While the beat movement associated with
Jack Kerouac and others was primarily a literary one, they grooved to, were influenced by, and themselves influenced some musical artists of the era, occasionally recording spoken word and comedy pieces themselves.
Beat Scene is an interesting, if somewhat loosely conceptualized, compilation of recordings from the birth, rise, and peak of the beats -- 1947 to 1959 -- that fall into this category. Foremost among the 24 tracks are three eloquently hip, well-delivered, late-'50s spoken word performances featuring
Kerouac himself, a couple of them with jazz backing by Steve Allen, and one done to music by
David Amram in the film
Pull My Daisy. It would be a mistake to think this is a
Kerouac or strictly
Kerouac-related compilation, however, as the majority of it features post-World War II modern and bop jazz by the likes of
Sun Ra,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Thelonious Monk, and
Charles Mingus. Interspersed with these are a few spoken word pieces by other major beat writers (
Allen Ginsberg and
Lawrence Ferlinghetti); a couple tracks by
Ken Nordine, perhaps the most famous spoken word recording artist to set his work to jazz; a couple of comedy routines by
Lenny Bruce; and even a beat novelty record by Mamie Van Doren ("The Beat Generation"), as well as
Louis Armstrong's theme song to the 1959 movie of the same name. Though almost everything here is entertaining and historically interesting, and the program of quite disparate efforts is well sequenced, the liner notes could have explained the connections of these specific tracks and artists to the beat movement much better. If all you had to go by was this CD, for instance, you wouldn't know that
Slim Gaillard's "Atomic Cocktail" is an especially apt inclusion as
Gaillard appears in a passage in
Kerouac's On the Road, or that
Pull My Daisy (from which there is another extract,
Anita Ellis' "The Crazy Daisy"), was a movie narrated by
Kerouac himself. Some of the tracks likely had no particular beat connection other than having been in the style of jazz some beats favored. Instead of annotation that connects the dots, we get liner notes offering a sketchy history of
Kerouac and the beats, with plenty of second-hand quotes by major beat writers. That's a relatively minor complaint for a collection that generally does a good job in sonically reflecting the beat scene at its apex, but it's frustrating that a yet better job could have been done. ~ Richie Unterberger