Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
Name	Steve Allen
Birth name	Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen
Birth date	December 26, 1921
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Death date	October 30, 2000
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S
Spouse	(divorced) (his death)
Occupation	Actor, comedian, television personality, musician, writer
Years active	1940s–2000 }}

Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best-known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts''. He graduated to become the first host of ''The Tonight Show'', where he was instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. Thereafter, he hosted numerous game and variety shows, including ''The Steve Allen Show'', ''I've Got a Secret'', ''The New Steve Allen Show'', and was a regular panel member on CBS' ''What's My Line?''

Allen was a "creditable" pianist, and a prolific composer, having penned over 14,000 songs, one of which was recorded by Perry Como and Margaret Whiting, others by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Les Brown, and Gloria Lynne. Allen won a Grammy award in 1963 for best jazz composition, with his song ''The Gravy Waltz''. His vast number of songs have never been equaled, however; singer/songwriter Julian Barry is said to have written over 5000 compositions. Allen wrote more than 50 books and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Allen was born in New York City, the son of Billy and Isabelle Allen (née Donohue), a vaudeville comedienne. Allen was raised on the south side of Chicago by his mother's Irish Catholic family. Milton Berle once called Allen's mother "the funniest woman in vaudeville."

Allen's first radio job was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers College (now Arizona State University) in Tempe, while still a sophomore. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and was trained as an infantryman. He spent his service time at Camp Roberts, near Monterey, California and did not serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California.

Career

Allen became an announcer for KFAC in Los Angeles and then moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-nights-a-week comedy show, ''Smile Time'', co-starring Wendell Noble. After Allen moved to CBS Radio's KNX in Los Angeles, his music-and-talk half-hour format gradually changed to include more talk on a full-hour, late-night show, boosting his popularity and creating standing-room-only studio audiences. During one episode of the show reserved primarily for an interview with Doris Day, his guest star failed to appear, so Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to ad lib for the first time. His radio show attracted a huge local following, and in 1950 it replaced ''Our Miss Brooks'', exposing Allen to a national audience for the first time.

Allen's first television experience had come in 1949 when he answered an ad for a TV announcer for professional wrestling. He knew nothing about wrestling, so he watched some shows and discovered that the announcers did not have well-defined names for the holds. When he got the job, he created names for many of the holds, some of which are still used today. The gig lasted several months before ABC decided to replace the matches with old movies.

After CBS radio gave Allen a weekly prime time show, CBS television believed it could groom him for national small-screen stardom and gave Allen his first network television show. ''The Steve Allen Show'' premiered at 11 am on Christmas Day, 1950, and was later moved into a thirty-minute, early evening slot. This new show required him to uproot his family and move from LA to New York, since at that time a coast to coast program could not originate from LA. The show was only a modest ratings success, and was canceled in 1952, after which CBS tried several shows to showcase Allen's talent.

Allen achieved national attention when he was pressed into service at the last minute to host ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'' because Godfrey was unable to appear. Allen turned one of Godfrey's live Lipton commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera and then pouring both into Godfrey's ukulele. With the audience (including Godfrey, watching from Miami) uproariously and thoroughly entertained, Allen gained major recognition as a comedian and host.

He was a regular on the popular panel game show ''What's My Line?'' (where he coined the popular phrase, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?") from 1953 to 1954 and returned frequently as a panelist after Fred Allen died in March 1956, until the series ended in 1967.

''The Tonight Show''

Leaving CBS, he created a late-night New York talk-variety TV program in 1953 for what is now WNBC-TV. The following year, on September 27, 1954, the show went on the full NBC network as ''The Tonight Show'', with fellow radio personality Gene Rayburn (who later went on to host hit game shows such as ''Match Game'', 1962–1982) as the original announcer. The show ran from 11:15 pm to 1:00 am on the East Coast.

While ''Today'' developer Sylvester "Pat" Weaver is often credited as the ''Tonight'' creator, Allen often pointed out that he had previously created it as a local New York show. Allen told his nationwide audience that first evening: "This is ''Tonight'', and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: this program is going to go on ''forever...'' you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around!"

It was as host of ''The Tonight Show'' that Allen pioneered the "man on the street" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become commonplace on late-night TV.

The Steve Allen Show

In 1956, NBC offered Allen a new, prime-time, Sunday night variety hour, ''The Steve Allen Show'', aimed at dethroning CBS's top-rated ''Ed Sullivan Show''. The show included a typical run of star performers, including early TV appearances by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Many popular film and television stars were guest stars: Bob Hope, Kim Novak, Errol Flynn, Abbott and Costello, Esther Williams, Jerry Lewis, Martha Raye, The Three Stooges, and a host of others.

The show's regulars were Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Don Knotts, Pat Harrington, Jr., Dayton Allen, and Gabriel Dell. All except film veteran Dell were relatively obscure performers prior to their stints with Allen, and all went on to stardom. The comedians in Allen's gang were often seen in "The Man in the Street," featuring interviews about some topical subject. Poston would appear as a dullard who couldn't remember his own name; Nye was "Gordon Hathaway," fey Madison Avenue executive; Dana played amiable Latino "Jose Jimenez"; Knotts was an exceedingly jittery man who, when asked if he was nervous, invariably replied with an alarmed "No!"; Harrington was Italian immigrant "Guido Panzini"; Dayton Allen played wild-eyed zanies answering any given question with "Why not?". Gabe Dell usually played straight men in sketches (policemen, newsmen, dramatic actors, etc.).

Other recurring routines included "Crazy Shots" (also known as "Wild Pictures"), a series of sight gags accompanied by Allen on piano; Allen inviting audience members to select three musical notes at random, and then composing a song based on the three notes; a satire on radio's long-running ''The Answer Man'' and a precursor to Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent (Sample answer: "Et tu, Brute."/Allen's reply: "How many pizzas did you eat, Caesar?")

The live Sunday night show aired opposite ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' on CBS and ''Maverick'' on ABC. One of Allen's guests was comedian Johnny Carson, a future successor to Allen as host of ''The Tonight Show''. Among Carson's material during that appearance was a portrayal of how a poker game between Allen, Sullivan, and ''Maverick'' star James Garner (all impersonated by Carson) would transpire. Allen's programs also featured a good deal of music; he helped the careers of singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, who were regulars on his early ''Tonight Show'', and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Allen's show also had one of the longest unscripted "crack-ups" on live TV when Allen began laughing hysterically during "Big Bill Allen's Sports Roundup." He laughed uncontrollably for over a minute, with the audience laughing along, because, as he later explained, he caught sight of his unkempt hair on an off-camera monitor. He kept brushing his hair and changing hats to hide the messy hair, and the more he tried to correct his appearance the funnier it got.

Allen helped the recently invented Polaroid camera become popular by demonstrating its use in live commercials and amassed a huge windfall for his work because he had opted to be paid in Polaroid Corporation stock.

Allen remained host of "Tonight" for three nights a week (Monday and Tuesday nights were taken up by Ernie Kovacs) until early 1957, when he left the "Tonight" show to devote his attention to the Sunday night program. It was his (and NBC's) hope that the Steve Allen show could defeat Ed Sullivan in the ratings. Nevertheless the TV Western ''Maverick'' often bested both ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' and ''The Steve Allen Show'' in audience size. In September 1959, Allen relocated to Los Angeles and left Sunday night television (the 1959-'60 season originated from NBC Color City in Burbank as ''The Steve Allen Plymouth Show'', on Monday nights). Back in Los Angeles, he continued to write songs, hosted other variety shows, and wrote books and articles about comedy.

Later TV projects

From 1962 to 1964, Allen re-created ''The Tonight Show'' on a new late-night ''The Steve Allen Show'', which was syndicated by Westinghouse TV. The five-nights-a-week taped show was broadcast from an old vaudeville theater renamed ''The Steve Allen Playhouse'' on 1228 N. Vine St. in Hollywood. (Several sources have erroneously identified Allen's show using the name of his theater.)

The show was marked by the same wild and unpredictable stunts and comedy skits that often extended down the street to a supermarket known as the Hollywood Ranch Market. He also presented Southern California eccentrics, including health food advocate Gypsy Boots, quirky physics professor Dr. Julius Sumner Miller, wacko comic Prof. Irwin Corey, and an early musical performance by Frank Zappa.

During one episode, Allen placed a telephone call to the home of Johnny Carson, posing as a ratings company interviewer, asking Carson if the Television was on, and what program he was watching. Carson didn't immediately realize the caller was Allen, and the exchange is classic humor from both, beginning to end. A rarity is the exchange between Allen and Carson about Carson's guests, permitting him to plug his own show on a competing network.

One notable program, which Westinghouse refused to distribute, featured Lenny Bruce during the time the comic was repeatedly being arrested on obscenity charges; footage from this program was first telecast in 1998 in a Bruce documentary aired on HBO. Regis Philbin took over hosting the Westinghouse show in 1964, but only briefly.

The show also featured plenty of jazz played by Allen and members of the show's band, the Donn Trenner Orchestra, which included such virtuoso musicians as guitarist Herb Ellis and flamboyantly comedic hipster trombonist Frank Rosolino (whom Allen credited with originating the "Hiyo!" chant later popularized by Ed McMahon). While the show was not an overwhelming success in its day, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Harry Shearer, Robin Williams, and a number of other prominent comedians have cited Allen's "Westinghouse show," which they watched as teenagers, as being highly influential on their own comedic visions.

Allen later produced a second half-hour show for Westinghouse, titled ''Jazz Scene'', which featured West Coast jazz musicians such as Rosolino, Stan Kenton, and Teddy Edwards. The short-lived show was hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr.

