Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – Kerouac’s Last Dream
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Posted On November 1, 1997
After a passel of false starts — “unadorned, necessary”; “leathery but supple”; “metaphorical yaddety, and so on” — I took my mouse, swept up all the reviewer-speak I’d generated about this album, and dumped it all.
Simpler talk will suffice.
In one sense, there is nothing new here. Kerouac’s Last Dream is a reissue (an interesting classification, since eight of the 17 tracks are classified “never-before-released”) of a German LP recorded in 1980, and it is filled largely with covers (Guthrie, Dylan, Acuff, Tubb) and traditional numbers. And as is Jack Elliott’s wont, several of those covers and traditional numbers have appeared on other releases.
But with Ramblin’ Jack, the re-telling of the story has always been more important than the telling of the story. His own colorful legend is evidence: What his resume doesn’t provide, the stories have. Purposely or not, this album’s liner notes are allegoric: repetitious, mythological, and Elliot(t)’s name is spelled two ways — the story is the same, but the telling always changes.
It is the same with the resurrection of songs. Repetition is not replication; repetition is evolution. “Traditional” songs have been sung for years, but it is likely the long-lost composers would nary recognize them. The resurrection of this album proves that repetition is not stasis; indeed, one could argue that repetition allows us to gauge an artist’s development much more accurately than new, untested material.
But I have drifted away from simple talk again. The bare-bones best of Kerouac’s Last Dream? All those stories. We may have little in common with buffalo skinners, massacred miners, cowboys, and World War I foot soldiers, or even the folkies and beats of “912 Greens”, but when Ramblin’ Jack sings their stories, I am refreshed to find some universal resonance with travelers who have started our stories for us, rather than hearing one more time that we’re all jes’ good ol’ boys and girls livin’ fer Friday night. Kerouac’s Last Dream is a simple, solid collection…unadorned and necessary, y’might even say.
