Kenneth Patchen, Allyn Ferguson, Chamber Jazz Sextet

condition (record/cover): M / NM (cut-out, in shrink)

This recording is a source for everything from Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac, through to Dylan, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson and beyond. And these trance-like dispatches, being the beginnings of a certain type of art-form, retain a freshness all these years later. Kenneth Patchen is accompanied here by the jazz-noir tones of the Chamber Jazz Sextet, playing woodwind based compositions specifically written for these poetry recitals. Patchen's schtick is that of a sleepwalking seer, his stream-of-consciousness words somehow meshing with the abstracted style of the music to great effect. The literal meaning of these interior monologues may be elusive but the twilit mood of his delivery is captivating. The final piece, I Went to the City, is more straightforward; an elegy for city dwellers and "men out of touch with the earth..." My favourite is State Of The Nation which seems to conjure up the 1950s as a sublime, subterranean landscape of parping saxophones and fever-dream words. This early jazz poetry is historically crucial and still a fantastic listen now!

Patchen was among the first American writers to engage with jazz as a genuine collaborative medium rather than a fashionable backdrop, and this recording, on Discovery Records, captures that engagement at its most fluent.