Allen hosted a number of television programs up until the 1980s, including ''The New Steve Allen Show'' in 1961 and the game show ''I've Got a Secret'' (replacing original host Garry Moore) in 1964. In the summer of 1967, he brought most of the regulars from over the years back with ''The Steve Allen Comedy Hour'', featuring the debuts of Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Byner and featuring Ruth Buzzi, who would become famous soon after on "Laugh-In." In 1968–71, he returned to syndicated nightly variety-talk with the same wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman in later years, including becoming a human hood ornament; jumping into vats of oatmeal and cottage cheese; and being slathered with dog food, allowing dogs backstage to feast on the free food. During the run of this series, Allen also introduced Albert Brooks and Steve Martin to a national audience for the first time.

A syndicated version of ''I've Got A Secret'' hosted by Allen and featuring panelists Pat Carroll and Richard Dawson was taped in Hollywood and aired during the 1972-73 season. In 1977, he produced ''Steve Allen's Laugh-Back'', a syndicated series combining vintage Allen film clips with new talk-show material reuniting his 1950s TV gang. From 1986 through 1988, Allen hosted a daily three-hour comedy show heard nationally on the NBC Radio Network that featured sketches and America's best-known comedians as regular guests. His cohost was radio personality Mark Simone, and they were joined frequently by comedy writers Larry Gelbart, Herb Sargent, and Bob Einstein.

Composer, actor, and author

Allen was an accomplished composer who wrote over 10,000 songs. He began his recording career in 1953 by signing with Decca Records's Brunswick Records sublabel. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs, ''Let's Go to Church Next Sunday'', was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting. Allen's best-known songs are "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and "The Gravy Waltz," the latter having won a Grammy award in 1963 for Best Jazz Composition. He also wrote lyrics for the standards "Picnic" and "South Rampart Street Parade." Allen composed the score to the Paul Mantee imitation James Bond film ''A Man Called Dagger'' (1967), with the score orchestrated by Ronald Stein.

Allen was also an actor. He wrote and starred in his first film, the Mack Sennett comedy compilation ''Down Memory Lane'', in 1949. His most famous film appearance is in 1955's ''The Benny Goodman Story'', in the title role. The film, while an average biopic of its day, was heralded for its music, featuring many alumni of the Goodman band. Allen later recalled his one contribution to the film's music, used in the film's early scenes: the accomplished Benny Goodman could no longer produce the sound of a clarinet beginner, and that was the only sound Allen ''could'' make on a clarinet! In 1960, he appeared as the character "Dr. Ellison" in the episode "Play Acting" of CBS's anthology series ''The DuPont Show with June Allyson'' though his ''The Steve Allen Show'' had been in competition with the June Allyson program the preceding season.

Allen could play a trumpet—sort of. He wrote and recorded a tune called "Impossible," in which he tries to play it straight, but continues to burst out laughing. (The recording has been played on the Dr. Demento radio show.)

From 1977 to 1981, Allen was the producer of the award-winning PBS series, ''Meeting of Minds'', a "talk show" with actors playing the parts of notable historical figures and Steve Allen as the host. This series pitted the likes of Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and Galileo Galilei in dialogue and argument. This was the show Allen wanted to be remembered for, because he believed that the issues and characters were timeless and would survive long after his passing. This may be more an indictment of popular tastes—which Allen himself wrote about in his last book, "Vulgarians at the Gates"—than of any obtuseness on the show's part.

Allen was a comedy writer and author of more than 50 books, including ''Dumbth'', a commentary on the American educational system, and ''Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality''. Twenty of his books were concerned with his viewsa about religion. He also wrote book-length commentaries on show business personalities ("Funny People"; "More Funny People"). Perhaps influenced by his son's involvement with a religious cult, he became an outspoken critic of organized religion and an active member of such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group that debunked pseudoscientific claims.

Allen and rock music

Allen was notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music, although he was showman enough to scoop Ed Sullivan by being one of the first to present Elvis Presley on network television (after Presley had appeared on the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey ''Stage Show'' and Milton Berle shows). "Allen found a way... to satisfy the Puritans. He assured viewers that he would not allow Presley 'to do anything that will offend anyone.' NBC announced that a 'revamped, purified and somewhat abridged Presley' had agreed to sing while standing reasonably still, dressed in black tie." In fact, on this occasion, Allen had Elvis wear a top hat and the white tie and tails of a "high class" musician while singing "Hound Dog" to an actual hound, who was similarly attired. According to Jake Austen, "the way Steve Allen treated Elvis Presley was his federal crime. Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd, and so he decided to goof on him. Allen set things up so that Presley would show his contrition by appearing in a tuxedo and singing his new song 'Hound Dog' to an elderly basset hound..." Elaine Dundy says that Allen smirkingly presented Elvis "with a roll that looks exactly like a large roll of toilet paper with, says Allen, the 'signatures of eighteen thousand fans.' " Presley looked "at Steve as if to say, 'It's all right. I've been made a worse fool in my life,' and after he patted the basset hound he is about to sing ''Hound Dog'' to, he wiped his hands on his trousers as if to wipe away Steve Allen, the dog, and the whole show." Guitarist Scotty Moore later said that Elvis and the members of his band were "all angry about their treatment the previous night." "The next day, as Elvis entered the RCA studios to record 'Hound Dog,' fans greeted him with signs that declared, 'We Want the Real Elvis' and 'We Want the Gyrating Elvis.' In the press, critics were no kinder with the singer than they had ever been, this time pronouncing him a 'cowed kid' who had demonstrated, once again, that he 'couldn't sing or act a lick.' " In a column in ''Newsweek'', John Lardner wrote, "Like Huckleberry Finn, when the widow put him in a store suit and told him not to gap or scratch, [Elvis] had been 'fouled' by NBC's attempt to 'civilize him... for the good of mankind.'" Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.

The singer "was later featured in a mediocre cowboy sketch with Allen, Andy Griffith, and Imogene Coca. As 'Tumbleweed Presley,' his big joke was, 'I'm warning you galoots, don't step on my blue suede boots.' " That apparent mockery was consistent with other situations in which Allen had singers in such comic scenarios on his show, in contrast to the simple "singing in front of a curtain" style of the Sullivan show. The house singers on the early ''Tonight'' show were subjected to many such stunts. In addition, Allen's skit with Presley actually was less a put-down of Presley and mainly a satire of country music stage shows like the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride, the Shreveport-based country music radio show (over KWKH) Presley performed on in 1954 and 1955. It's highly debatable, given Presley's spirited performance, whether unlike the top hat and tails performance, there was any put-down motivation on Allen's part with this particular skit, since he could have easily done it in any of his other programs.

In a 1996 interview Allen was asked about the show. Asked if NBC executives expressed any concerns about Elvis's planned appearance, Allen replied that he'd "read more nonsense about " it, and "a lot of wrong reports have gotten into the public -". "If there ever was, I never heard about it. And since it was my show, I think it would have brought to my attention. " Regarding Elvis's movements he stated "No! I took no objection to the movements I'd seen him make on the Dorsey Brothers show. I didn't see a problem. Of course, I had read about some of the controversy, much of it generated by Ed Sullivan, who was opposite of our show on CBS. It didn't matter to me. I was using good production sense in booking him."

In his book "Hi-Ho Steverino!" Allen wrote the following: "When I booked Elvis, I naturally had no interest in just presenting him vaudeville-style and letting him do his spot as he might in concert. Instead we worked him into the comedy fabric of our program." "We certainly didn't inhibit Elvis' then-notorious pelvic gyrations, but I think the fact that he had on formal evening attire made him, purely on his own, slightly alter his presentation."

Allen also appeared on the shows of entertainers, even the rock and roll program ''The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC.

Later career

In the late 1970s early 80s, Steve Allen recorded a solo piano Pianocorder album for the Pianocorder Contemporary Artists Series, joining other illustrious artists-pianists of the day such as Liberace, Floyd Cramer, Teddy Wilson, Roger Williams, and Johnny Guarnieri to name a few. His solo album was very popular. Pianocorder was founded by Joseph Tushinsky. The Pianocorder was the first modern mechanical player piano made for the public that used solenoids to power the keys. Later, it was bought out by Yamaha-Disklavier and discontinued and is known today as the Yamaha Disklavier. During the late 80s, Allen and his second wife Jayne Meadows made numerous appearances on the drama ''St. Elsewhere'', playing Victor Erlich's estranged parents.

The 1985 documentary film ''Kerouac, the Movie'' starts and ends with footage of Jack Kerouac reading from ''On the Road'' as Allen accompanies on soft jazz piano from ''The Steve Allen Plymouth Show'' in 1959. "Are you nervous?" Allen asks him; Kerouac answers nervously, "Noo," a take-off on the character usually played by Don Knotts.

Allen appeared in a PSA advocating for New Eyes for the Needy in the 1990s.

Personal life

Steve Allen was married to Dorothy Goodman in 1943 and they had three children, Steve Jr., Brian, and David. That marriage ended in divorce in 1952. Allen's second wife was actress Jayne Meadows, sister to actress Audrey Meadows. The marriage of Allen and Meadows produced one son, Bill Allen. They were married from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Allen received a traditional Irish Catholic upbringing. He later became a secular humanist and Humanist Laureate for the Academy of Humanism, a member of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. He received the Rose Elizabeth Bird Commitment to Justice Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1998. He was a student and supporter of general semantics, recommending it in ''Dumbth'' and giving the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1992. In spite of his liberal position on free speech, his later concerns about the lewdness he saw on radio and television, particularly the programs of Howard Stern, caused him to make proposals restricting the content of programs, allying himself with the Parents Television Council. His full-page ad on the subject appeared in newspapers a day or two before his unexpected death. Allen's views evolved in the last dozen years of his life, as he called himself an "involved Presbyterian". He had been married for decades to Jayne Meadows, who was the daughter of a Christian missonary.

