JAZZ SCENE IN EARLY 60'S IN NEW YORK CITY, BEATNIKS MEET BEBOP CREATOR THELONIOUS MONK

Birdman had the great fortune to travel from St Olaf College in the summer of 1962 to New York City and live on Perry Street in Greenwich Village. He had arrived in the center of one of the revolutions in music, the New York City Jazz scene. It was the time of the Beatniks, who read their poetry in Washington Square Park, at the fountain, and read at the Cafe Why?, the Cafe Why Not?, and the Fat Black Pussy Cat. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and numerous other Beat poets lived in the Village and prowled the cafes at night. Bob Dylan played at the Cafe Limelight, blowing his harmonica and singing his early songs. Birdmans first encounter with the scene, was a night at the Village Gate. Outside the building, a group of winos from an empty semi trailer on the Hudson River, had gathered with empty wine bottles, and showed Birdman how to listen through the empty bottle, through the walls to the sounds within. Inside, Mose Allison ws playing the piano and singing southern blues. Later on, Birdman saw Miles Davis play at the Village Vanguard, Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot, and all the bebop greats of that era, playing in one of the Village clubs, including the Blue Note. Jack Kerouac was strongly influenced by this jazz method and called his method of writing, "spontaneous, jazz inspired rapping." He influenced thousands of young men to buy an army rucksack, and hit the road, like his "On The Road" characters. Birdman, after 6 months of bumming around Europe, ended up in Hermosa Beach California. He saw most of the greats of jazz at that time play at the Light House Cafe on Pier Avenue. He and his friend from Minnesota, hopped a freight train to San Francisco and were lucky enough to hear Thelonious Monk play most of the night at the Jazz Workshop. Monk played and created some of the best jazz of that era, that will last far longer then the music of today. The beatniks of that time gathered every night at the Five spot in the Bowery of NYC. This mystical nightclub was formerly called the Bowery Cafe. The greats of the Bebop era played there on their own or with Monk, including Charlie Rouse, who Birdman later saw at El Chepultepec in Denver Colorado. The Beats hung out there, including Kerouac, who later in one of his novels called Monk the high priest, the Monk, the greatest musician who had ever played. Monk had a series of spontaneous dances, getting out of his piano chair, swirling around, and amusing the audience with his eccentric behavior. Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948. He expanded the meaning (tired or beaten down) to include the connotations "upbeat, beatific" and a musical association of being "on the beat". The jazz scene and the poetry scene in Greenwich Village in the early 60's was an unusual era of spontaneous creativity, never seen since. The Beats ended up in a kind of soulmate link with the greats of jazz of that time. Yes they were influenced by Thomas Wolfe and Walt Whitman, but every night, in their face, the sounds of Monk, Coltrane, Rouse, Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, Erik Dolphy, Nancy Wilson, and Nina Simone, reached into their souls, to inspire their writing. At the fountain in Washington Square Park, Big Brown and Moondog, rapped their street and jailbird poetry while a trumpet player blew a horn by their side. Leo Jones, the guru of Beatniks, chess player and Greek Mythology professor, worked the chess tables in Washington Square Park. He made a living rapping Mythology and hustling chess players. A crowd would gather to watch him, the black mystic, who could recite myths of old while he played chess. Birdman can still hear the trumpet sounds of Miles Davis, a muted howling in the night darkness. "All the bells that ever rang, still ringing in the long dying rays of light." William Faulkner