Jack Kerouac: 100 Years Of Beatitude (CD)

Release Date: 03/04/22

2-CD (digisleeve) with 36-page booklet, 52 single tracks. Total playing time approx. 150 minutes.

Bear Family Records® tribute to Jack Kerouac on the occasion of his 100th birthday in March 2022. Jack Kerouac, who along with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs formed the core cell of the Beat Generation.

The beatniks, as representatives of pop literature, listened to a wide range of specific styles of music; we have compiled 52 songs and historical audio documents from 1946 to 1963, from the core of the beatnik era.

Be Bop Jazz as the favorite music of the Beat Generation is featured with Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and others, as well as 'Word Jazz', the combination of jazz and beatnik poetry, such as by Oscar Brown, Jr., Don Morrow and of course Jack Kerouac himself with Steve Allen!

Contemporary pop music and rock 'n' roll around the beatnik subject are also represented, including satirical novelty numbers.

Featuring Big Jay McNeely, Babs Gonzales and others, rhythm 'n' blues is essential as a bridge between beatnik jazz and rock 'n' roll!

Historical sound documents, such as a Jack Kerouac reading, an interview, or the Allen Ginsberg recitation, round out the sound picture!

Two readings from the movie 'High School Confidential', which appeared on an MGM single in 1958, are here on CD for the first time!

And sounds from the 1959 film 'The Beat Generation'!

The colorful 36-page booklet contains rare photos and memorabilia as well as the history of the Beat Generation and its music, written by a connoisseur of the Beatnik scene, Roland Heinrich Rumtreiber!

On March 12, 2022, Jack Kerouac would have celebrated his 100th birthday, reason enough to remember him and his companions with a unique compilation! Kerouac is, together with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs the nucleus of the Beat Generation, the Beatniks, who from the late 1940s, across the Fifties, until the mid-Sixties acted mainly in California. Their type of pop literature was revolutionary at the time, like Rock'N'Roll in music.