Allen made a last appearance on ''The Tonight Show'' on September 27, 1994, for the show's 40th anniversary broadcast. Jay Leno was effusive in praise and actually knelt down and kissed his ring.

Death

On October 30, 2000, Allen was driving to his son's home in Encino, California, when his car was struck by another vehicle backing out of a driveway. Neither Allen nor the other driver believed he was injured and damage to both vehicles was minimal, so the two exchanged insurance information and Allen continued on.

Shortly after arriving at his son's home (after carving pumpkins with his grandchildren and taping a radio tribute to an old friend, satirist Paul Krassner), Allen did not feel right and decided to take a nap. While napping, he suffered a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead shortly after 8 p.m. Autopsy results concluded that the traffic accident earlier in the day had caused a blood vessel in his chest to rupture, causing blood to leak into the sac surrounding the heart (known as haemopericardium.) In addition, he suffered four broken ribs as a result of the accident.

Allen was two months shy of his 79th birthday at the time of his death. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park-Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles.

Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — a television star at 1720 Vine St. and a radio star at 1537 Vine St.

Shows

''Songs for Sale'' (1950–1952)

''What's My Line?'' (regular panelist, 1953–1954; frequent guest panelist 1954-1967)

''Jukebox Jury'' (1953)

''Talent Patrol'' (1953–1955)

''The Steve Allen Show'' (1956–61)

''The Tonight Show'' (1954–1957, NBC)

''The Steve Allen Westinghouse Show'' (1962–1968)

''I've Got a Secret'' (1964–1967, 1972–1973)

''The Steve Allen Show'' (Filmways production, 1968–1969)

''Match Game'' (panelist, 1974)

''Meeting of Minds'' (1977–1981, PBS)

''Steve Allen Comedy Hour'' (1980–1981)

''The Start of Something Big'' (1985–1986)

''Space Ghost Coast to Coast'' (1997, one episode, Guest)

''Homicide: Life On The Street (1998): Steve and Jayne appeared as guests (January 16, 1998).

Songs

"Theme from ''Picnic''"

"This Could Be the Start of Something Big"

"Pretend You Don't See Her, My Heart"

"The Gravy Waltz"

"The Saturday Evening Post"

"Impossible"

"Cool Yule"

Comedic Discography

"Man in the street" (1963) (Signature 1004)

"Funny phone calls" (1963) (Dot 3472, re-issued as Casablanca 811-366-1-ML)

"More funny phone calls" (1963) (Dot 3517, re-issued as Casablanca 811-367-1-ML)

Musical Discography

''Soulful Brass'' with Oliver Nelson (Impulse!, 1968)

''Soulful Brass #2'' with Oliver Nelson (Flying Dutchman, 1969)

Books

{|class="wikitable" |- !Year!!Title!!Notes!!Identifiers |- | 1955 || ''Steve Allen's Bop Fables'' || illustrated by George Price || |- | 1955 || ''Fourteen for Tonight'' || short stories || |- | 1956 || ''The Funny Men'' || || |- | 1956 || ''Wry on the Rocks'' || poems || |- | 1958 || ''The Girls on the 10th Floor and Other Stories'' || short stories || ; ISBN 0-8369-3608-6 (1970 printing) |- | 1959 || ''The Question Man...'' || photographs by Gene Lester || |- | 1960 || ''Mark It and Strike It: An Autobiography'' || || |- | 1962 || ''Not All of Your Laughter, Not All of Your Tears'' || Steve's first novel || |- | 1964 || ''Dialogues in Americanism'' || transcript of three debates: Allen vs. William F. Buckley, Jr.; Robert M. Hutchins vs. L. Brent Bozell, and James MacGregor Burns vs. Willmoore Kendall || |- | 1965 || ''Letter to a Conservative'' || || |- | 1966 || ''The Ground is Our Table'' || photographs by Arthur Dubinsky || |- | 1967 || ''Bigger than a Breadbox'' || with commentary by Leonard Feather; illustrations by Rowland B. Wilson || |- | 1969 || ''A Flash of Swallows: New Poems'' || poems || ISBN 0837567343; |- | 1972 || ''The Wake'' || || ISBN 0-385-07608-8 |- | 1973 || ''Princess Snip-Snip and the Puppy-Kittens'' || illustrated by David Gantz || |- | 1973 || ''Curses! or... How Never to Be Foiled Again'' || illustrated by Marvin Rubin || ISBN 0-87477-008-4 |- | 1974 || ''What To Say When It Rains'' || || ISBN 0-8431-0357-4 |- | 1975 || ''Schmock-Schmock!'' || || ISBN 0-385-09664-X |- | 1978 || ''Meeting of Minds'' || || ISBN 0-517-53383-9; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-550-4 |- | 1978 || ''Chopped-Up Chinese'' || || |- | 1979 || ''Ripoff: A Look at Corruption in America'' || with Roslyn Bernstein and Donald H. Dunn || ISBN 0-8184-0249-0 |- | 1979 || ''Meeting of Minds, Second Series'' || || ISBN 0-517-53894-6; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-565-2 |- | 1980 || ''Explaining China'' || || ISBN 0-517-54062-2 |- | 1981 || ''Funny People'' || || ISBN 0-8128-2764-3 |- | 1982 || ''Beloved Son: A Story of the Jesus Cults'' || || ISBN 0-672-52678-6 |- | 1982 || ''More Funny People'' || || ISBN 0-8128-2884-4 |- | 1986 || ''How to Make a Speech'' || || ISBN 0-07-001164-8 |- | 1987 || ''How to Be Funny: Discovering the Comic You'' || with Jane Wollman || ISBN 0-07-001199-0; 1992 printing: ISBN 0-87975-792-2; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-206-4 |- | 1989 || ''The Passionate Nonsmoker's Bill of Rights: The First Guide to Enacting Nonsmoking Legislation'' || with Bill Adler, Jr. || ISBN 0-688-06295-4 |- | 1989 || ''"Dumbth": And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter'' || || ISBN 0-87975-539-3; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-237-4 |- | 1989 || ''Meeting of Minds, Vol. III'' || || ISBN 0-87975-566-0 |- | 1989 || ''Meeting of Minds, Vol. IV'' || || ISBN 0-87975-567-9 |- | 1990 || ''The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories'' || || ISBN 0-942637-22-4 |- | 1990 || ''Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality'' || || ISBN 0-87975-638-1 |- | 1992 || ''Hi-Ho, Steverino: The Story of My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of Television'' || || ISBN 0-942637-55-0; large-print edition: ISBN 1-56054-521-6 |- | 1993 || ''More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality'' || || ISBN 0-87975-736-1 |- | 1993 || ''Make 'em Laugh'' || || ISBN 0-87975-837-6 |- | 1994 || ''Reflections'' || || ISBN 0-87975-904-6 |- | 1995 || ''The Man Who Turned Back the Clock, and Other Short Stories'' || || ISBN 1-57392-002-9 |- | 1995 || ''The Bug and the Slug in the Rug'' || || ISBN 1-880851-17-2 |- | 1996 || ''But Seriously...: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind'' || || ISBN 1-57392-090-8 |- | 1999 || ''Steve Allen's Songs: 100 Lyrics with Commentary'' || || ISBN 0-7864-0736-0 |- | 2000 || ''Steve Allen's Private Joke File'' || || ISBN 0-609-80672-6 |- | 2001 || ''Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio—Raising the Standards of Popular Culture'' || || ISBN 1-57392-874-7 |}

Allen's series of mystery novels "starring" himself and wife Jayne Meadows were in part ghostwritten by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook.

''The Talk Show Murders'' (1982), ISBN 0-440-08471-7

''Murder on the Glitter Box'' (1989), ISBN 0-8217-2752-4

''Murder in Manhattan'' (1990), ISBN 0-8217-3033-9

''Murder in Vegas'' (1991), ISBN 0-8217-3462-8

''The Murder Game'' (1993), ISBN 0-8217-4115-2

''Murder on the Atlantic'' (1995), ISBN 0-8217-4647-2

''Wake Up to Murder'' (1996), ISBN 1-57566-090-3

''Die Laughing'' (1998), ISBN 1-57566-241-8

''Murder in Hawaii'' (1999), ISBN 1-57566-375-9

References

External links

Entertainer Steve Allen dead at 78

Steve Allen tribute (Skeptical Inquirer January 2001)

Steve Allen Interview at Archive of American Television

http://www.box.net/shared/a7kkghvxti Steve Allen Pianocorder/LX Piano Solo "The Shadow of Your Smile"

http://www.box.net/shared/gmr3y5scmj Steve Allen Pianocorder/LX Piano Solo

Steve Allen interview by Mike Wallace on ''The Mike Wallace Interview'' July 7, 1957

http://www.tedstrong.com/steveallen.shtml

FBI file on Steve Allen

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Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
name	Frank Zappa
background	solo_singer
birth name	Frank Vincent Zappa
born	December 21, 1940Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
died	December 04, 1993Los Angeles, California, U.S.
instrument	Guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, drums, synclavier, bicycle
genre	Progressive rock, jazz fusion,
occupation	Composer, musician, conductor, producer
years active	1950s–1993
label	Verve, Bizarre, Straight, DiscReet, Barking Pumpkin
associated acts	The Mothers of InventionCaptain BeefheartSteve Vai
website
notable instruments	}}

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, ''Freak Out!'', combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the ''Zappa Family Trust''.

