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.
These days the term hipster has become the catchall phrase to deride rampant poseurism of all sorts. When used as a descriptor of people, it usually applies to the “please notice me” fashion sensibility and/or the flaky activities or behavior of mostly younger folks that the observer perceives as being calculatedly shallow, obnoxious, or simply fake.
In its current usage, calling somebody a hipster is nearly always an insult. At least I can’t recall any contemporary instances where the word is employed with affection, and I certainly haven’t encountered anyone using it to describe themselves. When applied to art it almost constantly denotes style over substance, a mode of expression that’s reliably geared toward a constantly amorphous cutting edge designed to anoint those attuned to its frequencies in a special kind of dubiously-earned cool.
For this writer, the only real bummer in the whole hipster scenario is that it’s overwhelmed the original inspiration for the term. After World War II and especially during the 1950s, the American landscape came to be populated with individuals who stood noticeably outside the mainstream. Mostly Caucasian, the vast majority of these margin walkers shared an unbridled love for African-American culture, specifically Modern Jazz and the milieu that surrounded its making.
But just being a white cat that owned a large collection of post-bop LPs didn’t make you a ‘50s-style hipster. It was a much deeper phenomenon, caught up in a choice of language and clothing styles that was frequently borrowed wholesale from black urban existence as a way for these fringe-dwellers to express their disillusionment with the staleness of mainstream society.
Naturally, these modes of conduct, speech, and appearance served as a quick clue-in for like-minded strangers that they were a part of the same disaffected subterranean subculture. And the more they came into contact with each other, the higher their profile increased in the straight-laced world they disdained. Attached were the expected reactions of curiosity, analysis, skepticism and opprobrium.
Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” opened a whole lot of eyes, though it’s far from the definitive treatment of the subject. To elaborate, the general thrust of Mailer’s piece signifies the movement as an extension of society’s ills produced by, amongst other things, the back-to-back horror show of two World Wars. In short, it was but one malady of a very nasty compound disease.
However, subsequent history has shown the hipsters to largely be just ill with society, and in particular the hypocrisy and conformism of a world that chose not to reflect upon the ugliness of racism and mass killing that resulted in, along with other unfortunate situations, the Holocaust and the dropping of the Atom Bomb. Instead of getting with the Grey Flannel Suit scene, they chose to make their own.
The scene they created is often caught up in the historical uprising described as the Beat Generation. And the continuing relevance of this movement is often directly related to the realm of Literature, with the three defining writers being Irwin Allen Ginsberg, William Seward Burroughs, and the true granddaddy of Beat’s undying if oft convoluted and uncomfortable allure, Jean-Louis “Jack” Kerouac.
For many, the Beat Generation and ‘50’s hipsterism are basically synonymous, but it’s considerably more complicated than just lumping it all into one tidy bag. A whole lot of hipsters were in it purely for the intensity of the music, the excitement of the lifestyle and yes, the rush of the drugs. They made a concerted effort to drop out of Squaresville, but after successfully executing the departure didn’t necessarily develop any pronounced social/political consciousness.
The beats (as opposed to “beatnik,” the term adopted by the mainstream shortly after their arrival in newspapers and on TV screens) craved the same sort of kicks as the hipster, but with this desire for excitement came a need to articulate their separation from societal values through the creation of, or at least an enthusiastic engagement with, an art form directly related to their circumstances and worldview.
Of the three writers named above, Kerouac most deeply embodies the place where Beat and hipster intersect. For one thing, both Ginsberg and Burroughs outlived Kerouac by decades, their literary reputations expanding far beyond the specificity of the ‘50s-‘60s moment. In fact, Ginsberg’s vast output influenced so much ensuing poetic spillage that he became a highly respected figure in academe while easily retaining his boho bona fides.
And Burroughs’ novels wielded such an ominously surreal, recurrently satirical edge that he was embraced by the both the sci-fi wing’s left field and the denizens of the punk rock scene, its Industrial offshoot in particular. Along the way his art and persona became ubiquitous with the success of living outside the norm. And like Ginsberg, he also eventually taught at the collegiate level.
But Kerouac, he didn’t make it out of the ‘60s. After a fleeting rise in notoriety connected to the publication of his second novel On the Road, he ended up in a slow downward spiral, alienating friends and drinking himself to death while living with his third wife Stella and his mother Gabrielle. His last public appearance was on Firing Line, the television show of lifetime toad William F. Buckley Jr. Obviously inebriated and somewhat crotchety, and much to the delight of the host (as Ginsberg looked on from the audience), it was all rather painful and yes, embarrassing. A year later he was gone.
Kerouac’s large shelf of writing remains the best testament to his vast importance in the scheme of 20th century art and culture. And many greatly prefer the wide-eyed passion and joy of his early work to the often depressing sense of disillusionment found in his later stuff, but in the mature material one can gather, amongst numerous other rewards, the underlying sincerity of the writer’s often wildly romanticized worldview as it collides with a country in rapid transition and a life going down the tubes.
During the height of his fame Kerouac was responsible for three records, all of them worthy of attention by those interested in either the audio manifestation of the Beat Generation’s still palpable mystique or just additional insights into this writer’s unique personality. His first LP Poetry for the Beat Generation is often (arguably) regarded as his best, finding Kerouac accompanied by the not at all bad piano playing of comedian and late night TV host Steve Allen, and it’s a still absorbing aural glimpse of the meeting between Jack’s undiluted Beat gush and an inquisitive, sympathetic mainstream viewpoint.
