Customer Reviews

Reads on the Road

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My first hearing of his whispering / singing his "On The Road" took my breath away. Done before Dylan, Tim Buckley, and Leonard Cohen produced similar material...what a loss to have only this; the playing of Victor Juris and especially John Medeski on this song is perfectly ethereal.

The swing/scat songs are a treat too with him goofing on the lyrics and the dedications. All proof of why he must have been a great guy to hang around with when he wasn't in his cups.

David Amram's accompaniment on other pieces immediately transported me to the kind of late night reading / playing that he's described doing with Jack.

Listen to Kerouac play with his voice, with his words, and with all the names and pseudonyms of his friends. A great addition to his published work.

True, the title is misleading, but Track 2 IS 28 minutes of Jack reading from On the Road and this makes it worth the $$$. The folk-bluesy song "On the Road," from a story collected in Good Blond, sung by Kerouac on one track and Waits/Primus on the final track, is really the only song integral to more fully developing an appreciation for Keruoac's literary themes. Yet, for the serious Kerouac fanatic, the other jazzy-goof songs are novel at worst. The Steve Allen (and the rest of the Box Set for that matter) recordings will forever be the benchmark for Kerouac's readings, but that does not diminish the importance of the On the Road readings on this CD. On the Amram collaborations: I've always been a disciple of Kerouac's prose, but his poetry has never done much for me. Outside of Amram's tiresome, recurring "Pull my Daisy" backing melody, the music compliments the poetry much better than the techno-junk that accompanies "McDougal St." on the Kicks CD. I give it 4 stars (instead of 5) only because these tracks aren't the Steve Allen recordings. I'd give it 3 stars and pay $20 if it were Kerouac reading a shopping list.

All I have to say about this one is "What the hell were they thinking?" Having picked up "The Jack Kerouac Collection" box recently, I was surprised to come across this CD of more material and was hoping I'd find more of Jack's classic jazzy beatness. And I did...sort of.

The readings here (like Jack's selections from "On The Road") are as crisp as I'd expected and would fit in nicely with "Readings From The Beat Generation". And I love the obscure jazz tunes they dug up by Jack. They work much better than some of the "singing" he tries on for size in his "Blues & Haikus". Here, he's no Sinatra but what Jack lacks in actual pipes, he makes up for in plain old enthusiasm.

But why, oh why did the producers think it was such a hot idea to throw some of David Amram's jarring jazz pieces over Jack's readings on "Orizaba 210 Blues" or "Washington D.C. Blues"? They don't even match the readings or belong there in the first place. What makes it worse is the two tracks go on forever. I could handle a brief experiment...but half an hour of this 90s noodling is just enough already. And hey, I love Waits, but what's he doing here? They should've saved him for the Jack tribute album that came out a few years back.

I wish somehow they'd clean this one up and add it to "The Jack Kerouac Collection" to make it complete - but I know that isn't gonna happen. If you want some advice, save your money for the brilliant boxed set and give this one the pass.

The stuff that is in it's original form (or at least close to it) is great. "Ain't We Got Fun", "Come Rain or Come Shine", and especially the reading from On the Road all sound great. This could have actually been a decent 40-minute CD. But why screw around with Jack's work? The pieces with newly recorded backing tracks are awful, they remind me of the Sinatra "Duets" stuff where there was no connection between Sinatra and his collaborators. It's like Ted Turner colorizing old classics. And I love Tom Waits, but what is he doing on this collection? Unfortunately, a lame concept. Get the Rykodisc boxset, it's the real deal.

In this amazing cd , we get to experience Kerouac reading the legendary "On The Road" excerpt recorded for, but omitted from his "Readings On The Beat Generation" album. The performance is strong , and from a different manuscript than the published one, and the public can now understand why he chose the zany mystical "Cody" sections for that album. The drunken Kerouac songs are touching but one gets the impression he is really much more interested in his own work (the jazz numbers have a sly, almost mocking tone to them.) "On the Road " (song), is truly sublime. Here we have the sweet private Kerouac in his own home, heartbreakingly laying down his road song. You get the feeling, just in the measure of his voice inflection , of a man who knows he has accomplished art for eternity,that the sanctity of the moment is being preserved;art is not in vain.The organ,guitar accompaniment is the first time music has sucsessfully complemented and blended with his voice(compare wretched "MacDougal Street Blues).The Amram / Kerouac connection is deep and enriching, especially the threds of "Daisy" throughout.Though I am a big fan of Waits, I find his interpretation to be a little rough or just plain expected, lacking the tenderness so essential to Kerouac. Overall , the picture painted in this disc is the exuberant youthful Kerouac, tho tired already of nonsense fame , and is the portrait of an artist who knows who is and what he has accomplished. An important release.