Early life

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie Colimore, was of Italian and French descent; his father, Francesco Vincente Zappa, was a native of Partinico, Sicily. Zappa was the eldest of four children. The family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's nearness to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home. This had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work.

Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation. Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator Cal Schenkel.

Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have been due to exposure to mustard gas. His health worsened when he lived in Baltimore. In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health. They moved next to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They soon moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon, before finally settling San Diego.

Musical influences

Zappa joined his first band, the Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School in San Diego. He was the band's drummer. About the same time his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection. R&B; singles were early purchases, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life. He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age 12, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion. Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began when he read a ''LOOK'' magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as ''The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One''. The article described Varèse's percussion composition ''Ionisation'', produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount. Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B; and doo-wop groups (including the Medallions and local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.

Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)

By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base, in northern Los Angeles County. Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long distance call to the composer as a 15th birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. He later received a letter from Varèse thanking him for his interest, and telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.

At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Vliet (who later expanded his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B; records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers. Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts. The band was racially diverse, and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of The Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. (In the 1970s and '80s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.) Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures", and developed an eclectic, innovative and highly personal style.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album ''Freak Out!'' Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960. Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works. Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.

Early 1960s: Studio Z

Zappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of The Blackouts. Financially more rewarding were Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films ''The World's Greatest Sinner'' (1962) and ''Run Home Slow'' (1965). The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records. The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot. Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album ''The Lost Episodes'' (1996).

During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins, although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured. Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track. Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it. He appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show the same year, in which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument. With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of The Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of ''Freak Out!''

In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This set a work pattern that endured for most of his life. Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z. Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood. Zappa started performing as guitarist with a power trio, The Muthers, in local bars in order to support himself.

An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films. In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend recorded a faked erotic episode. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material. The press was tipped off beforehand, and next day's ''The Daily Report'' wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer". Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography". This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended. His brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was key in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance. Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police only returned 30 out of 80 hours of tape seized. Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted. Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.

Late 1960s: The Mothers of Invention

In 1965, Zappa was approached by Ray Collins who asked him to take over as the guitarist in local R&B; band The Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist. Zappa accepted, and soon he assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract. The band was renamed The Mothers, coincidentally on Mother's Day. The group increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, while they gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene. In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots. Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the folk-rock act Simon & Garfunkel, and was notable as one of the few African Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time.

Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve Records division of MGM Records, which had built up a strong reputation in the music industry for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially re-title themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother", in slang terminology, was short for "motherfucker" — a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.

Debut album: ''Freak Out!'' (1966)

With Wilson credited as producer, The Mothers of Invention, augmented by a studio orchestra, recorded the groundbreaking ''Freak Out!'' (1966) which, preceded by Bob Dylan's ''Blonde on Blonde'', was the second rock double album ever released. It mixed R&B;, doo-wop, musique concrète, and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time. Although he was dissatisfied with the final product—in a late '60s radio interview (included in the posthumous ''MOFO Project/Object'' compilation) Zappa recounted that the side-long closing track "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was intended to be the basic track for a much more complex work which Verve did not allow him to complete – ''Freak Out'' immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America". The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. While recording in the studio, some of the additional session musicians were shocked that they were expected to read the notes on sheet music from charts with Zappa conducting them, since it was not standard when recording rock music. The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs. Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections to get the group the financial resources needed.

During the recording of ''Freak Out!'', Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album. The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use. He labeled people on drugs "assholes in action", and he tried cannabis only a few times, but without any pleasure. He was a regular tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns. After a short promotional tour following the release of ''Freak Out!'', Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer. They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.

Wilson nominally produced The Mothers' second album ''Absolutely Free'' (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in ''de facto'' control of most facets of the production. It featured extended playing by The Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements. Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s. As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for a self-produced album based on orchestral works to be released under his own name. Due to contractual problems, the recordings were shelved and only made ready for release late in 1967. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue to finalize what became his first solo album (under the name ''Francis Vincent Zappa''), ''Lumpy Gravy'' (1968). It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.

New York period (1966–1968)

The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year. As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with The Mothers of Invention, moved to New York. Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals. Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some U.S. Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, The Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, ''We're Only in It for the Money'' (released 1968). It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. ''We're Only in It for the Money'' featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' ''Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a life-long collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, ''Cruising with Ruben & the Jets'' (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute. Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?" A theme from Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'' is heard during one song.

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album ''Uncle Meat'' (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts, and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations) — reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time). Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album ''Trout Mask Replica'' for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance.

Disbanding the original Mothers of Invention (1969)

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Zappa and The Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn. This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being a success with fans in Europe, The Mothers of Invention were not faring well financially. Their first records were vocally oriented, but Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical oriented music for the band's concerts, which confused audiences. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music". In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group himself from his publishing royalties whether they played or not. 1969 was also the year Zappa, fed up with MGM's interference, left MGM Records for Warner Bros. Records' Reprise Records subsidiary where Zappa/Mothers recordings would bear the Bizarre Records imprint. In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason, but also commented on the band members' lack of sufficient effort. Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's concern for perfection at the expense of human feeling. Others were irritated by 'his autocratic ways', exemplified by Zappa's never staying at the same hotel as the band members. Several members would, however, play for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings with the band from this period were collected on ''Weasels Ripped My Flesh'' and ''Burnt Weeny Sandwich'' (both released in 1970).

After he disbanded The Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album ''Hot Rats'' (1969). It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings. It was backed by jazz, blues and R&B; session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and previous member of Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart (providing vocals to the only non-instrumental track, "Willie the Pimp"). It became a popular album in England, and had a major influence on the development of the jazz-rock fusion genre.

1970s: From The Mothers to Zappa

In 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with The Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie ''200 Motels''. Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one. His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career; he often felt that the quality of performance of his material delivered by orchestras was not commensurate with the money he spent on orchestral concerts and recordings.

Rebirth of The Mothers and filmmaking (1970)

Later in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".

This version of The Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album ''Chunga's Revenge'' (1970), which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie ''200 Motels'' (1971), featuring The Mothers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London. Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting. The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician. It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process which allowed for novel visual effects. It was released to mixed reviews. The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.

After ''200 Motels'', the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, ''Fillmore East - June 1971'' and ''Just Another Band From L.A.''; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances in which songs were used to build up sketches based on ''200 Motels'' scenes as well as new situations often portraying the band members' sexual encounters on the road.

Accident, attack and their aftermath (1971–1972)

In December 1971, there were two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, The Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino. Immortalized in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", the event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album ''Swiss Cheese/Fire'', released legally as part of Zappa's ''Beat the Boots II'' compilation. After a week's break, The Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing. This left him wheelchair bound, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain. Meanwhile, The Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.

During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, ''Waka/Jawaka'' and ''The Grand Wazoo'', which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni. Musically, the albums were akin to ''Hot Rats''. Zappa began touring again in late 1972. His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the U.S. for five weeks from October to December 1972.

Top 10 album (1973–1975)

Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin). By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. In their place, Zappa and Cohen created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner Bros. Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album ''Apostrophe (')'' (1974), which reached a career-high No. 10 on the Billboard pop album charts helped by the chart single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow". Other albums from the period are ''Over-Nite Sensation'' (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums ''Roxy & Elsewhere'' (1974) and ''One Size Fits All'' (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called The Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)". A live recording from 1974, ''You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2'' (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–75 band". Zappa released ''Bongo Fury'' (1975), which featured live recordings from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period. They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.

Business breakups and touring (1976–1979)

Zappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in 1976. Zappa sued Cohen for skimming more than he was allocated from DiscReet Records, as well as for signing acts of which Zappa did not approve. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen had gained from an out-of-court settlement with MGM over the rights of the early Mothers of Invention recordings. It also prevented Zappa having access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the rock-oriented ''Zoot Allures'' (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thereby bypassing DiscReet.

In the mid-1970s Zappa prepared material for ''Läther'' (pronounced "leather"), a four-LP project. ''Läther'' encapsulated all the aspects of Zappa's musical styles — rock tunes, orchestral works, complex instrumentals, and Zappa's own trademark distortion-drenched guitar solos. Wary of a quadruple-LP, Warner Bros. Records refused to release it. Zappa managed to get an agreement with Mercury-Phonogram, and test pressings were made targeted at a Halloween 1977 release, but Warner Bros. prevented the release by claiming rights over the material. Zappa responded by appearing on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast ''Läther'' and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings. A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros. followed, during which no Zappa material was released for more than a year. Eventually, Warner Bros. issued major parts of ''Läther'' against Zappa's will as four individual albums with limited promotion. ''Läther'' was released posthumously in 1996.

Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner Bros. contracts, the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands. Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show ''Saturday Night Live''. The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting. Zappa's song, "I'm the Slime", was performed with a voice-over by ''SNL'' booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing.

Zappa's band at the time, with the additions of Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker), performed during Christmas in New York, recordings of which appear on one of the albums released by Warner Bros., ''Zappa in New York'' (1978). It mixes intense instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer". The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure, radical changes of tempo and meter, and short, densely arranged passages.