That album was originally slated for release in 1958 on the Dot label, but the results of the Bob Thiele-produced session apparently so confounded Dot president Randy Wood that he steadfastly refused to release it. What a total cube. Listening today to the LP’s highly inviting warmth, with Kerouac’s syllables greatly enhanced by a natural, non-affected delivery while Allen plays themes that are unexceptional in jazz terms but surprisingly solid as basic accompaniment (he’s best at bluesy motifs that are sturdy but never transcendent), can lead a mind to wonder what exactly the fuss was all about.
But of course, the same exact thing can happen when soaking up one of Elvis’ superb Sun sides. In both Kerouac’s and Presley’s case, it wasn’t the sound so much as the blunt inappropriateness of the conduct, and Poetry for the Beat Generation offered the actions of a man who a significant portion of the population easily considered dangerous or even disgusting. And even worse, he was being abetted by a genuinely interested party from the mainstream.
That first record sat around doing nothing for a year before Thiele and Allen released it themselves on their own Hanover label. For the next record, also issued on Hanover in ’59, Kerouac insisted on working with legit figures from the current jazz scene, and the result offers a raw taste of the writer’s artistic depth while also serving as a study of the dissonance that sat in the heart of the ‘50s hipster experience.
Blues and Haikus features the talents of Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, two very major ‘50s jazzmen. For the opening ten minute track “American Haikus,” Kerouac recites short poems based on but distinct from the highly structured Japanese verse form, with his brief bits of sometimes William Carlos Williams-like imagery intersected by equally succinct excursions by either Cohn or Sims on tenor sax.
The combination is an extended and often intriguing tour through the meeting of two overlapping but different worlds. Where Poetry for the Beat Generation found Kerouac in all his On the Road-derived glory, here he plunges into the Buddhist-informed aspects of his personality located in his third published novel The Dharma Bums and in the collections of his poetry such as Mexico City Blues.
But there are also moments, as on the first LP, where the sound of his voice mimics the slow croaky drawl of Burroughs, a gesture that at this point couldn’t have been made for anyone other than himself and a few of his tight Beat cohorts. And on Blues and Haikus the spew of transcendence is far less derived from the adoption and worship of a culture he never fully (or at times even adequately) understood than it is on Poetry for the Beat Generation (or for that matter, On the Road.)
However, a definite disconnect is still very much in evidence. Cohn and Sims, two consummate guys who along with Serge Chaloff and the great Stan Getz filled out the sax section of Woody Herman’s Second Herd in the late-‘40s, were at this point accurately described as true professionals. They were most certainly artists of great skill and invention (for evidence, get a load of them with Hank Mobley and John Coltrane on the Prestige Records four saxophone pileup Tenor Conclave from ’57), but their everyday reality was notably different.
Critical reactions to this meeting have ranged from an overzealous amazement that rivals Kerouac’s jaw-on-the-floor (but again, frequently non-astute) considerations of the bebop titans that blew his eager young mind to an equally unperceptive assessment of extreme failure as folly that often reveals a severe intolerance for the appropriation of jazz’s purity by the supposed phonies of the Beat/hipster nexus.
To these ears, the reality falls somewhere in the middle. Cohn and Sims provide consistently interesting counterpoint to Jack’s words on “American Haikus,” but with a few short-lived exceptions, it’s always apparent that they are basically just making the date. They’re doing their admirable best in a situation that was obviously pretty different from the jazz session norm, but it was still all in a day’s work.
On the other side of the equation, as emphasized by the occasionally audible laughter of excitement during the sax passages, Kerouac is clearly having something close to the time of his rather eventful life. For some, this wide disparity in overall temperament might connect like an angelic, emotionally nude man ill-served by his idols, but for others it could easily seem like two dudes humoring an extremely loquacious fanboy. In the end, I can’t help but think of it as a fitting and enduring bit of expressiveness from an artist who was soon to be doomed by the disappearance of the very world that shaped him.
On “Hard Hearted Old Farmer” Sims takes a break, Cohn switches to piano, and after some generous studio chatter betwixt Thiele and Kerouac, Jack sings, and in a seriously unserious way. Those brittle souls who’ve never been able to abide the vocal charms of Chet Baker might want to give this baby a very wide berth, but anybody favorable to Kerouac’s essence should find it a very welcome pleasure.
Cohn continues on the keys for “The Last Hotel/Some of the Dharma,” with his playing emitting a loose, unpolished and inherently jazz-like abstraction that’s a thousand yards away from Allen’s likeable yet minor tinkling on the prior LP. And Kerouac’s voice is imbued with a sense of commitment that’s often absent from his at times reserved or nervous approach on Poetry for the Beat Generation. When Sims comes in on sax he blows with an assurance that’s in keeping with his deep reputation, and for a few moments, if perhaps only by the accident of good intentions, all three of the individuals click as one.
Sadly, the fleetingness of this aura doesn’t really return on side two’s long single track “Poems from the Unfinished Book of Blues.” It’s without a doubt a very rich listen, but the vibe is largely that Cohn and Sims are just blowing and that the palpable head of steam they are inspiring in Kerouac isn’t really reciprocal. Towards the end some communicative sparks do fly, and it’s surely worth the wait.
In 1960 Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation, the final LP issued during the writer’s lifetime, was released by Verve, and it found him sans musical accompaniment on selections that cut far into the psyche and heart of a great but often formidable artist. Due to this rawness it’s probably the record that listeners should save for last. If the first two give you good strokes, then by all means proceed.
But after consideration, Blues and Haikus should be heard even by those indifferent to Kerouac’s vital contribution to the Beat Generation (and by extension America and this entire spinning globe), for in providing exemplary exposure to the intricacies and foibles of the original Hipster subculture it celebrates a great historical loosening of the manacles of intolerance. And that’s a part of the past that should never be forgotten.
(RE)GRADED ON A CURVE:
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