When Rykodisc released their excellent Kerouac tribute CD, Kicks Joy Darkness many people felt that they would be hard pressed to top that album. Well, we were wrong; they have indeed topped it, and with a CD of rare material by Jack Kerouac himself.

The stand-out item on this set has got to be Jack's thirty minute reading of the "Jazz of the Beat Generation" section from On the Road. Although Kerouac recorded extracts from his most famous book almost fifty years ago, none were ever released and the tapes were thought to be lost. A complete On the Road album was planned at the time, but never materialized, and there has long been a search for the recordings that Jack made at his Verve session in the last week of February 1958. During that week in New York, Kerouac recorded an album with Steve Allen on piano, released on the Dot and Hanover labels, and enough material for three other LPs of unaccompanied readings for Verve: "Four goddam albums in one week," as Jack wrote to his poet friend Philip Whalen. One of the three Verve LPs ("Readings on the Beat Generation") was issued by the company at the time, but the other two, including the planned On the Road set, did not appear; the master tapes have never been located.

Now that an extract from On the Road has finally been released on CD, can it be from the lost session? The answer has to be almost certainly yes. The liner notes tell us it came from (mislabelled) acetates in the possession of the Kerouac estate. These acetate discs were the sort of thing that record companies would quickly press from their master tapes in order to allow the performer to listen to their recordings prior to release. There's evidence from Kerouac's letters to friends in the summer of 1958 that he had been listening to these acetates at home, and was eagerly awaiting their release. "Greatest poetry records since Dylan Thomas ... I really read like a bitch," he told Ginsberg. Two 12-inch acetates recently found amongst Kerouac's possessions contain, according to handwritten titles on the labels: "Early History of Jazz", "Excerpts from The Subterraneans", "Zoot Sims", and "Charlie Parker" (in two parts). It is the "Charlie Parker" tracks which are mislabelled and actually play the On the Road extract. The first two tracks listed appeared on the single Verve LP released at the time, and this helps confirm that the On the Road reading comes from that same February 1958 session. "Zoot Sims", so far unreleased, is a short poem called "Hurrah for Zoot Sims", actually chorus #32 of Orlanda Blues, which Jack wrote in Florida just a few days before travelling to New York for his recording sessions.

But how come the mistitling of the On the Road extract as "Charlie Parker"? When Jack was anticipating these recordings in January 1958, he wrote to friends that he was going to be recording for Verve "in front of unreleased [Charlie] Parker tape," so this may explain the labelling. In fact, this did not happen, and in June he told Philip Whalen that "the three albums I made for Norman Granz [at Verve] are being listened to by Shorty Rodgers and Jimmy Giuffre, and then they're going to compose scores over it." Rodgers and Giuffre, prominent jazz musicians, would no doubt have been given similar acetates from which to hear Jack's voice and compose their accompaniments. Again, nothing came of this plan, and, apart from the one unaccompanied Verve LP by Jack, no other material from that session was ever released -- until now. So, although the master tapes have still not been found -- the search will hopefully continue -- we are indeed lucky that we are able to hear a section of the missing material courtesy of these acetate discs.

Jack's reading of this item is as magnificent as expected, and it has to be the highlight of the CD. Strictly speaking, what Jack reads is "Jazz of the Beat Generation", a piece he wrote for publication in New World Writing in 1955, which mixes together extracts from On the Road and Visions of Cody. There are large sections of the text in On the Road as well as subtle differences. The unnamed tenorman/singer who Kerouac describes himself and Neal digging in 1949 at a San Francisco jazz-club in On the Road becomes two separate people in this reading -- a tenorman, and a singer named Freddy, who has recently been identified, from a Neal Cassady letter, as Freddy Strong, a vocalist and conga drum player who went on to tour and record with Dizzy Gillespie two years later.

Jack mimics Freddy's singing well in this reading, and there are more examples of his vocal work to come. The following track is a home recording of Jack singing a song called "On the Road", which includes lines from the one to be found in Part Four of the book as well as others from the short story The Rumbling, Rambling Blues, backed by a simple but effective dubbed-on guitar and keyboard accompaniment. The album finishes with another version of the same song, this time performed by Tom Waits with the band Primus. There are four other songs on the CD, all sung by Jack, backed by jazz musicians in his friend Jerry Newman's New York recording studio in the late 1950s or early '60s. On these standard ballads, although obviously high, Jack performs creditably, even if he does invent some lyrics of his own along the way, and the quality of his singing voice is bound to be a pleasant surprise for many.

