Post war America’s flag waving enthusiasm created a counter culture of bop players that grew teeth and literary wings as the ‘50s unfurled. In the legendarily smokey coffee houses on both coasts post-bop players were joined by notebook-wielding politico’s and java-fuelled surrealists who stroked their goatees and told it like it could be. They developed their own cool language and lived the dream of exploration through the writings of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs alongside the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth among many others.
The beat scene embraced the playing of Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, Charlie Ventura, Gerry Mulligan’s Quartet, along with the acidic humour of Lenny Bruce and the irreverent rantings of Lord Buckley and it was roundly parodied by everyone from Perry Como to Rod McKuen. These were heady days, the precursor to a hippie movement that dabbled in peace and love in the ‘60s before that dream crumbled in front of The Rolling Stones at Altamont in 1969.
Just over a decade earlier, Kerouac had done readings from The Beat Generation with tinkling piano accompaniment courtesy of Steve Allen and Fantasy, in 1960, had released Kenneth Rexroth’s ‘Poetry And Jazz At The Blackhawk’ where his readings were accompanied by some cool jazz blowing. On the sleeve, Rexroth astutely outlined the first rumblings of the unlikely marriage of poets and players.
“Over a hundred years ago,” he recalled, “the French poet, Charles Cross, the man who invented the phonograph, recited his poetry to the hot music of a bal musette band. In the Twenties, Langston Hughes, Maxwell Bodenheim and myself recited poetry to the jazz of the time. A few years back, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Patchen, Lawrence Lipton and I revived it in California.”
‘Jazz Canto’, an anthology of poetry and jazz was recorded and released in 1958 and brought together the writings of Ferlinghetti, Hughes and Lipton along with those of Dylan Thomas, Philip Whalen, Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams. Read by John Carradine, Hoagy Carmichael, Bob Dorough and Ben Wright with musical accompaniment by The Bob Dorough Quintet, Roy Glenn, The Chico Hamilton Quintet, Bob Hardaway, The Jazz Canto Ensemble and The Ralph Pena Quintet, it’s from a time when two wildly spinning worlds collided to produce recordings that are simply breathtaking, a staggering mix of styles and subject matter that make for one of the strangest musical trips imaginable.
Influenced by Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust and many more, the painter and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s ‘Dog’ tells of a roaming dog and his view of the world which lets the dog look into the “great gramophone of human existence”, Dylan Thomas’ ‘Lament’ recounts the life of a man in five verses and five stages of self-realisation, while the writer Langston Hughes, famous for his work in the Harlem renaissance, is covered in three charged pieces that reflect the political climate of the day.
The eerie ‘Night Song For The Sleepless’ by Lawrence Lipton dabbles in drugs and their visionary power while one of the unsung heroes of the beatnik generation, the Zen Buddhist Philip Whalen’s ‘Big High Song For Somebody’ has all the illustrative prowess of a man painting pictures with words over a cool laidback groove. William Carlos Williams’ two offerings are like miniature soap operettas that were undoubtedly inspired by his meetings with artists Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. The physician turned poet was part of the New York group The Others and part of the development of modernism and Imagism in the States.
Finally, Walt Whitman provides the introduction to this extraordinary album welcoming the poets to let loose their creativity. The legendary journalist and essayist who died in 1892 was acclaimed by the beats for his transition between transcendentalism and realism and the Jazz Canto Ensemble’s dramatic arrangement make his ‘Poets To Come’ all the more startling.
The four readers involved in the project all have different tales to tell. The father of David Carradine, whose evocative Kung Fu TV series carried some of the beatnik existentialism to new degrees in the ‘70s, John Carradine was famous for acting in westerns in the 1940s, while Hoagy Carmichael was a legendary crooner whose ‘Stardust’ from 1927 was voted one of the greatest songs of the last millennium.
Ben Wright was the voice behind The Outer Limits TV programme and also provided voices for many Disney animations including 101 Dalmations and The Jungle Book, while Bob Dorough was the key instigator of the ‘Jazz Canto’ project, a jazz pianist and vocalese singer who worked with Miles Davis and Ginsberg as well as inspiring the legendary Mose Allison.
The musical performances on the album move from cool jazz simplicity to filmic pieces of exotica that further enhance the offbeat nature of the proceedings. ‘Jazz Canto’ is unreservedly out there and thankfully so. This is deep stuff.
1 Poets To Come 2:54 (Walt Whitman) John Carradine With The Jazz Canto Ensemble 2 Tract 5:12 (William C Williams) Hoagy Carmicheal With The Ralph Penna Quintet 3 In My Craft Or Sullen Art 1:44 (Dylan Thomas) Ben Wright With The Jazz Canto Ensemble 4 Night Song For The Sleepless 6:35 (Lawrence Lipton) John Carradine With The Chico Hamilton Quintet 5 Lament 6:30 (Dylan Thomas) Ben Wright With The Jazz Canto Ensemble 6 Dog 3:43 (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet 7 Young Sycamore 0:45 (William Carlos Williams) Hoagy Carmichael With Bob Hardaway 8 Daybreak In Alabama 3:59 (Langston Hughes) Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet 9 Night And Morn 3:31 (Langston Hughes) Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet 10 The Dreamkeeper 4:17 (Langston Hughes) Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet 11 Big High Song For Somebody 3:57 (Philip Whalen) Roy Glenn
