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Hitchhiking Through Space and Time: Rime of the Ancient Mariner
From: Columbia University
| By:
David Amram |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
David Amram has lived several lives as a musician, journalist and author. A leading cultural figure in the 1950s, Amram was part of a legendary group of friends and artists that included writer Jack Kerouac, musician Charlie Mingus and poets Philip Lamantia and Howard Hart. On December 2, 1999, Amram shared reminiscences about the 1950s with students at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. |
 llow me to read just a little bit of something that I am writing, which in my sense is reportage. Some of it happened over 40 years ago. Obviously, I didn't have a tape recorder and I didn't have a notebook. Well, I did have a notebook, but I was writing music in it, not what everybody said. I remember pretty much what was said. This is my way now of functioning as a reporter of sorts for something that happened that I was part of as a primary source. |
"Collaborating with Kerouac was as natural as breathing. That is because the breath and the breadth of Jack's rhythms were so natural that even the most stodgy musician or listener or reader could feel those rhythms and cadences, those breathless flowing phrases, the subtle use of dynamics that are fundamental to the oral, that is to say spoken, and aural, to be listened to, tradition of all music and poetic forms of expression." |
"Whoa!" you might say. Why such a long sentence? Because Jack himself spoke, wrote, improvised and sang in long, flowing phrases like the music of Franz Schubert, George Gershwin, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, like the poetry of Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Baudelaire, Langston Hughes and other lyric artists whose work we both loved and admired. The 1950s were the pinnacle years for great conversationalists and great rappers. The last generation to grow up reading vivaciously, traveling by extension of the thumb and trust in the great creator to get you to your destination. |
Part of your requirement of being a successful hitchhiker was to engage your patron saint of the moment, the person who picked you up, in conversations about anything and everything. Storytelling was still practiced as a people-to-people activity. TV and the Internet were not part of the picture. |
Entertainment and communication came from the interaction of people to one another. Many of the greatest poets, authors and jazz artists, whether reading or playing in public, could carry on for hours for an audience of one other person. Our expectations and goals were to achieve excellence with the hope that once we did someone out there would dig it. |
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| David Amram (top right) sits with Allen Ginsberg (bottom right), Jack Kerouac (top left), Larry Rivers and Gregory Corso. | |
I participated in incredible concerts, jam sessions, poetry music readings, classical music concerts and dance events where the performers usually outnumbered the audience. That was more or less expected. On the rare occasions when there was a large audience, that sense of intimacy was still retained by the performers and considered to be the most important goal to strive for. Our universal motto was "Be for real." "Just find one person and play for that person all night long, Dave," Charlie Mingus told me in the fall of 1955, when I had just arrived in New York. I was fortunate enough to be chosen by him to be in his quintet. All you need is one person in your whole life to really be listening. Jack was one of those people who listened and observed as well as he wrote and performed. |
When Jack Kerouac and I first began performing together in 1956, we would run across each other at the "bring your own bottle" parties often held at painters' lofts. The guests would bring wine, beer, Dr. Brown's black-cherry soda, sometimes just paper cups or potato chips, graham crackers and musical instruments, a new poem, a monologue from Shakespeare or Lord Buckley's latest comedic philosophic rap, a song or simply their unadorned selves looking for romance, fun, excitement and a chance to celebrate Friday and Saturday night where you can stay up till dawn because you didn't have to go to your day job. |
The great American weekend frenzy was upon us. But unlike most of our brother and sister pilgrims in the mad canyons of New York's vast and terrifying cement jungle, we could find a harmonious home in our own temporary oasis for weekend adventures wherever we ended up. Enduring friendships were often formed in the most modest of milieus. |
I'm going to talk about just before we decided to do the first jazz poetry reading. We decided to go to the Cafe Figaro after we had gotten together with Howard Hart and Philip Lamantia perhaps to discuss some of our jazz poetry ideas. |
