Playlist: the music of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’
“I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday.” – Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969)
The publication of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel, On The Road, was a notable turning point as pop culture unfurled. While the paramountcy of the printed press was waning thanks to Elvis Presley’s shaking hips and the cleavage in Cleopatra, Kerouac decided to get out there, ditch the ways of the desk-bound writer, and catch the happening culture on the wing. In the process, he provided a bible for the beats, looking to follow in his footsteps.
Beyond the vivid cascading prose that offers a sense of life and the naivety of the unabetted philosophy, the virile youthfulness of the novel is derived from the simple presence of youth culture—which, at the time, for alternative folks meant bebop jazz. This buzzing musical experiment soundtracked Kerouac’s cross-country adventure and brought inherent colour to his work.
Kerouac wasn’t too proud to let his words service the masters of the arts that he looked to imitate in prose. As he said of his favourite, Charlie Parker: “Musically as important as Beethoven, yet not regarded as such.” Glowing praise like that is plentiful in On The Road as he captures the essence of the heaving hubs of bebop across the States.
In doing so, he encapsulated the communicative power of music. If his effort was the ‘book of the people’, then he made it clear that music, in its less highfalutin forms, was ‘the culture of the people’. This poetic notion of union, good times and poetry proved infectious and helped to spawn counterculture. That’s why on any given modern pressing of On The Road, you’ll find Bob Dylan’s testimony that it “changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.”
“I came out of the wilderness and just naturally fell in with the Beat scene, the bohemian bebop crowd, it was all pretty much connected,” Dylan told The New Yorker back in 1985. “It was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti… I got in at the tail end of that, and it was magic… it had just as big an impact on me as Elvis Presley.” To twist a famed phrase, if Elvis had freed bodies, then Kerouac had freed minds.
And yet, the writer himself vitally appraised both in his work. He weaves the sounds of Billie Holiday’s ‘Lover Man’ and Red Norvo’s ‘Congo Blues’ into his masterful work as key proponents of atmosphere and energy. With that in mind, we’ve decided to bottle that up into a playlist of all the music mentioned in On The Road, a book that has never lost an ounce of relevance since 1957.
The music of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road:
- ‘Ornithology’ – Charlie Parker
- ‘Donna Lee’ – Charlie Parker
- ‘Lover Man’ – Billie Holiday
- ‘Fine Romance’ – Billie Holiday
- ‘Fidelio’ – Ludwig van Beethoven
- ‘Manana’ – Peggy Lee
- ‘Central Avenue Breakdown’ – Lionel Hampton
- The Hunt’ – Dexter Gordon
- ‘Sweet Adeline’ – The Mellomen
- ‘Cement Mixer’ – Slim Gaillard
- ‘Groove Juice Special pt 2’ – Slim Gaillard
- ‘Groove Juice Special’ – Slim & Slam
- ‘Congo Blues’ – Red Norvo
- ‘Deep Purple’ – Glenn Miller Orchestra
- ‘Lester Leaps In’ – Lester Young
- ‘Moon Dreams’ – Miles Davis
- ‘West End Blues’ – Louis Armstrong
- ‘Gator Tail pt 1’ – Cootie Williams
- ‘Gator Tail pt 2’ – Cootie Williams
- ‘I Like My Baby’s Pudding’ – Wynonie Harris
- ‘Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop’ – Lionel Hampton
- ‘Mambo Jambo’ – Perez Pardo
- ‘Mambo De Chattanooga’ – Perez Pardo
- ‘More Mambo Jambo’ – Perez Pardo
- ‘Mambo Number 8’ – Perez Pardo
- ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee’ – Sticks McGhee
- ‘Shorty’s Got to Go’ – Lucky Millinder
