At the heart of Beat writing is the idea that spontaneity is
crucial in expression. The method is best summarized in Jack Kerouac’s
“Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” – featuring such an apothegm as “Be crazy dumbsaint
of the mind” and “Blow as deep as you want to blow.”
The immediate guide for Kerouac was jazz, most especially the
bebop form led forward by Charlie Parker. But among the other influential jazz
players there were many others that Kerouac followed. And among these was Lee
Konitz, vaunted alto saxophonist who passed away last week at 92 in New York,
from complications of Covid-19 and pneumonia.
Although the brutal coronavirus caught up with him, Konitz was
truly a survivor, one who followed his own beacon across a cavalcade of styles
of jazz, continuing to play until very recently. His connection to Kerouac is enduringly
important.
Born in Chicago, Konitz as a lad was inspired by Benny Goodman. He
went on to play with the Claude Thornhill orchestra, Stan Kenton’s band, before
moving in the late 1940s to the center of Jazz and Beatdom, New York.
Konitz admitted to learning and copying Parker’s pivotal solos –
as everyone, including Jack Kerouac, did -- but, he looked to distinguish his
playing by forgoing vibrato and playing “mostly in the higher register.” He did
come up with something unique, working with a phalanx of musicians including
Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan (in Davis’s reknown Nonet), as well as with Lenny
Tristano, that forged the sound of the cool school of jazz.
As described in Konitz’s NYTimes obituary, spontaneous
improvisation was paramount. His way of preparing for a performance was “to not
be prepared.” This was a good fit with Kerouac’s developing literary stylings.
The importance of Konitz in Kerouac’s cosmology is clear in Kerouac’s
letters. On October 9, 1951, he wrote to Neal Cassidy that he had “finally-at-last
found” his style. It was a loose, improvised style formed in the composition of
“Visions of Neal” – later known as “Visions of Cody.” He had discovered what he
called jazz writing.
“So, from now on,” he exclaims, “call me Lee Konitz…”
Konitz appears in Visions of Cody. With Beat time on his hands,
Kerouac is observing, mucking about New York, when he sees the saxophonist, who
was well known in then sizzling jazz scene.
Kerouac describes some hanging out near Times Square, where he recognizes
Konitz, and watches as the musician meets up with a bass player.
“Following Lee Konitz the famous alto jazzman down the street and
don’t even know what for – saw him first in that bar on the northeast corner of
49th and Sixth Avenue which is in a real old building that nobody
ever notices …” he writes.
For Kerouac the interest is in watching the artist Konitz living a
regular life. Navigating the streets and sidewalks and buying, for example, a
reed for his horn.
“He can take care of himself even though he goofs and does “April
in Paris” from inside out as if the tune was the room he lived in and was going
out at midnight with his coat on..”
Kerouac goes on to contemplate this: He can not live like Konitz, “cutting
around the world of men and women” when he has to take care of his mother per
his father’s deathbed plaint. Kerouac, stalking, shows his homage to Konitz. If
he were able to address him it would be as “great genius.”
Later in Visions, Kerouac emphasizes the importance jazz in
spontaneous writing, and Konitz again appears.
“the song, the great whistling song, whistling into your horn and holding your horn high, aware all the time of the mistakes you can make and at the same time realizing the dreariness of the moments it consumes to realize this and letting the song, the song pass you by; then raising your horn, horizontal like Lester and Lee Konitz, and blowing into it, whistling out of it, out of its iron, the perfect harmonic note in this moment of the tune, the pop tune, the song, the living American melodic symphony that rings in my brain continually and is the great chord of the key, the great hollow and echoing arrangements of wide-spaced octaves …” [Excerpt From Visions of by Cody Jack Kerouac.]
The
connection of Kerouac and Konitz went on beyond Kerouac’s death. Konitz along
with Willie Alexander and Jim Doherty provided the soundtrack for Henry
Ferrini’s “Lowell Blues” – the musing New England film that focuses on
presenting Kerouac’s writings with evocative imagery of the great bard’s original mill town
home. - Jack Vaughan
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