If Allen Ginsberg is one of the premier poets of the Beat Generation, then Bob Dylan is one of the premier musicians of that era. In November 1971, the two came together to record a series of Ginsberg’s poems, as well as some original songs written on the spot by the two of them and adaptations of other poems. Many of these tracks were later re-recorded for Ginsberg’s compilation album First Blues, released in 1983.
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Ginsberg once described the interaction with Dylan that led to the 1971 recordings, sharing the story of a poetry reading at NYU where Ginsberg had improvised a blues song. He said that after the reading, he went home, and the phone rang. “It was Dylan asking, ‘Do you always improvise like that?’ And I said, ‘Not always, but I can. I used to do that with [Jack] Kerouac under the Brooklyn Bridge all the time.’”
Dylan was versed in improvisation, as he’d engaged in the practice with The Band on Basement Tapes earlier. The resulting tracks with Ginsberg reflect on The Basement Tapes, pulling similar improvisational styles according to an analysis by Recliner Notes.
Ginsberg continued, “[Dylan] came to our apartment with [David] Amram and a guitar, we began inventing something about ‘Vomit Express,’ jamming for quite awhile, but didn’t finish it. He said, ‘Oh, we ought to get together in a studio and do it’ [and] then showed me the three-chord blues pattern on my pump organ.”
A “Wacky” Week-Long Recording Session Turns into Improvisational Expression for Two Poets
Guitarist Happy Traum played bass on the recordings and was one of many who showed up to the session. According to Traum’s recollections, as told in an interview with Hyperlocrian, Bob Dylan called Traum and asked him to learn bass. Traum agreed, and Dylan called him a few months later and told him to come to the city to record with Allen Ginsberg.
“I went into the city and I brought the bass with me. I had never met Allen Ginsberg before. It was Allen, Peter Orlovsky, his partner, David Amram, John Sholle, Bob Dylan who was organizing the whole session…It was a crazy session,” said Traum. “We were putting music to Allen’s poetry. Allen was singing and playing his harmonium, which he pumped with one hand and played with the other. It was a long, all-day session. It was crazy, there were beat poets there, Gregory Corso showed up and was causing all kinds of havoc because he wanted all the attention for himself. There was a Tibetan Buddhist lama woman who was blessing everybody. It was just a really wacky scene.”
Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg Ride the “Vomit Express”
While the recording session was decidedly “wacky,” a claim that is backed up by the recordings themselves, there was one stand-out from the session—“Vomit Express.”
As Ginsberg explained, “‘Vomit Express’ was a phrase I got from my friend Lucien Carr, who talked about going to Puerto Rico, went often, and we were planning to take an overnight plane a couple of weeks later, my first trip there. He spoke of it as the ‘vomit express,’ poor people flying at night for cheap fares, not used to airplanes, throwing up airsick.”
Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg made an interesting improvisational team during the week-long recording session in New York. The cuts are rough and wild, but they capture the spirit of the time.
Featured Image by PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images
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