Kerouac's Seymour..
Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Mon, 04 Aug 1997 03:21:20 +0500 (GMT+0500)
Well, this hardly has any JDS content but a cusrsory search for
"seymour;wyse" on altavista threw up one hit that I thought some of you
may find of some interest considering that a lot of _names_ figure here
and since someof the jazz men mentioned happen to be personal favourites,
I thought I'd append it here:
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Ann Charters' compilation, A Bibliography of Works By Jack Kerouac,
notes a description by John Clellon Holmes on the making of the
recordings:
...Seymour Wyse [Wise], an old friend of Jack's from Horace Mann
days, with whom he shared an interest in jazz, was working (in
1949-50) in a record shop on Eighth Street, west of Sixth, owned by
another old friend, Jerry Newman, who in early 1940 had made a
classic series of records up at Minton's in Harlem, featuring the
work of Charlie Christian and the then almost unknown Thelonius
Monk, Dizzie Gillespie, Kennie Clarke, and others who came to
prominence in the bop revolt a few years later... Anyhow, my then
brother-in-law had left in my apartment one of those massive,
ungainly and also unreliable recording machines of the late 40's,
weighing over one hundred pounds with a cutting arm that had the
heft of a good-size hammer. All of us, then, were a bop-mad,
indefatigable, stone-broke, and full (we imagined) of ravishing
jazz-ideas. One night, Seymour brought to a party of mine several
demonstration discs, only one side of which had been used, and,
pleasantly mulled on beer, which in those days we always bought in
enormous quart bottles, and never more than four at a time, after
which someone was delegated to go down to the deli below and
purchase more. Soon I got Jack to read the two slight selections
from Town and City (both of which were considerably thinned in the
published version), after which our exuberance quickly outran any
such "literary" projects, and we got down to making records of
ourselves, riffing over recorded solos. One of our passions just
then was the work of pianist Lennie Tristano, who was, perhaps, the
most avant-garde of the younger jazzmen of that year, and who, just
a month before, had recorded, the first attempt at total, freeform,
atonal improvisation, a record called "Intuition", not yet
released, but played occaisionally by Symphony Sid on his all-night
radio show. We decided to attempt a similar thing, and the "Three
Tools" were born, flourished briefly, and passed away. We made
other records, none of which was really successful, and on other
nights, with other discs that Seymour brought, I managed to get
Ginsberg recorded, reading his then tightly-metaphysical-Yeats-like
poems, and Jack doing selections from Hamlet, which he felt he
could interpret best while a little muddled on beer, eschewing too
much gravity, and adopting a musing, and sometimes amusing, tone...
A few months later, my brother-in-law reclaimed his equipment, and
the early attempt to establish Caedmon Records came to an end.
When, some years afterwards, I got a tape recorder, I taped a long
conversations with Jack and Allen and Peter, and joint, giggling
poetry readings, and even late-night confessionals. All these
tapes, lamentably, are now lost.
[Charters, Ann. A Bibliography of Works By Jack Kerouac. New
York:Phoenix Bookshop (1967): 109-110.]
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Obsalinger: If JDS could have all those cracks at "Dharma Bums" and so
on, it shouldn't really be surprising to find that Kerouac did read
JDS. Considering Langusta's recent post, obviously he did --or had
atleast made the acquaintence of _the_ Seymour Glass.
Besides, I went back to the Warren French book I have on JDS
(apparently he also did one on Kerouac) and found that the Glass
chronicles have been compared to Kerouac's projected Duluoz Legend. Now
the only Kerouacs I think I've read is Dharma Bums ( and perhaps some
parts of On the Road, and have even the chronology all mixed up..) but
I believe Kerouac did not live long enough to rework his stories into a
coordinated whole, whereas one hopes JDS has...Like some on the list
(Malcs once said that he hopes for "Walt & Waker") my wish would be
ofcourse to have a complete annotated "Buddy Glass" Though I would
rather lay my money on a blank sheet of paper enclosed by way of
explanation. Uh, without the cigar end, ofcourse.
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Sundeep Dougal (Sonny, to friends) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA