In February 1949, Jack Kerouac visited Neal Cassady in
San Francisco. They went to the Fillmore district to hear some music; much of
their adventure appearing in On the Road, first published 60 years ago. The two found themselves in the
midst of a musical paradise. The Fillmore district in the '40s and '50s was known
as the "Harlem of the West," a jazz and R 'n'B hot spot with a dozen music clubs crammed into a tiny neighborhood. The Fillmore and Geary
location would later become famous as Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, butt hat was long after Cassady and Kerouac. No factual details exist, but reading
into Kerouac's novel with a knowledge of Frisco, one can the put pieces together where they may have seen those artists like Lampshade and Slim Gaillard who appear in the manuscript. Kerouac, for instance, refers to a club called Jamson's
Nook. Not a lot of imagination required to connect Jamson's Nook with a small
jam club on Post and Buchannon, Jackson's Nook. Other clubs at the time
included Vout City, right next to Jackson’s Nook, which later became Jimbo’s Bop
City. What's interesting is that a connection with the Grateful Dead and
Cassady was already in the works. Not only had Jerry Garcia's father played in many of
the clubs that Kerouac visited with Cassady/Moriarty (years earlier, but a
connection nonetheless), Garcia, with The Dead on most occasions, would play
these clubs as well; venues like the Orpheum, the Warfield and the Family Dog near SF's Playland; a club Garcia's father would play when it was called Topsy's
Roost. The point is, it's like The Six Degrees of Separation – more of AM's
obsession with connections.
In a scene from On The Road, there's raucous musical
passage with a wailing horn, a mad crowd, and Cassady/Moriarty in a "trance": "Dean was already racing across the street with his thumb
in the air, yelling, 'Blow, man, blow!'… 'Whoo!' said Dean. He was rubbing his
chest, his belly; the sweat splashed down from his face… Dean was directly in
front of [the horn player] with his face lowered to the bell of the horn,
clapping his hands, pouring sweat on the man's keys… Dean was in a trance."
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A man in a hat, Larry Rivers, Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg |
AM, though, isn't about literature and it's not about
jazz, we are aficionados of both, but that's not who we are, so where’s the real
connection?
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Garcia, Circa '57 |
In a musical interlude to this series, tomorrow we'll post The Dead's setlist standard "That's It For the Other One," the core to many a Dead show, and a tribute to the "Other One," Neil Cassady.