Jazz and the Beat Generation

I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long
blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday.
Jack Kerouac¹

Jazz is a changing art form; and thus, throughout its history, it has been made to fulfill the larger social purposes of many different and varied masters. For Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, perhaps the two best-known authors of the Beat Generation, it became the musical accompaniment to and embodiment of their lifestyle during the late 1940's and early 1950's; it even became the model which they emulated in writing their most famous works, On the Road and Howl.