Two further tracks feature Jack reading his blues poems Orizaba 210 Blues (the first thirteen choruses), and Washington D.C. Blues, and for these performances David Amram, an old friend of Kerouac's, has composed special soundtracks to accompany and enhance Jack's readings. Although it is suggested in the notes that the original tape of Orizaba 210 Blues was also made at Jerry Newman's, it is now thought that both blues poems were probably recorded by Jack at home. As was common with Kerouac's home recordings, a record, usually by Sinatra, was playing in the background. This was felt by the producers to be a distraction to Jack's readings and so was reduced using the latest digital technology, with Amram's sensitive musical score further masking the intrusions, although small bursts can occasionally still be heard under the added music. It's good to hear Jack read from Orizaba 210 Blues, the only other performance from that poem so far available being the "Slouch Hat" section on the album with Steve Allen. The Washington D.C. Blues reading is also lively, and includes the delightful little poem "Schatzi is a Dachshund", a version of which, illustrated by artist Teura Maffei, is in the Fales Collection at New York University.

So, an altogether fascinating collection of 75 minutes of the rarest Kerouac material, expertly performed by the master himself, and a must for all enthusiasts. Producers Jim Sampas and Lee Ranaldo are to be congratulated on putting it all together so well, and the hope must be that even more of the same is to follow.

Very few people know that Jack Kerouac sang on a few recordings. I bought this CD thinking that it was all poetry readings, but soon found out that only 3 tracks are of him reading poetry, 5 are of him singing bop songs and lastly, a seriously crap version of the "On the road" song by Tom Waits. If you buy it for the readings, which most do, be warned that only 3 tracks are of his poetry, but the combined 3 readings contain over 50 minutes of his reading. Most people enjoy the reading of "On the Road", which is aroung 29 minutes long, but that time flies by as you are envisioning what Jack saw on the road. The conflicting part lies in the other two readings, where the reading is backed by Dave Amram, who leads the jazz behind. I have to admit that sometimes the music kind of strays from what Kerouac is saying, but it is still just a filler to back the emotion of Jack's words, and that is all that matters. Now for the songs. Even though it is easy to tell that Jack had an untrained singing voice, he still had the talent. The best example is his version of "When a Woman loves a Man". "Ain't we got fun" is a good opener, with the humorous dedication to "lovely, shapely, skinny Sue Evans, with the beautiful box." The only problem on here is Tom Waits. Hearing Jack sing the song "On the Road" which he wrote is simply beautiful to hear. Mr. Waits on the other hand runs the song into the ground. It is truly an insult to that song.

The Conclusion is that this CD is well worth the price. It has the feel of cold evening walks, like in early winter, when it is sprinkling outside. An essential disc for any Kerouac fan.

Everything on this cd is absolutely amazing except for the music composed by David Amran on tracks 5 and 8. His music does not compliment Kerouac's incredible readings at all. The remaining tracks make this cd a worthwhile purchase. Especially track 3, On the Road (song) and track 6, When a Woman Loves a Man.

Jack Kerouac, reading exerpets from On the Road, singing songs, always brings a smile to my face. Money well spent, if youre a Kerouac fan :)

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Track 1: 'Ain't We Got Fun' 2:31

Imagine if you will a small dimly lit club on the lower east side - not far from the docks. It's drizzling outside, a dark winters night. We're inside, with or without our lady friends, there's a chink of glasses, but no murmur of conversation as there aren't many of us in that night. A four piece group on stage: sax, piano, bass, and drums have just eased up from playing a slow improvised blues. A cop car wails outside in the night and a girl at the bar is about to tell her feller what she'd said to her brother that day.

The pianist rises from his stool and beckons Jack Kerouac to come up on stage and join them for a couple numbers. The barman, the club manager, and one or two customers recognise Jack as the newly published author but generally it's a low key introduction, no applause, and Jack needs encouragement from the small group of friends he's with to get up there. He says something to the musicians, leans his backside against the high stool, feet apart and square on the ground, reaches out, takes the microphone from it's stand and announces: "Jack Kerouac is dedicating this number to lovely, beautiful, skinny, shapely, Sue Evans - with the beautiful box!"

The pianist has left his piano and introduces the number on a jaunty xylophone. "In The Evening ain't we got fun " start's Jack. He's had a couple to overcome his stage nerves and after straining the first few words, he improvises and cracks some good humoured jokes to "Sue Evans" allowing himself to relax a little and settle into the groove of the song. The straying from the lyric and frequent flat-notes strangely make it more appealing as though through it all it's evident that Jack loves this kind of night club jazz and the effort and soul are there if the slick professionalism is not. His mind has been formed by digging this music for the past twenty years, so he sings no other. It's Buddy Greco meets Billy Holiday. (My mother said, on hearing Billy Holiday - this is how women sing when they're drunk). Jack sings jazz like you'd sing jazz if you forgot yourself for a moment.

