The Jack Kerouac Collection (Rhino, 1990)

During my teenage years, Jack Kerouac was a person whose name kept coming up as I gravitated toward particular authors, musicians, and movie directors. Due to these influences, I eventually read the obligatory On the Road and liked it so much that by the time I graduated from college I had acquired copies of most of the writer's other novels for my personal library. I was never the kind of fan who claimed that reading his best-known book was a life-changing event for me, nor did I ever have any desire to emulate his nomadic modus vivendi. What I always liked about Kerouac's best works - with my favorites being On the Road, Maggie Cassidy, Visions of Cody, Big Sur, and Vanity of Duluoz - was how he told a story, even if the typical plot was usually on the surface nothing more than a series of relatively ordinary events interspersed with exercises in deep introspection. Additionally, there is no author other than Kerouac who has really made me feel like he saw the world much in the same way that I do. However, what ultimately makes him such a compelling writer is his ahead-of-its-time postmodern view of postwar America, which, whether he liked it or not, helped lay the groundwork for the 1960s countercultural explosion.

JACK KEROUAC ABOUT TO GO ON THE ROAD

I played the contents of this box set to death when I first got it in the early 1990s, but it remains one of the most treasured items in my collection even if the CDs don't get much rotation these days. Reading poetry has never much appealed to me, but hearing it read aloud can be a revelatory experience if done properly, which is definitely the case here. These three albums not only feature Kerouac reciting poems with and without musical accompaniment, they also contain some fascinating recordings of his unique stream-of-consciousness-style prose. If you ask me to choose a favorite, I'm going to cop out and tell you that these three discs are all equally great in their own ways. The first, Poetry for the Beat Generation, is probably the most easily accessible due in large part to Steve Allen's impeccable ivory tinkling. In fact, of all the instrumentalists who worked with Kerouac, I think that this pianist (and all-around entertainer) was the most sympathetic. Allen always seems to provide just the right kind of backing on every performance, whether it's a reminiscence of the author's brakeman days ("October in the Railroad Earth"), tributes ("Charlie Parker," "One Mother," "Abraham," "The Moon Her Majesty"), humorous bits ("Deadbelly," "Goofing at the Table," "Dave Brubeck" "I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous"), meditations on transcendentalism ("The Sounds of the Universe Coming in My Window," "The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception" - how are those for thought-provoking titles?), New York-centric pieces ("Bowery Blues," "McDougal Street Blues"), or the album's centerpiece ("I Had a Slouch Hat Too One Time"), which sounds like a fascinating excerpt from the memoir of an early 20th-century drifter/petty criminal. The fantastic bonus track presents Kerouac reading passages from On the Road and Visions of Cody with full band accompaniment on a Steve Allen Show broadcast from 1959 and leaves the listener pining for more. Blues and Haikus comes off as perhaps the most stereotypically beatnik-sounding of these three LPs, especially on the opening track "American Haikus," which consists of alternately deep or amusing short poems separated by brief solos by saxophonists Al Cohn (who also plays piano on some tracks) and Zoot Sims. "Hard Hearted Old Farmer" brings attention to Kerouac's awkward singing but endearing French Canadian/New England accent ("Hahd Hahted Old Fahmah"), while the sometimes rambling and chaotic "The Last Hotel & Some of Dharma," "Poems from the Unpublished Book of Blues," "Old Western Movies," and "Conclusion of the Railroad Earth" are perhaps best appreciated while in an altered state of mind. A lot of fans rally around Readings on the Beat Generation as the best of this bunch, believing the optimum way to experience the writer's voice is by itself. Indeed, Kerouac's natural rhythm makes itself evident to such an extent throughout this album that all those literary theories which cite the influence of jazz on his writing style don't seem so ridiculous after all. "The Beat Generation" remains the definitive spoken word piece on the movement, while "Poems (Fragments)" can be considered this record's equivalent to "American Haikus," - i.e. short compositions that often speak volumes. The two-part "Lucien Midnight" qualifies as the most abstract work here and is utterly inscrutable at times. "Fantasy" though it may be, "The Early History of Bop" presents a more convincing a theory on the origins of this jazz sub-genre than any scholarly musicological treatise ever could. In short, it's an utter masterpiece of recorded monologue. "Excerpts from The Subterraneans" utilizes one of the best sections from an otherwise so-so book, whereas the gripping but slightly bowdlerized "Visions of Neal: Neal and the Three Stooges, Pts. I & II" is an essential part of my all-time favorite Kerouac book, Visions of Cody. As its outlandish title suggests, it covers everything from Neal Cassady to Moe, Larry, and Curly and all points in between. Finally, "Is There a Beat Generation?" from the like-named academic conference at Brandeis University in 1958, may not provide a clear answer to the question, but at the very least it allows Kerouac to provide his audience with some laughs while also leading them on a heartfelt nostalgic trip through his childhood memories of prewar America.

Disc 1 - Poetry for the Beat Generation - with Steve Allen (Hanover, 1959)
1. October in the Railroad Earth
2. Deadbelly
3. Charlie Parker
4. The Sounds of the Universe Coming in My Window
5. One Mother
6. Goofing at the Table
7. Bowery Blues
8. Abraham
9. Dave Brubeck
10. I Had a Slouch Hat Too One Time
11. The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception
12. McDougal Street Blues
13. The Moon Her Majesty
14. I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous
Bonus track
15. Readings from On the Road and Visions of Cody (from The Steve Allen Plymouth Show)

Disc 2 - Blues and Haikus / Featuring Al Cohn and Zoot Sims (Hanover, 1959)
1. American Haikus
2. Hard Hearted Old Farmer
3. The Last Hotel & Some of Dharma
4. Poems from the Unpublished Book of Blues
Bonus tracks
5. Old Western Movies
6. Conclusion of the Railroad Earth

Disc 3 - Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation (Verve, 1960)
1. The Beat Generation
2. Poems (Fragments)
a) San Francisco
b) Street Scene
c) Money Honey
d) Westinghouse Elevators
e) Old Age
f) Praised Be Man
g) The Sad Turtle
3. Lucien Midnight: The Sound of the Universe in My Window, Pt. I
4. Lucien Midnight: The Sound of the Universe in My Window, Pt. II
5. Fantasy: The Early History of Bop
6. Excerpts from The Subterraneans
7. Visions of Neal: Neal and the Three Stooges, Pt. I
8. Visions of Neal: Neal and the Three Stooges, Pt. II
Bonus track
9. Is There a Beat Generation? (from the Is There a Beat Generation? forum at Brandeis University)