Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack

He was the leading light of the Beat Generation writers and the most dynamic author of his time, but Jack Kerouac also had a lifelong passion for music, particularly the mid-century jazz of New York City, the development of which he witnessed first-hand during the 1940s with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk to the fore. The novelist, most famous for his 1957 book On the Road, admired the sounds of bebop and attempted to bring something of their original energy to his own writing, a torrent of semi-autobiographical stories he published between 1950 and his early death in 1969. Yet he was also drawn to American popular music of all kinds – from the blues to Broadway ballads – and when he came to record albums under his own name, he married his unique spoken word style with some of the most talented musicians on the scene. Kerouac's musical legacy goes well beyond the studio recordings he made himself: his influence infused generations of music makers who followed in his work – from singer-songwriters to rock bands. Some of the greatest transatlantic names – Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison and David Bowie, Janis Joplin and Tom Waits, Sonic Youth and Death Cab for Cutie, and many more – credited Kerouac's impact on their output. In Kerouac on Record, we consider how the writer brought his passion for jazz to his prose and poetry, his own record releases, the ways his legacy has been sustained by numerous more recent talents, those rock tributes that have kept his memory alive and some of the scores that have featured in Hollywood adaptations of the adventures he brought to the printed page.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Permissions Foreword Introduction Simon Warner 1. Jack Kerouac's Jazz Scene Jim Burns 2. 2nd Chorus: Blues: Jack Kerouac Larry Beckett 3. Duet for Saxophone and Pen: Lee Konitz and the Direct Influence of Jazz on the Development of Jack Kerouac's 'Spontaneous Prose' Style Marian Jago Interview 1: Lee Konitz Marian Jago 4. Jack Kerouac Goes Vinyl: A Sonic Journey into Kerouac's Three LPs: Poetry for the Beat Generation; Blues and Haikus; and Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation Jonah Raskin 5. Art Music: Listening to Kerouac's 'Mexico City Blues' A. Robert Lee Interview 2: David Amram Pat Thomas 6. Beat Refrains: Music, Milieu and Identity in Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Film Adaptation Michael Prince 7. Bob Dylan's Beat Visions (Sonic Poetry) Michael Goldberg 8. Carrying a Torch for Ti Jean Paul Marion Interview 3: Richard Meltzer Michael Goldberg 9. The Grateful Dead: Jack Manifested as Music Brian Hassett 10. Driver Mark Bliesener 11. Jim Morrison/Angel of Fire Jay Jeff Jones 12. Light is Faster than Sound: Texans, the Beats and the San Francisco Counterculture Holly George-Warren 13. Hit the Road, Jack: Van Morrison and On the Road Peter Mills 14. Detecting Jack Kerouac and Joni Mitchell: A Literary/Legal (Not Musicological) Investigation into the Search for Influence Nancy Grace 15. Kerouac and Country Music Matt Theado 16. 'Straight from the Mind to the Voice': Spectral Persistence in Jack Kerouac and Tom Waits Douglas Field Interview 4: Barney Hoskyns Simon Warner 17. From Beat Bop Prosody to Punk Rock Poetry: Patti Smith and Jack Kerouac; Literature, Lineage, Legacy Ronna Johnson Poems: Marc Zegans Interview 6: Allen Ginsberg Pat Thomas 18. Tramps Like Them: Jack and Bruce and the Myth of the American Road Simon Morrison Interview 5: Graham Parker Pat Thomas 19. Punk and New Wave James Sullivan Interview 7: Jim DeRogatis on Lester Bangs James Sullivan 20. The Tribute Recordings Jim Sampas and Simon Warner Appendix I: Jack Kerouac Biography Appendix II: Jack Kerouac Discography Dave Moore Appendix III: Tribute Discography Appendix IV: Kerouac/Cassady Song List Dave Moore/Horst Spandler Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Simon Warner is a lecturer, writer, broadcaster, and Visiting Research Fellow in Popular Music at the University of Leeds in the UK. He is the author of Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture (2013). Jim Sampas is a music and film producer whose work often focuses on major cultural figures such as Jack Kerouac, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, the Smiths, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. In 2017, he was appointed Literary Executor of the Jack Kerouac Estate.