''Zappa in New York'' featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", which featured Don Pardo providing the opening narrative in the song. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references, leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content. Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it. Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?" The remaining albums released by Warner Bros. Records without Zappa's consent were ''Studio Tan'' in 1978 and ''Sleep Dirt'' in 1979, which contained complex suites of instrumentally-based tunes recorded between 1973 and 1976, and whose release was overlooked in the midst of the legal problems. Also released by the label without the artist's consent was ''Orchestral Favorites'' in 1979, which featured recordings of a concert with orchestral music from 1975.

Zappa as an independent artist (1979)

Resolving the lawsuits successfully, Zappa ended the 1970s "stronger than ever", by releasing two of his most successful albums in 1979: the best selling album of his career, ''Sheik Yerbouti'', and the "bona fide masterpiece", ''Joe's Garage''. The double album ''Sheik Yerbouti'' was the first release on Zappa Records, and contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached No. 45 on the ''Billboard'' charts, and "Jewish Princess", which received attention when a Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics. Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time". The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the U.S., but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language. The triple LP ''Joe's Garage'' featured lead singer Ike Willis as the voice of the character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems, the suppression of freedom of speech and music — inspired in part by the Islamic revolution that had made music illegal within its jurisdiction at the time — and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness". The album contains rock songs like "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"), "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up", and the title track, as well as extended live-recorded guitar improvisations combined with a studio backup band dominated by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly good musical rapport) adopting the xenochrony process. The album contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay".

On December 21, 1979, Zappa's movie ''Baby Snakes'' premiered in New York. The movie's tagline was "A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal". The 2 hour and 40 minutes movie was based on footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew. It also contained several extraordinary sequences of clay animation by Bruce Bickford who had earlier provided animation sequences to Zappa for a 1974 TV special (which later become available on the video ''The Dub Room Special'' (1982)). The movie did not do well in theatrical distribution, but won the Premier Grand Prix at the First International Music Festival in Paris in 1981. The Zappa Family Trust released it on DVD, and it has been available since 2003.

Zappa later expanded on his television appearances in a non-musical role. He was an actor or voice artist in episodes of ''Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre'', ''Miami Vice'' and ''The Ren and Stimpy Show''. A voice part in ''The Simpsons'' never materialized, to creator Matt Groening's disappointment.

1980s: Productive as ever

After spending most of 1980 on the road, Zappa released ''Tinsel Town Rebellion'' in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records, and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of ''sprechstimme'' (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg — showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta). While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, in the sense that some found them sexist, the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything". The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in the fall of 1980.

The same year the double album ''You Are What You Is'' was released. Most of it was recorded in Zappa's brand new Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house, thereby giving him complete freedom to work. The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3^rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but focused mainly on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics targeted at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy. "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the U.S. administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money. Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reagan era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness". In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, ''Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar'', ''Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More'', and ''The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar'', which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through the CBS label due to popular demand. The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979–1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well". Another guitar-only album, ''Guitar'', was released in 1988, and a third, ''Trance-Fusion'', which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.

From hit single to classical performances

In May 1982, Zappa released ''Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch'', which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No. 32 on the ''Billboard'' charts). In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon," "fer sure, fer sure," "grody" (gross), and "barf out". Most Americans who only knew Zappa from his few singles successes now thought of him as a person writing "novelty songs", even though the rest of the album contained highly challenging music. Zappa was irritated by this and never played the song live.

In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with ''The Man from Utopia,'' a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on ''Tinseltown Rebellion.'' The second album, ''London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1'', contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). A second record of these sessions, ''London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 2'' was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl". Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes. Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that in "fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult". Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far. In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of ''A Zappa Affair'' with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice. Zappa was invited by conference organizer Thomas Wells to be the keynote speaker at the American Society of University Composers at the Ohio State University. It was there Zappa delivered his famous "Bingo! There Goes Your Tenure" address, and had two of his orchestra pieces, "Dupree's Paradise" and "Naval Aviation in Art?" performed by the Columbus Symphony and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus.

Synclavier

For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was influenced by his use of the Synclavier as a compositional and performance tool. Even considering the complexity of the music he wrote, the Synclavier could realize anything he could dream up. The Synclavier could be programmed to play almost anything conceivable, to perfection: "With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be invited to play the most difficult passages ... with ''one-millisecond'' accuracy—every time". Even though it essentially did away with the need for musicians, Zappa viewed the Synclavier and real-life musicians as separate. In 1984, he released four albums. ''Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger,'' contains orchestral works commissioned and conducted by world-renowned conductor Pierre Boulez (who was listed as an influence on ''Freak Out!'') and performed by his Ensemble InterContemporain, juxtaposed with premiere Synclavier pieces. Again, Zappa was not satisfied with the performances of his orchestral works as he found them under-rehearsed, but in the album liner notes he respectfully thanks Boulez's demands for precision. The Synclavier pieces stood in contrast to the orchestral works, as the sounds were electronically generated and not, as became possible shortly thereafter, sampled.

The album ''Thing-Fish'' was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government. New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage". Finally, in 1984, Zappa released ''Francesco Zappa'', a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th century composer Francesco Zappa (no known relation), and ''Them or Us,'' a two-record set of heavily edited live and session pieces.

Senate testimony

On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC consisted of many wives of politicians, including the wives of five members of the committee, and was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with sexual or satanic content. Zappa saw their activities as on a path towards censorship, and called their proposal for voluntary labelling of records with explicit content "extortion" of the music industry. In his prepared statement, he said:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation ... The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?

Zappa set excerpts from the PMRC hearings to Synclavier music in his composition "Porn Wars" on the 1985 album ''Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention'', and the full recording was released in 2010 as ''Congress Shall Make No Law...''. Zappa is heard interacting with Senators Fritz Hollings, Slade Gorton, Al Gore (who claimed, at the hearing, to be a Zappa fan), and in an exchange with Florida Senator Paula Hawkins over what toys Zappa's children played with. Zappa expressed opinions on censorship when he appeared on CNN's ''Crossfire TV series'' and debated issues with ''Washington Times'' commentator John Lofton in 1986. Zappa's passion for American politics was becoming a bigger part of his life. He had always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988 he had registration booths at his concerts. He even considered running for President of the United States.

Digital medium and last tour

Around 1986, Zappa undertook a comprehensive re-release program of his earlier vinyl recordings. He personally oversaw the remastering of all his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s albums for the new digital compact disc medium. Certain aspects of these re-issues were, however, criticized by some fans as being unfaithful to the original recordings. Nearly twenty years before the advent of online music stores, Zappa had proposed to replace "phonographic record merchandising" of music by "direct digital-to-digital transfer" through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software). In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a "miserable flop".

The album ''Jazz From Hell,'' released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo (St. Etienne), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier. Although an instrumental album, containing no lyrics whatsoever, Meyer Music Markets sold ''Jazz from Hell'' featuring an "explicit lyrics" sticker — a warning label introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in an agreement with the PMRC.

Zappa's last tour in a rock and jazz band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums ''Broadway the Hard Way'' (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), ''The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life'' (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's ''Boléro'' to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), and ''Make a Jazz Noise Here'' (mostly instrumental and avant-garde music). Parts are also found on ''You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore'', volumes 4 and 6.

1990s: Classical music and death

In early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel, and was asked to serve as consultant for the government on trade, cultural matters and tourism. Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa who had great influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa's 1968 song "Plastic People"). Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Within a few weeks, however, the U.S. administration put pressure on the Czech government to withdraw the appointment. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead. Zappa also planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses. Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable. After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. In 1993 he completed ''Civilization, Phaze III'' shortly before his death. It was a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.

In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the world-acclaimed Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alexander Knaifel). Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble, Ensemble Modern, which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, Zappa invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material. In addition to being satisfied with the ensemble's performances of his music, Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for the fall. In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled, but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation. It would become his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating". Recordings from the concerts appeared on ''The Yellow Shark'' (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous ''Everything Is Healing Nicely'' (1999).

Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles, next to the grave of actor Lew Ayres. On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".

Legacy

Acclaim and honors

Zappa earned widespread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'' (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music — and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable". Even though his work drew inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite". On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity. ''Guitar Player'' devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music". Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s. He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s, and said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music." Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that". Pierre Boulez stated in ''Musician'' magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive." Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation. As an electric guitarist, he has become highly regarded.

In 1994, jazz magazine ''Down Beat'''s critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres — rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music — with masterful ease". He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, the U.S. National Recording Preservation Board included ''We're Only in It for the Money'' in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it". The same year, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him at No. 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2011, he was ranked at No. 45 on the list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by the same magazine.

Artists influenced by Zappa

A number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper, Primus, Fee Waybill of The Tubes all cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and John Frusciante. Paul McCartney regarded ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' as The Beatles' ''Freak Out!'' Heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath, Mike Portnoy, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, Strapping Young Lad, System of a Down, Clawfinger, and Devin Townsend acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Ensemble Ambrosius and the Fireworks Ensemble regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton. Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa include new age pianist George Winston, electronic composer Bob Gluck, parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic, industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge, and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.

References in arts and sciences

Scientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it ''Amaurotoma zappa'' with the motivation that, "The specific name, ''zappa'', honors Frank Zappa". In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea ''Zappa'', with a species named ''Zappa confluentus''. Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian jellyfish ''Phialella zappai'' (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer". Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named ''Pachygnatha zappa'' because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache". A gene of the bacterium ''Proteus mirabilis'' that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named ''zapA'' by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature". In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it ''Spygori zappania'' to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".

In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: ''3834 Zappafrank''. The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".

