{"id":10255,"date":"2011-10-22T17:46:25","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T17:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/10\/22\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-kerouacs-favorite-song\/"},"modified":"2011-10-22T17:46:25","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T17:46:25","slug":"saturday-night-at-the-oldies-kerouacs-favorite-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/10\/22\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-kerouacs-favorite-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac’s Favorite Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac <\/em>(St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken." Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity." They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song. Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River"<\/a> was the theme song <\/a>of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's<\/em>. Sobbed by a harmonic, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed they do. A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveler, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of tears & mist, a pilgrim on the via dolorosa<\/em> of this dolorous life, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore. Here<\/a> is another version of the tune with some beautiful images.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another 'river' song in the same plaintive vein is Pat Boone's Moody River<\/a> from 1961.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324: One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & … Continue reading “Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac’s Favorite Song”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kerouac-and-friends","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}