The Jazz Beatnik Connection

Jazz, one of the infinitely defined aspects of the music industry (one which some would escape from in order to avoid commercialization), would in the 40's evolve into its bandwagon express to rocket the writing revolution at the time. The Beats.

"In this modern jazz, they heard something rebel and nameless that spoke for them, and their lives knew a gospel for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude toward life, a way of walking, a language and a costume; and these introverted kids... now felt somewhere at last." -John Clellon Holmes, 'GO'

Curious? Well, before we get into the grand story, lets first indulge into what exactly happened before the two revolutions collided head first.

Jazz underwent a sizable change in the 40's, sprouting a twin head (of smaller proportions) in the form of bebop. Bebop's metling pot was in New York City, where eventual greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, John Coltraneand Miles Davis filtered through mainstream in midnight clubs. Bebop was a form of Jazz consisting of smaller groups of musicians, instead of the larger groups, and extended a heavy hand into the virtuosity which marketed their styles.

In the 50's, the Beat generation catapulted into the limelight. It's a curious coin of the word "generation", however, since its main members were so diminutive that most of them knew each other. Unlike other coined generations of our age, they were in no size comparison. They were a bunch of rag-tag outcasts and fun goers lead by the likes of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Chuck Bukowski, Gary Snider, William Burroughs, and the famous Neal Cassady.

The merging worlds of Beats and Bebops would begin in midnight clubs, popularized by Beatniks and amused by their cousins in music. In fact, the word 'Beat' itself comes from a time after World War II, used by jazz and hustlers alike as slang meaning down and out, or poor and exhausted. It expressed the depressing attitude felt at the time, and the need for an outlet. For both parties at the time, this outlet was late night sessions of enthusiasm and inspiration. Allen Ginsberg was quoted to say that Jazz men were the "Secret Heroes" of this most displaced society.

Jazz and Beat also shared alike terms of slang; square, cats, nowhere, dig, and kicks; their own slang, which has in some groups still survived to this day (as in comparison to the "happy America" untop their sweltering sand trap. Words like "swell" are a joke these days).

To the Beats, Jazz was a new way of expression, a convoluted and contorted paradigm of explosion into the great sound of the world. They used it as a point of reference for their writing. It gave them wings.

(Note: In this point of reference, Dean is the great Neal Cassady)

Dean stands in the back, saying, 'God! Yes!' -- and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. 'Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.' Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C's, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing 'C-Jam Blues' and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. -Jack Kerouac, 'On The Road'

The drug addiction of the Beats is also parallel to their musicians, both sides of the spectrum were heavy Junk users, hoping it would bring them to some sort of enlightened magical dream-expression.

The Bebop's stream of conscious melody (and sometimes lack thereof) also happened with the Beats. Both parties experimented in a stream of conscious, writing endlessly without stopping of any idea or whim. This style was done to it's perfection in Allen Ginsberg's Howl. As put by the Homosexual Hippie himself, "First thought, best thought".

Another more subtle trait of both generations was to "blow the horn" until their breath ran out. At poetry and Jazz jams, both went into their art with giant screams of spontaneity, not stopping until their faces turned purple. In 'Howl', the word he stopped and began at was "who". Ginsberg claimed the song paralleled Lester Young's, "Lester Leaps in".

Sooner or later it was bound to happen, when Beat poets and Jazz musicians would accompany each other on stage, providing voice and beat for each other in clubs about America's urban backdrop. Kenneth Patchen, the Godfather of Poetry/Jazz intersplicing, and fellow Beat revolutionary, was the first to truely break down the barrier and encourage the rest of the Beatniks to give it their shot.

"Speak softly; sun going down
Out of sight. Come near me now.

Dear dying fall of wings as birds
complain against the gathering dark . . .

Exaggerate the green blood in grass;
the music of leaves scraping space;

Multiply the stillness by one sound;
by one syllable of your name . . .

And all that is little is soon giant,
all that is rare grows in common beauty

To rest with my mouth on your mouth
as somewhere a star falls

And the earth takes it softly, in natural love . . .
Exactly as we take each other . . . and go to sleep . . ."

-Kenneth Patchen, 'Fall of the Evening star"

"Kerouac was even booked into the Village Vanguard to "play" regular sets, reading poetry with jazz accompaniment... on his better nights, he dispensed with the poetry and took up scat singing, including a faithful rendering of a Miles Davis solo that... "was entirely accurate and something more than a simple imitation."- Jack Chambers, 'Milestones'

As the generations themselves sprung derivatives, we can still see their marriage as consistent. The Beats eventually evolved in the Hippies, from there rock stars, punks, and freaks, as Jazz changed from its old Bebop (and larger group Jazz) into hip-hop, commercialism, and rap. Both at times a disgrace to their orgins, we can still see their never-ending merger in Rap-rock, Jazz Fusion, and other derivatives.

In ending, a final quote from Kerouac on his take of the Jazz history:

"Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and subtlety--leaning to it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother's woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonious Monk and madder Gillespie--Charlie Parker in his early days when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while playing. Somewhat younger than Lester Young, also from KC, that gloomy, saintly goof in whom the history of jazz was wrapped; for when he held his horn high and horizontal from his mouth he blew the greatest; and as his hair grew longer and he got lazier and stretched-out, his horn came down halfway; till it finally fell all the way and today as he wears his thick-soled shoes so that he can't feel the sidewalks of life his horn is held weakly against his chest, and he blows cool and easy getout phrases. Here were the children of the American bop night."-On The Road And another, The Sax Bit, by Ted Jones...

This poem is
just a poem of
thanks

This bent metal serpent/ holy horn with lids like beer
mug/ with phallic tail why did they invent you
before Coleman Hawkins was born ?
This curved shiney tune gut/ hanging lynched like/ J
shaped intitial of jazz/ wordless without a reed when
Coleman Hawkins first fondled it/kissed it with Black
sound did COngo blood sucking Belges frown ?
This tenor/alto/bass/baritone/soprano/moan/cry &
shout-a-phone ! sex-oh-phone/tell-it-like-damn-
sho-isa-phone !What tremors ran through Adolphe
Saxe the day Bean grabbed his ax ?
This golden mine of a million marvelous sounds/black
notes with myriad shadows/or empty crooked tube of
technical white poor-formance/calculated keys that
never unlock soul doors/white man made machine saved
from zero by Coleman Hawkins !
This saxophone salvation/modern gri gri hanging from
jazzmen's necks placed there by Coleman Hawkins
a full body & soul sorcerer whose spirit dwells eternally
in every saxophone NOW and all those sound-a-phones
to be

Reference and quotes supplied by:
http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/LitKicks.html
http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/

Edits/corrections/year-after afterthoughts:

• Charles Bukowski, although sometimes credited as a Beatnik, is not, and was not very involved in the jazz scene at all. Bukowski is closer defined along the generation writers like Celine and Lorca. At one point Bukowski was quoted with something along the lines of disinterest and annoyance at the Beatniks. He was also a greater fan of Classical than Bebop. I can't find anything that shows Bukowski disliking bebop, though.
• Though Bebop's impact on writing was one of the key props for Beat writing, there are sharp contrasts on the musician's take on Bebop and the writer's inspiration. Bebop is highly technical and takes care of its many notes, creating tapestries of music interwoven with past tunes and altercations in short movements. Beat writing however was fast paced but mostly careless, and was by whole less matured than its Bebop musicians by comparison.