Kerouac on Record

A Literary Soundtrack

Simon Warner, Jim Sampas, Simon Warner, Jim Sampas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781501360787
• eBook ISBN: 9781501323362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism

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

• Cover page
• Halftitle page
• Praise
• Title page
• Copyright page
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PERMISSIONS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 JACK KEROUAC’S JAZZ SCENE
• CHAPTER 2 THE BEGINNING OF BOP1
• CHAPTER 3 2ND CHORUS: BLUES: JACK KEROUAC
• CHAPTER 4 DUET FOR SAXOPHONE AND PEN: LEE KONITZ AND THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF JAZZ ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF JACK KEROUAC’S ‘SPONTANEOUS PROSE’ STYLE
• INTERVIEW 1: LEE KONITZ
• CHAPTER 5 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
• CHAPTER 6 ART MUSIC: LISTENING TO KEROUAC’S MEXICO CITY BLUES
• INTERVIEW 2: DAVID AMRAM
• CHAPTER 7 BEAT REFRAINS: MUSIC, MILIEU AND IDENTITY IN JACK KEROUAC’S THE SUBTERRANEANS, THE METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER FILM ADAPTATION
• CHAPTER 8 BOB DYLAN’S BEAT VISIONS (SONIC POETRY)
• CHAPTER 9 CARRYING A TORCH FOR ‘TI JEAN’
• INTERVIEW 3: RICHARD MELTZER
• CHAPTER 10 THE GRATEFUL DEAD: JACK MANIFESTED AS MUSIC
• CHAPTER 11 DRIVER: NEAL CASSADY’S MUSICAL TRIP
• CHAPTER 12 JIM MORRISON / ANGEL OF FIRE
• CHAPTER 13 LIGHT IS FASTER THAN SOUND: TEXANS, THE BEATS AND THE SAN FRANCISCO COUNTERCULTURE
• CHAPTER 14 HIT THE ROAD, JACK: VAN MORRISON AND ON THE ROAD
• CHAPTER 15 DETECTING JACK KEROUAC AND JONI MITCHELL: A LITERARY/LEGAL (NOT MUSICOLOGICAL) INVESTIGATION INTO THE SEARCH FOR INFLUENCE
• CHAPTER 16 KEROUAC AND COUNTRY MUSIC
• CHAPTER 17 ‘STRAIGHT FROM THE MIND TO THE VOICE’: SPECTRAL PERSISTENCE IN JACK KEROUAC AND TOM WAITS
• INTERVIEW 4: BARNEY HOSKYNS ON TOM WAITS
• CHAPTER 18 FROM BEAT BOP PROSODY TO PUNK ROCK POETRY: PATTI SMITH AND JACK KEROUAC – LITERATURE, LINEAGE, LEGACY
• POEMS
• INTERVIEW 5: ALLEN GINSBERG
• CHAPTER 19 TRAMPS LIKE THEM: JACK AND BRUCE AND THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN ROAD
• INTERVIEW 6: GRAHAM PARKER
• CHAPTER 20 PUNK AND NEW WAVE
• INTERVIEW 7: JIM DEROGATIS ON LESTER BANGS
• CHAPTER 21 THE KEROUAC TRIBUTE RECORDINGS
• APPENDIX I: ‘ESSENTIALS OF SPONTANEOUS PROSE’1
• APPENDIX II: ‘BELIEF AND TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE’1
• APPENDIX III: JACK KEROUAC: AN ANNOTATED DISCOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX IV: TRIBUTE ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX V: JACK AND NEAL ON RECORD
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX