“Exile On Main Street”  The Rolling Stones  Cover art design and photography by Robert Frank.  Frank’s, 1958 publication of The Americans, a book of photographs with an introduction by Jack Kerouac, changed modern photography.  In 1972, he directed “Cocksucker Blues,” an infamous, seldom-seen and much bootleged, cinema verite documentary of The Stones American Tour that year.  In conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum’s current Robert Frank exhibit of The Americans, I attended a screening of CB.  After years of having only a crappy VHS dupe, it was amazing to see the band misbehaving – and performing – on a clean print in the museum’s theater.  And how strange to see this notorious, dirty, “underground” movie being celebrated and analyzed at the Met, the bastion of high art.

(30 votes, average: 3.70 out of 5)

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Jack Kerouac with jazz greats Zoot Sims and Al Cohn. (1958). His second album on Hanover after “Poems for a Beat Generation” on which he was accompanied by TV talk show host Steve Allen. Produced by Bob Thiele. Click on the back cover here and hopefully you can read the liner notes by Gilbert Millstein. Kerouac calls Zoot and Al “Holy Blakean babies” and says “Zoot and Al blow thoughtful, sweet metaphysical sorrows.” Kerouac actually sings on one cut with Zoot playing piano for the first time on record. Here’s one of the haikus: “In my winter cabinet/the fly has/died of old age” Beat that.

Track listing: American Haikus; Hard Hearted Old Farmer; The Last Hotel & Some Of The Dharma; Poems from the Unpublished Book of The Blues; Old Western Movies; Conclusion Of The Railroad Earth.

Hear some of this record HERE.

(29 votes, average: 4.62 out of 5)

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I love the recordings of Kerouac reading his works. He has a great voice and very cool, laid back style. Here’s a clip of him on the Tonight Show with Steve Allen on the piano.

Verve Records 1959. Cover photo of Kerouac by Robert Frank. Sleeve notes by Bill Randle. Kerouac reads extracts from “Old Angel Midnight”, “Desolation Angels”, “The Beginnings of Bop”, “Mexico City Blues”, “Neal And The Three Stooges”, “San Francisco Blues”, “The Subterraneans” and more. Unlike Jack’s previous two lps this one is him solo. Without Steve Allen on the piano or Zoot Sims on sax.

(14 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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This is one of my rarest and most valuable records. It is an alternate cover that was recalled by conservative Dot records owner Randy Wood when he realized who Jack Kerouac was and felt that the beat poet’s counter-cultural subject material was too offensive for his Pat Boone and Shirley Jones-loving consumers. (About 100 copies got out to radio stations before the recall.) The record was cut in a single session and a single take for each piece which certainly supported Jack’s first draft is best draft philosophy of writing.

This is the first of Kerouac’s three records and is the result of a performance at the Village Vanguard with Steve Allen accompanying him on piano. The album was produced by Bob Thiele who then left the company over the dispute, took the master tape and formed Hanover Records with Steve Allen. Hanover then released the record in 1959.

(9 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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