VA - Best Of The Beat Generation (2002)

01 from the album Poetry For The Beat Generation, Hanover #5000 (1959)
02 from Queen / King single #4121 (1946)
03 from the album Jack Hammer - Rebellion - Jack Hammer Sings And Reads Songs And Poems Of The Beat Generation, Warwick #2014 (1960)
04 from the album How To Speak Hip, Mercury #6205 (1961)
05 from Bruswick single #86001 (1953)
06 from the album Various - Jazz Canto Vol. 1: An Anthology Of Poetry And Jazz aka "Poetry & Jazz", World Pacific #1409 (1958)
07 from Brunswick single #55140 (1959)
08 from the album King Pleasure Sings / Annie Ross Sings, Prestige #7128 (1957)
09 from the album Lord Buckley - Euphoria, Vaya #101/2 (1955)
10 from the album Various - Jazz Canto Vol. 1: An Anthology Of Poetry And Jazz aka "Poetry & Jazz", World Pacific #1409 (1958)
11 from the album No More Walls, RCA #7089 (1971)
12 from the album Poetry For The Beat Generation, Hanover #5000 (1959)
13 from the album Word Jazz, Dot Jazz Horizons #3075 (1957)
14 from the album Kenneth Patchen with Chamber Jazz Sextet - Reads His Poetry with the Chamber Jazz Sextet, Cadence #3004 (1958)
15 from the album Shorty Petterstein - The Wide Weird World Of Shorty Petterstein (More Interviews Of Our Time), World Pacific #412 (1958)
16 from the André Previn, Gerry Mulligan, Carmen McRae - Performing Music From The Subterraneans - Original Sound Track Album, MGM #3812 (1960)
17 from the album Weary Blues, MGM #3697 (1958)
18 from the album The Sick Humor Of Lenny Bruce, Fantasy #7003 (1959)
19 from the album Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems And Songs 1949-1993, Rhino / World Beat #71693 (1993)
20 from the album Call Me Burroughs [orig. issued by the English Bookshelf, Paris (1965)], ESP #1050 (1966)

In its heyday, Beat appealed to observers as diverse as Steve Allen, National Review editors, and the elementary-school-age James Austin. Austin, this compilation's co-producer, augments a selection of tracks from the 1992 Beat Generation box with nearly a dozen that missed that one. Jack Kerouac's conversational reading of "October in the Railroad Earth" immediately throws Best listeners into the author's loving vision of workingman's San Francisco (his "Bowery Blues" does the same for Manhattan). Also aboard are Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (via a stellar performance of "Dog" by singer Bob Dorough), non-Beat Langston Hughes, and Kenneth Patchen. Other stylistically and emotionally correct jazz sides from Annie Ross, Slim Gaillard, Carmen McRae, and Roy Glenn sit well with naked--but hep!--cash-ins like Rod "Bob McFadden" McKuen's "Beat Generation" and Del Close and John Brent's "Basic Hip." Worth the price for Kerouac and Burroughs alone, the CD's entirety is an inspiring and often hilarious account of a sensibility that hangs in, whether overtly or covertly, year after year. --Rickey Wright