In 1995, a bust of Zappa by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A replica was offered to the city of Baltimore in 2008, and on September 19, 2010 — the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zappa's testimony to the U.S. Senate — a ceremony dedicating the replica was held, with the bust installed at the Southeast Anchor Branch Library in Baltimore's Highlandtown. Speakers at the event included Gail Zappa and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, since 1990 location of the ''Zappanale'', an annual music festival celebrating Zappa. At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007. The same year, Baltimore's mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Discography

References

Notes

External links

The official Frank Zappa website

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''The Steve Harvey Show'' (also known as ''Steve Harvey'') is an American sitcom that aired for six seasons from August 25, 1996 to February 17, 2002 on The WB Television Network. It was created by Winifred Hervey and directed by Stan Lathan.

Synopsis

Steve Hightower (Steve Harvey) is a has-been 1970s funk legend who is now a music teacher/Vice-principal at Booker T. Washington High in Chicago's West Side. Budget cutbacks meant Steve also had to teach drama and art, much to his surprise. Cedric Robinson (Cedric the Entertainer) is a coach at the high school, and Steve's long-time best friend. The principal of Booker T. Washington High is Steve's former classmate, Regina Grier (Wendy Raquel Robinson), who Steve affectionately calls "Piggy", due to the fact that she was overweight as an adolescent.

Steve seemingly meets his match in a pair of his students: Romeo Santana (Merlin Santana), a stylish, popular, self-absorbed ladies' man, and the equally vacuous Stanley Kuznocki, nicknamed Bullethead (William Lee Scott).

In 1997, the show introduced a new character, a secretary named Lovita Jenkins (Terri J. Vaughn), a woman who is fundamentally good in nature, but nonetheless, considerably unrefined in terms of disposition. Cedric and Lovita begin dating, and eventually marry and produce a child. The show also featured a succession of young actresses who served as female foils to Romeo and Bullethead; the longest-lasting of these was Lori Beth Denberg as the overachieving, socially inept Lydia Gutman. Rapper The Lady of Rage also had a recurring role as Coretta Cox, a physically massive, brutish teenaged girl in romantic pursuit of Romeo.

Steve was part of a fictional singing group called "Steve Hightower and the High Tops," who would temporarily reunite to perform on occasion (the spelling of "High Tops" appears on a promotional poster that hangs on Steve's wall). The members consisted of Steve, T-Bone (played by T.K. Carter, later by Don 'D.C.' Curry), Pretty Tony (played by Ronald Isley of The Isley Brothers), and Clyde (played by Jonathan Slocumb). Two of their signature songs (performed several times on the show) were "When the Funk Hits the Fan," and "Break Me Off a Piece of That Funk." Though Cedric was not an original member of the group, he usually sang with them on several events.

A few other recurring characters throughout the series included Cedric's grandmother named "Grandma Puddin'" (played by Cedric the Entertainer) and Regina's boyfriend, Warrington Steele (played by Dorien Wilson). Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell appeared in several episodes as "Junior" and "Vincent." Wayne Wilderson portrayed Byron, a "bougie" type character who was a TV producer and a member of the Onyx Club (a professional men's group that Steve and Cedric tried to join). Dwayne Adway played Jordan Maddox, a professional basketball player who was briefly married to Regina before dying during their honeymoon. Ernest Lee Thomas made a couple of appearances as the Reverend who eulogized Maddox, and who married Cedric and Lovita.

Running gags

There were a few recurrent gags throughout the series. For instance, Lovita had several relatives named after products or items (her brother's name was Duracell; she had cousins named "Kinko", "Bruschetta," "Clinique," and "Camay").

Steve also made several references to his well known hot spot "The Nasty Kitty" and his favorite working girl, Bubblicious, even though the strip club is never seen. Steve's topical humor of popular culture was also another recurring gag. One example of these jokes: "When I see that woman, I'm like Shaq doing Shakespeare- I just don't know how to act!". Another recurring gag on the show was despite being a one-time famous musician in the universe of the show, Steve was always mistaken for being other famous musicians. For example, in an episode guest starring Jerry Springer, he refers to him as "That Cop from the Village People." Another episode featured singer Teena Marie, who when Steve went to introduce himself to see if she'd remember him, answers "Oh Yes! Lionel! How are you? Give my best to the rest of The Commodores." (This was in obvious reference to singer Lionel Richie).

Though Regina blossomed into a beautiful, stylish lady, she sometimes displayed her insecurities, and was highly competitive (always displayed childlike exuberance whenever she won a trophy by yelling her signature catch phrase "Bam! In your face!", and once cheated Steve in a game of Scrabble because he played it better than she). In addition, the romantic tension between Steve and Regina eventually blossomed into a relationship.

A very well known gag was Cedric's story about being from Willacoochee, Georgia, where he was raised in a one bedroom shack. The story was never finished, the scene would change or someone would interrupt him. Cedric's love for decking out his Hyundai, which was never seen in the show, was another running gag, as well as offering to take Lovita out to dinner whenever he had a two-for-one coupon at the Sizzler restaurant.

Occasional gags referenced Bullethead's trailer park lifestyle, and Romeo's numerous names (he has used the names Romeo Miguel Jesus Pele Rojas Alejandro Santana). In one episode, he wrote all of his names on paper but never prepared his assignment, resulting in an "F." Lydia almost always displayed an obsession for her fellow classmate/alleged lover, Arthur Rabinowitz (whom Steve referred to as "that polite Jewish boy that does his taxes"), and for her favorite entertainer, Barbra Streisand; however, she had total disdain for classmates "Heather the cheerleader" and "Jennifer the cheerleader". One other gag was that teachers would refer to a student (amongst themselves) due to a condition or appearance ("Helmet Boy" for wearing a special helmet in gym class; "Au Natural Girl" for having a strong body odor, and "Firestarter" for one kid who kept setting items on fire).

Cast

Main cast

Steve Harvey – Steven "Steve" Hightower

Cedric the Entertainer – Cedric Jackie Robinson

Merlin Santana – Romeo Santana

William Lee Scott – Stanley "Bullethead" Kuznocki

Wendy Raquel Robinson – Principal Regina Grier-Maddox

Terri J. Vaughn – Lovita Alizé Jenkins-Robinson (1997-2002)

Tracy Vilar – Sophia Ortiz (1996-1997)

Netfa Perry – Sara (1996-1997)

Ariyan A. Johnson – Aisha (1997-1998)

Lori Beth Denberg – Lydia Liza Guttman (1998-2002)

Recurring cast

Kel Mitchell – Vincent (1996-1999)

Kenan Thompson – Junior (1996-1999)

T. K. Carter – T-Bone (1996-1999)

Ronald Isley – Pretty Tony (1996-2001)

Jonathan Slocumb – Clyde (1996-2001)

The Lady of Rage – Coretta "The Ox" Cox (1997-2000; credited during season 4 episodes as "Robin Yvette")

Wayne Wilderson – Byron (1998-2001)

Dorien Wilson – Warrington Steele (1998-1999)

Samm Levine – Arthur Rabinowitz (2001)

Don "D.C." Curry – T-Bone (1999-2001)

Dwayne Adway – Jordan Maddox (2000)

Special guest appearances

Teena Marie

Jerry Springer

Bow Wow

Jermaine Dupri

Teddy Riley

Snoop Dogg

Sean Combs

Kim Fields

Isabel Sanford

Judge Greg Mathis

Antonio Fargas

Busta Rhymes

Brian McKnight

Nikki Cox

Boris Kodjoe

Gabrielle Union

Bumper Robinson

Seasonal ratings in the United States

! Season	! Network	! Season premiere	! Season finale	! Rank	! Viewers(in millions)
! 1		August 25, 1996	May 18, 1997
! 2	September 10, 1997	May 13, 1998
! 3	September 18, 1998	May 20, 1999
! 4	September 24, 1999	May 19, 2000
! 5	October 8, 2000	May 20, 2001
! 6	October 14, 2001	February 17 , 2002

Series end

In 2001, Harvey decided to pursue other projects. He wished to end the show after the fifth season, but at the insistence of the WB network, reluctantly filmed a 13-episode sixth season.

The series ended with Regina mulling over a job offer to be a principal at a private school in California. Steve, who doesn't want Regina to go, acts supportive despite his feelings. Regina ends up taking the job and with encouragement from Lydia, Bullethead, and Romeo, Steve decides to go after her to reveal his true feelings. Meanwhile, Cedric and Lovita win the lottery and Lovita goes into labor (Terri J. Vaughn's real-life pregnancy was written into the show that season).

Death of Merlin Santana

On November 9, 2002, nine months after the series ended, Merlin Santana was shot and killed while sitting in his car in South Los Angeles, California. He was 26 years old. The reason for his death is that one of the killers' girlfriend falsely stated that Santana tried to rape her.

Syndication

The series was first distributed to syndication to WB and UPN affiliates in the United States by Sony Pictures Television in September 2002, and remained airing in broadcast syndication in some U.S. markets on various local stations (such as WCIU and MeTV in Chicago) as late as 2008.

The series aired on BET until March 2009, and currently TBS in the United States, (ending its run on September 24, 2011) UK Channel Trouble. It was broadcast on Ion Television until March 16, 2009. TBS missed most of the first inning of Game 6 of the 2008 American League Championship Series, with viewers getting a rerun of ''The Steve Harvey Show'' instead. TBS picked up the game just prior to the last out in the bottom of the first, with announcer Chip Caray apologizing to viewers for "technical difficulties." TBS acknowledged there was a problem with one of their routers used in the broadcast transmission of the relay of the telecast from Atlanta.