Jack said, "Let's go get some more wine and go out to the Cafe Figaro at MacDougal and Bleecker Street and meet some beautiful gals and we'll discuss our plans to invade New York's literary jungle and overwhelm the masses with our spontaneous madness." We ambled down the six flights of stairs in my apartment and headed towards the Cafe Figaro. We walked in silence for a few blocks. Jack turned to me and asked, "Did you ever feel you knew someone all your life when you met them?" "Yes, Jack. I felt that with you the first time we played together at one of those loft parties but would never had said it." "You didn't need to say it," said Jack. |
We crossed to the Figaro and we sat down in the back room. I took out my horn and we gave an impromptu, improvised performance. Brooklyn Bernie, an old Village moving man, applauded and came over to our table. "I'll tell you what, Dave. I'll buy all you guys free coffee, sandwiches and pastry if you'll let me recite 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' with you, all right? Listen Dave, you play the horn like the sea sounds making the boat rock and you other guys hum when I signal you. I always wanted to do this at the Figaro. This is my chance." |
Then he whispered confidentially, "There is a bunch of beautiful young ladies from Barnard College and Mount Holyoke College for Women sitting in the front two tables by the window. They are here to meet some real bohemian artists. What you guys are doing, no offense, but it's too weird. It's too far out. But when they hear me do 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' they'll flip out and I'll buy you all whatever you want." "I accept your kind offer," said Philip Lamantia. "I'll have the apple turnover, a double espresso and a salmon platter." "I'll have the same," said Howard Hart. "I'm not hungry, I'm thirsty," said Jack. "I'll take a sip of whatever holy spirits are in that bottle I see in the side pocket of your coat." |
"I'm starving, Bernie," I said. "I'll have the vegetarian special plate, a tuna roll, a cappuccino, a toasted bagel with lox, onions and cream cheese with a side order of cole slaw and French fries." Brooklyn Bernie the moving man ordered us our feast. After we chowed down, Jack and I did a few impromptu numbers punctuated by Jack taking loud slurps of Wild Turkey whiskey from Brooklyn Bernie's brown-bagged paper bottle before launching into his next improvised story, song poem. |
Jack sat down and attacked my remaining cole slaw and French fries. Brooklyn Bernie took a huge belt from his near-empty bottle of Wild Turkey, cleared his throat and climbed on top of his chair waving his arm so that the patrons of the Cafe Figaro knew it was show time. The denizens of the Cafe Figaro were used to unannounced performances by anyone who felt like giving impromptu readings of their latest poems, monologues from Shakespeare or Chekhov, ranting and raving about world politics or homemade public service announcements requesting a place to stay for the night. |
Brooklyn Bernie clapped his hands, gestured like a crazed symphony conductor from his chair podium for quiet and launched into a raspy-voiced version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." No one paid any attention. He gave Howard Hart, Jack Kerouac, Philip Lamantia and myself signals to accompany him with sound effects suggesting the sea. But his ship was sinking rapidly. He was receiving the fabled New York freeze. |
The customers began talking to each other, gradually drowning him out. Many of them turned their chairs so that gradually Bernie could see a room filled with people whose backs were turned towards him. "He's like Ralph Ellison's invisible man," whispered Howard Hart. "No one knows he is here." Brooklyn Bernie concluded and was rewarded by withering silence and cold stares of contempt. We could feel his despair. Jack leapt up and started singing "Pennies From Heaven," interspersing Bernie from Brooklyn into the lyrics while I accompanied him. |
Jack made up a whole song about Brooklyn Bernie coming through the rain to make Manhattan his new home and what a moving man this moving man was. At the end the whole Figaro burst into applause and laughter and one of the women from the table full of intellectual lovelies invited us to join them and we were asked to go with them to a friend's loft where we partied till dawn. |
Brooklyn Bernie was in heaven and was having an elated conversation with a gorgeous philosophy major, which was prematurely terminated when he passed out in the armchair he was emoting from. There was an old upright piano in their loft and Jack Kerouac played his particular style, crashing Beethoven-esque chords while I was scat singing, and I backed him up when he sang, spoke or scatted and we traded rhyme verses together with Jack playing the bongos. His natural musicality and style of poetic speaking was extraordinary and the young women were so transfixed to see someone who looked more like Paul Bunyan than the tortured introspective poet carrying on in emoting streams of dialogue, stories, song and poetry that all made sense. We both knew that night that together we could do anything, anywhere, for anybody. And the people who were there with us would no longer be the traditional passive audience. All of us would feel part of one another sharing the moment knowing it would never happen again in the same way. |
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