Review :
In Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack, Simon Warner and Jim Sampas have put together a wide-ranging collection of essays and interviews exploring the relationship between Kerouac and music … It is thoroughly deserving of a place on any Beat bookshelf. This volume collects essays and interviews that limn musical limbs of the Beat tree ... Among the strongest in a strong lot are Michael Goldberg's examination of Dylan's lit roots and Kerouac's own musicological piece - The Beginning Of Bop - that attempts to capture jazz in words - and succeeds. Fresh approach to understanding the output of the On the Road novelist which uses music to illuminate his written work. Jack Kerouac is the common bond that connects Dylan, Springsteen, Mitchell, and many other musical recording artists whose legacy either started in his lifetime or blossomed in his wake. Kerouac On Record: A Literary Soundtrack, edited by Simon Warner and Jim Sampas, is a compelling and comprehensive collection of academic studies that successfully spotlights the connective tissue between Kerouac and the music he loved, like the Bop jazz of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz or Chet Baker's vocals and Miles Davis's mastery of the cool jazz trumpet style, and the music he might never have imagined would have followed in his wake. Packed with well-researched articles, some fascinating interviews and an extensive discography this is a book aimed at the scholar but one that will also appeal to all serious music lovers. Editors Simon Warner and Jim Sampas have gathered together a series of essays that inform and expand on what we know about this [musical] aspect of Jack Kerouac ... There are interviews. Bob Dylan is discussed. Van Morrison. Bruce Springsteen. There is a long conversation between Simon Warner and Jim Sampas about all the Kerouac themed albums ... You'll want them all. A hefty, lovingly produced book. Contentious stuff is said. But it adds to the sum of knowledge and so they have done good work. The book is a lively and fascinating collection of essays, interviews and musings. Kerouac on Record is a tantalizing new collection of essays and interviews on the interrelations between Jack Kerouac and music – both the music he heard and was inspired by in his 'bop prosody', and the music later artists have been inspired by him to produce, either as settings of his works or as intertextual companion pieces extending the life span of those works by recontextualizing them for new generations of listeners and readers. Warner and Sampas have brought together some of the most engaging writers in the fields of literary and cultural Beat Studies, as well as some of the most articulate voices within the music community: critics, producers, music archeologists, and lyricists. This blend of perspectives and registers makes for an unusually engaging reading experience as one traipses through the manuscript, high on 'life, joy, kicks, darkness, music' as Kerouac himself memorably put it in On the Road. With his ear for language, accents, riffs, and affinity for the spontaneous improvisation of the highly trained musician, Kerouac's prose and verse dances with an undeniable musicality that has kept readers across the globe coming back to his works again and again. Many of these readers, as it turns out, have been musicians. This collection brings together a series of essays that, taken together, strive to convey the profound, long-lasting, and yet underappreciated force of inspiration Kerouac represents to a half century of recorded music. Kerouac on Record identifies and analyses the conversations that take place across time and space between the King of the Beats and the jazz, country, rock, pop, and punk troubadours that see him as inspiration, crank, life coach, and master of rhythm. This book will change the way we think of Kerouac's work and provide us with fresh ears to hear anew the music that is indebted to his writing and life. Warner's and Sampas's encyclopedic collection represents a vital contribution to Beats scholarship. This is not just because the range of interactions between Kerouac's work and genres of popular music – from jazz to country to punk – is dazzling, but also because it insists on seeing the Beats' creativity as interdisciplinary from the start, and on the need for Beats criticism to follow suit. As a model of this approach, it is exemplary, with contributions from poets, rock critics, literary scholars, playwrights and many others. This is a book with a wide appeal to anyone interested in Kerouac, the Beats and popular music, and one that will quickly become indispensable to scholars in these fields. Bringing together Beat studies with popular music studies, and ranging high and low from jazz to rock, blues to punk, this rich eclectic mix of scholarship and interviews is the book for anyone remotely interested in the counterpoint of Kerouac and music: it's a book as big as its sometimes fraught but always fascinating subject, and absolutely in tune with it. Following Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture (2013), Simon Warner partners with Literary Executor of the Estate of Jack Kerouac, Jim Sampas, to go deeper into his exploration of the connections between the great figures of the Beat generation and the music of the so-called 'rock era.' Interspersed with exclusive interviews of the likes of Lee Konitz, Graham Parker, Lester Bangs, and Allen Ginsberg, the twenty chapters are signed by an impressive array of journalists, music industry professionals, rock critics, writers, film makers and academics from all over the world. Addressing such issues as the influence of jazz on Kerouac's 'spontaneous prose' style, the lineage between his 'Beat bop prosody' and Patti Smith's 'punk rock poetry,' or his inspiring 'the myth of the American road' in Bruce Springsteen's lyrics, they shed light on what appears to be a two-way relationship between popular music and the work of the author of On the Road. As Warner puts it: 'if, for Kerouac, it was jazz that would have the principal impact, then it was rock on which the writer would have the main effect.' Warner and Sampas' collection of essays provides an indispensable and long-overdue account of the music that shaped Kerouac and his writing, as well as an analysis of how a generation of musicians like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Patti Smith were influenced by Kerouac. With its well-researched articles, in-depth interviews, and extensive discography and song list, Kerouac on Record is a must-read for scholars, fans, and music lovers alike.