazz and voice, in which the saxmen do get their solo spots around Kerouac's work. There's much more of a sense on this album of a conscious interaction here between Kerouac and his accompanists, and the album is more arch but also more intense and more imposing than its predecessor.
Tracklist:
A1: American Haikus (10:03)
A2: Hard Hearted Old Farmer (2:17)
A3: The Last Hotel & Some Of Dharma (3:52)
B1: Poems from the unpublihsed "Book of Blues" (14:10)
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