DVD release

In 2003, Sony Pictures released ''The Best of the Steve Harvey Show, Vol. 1'', on Region 1 DVD. The disc features five episodes of the series.

Awards and nominations

Nominated rowspan=4Nominated rowspan=24NominatedNominatedNominatedNominatedWon

style="background-color: #BCBCBC"	Year	Award	Result	Category	Recipient
rowspan=2	1996	NCLR Bravo Awards	|	Outstanding Individual Performance in a Comedy Series	Tracy Vilar
Nominated	Outstanding Individual Performance in a Comedy Series
rowspan=3	1998	ALMA Award ||	Nominated	Outstanding Comedy Series	-
Nominated	Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Nominated	Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
1999	|	Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series	Merlin Santana
rowspan=2	1998	NAACP Image Awards ||	Nominated	Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series	Steve Harvey
Nominated	Outstanding Comedy Series
rowspan=3	1999	|	Outstanding Comedy Series	-
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
rowspan=5	2000	|	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Terri J. Vaughn
Nominated	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
rowspan=7	2001	|	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	William Lee Scott
Nominated	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Nominated	Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
rowspan=6	2002	|	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	Merlin Santana
Nominated	Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Comedy Series
Won	Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
2003	|	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Terri J. Vaughn

References

External links

Category:1996 American television series debuts Category:2002 American television series endings Category:1990s American television series Category:2000s American television series Category:American television sitcoms Category:Black sitcoms Category:English-language television series Category:Fictional versions of real people Category:High school television series Category:Television series by NBC Universal Television Category:Television series by Sony Pictures Television Category:Television shows set in Chicago, Illinois Category:WB network shows

fr:The Steve Harvey Show

Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
name	Jack Kerouac
birth name	Jean Louis Kerouac
birth date	March 12, 1922
birth place	Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.
death date	October 21, 1969
death place	St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
occupation	Novelist, Poet, Painter
nationality	American
genre	Beat Poets
movement	Beat
notableworks	''On the Road''''The Dharma Bums''''Big Sur''
religion	Catholic
influences	Henry Miller, Thomas Wolfe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marcel Proust, Jack London, James Joyce, Neal Cassady, Walt Whitman, Charlie Parker, Arthur Rimbaud, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Honoré de Balzac, John Fante, Herman Melville, Matsuo Basho, the Diamond Sutra, Lester Young
influenced	Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Russell Banks, Joyce Johnson, Jim Morrison, Roy Harper, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Tom Wolfe, Tom Waits, Jerry Garcia, Haruki Murakami, Ben Gibbard, Will Clarke, Joe Cutler, Jim Dodge, Blake Schwarzenbach, Russell Brand, Hunter S. Thompson
signature	Jack Kerouac signature.svg }}

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac ( or ; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American/French-Canadian novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired other writers, including Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, Lester Bangs, Tom Robbins, Will Clarke, and Haruki Murakami. Critics of his work have labeled it "slapdash", "grossly sentimental", and "immoral". Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the Hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward it. In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from internal bleeding due to long-standing abuse of alcohol. Since his death Kerouac's literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today, among them: ''On the Road'', ''Doctor Sax'', ''The Dharma Bums,'' ''Mexico City Blues'', ''The Subterraneans'', ''Desolation Angels'', ''Visions of Cody'' and ''Big Sur.

Biography

Adolescence

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, natives of the province of Quebec, Canada. There is some confusion surrounding his original name partly due to variations on the spelling of Kerouac, and partly because of Kerouac's own promotion of his name as ''Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac''. His reason for doing so seems to be linked to an old family legend that the Kerouacs had descended from Baron François Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac. Kerouac's baptism certificate lists his name simply as ''Jean Louis Kirouac'', and indeed Kirouac is the most common spelling of the name in Quebec. Kerouac claimed he descended from a Breton nobleman, granted land after the Battle of Quebec, whose sons all married Native Americans. Research has shown that Kerouac's roots were indeed in Brittany, and he was descended from a middle-class merchant colonist, Urbain-François Le Bihan, Sieur de Kervoac, whose sons married French Canadians. Kerouac's own father had been born to a family of potato farmers in the village of Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup. He also had various stories on the etymology of his surname, usually tracing it to Irish, Breton, or other Celtic roots. In one interview he claimed it was the name of a dead Celtic language and in another said it was from the Irish for "language of the water" and related to ''Kerwick''. Kerouac, derived from ''Kervoach'', is the name of one hamlet situated in Brittany in Lanmeur, near Morlaix.

|thumb|left|250px|His third of several homes growing up in the West Centralville section of Lowell, Jack Kerouac later referred to 34 Beaulieu Street as "sad Beaulieu". The Kirouack family was living there in 1926 when Jack's big brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. Jack was four at the time, and would later say that Gerard followed him in life as a guardian angel. This is the Gerard of Kerouac's novel Visions of Gerard. Despite the future elaborations, around the house during his childhood, Kerouac was referred to as ''Ti Jean'' or ''little John''. Kerouac spoke the French-Canadian dialect called Joual until he learned English at age six, not speaking it confidently until his late teens. He was a serious child who was devoted to his mother who played an important role in his life. She was a devout Catholic, instilling this into both her sons; this can be seen throughout his works. Kerouac would later go on to say that his mother was the only woman he ever loved. When he was four, he was profoundly affected by the death of his nine-year-old brother, Gérard, from rheumatic fever, an event later described in his novel ''Visions of Gerard''. His mother sought solace in her faith, while his father abandoned it wallowing in drinking, gambling and smoking. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life, he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing ''On the Road'' in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels. The writings are in dialectal Quebec French.

On May 17, 1928, while six years old, Kerouac had his first Sacrament of Confession. For penance he was told to say a rosary, during the meditation of which he could hear God tell him that he had a good soul, that he would suffer in his life and die in pain and horror, but would in the end have salvation. This experience, along with his dying brother's vision of the Virgin Mary, and the nuns' fawning over the dying boy, convinced that he was a saint, incorporated with later found Buddhism and ongoing commitment to Christ, solidified into his worldview which informs his work.

There were few black people in Lowell, so the young Kerouac was not raised in an environment of racial hatred as many were at the time. Kerouac once recalled to Ted Berrigan, in an interview with the ''Paris Review'', an incident from the 1940s, in which his mother and father were walking together in a Jewish neighborhood in the Lower East Side of New York, saying "And here comes a whole bunch of rabbis walking arm in arm... teedah- teedah - teedah... and they wouldn't part for this Christian man and his wife. So my father went POOM! and knocked a rabbi right in the gutter." His father, after the death of his child and apostasy, had treated a priest with similar contempt, angrily throwing him out of the house after an invitation by Gabrielle.

Kerouac's skills as a running back in American football for Lowell High School earned him scholarship offers from Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia University. He entered Columbia University after spending a year at Horace Mann School, where he earned the requisite grades to matriculate to Columbia. Kerouac cracked a tibia playing football during his freshman season, and he argued constantly with Coach Lou Little who kept him benched. While at Columbia, Kerouac wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the ''Columbia Daily Spectator'' and joined the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. He also studied at The New School.

Early adulthood

When his football career at Columbia soured, Kerouac dropped out of the university. He continued to live for a period on New York City's Upper West Side with his girlfriend, Edie Parker. It was during this time that he met the people—now famous—with whom he would always be associated, the subjects injected into many of his novels: the so-called Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs.

Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942, and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but he only served eight days of active duty before arriving on the sick list. According to his medical report Jack Kerouac said he “asked for an aspirin for his headaches and they diagnosed me Dementia Praecox and sent me here.” The medical examiner reported Jack Kerouac’s military adjustment was poor, quoting Kerouac: “I just can’t stand it; I like to be by myself”. Two days later he was honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds (he was of "indifferent character" with a diagnosis of "schizoid personality").

In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as a material witness in the murder of David Kammerer, who had been stalking Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr since Carr was a teenager in St. Louis. William Burroughs was himself a native of St. Louis, and it was through Carr that Kerouac came to know both Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. According to Carr, Kammerer's obsession with Carr turned aggressive, causing Carr to stab him to death in self-defense. After turning to Kerouac for help, together they disposed of evidence. Afterwards, as advised by Burroughs, they turned themselves in to the police. Kerouac's father, unwilling and unable, refused to pay his bail. Kerouac then agreed to marry Edie Parker if she'd pay the bail. Their marriage was annulled a year later, and Kerouac and Burroughs briefly collaborated on a novel about the Kammerer killing entitled ''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks''. Though the book was not published during the lifetimes of either Kerouac or Burroughs, an excerpt eventually appeared in ''Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader'' (and as noted below, the novel was finally published late 2008). Kerouac also later wrote about the killing in his novel ''Vanity of Duluoz''.

Later, he lived with his parents in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, after they also moved to New York. He wrote his first novel, ''The Town and the City'', and began the famous ''On the Road'' around 1949 while living there. His friends jokingly called him "The Wizard of Ozone Park," alluding to Thomas Edison's nickname, "the Wizard of Menlo Park" and to the film ''The Wizard of Oz''.

Early career: 1950–1957

Kerouac wrote constantly, carrying a notebook with him everywhere. Letters to friends and family members tended to be long and rambling, including great detail about his daily life and thoughts. Prior to becoming a writer, he tried a varied list of careers. He was a sports reporter for ''The Lowell Sun''; a temporary worker in construction and food service; a United States Merchant Marine and he joined the United States Navy twice.

''The Town and the City'' was published in 1950 under the name "John Kerouac" and, though it earned him a few respectable reviews, the book sold poorly. Heavily influenced by Kerouac's reading of Thomas Wolfe, it reflects on the generational epic formula and the contrasts of small town life versus the multi-dimensional, and larger, city. The book was heavily edited by Robert Giroux; some 400 pages were taken out.

