• Track Listing

2010 collection. In the '50s, with Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs, Jack Kerouac was instrumental in starting the Beat movement. The acknowledged leader and spokesman of the group, it was he who first used the term Beat Generation to express despair over the suppressed state of the individual in society and belief in the natural world and in the powers of the beat of Jazz music and poetry. The Beats rejected the prevailing academic attitude to poetry and declared, through their art and attitudes, their alienation and disgust with shallow American middle-class values. This collection includes cuts from this influential period including tracks from Kerouac, Mamie Van Doren, Ken Nordine, Sun Ra, Lenny Bruce, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and many others. El.