Jack Kerouac and Bebop

The Beats The word ‘beat’ itself was a slang term used by jazz musicians to refer to down and outs, or the ‘bum’, who could not conform to societal pressures 1944 - It was introduced to William Burroughs by Herbert Huncke, and he introduced it to Columbia freshman Allen Ginsberg and Ginsberg’s writer friend, Columbia dropout Jack Kerouac. Kerouac later explained ‘beat’ as having connotations of beatitude or the beatific – it implied an oppositional culture Drugs, sex and jazz bio

Jazz and Literature Jazz poetry had become a phenomenon in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, with poets such as Langston Hughes A large part of the influence was the technique of improvisation, but breath and pacing had much to do with it Kerouac’s prose and poetry functioned musically like modern jazz Heartfelt, spontaneous and conversational –’the first thought is the best thought’ Like Bebop with fast tempo, complex chord progressions and many improvisational changes of key – musicians frequently playing off each other’s reactions. Sounds and breaths were as important as notes

Kerouac experimented with composition in jazz fiction Shared vision with bebop artists that music is a socially corrective force – they could reject their society of racial segregation and suburban isolation through modern jazz Andrew Clark argues that the 1950s Beat writers made ‘a more self- conscious attempt to develop an analogy with the jazz model’ Kerouac experimented with composition in jazz fiction Emphasis on the performative Kerouac’s own literary aesthetic compares writer to jazz musician in searching for a ‘sketching language’ as ‘undisturbed flow from the mind’ – ‘blowing’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YhveH2yuuI

Post-WWII America CIA, NATO created. Nuclear arms race, blacklisting, HUAC and the Communist scare were at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Howl and Naked Lunch on trial. Affluent middle class that got married and produced baby-boom generation Generation ‘was trapped in large corporate organisations and bland suburban developments where ‘sameness’ and passivity were prevailing Teenagers disillusioned by parents’ materialistic lives Concern with how these children would grow up, as post WWI children became the ‘Lost Generation’ of 1920s. Attempts to enforce conformity and promote status quo - cultural rebels emerge ‘Beatnik’ derogatory term for alternative society of San Fran and later NYC

Kerouac’s jazz criticism Improvisational jazz reflected a new American ideal of individual expression – backlash to swing April 1947 Kerouac writes article titled ‘New Modern Progressive Jazz – the New Bebop’ Writes that Bebop makes everything that came before it seem ‘limited and obsolete’ He writes that people who ask ‘where is jazz going?’ had the conception of jazz as ‘fixed within the pre-1944 limit of rhythmic, harmonic, melodic understanding’. Necessitated a new kind of listener – intellectual and exclusive?

Jazz in On the Road On The Road’s characters are passionately immersed in jazz, and are admirers of Billie Holiday, Slim Gaillard, George Shearing, Lester Young. Bebop is the major event in Sal’s world Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty encounter musician George Shearing: ‘He played innumerable choruses with amazing chords that mounted higher and higher till the sweat splashed all over the piano and everybody listened in awe and fright. They led him off the stand after an hour. He went back to his dark corner, old God Shearing, and the boys said, “there ain’t nothing left after that”. But the slender leader frowned. “Let’s blow away anyway”. Something would come of it yet. There’s always more, a little further – it never ends. They sought to find new phrases after Shearing’s explorations; they tried hard. They writhed and twisted and blew. Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men’s souls to joy. They found it, they lost it, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned – and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go.’----- On the Road, p. 241.

Charlie Parker ‘so here [Parker] was on the stand, examining them with his eyes as he blew his now-settled- down-into-regulated-design “crazy” notes...[he looked at me] directly in my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos—not a challenging looking but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging his eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work, his eyes separate and interested and humane, the kindest jazz musician there could be while being and therefore naturally the greatest...’---The Subterraneans, 1958

Criticism Illiterate in jazz and not comprehending technicalities or practise and training undertaken by musicians like Parker Reducing Parker to the personification of kindness, as can be seen in Mexico City Blues and The Subterraneans. ‘That’s not writing, that’s typing’ – Truman Capote Idealistic view of African American life and his romanticised association with them

Collaboration Composer David Amram, who worked extensively with Kerouac said he could instantly recall any music that he heard: ‘collaborating with Kerouac was as natural as breathing. That is because the breath and breadth of Jack’s rhythms were so natural that even the most stodgy musician or listener or reader could feel those rhythms and cadences, those breathless flowing phrases, the subtle use of dynamics that are fundamental to the oral and the aural tradition of all music and poetic forms of expression…’

Pull My Daisy (1959) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQCgVnRqzw &t=1262s (20:01)

Legacy Kerouac remained an enormous influence on several of rock’s pivotal artists, especially Bob Dylan who fused Beat poetry sensibilities with grassroots politics to become a spokesman and conscience of a new generation. (Bringing it all back home). It has been argued that Kerouac was one of many influences on John Lennon (‘Come together’ or ‘I am a Walrus’) Most of all, Kerouac opened up working class America for inspiration and creative sustenance in rebellion against conformity. This could become a big part of rock and roll imagery Trials of Beat works (Howl and Naked Lunch) went on to change publishing in USA