He sings jazz like Fred Flintstone sings jazz only with a single-malt smoothed talking, singing voice: 'They're having troubles in old London Town, Oh eee .. Cold roast beef and Worcester Sauce", Jack is such a universalist, eventually he makes it all his own: "Da boppajah de baby... Wop a do be do do do"

Beautiful sweet rhythm playing by the quartet gets the customers clapping along to the swing. By the end of the tune it's jumping.

Track 2: "On the Road" (Jazz of the Beat Generation) 28:40

Now Jack's home alone much later that same night, Sue Evans droped him off in her car as she's got work the following morning, as it is she won't get much sleep, it must be 3am already. Jack settles down with a final drink by the dying embers of a fire, takes up a proof copy of a soon to be published book, turns on his tape recorder and keeping his voice down so as not to wake Memere upstairs, starts to read:

"Out we jumped in the warm mad night, hearing a wild ten nerman's balling horn across the way going eee-ya eee-ya and hands clapping" Jack starts a little nervously, finding his voice, which as we noticed in the club earlier - is beautiful, not guttural-beat as you might imagine but with a lightness to it like a young preacher telling you - 'yes, there is a thing called love...', there becomes an urgency to it.

He's describing a "sawdust saloon" and we're back in the 'fifties, on wooden floorboards, beer stains all over, piss stains in the 'jon', bent bottle tops lying around. It's a wonderful 'down home' scene that Sal (the narrator), Dean Moriarty (his friend) and their girlfriends Galatia and Alice have hit to ball the night away. And of course Jack describes it brilliantly: "strange floppy women wandering around" does that mean fat women sloppily dressed in loose frocks? I ask myself. Where,in a poem somewhere (on another C.D.) Jack says: "and the flop comes on" does he mean evening falls and everybody relaxes and lets it all hang out? It's an American thing.

But we're back circa 1947 maybe in that barn of a pub with Sal, Dean and the girls digging the jazz band and chasing it around. Wonderful descriptions of the band playing and the place jumping with seemingly not a person in the audience undescribed until your heads spinning and you're there with them. Jack building the scene in words so that that venue in 1949 exists here in 1999! (or should I say here in the new Millennium). And Jack, bent over in the chair now, tape wheels turning, hot embers in front and cold night steeling in behind him unnoticed as now he's lost in warm summer evening '49 as his warm honeyed tones toast that night with the rhythm and flow that Jacks writing, unique in the world, has.

There's remarkably good characterisation in Jack's reading voice effortlessly changing from the parlance of the black singer "Freddy" to the white fan "Dean", a wonderful ear for dialect and ethnic mannerism. I love it when describing Freddy as being dressed "like a pimp in Mecca" he checks himself realising that Mecca is a holy city and not wishing to offend Muslims out of plain courtesy he adds: "where there are no pimps".

It's not just description, but like a great painter he includes his impression of what he see's with an original honest eye. Also displaying the aforementioned ceaseless flow and rhythm so without even catching his breath Jack sends the words cascading and swirling down into the black hole which is all our hearts. But we're not finished yet as Sal and Dean abandoned by the girls join some of the musicians in jumping in a car to ball it clear across San Francisco to another jumping club, with great in-car conversations and Jack becomes the master actor and proves that nobody reads Kerouac like Kerouac!

So what kind of a C.D. is "Jack Kerouac reads On The Road"? Well, you remember how back in 1960 after Buddy Holly died they released on album of the singers rough cuts and demo's with backings dubbed on by (I think) The Crickets. How at first, & when you read the reviews you thought: "This won't be no good" yet when you finally heard the record, Holly's genius shone through the scratchy under produced tracks like "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and you new even this L.P. consisting of sweepings from the studio floor would in time become a classic, and it did.

Well "Kerouac reads On The Road" is that kind of a disc: something of a curates egg (good in parts). I find I have to be in the mood to appreciate it, but as a late-night mood complimentor it's up there with the best. You have to be able to let your mind go with it & by the time I got to "Leaving Town" (track 7) my mind had wandered off it, (but that was at 11 o'clock in the morning!). Apparently these tracks were lifted from some acetate discs that Jack had cut privately back in the early sixties. The half-hour (track 2) reading of "On the Road" being fabled but overlooked for some thirty years because it was wrongly labelled "Charlie Parker"! But the C.D has a terrific extensive sleeve note by Douglas Brinkley which explains this and a whole lot more. On the C.D. there are four tracks of Jack singing night-club style backed by an unknown jazz combo (and they're good). Up to now I'd been suspicious of David Amrarns' talents (one fan's jealousy of another?) but here he provides dubbed on musical backings to Jack reading two poems which are highly sensitive to the themes and stand as beautiful melodies in there own right. The C.D is produced by Jim Sampas and Lee Ranaldo, and they've done us a great service.