For the next six years, Kerouac continued to write regularly. Building upon previous drafts tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road," Kerouac completed what is now known as ''On the Road'' in April 1951, while living at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan with his second wife, Joan Haverty. The book was largely autobiographical and describes Kerouac's road-trip adventures across the United States and Mexico with Neal Cassady in the late-40s, as well as his relationships with other Beat writers and friends. He completed the first version of the novel during a three-week extended session of spontaneous confessional prose. Kerouac wrote the final draft in 20 days, with Joan, his wife, supplying him bowls of pea soup and mugs of coffee to keep him going. Before beginning, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper into long strips, wide enough for a type-writer, and taped them together into a long roll he then fed into the machine. This allowed him to type continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript contained no chapter or paragraph breaks and was much more explicit than what would eventually be printed. Though "spontaneous," Kerouac had prepared long in advance before beginning to write. In fact, according to his Columbia professor and mentor Mark Van Doren, he had outlined much of the work in his journals over the several preceding years.

Though the work was completed quickly, Kerouac had a long and difficult time finding a publisher. Before ''On the Road'' was accepted by Viking Press, Kerouac got a job as a "railroad brakesman and fire lookout" traveling between the East and West coasts of America to collect money, so he could live with his mother. During this period of travel, he conspired what was to be "his life's work", "The Legend of Duluoz."

Publishers rejected ''On the Road'' because of its experimental writing style and its sympathetic tone towards minorities and marginalized social groups of post-War America. Many editors were also uncomfortable with the idea of publishing a book that contained what were, for the era, graphic descriptions of drug use and homosexual behavior—a move that could result in obscenity charges being filed, a fate that later befell Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' and Ginsberg's ''Howl''.

According to Kerouac, ''On the Road'' "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever Established and really must not be spoken about." According to his authorized biographer, historian Douglas Brinkley, ''On the Road'' has been misinterpreted as a tale of companions out looking for kicks, but the most important thing to comprend is that Kerouac was an American Catholic author - for example, virtually every page of his diary bore a sketch of a crucifix, a prayer, or an appeal to Christ to be forgiven.

In late 1951, Joan Haverty left and divorced Kerouac while pregnant. In February 1952, she gave birth to Kerouac's only child, Jan Kerouac, though he refused to acknowledge her as his own until a blood test confirmed it 9 years later. For the next several years Kerouac continued writing and traveling, taking extensive trips throughout the U.S. and Mexico and often fell into bouts of depression and heavy drug and alcohol use. During this period he finished drafts for what would become 10 more novels, including ''The Subterraneans'', ''Doctor Sax'', ''Tristessa'', and ''Desolation Angels'', which chronicle many of the events of these years.

In 1954, Kerouac discovered Dwight Goddard's ''A Buddhist Bible'' at the San Jose Library, which marked the beginning of his immersion into Buddhism. However, Kerouac had taken an interest in Eastern thought in 1946 when he read Heinrich Zimmer's Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Kerouac's stance on eastern texts then differed from when he took it up again in the early to mid-1950s. In 1955 Kerouac wrote a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, entitled ''Wake Up'', which was unpublished during his lifetime but eventually serialised in ''Tricycle: The Buddhist Review'', 1993–95. It was published by Viking in September 2008.

Politically, Kerouac found enemies on both sides of the spectrum, the right disdaining his association with drugs and sexual libertinism and the left contemptuous of his anti-communism and Catholicism; characteristically he watched the 1954 Senate McCarthy hearings smoking pot and rooting for the anti-communist crusader, Senator Joe McCarthy. In ''Desolation Angels'' he wrote, "when I went to Columbia all they tried to teach us was Marx, as if I cared" (considering Marxism, like Freudianism, to be an illusory tangent).

In 1957, after being rejected by several other firms, ''On the Road'' was finally purchased by Viking Press, which demanded major revisions prior to publication. Many of the more sexually explicit passages were removed and, fearing libel suits, pseudonyms were used for the book's "characters". These revisions have often led to criticisms of the alleged spontaneity of Kerouac's style.

Later career: 1957–1969

In July 1957, Kerouac moved to a small house at 1418½ Clouser Avenue in the College Park section of Orlando, Florida, to await the release of ''On the Road''. Weeks later, a review appeared in ''The New York Times'' proclaiming Kerouac the voice of a new generation. Kerouac was hailed as a major American writer. His friendship with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, among others, became a notorious representation of the Beat Generation. The term “Beat Generation” was invented by Kerouac during a conversation held with fellow novelist Herbert Huncke. His fame came as an unmanageable surge that would ultimately be his undoing.

Kerouac's novel is often described as the defining work of the post-World War II Beat Generation and Kerouac came to be called "the king of the beat generation," a term that he never felt comfortable with. He once observed, "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic", showing the reporter a painting of Pope Paul VI and saying, "You know who painted that? Me."

The success of ''On the Road'' brought Kerouac instant fame. His celebrity status brought publishers desiring unwanted manuscripts which were previously rejected before its publication. After nine months, he no longer felt safe in public. He was badly beaten by three men outside the San Remo Bar at 189 Bleecker Street in New York City one night. Neal Cassady, possibly as a result of his new notoriety as the central character of the book, was set up and arrested for selling marijuana.

In response, Kerouac chronicled parts of his own experience with Buddhism, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets, in ''The Dharma Bums'', set in California and Washington and published in 1958. It was written in Orlando between November 26 and December 7, 1957. To begin writing ''Dharma Bums'', Kerouac typed onto a ten-foot length of teleprinter paper, to avoid interrupting his flow for paper changes, as he had done six years previously for ''On the Road''.

Kerouac was demoralized by criticism of ''Dharma Bums'' from such respected figures in the American field of Buddhism as Zen teacher Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Alan Watts. He wrote to Snyder, referring to a meeting with D. T. Suzuki, that "even Suzuki was looking at me through slitted eyes as though I was a monstrous imposter." He passed up the opportunity to reunite with Snyder in California, and explained to Whalen, "I'd be ashamed to confront you and Gary now I've become so decadent and drunk and don't give a shit. I'm not a Buddhist any more."

Kerouac also wrote and narrated a "Beat" movie entitled ''Pull My Daisy'' (1959), directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. Originally to be called ''The Beat Generation'', the title was changed at the last moment when MGM released a film by the same name in July 1959 which sensationalized "beatnik" culture.

The CBS Television series ''Route 66'' (1960-64), featuring two untethered young men "on the road" in a Corvette seeking adventure and fueling their travels by apparently plentiful temporary jobs in the various U.S. locales framing the anthology styled stories, gave the impression of being a commercially sanitized misappropriation of Kerouac's "On The Road" story model. Even the leads, Buz and Todd, bore a resemblance to the dark, athletic Kerouac and the blonde Cassady/Moriarty, respectively. Kerouac felt he'd been conspicuously ripped off by ''Route 66'' creator Stirling Silliphant and sought to sue him, CBS, the Screen Gems TV production company, and sponsor Chevrolet, but was somehow counseled against proceeding with what looked like a very potent cause of action.

John Antonelli's 1985 documentary ''Kerouac, the Movie'' begins and ends with footage of Kerouac reading from ''On the Road'' and ''Visions of Cody'' on ''The Tonight Show'' with Steve Allen in 1957. Kerouac appears intelligent but shy. "Are you nervous?" asks Steve Allen. "Naw," says Kerouac, sweating and fidgeting.

Kerouac developed something of a friendship with the scholar Alan Watts (renamed Arthur Wayne in Kerouac's novel ''Big Sur'', and Alex Aums in ''Desolation Angels''). Kerouac moved to Northport, New York in March 1958, six months after releasing ''On the Road''., to care for his aging mother Gabrielle and to hide from his new-found celebrity status.

In 1968, he appeared on the television show ''Firing Line'' produced and hosted by William F. Buckley. The visibly drunk Kerouac talked about the 1960s counterculture in what would be his last appearance on television.

Death

On 20 October 1969, around 11 in the morning, Jack was sitting in his favorite chair, drinking whiskey and malt liquor, trying to scribble notes for a book about his father's print shop in Lowell, Mass. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach, which was nothing unusual, and headed for the bathroom. He began to throw up massive amounts of blood, and yelled to his wife, "Stella, I'm bleeding." Eventually he was convinced to go to the hospital and was taken out by ambulance to St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg. Blood continued to pour from his mouth and he underwent numerous transfusions. Eventually that evening Jack underwent surgery in an attempt to tie off all the burst blood vessels, but his liver, destroyed by years of drinking, would not let his blood clot. Kerouac finally died at 5:15 am the following morning, 21 October 1969, having never regained consciousness from the operation.thumb|right|250px| Lowell, Massachusetts Grave site, Lowell Massachusetts His death, at the age of 47, resulted from an internal hemorrhage (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. Kerouac is buried in his hometown of Lowell and was honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters degree from his hometown's University of Massachusetts Lowell on June 2, 2007.

At the time of his death, he was living with his third wife, Stella Sampas Kerouac, and his mother, Gabrielle. Kerouac's mother inherited most of his estate. When she died in 1973, Stella inherited the rights to his works under a faked will purportedly signed by his mother. Family members challenged the will and, on July 24, 2009, a judge in Pinellas County, Florida ruled that the will of Gabrielle Kerouac was fake, citing that Gabrielle Kerouac would not be physically capable of providing her own signature on the date of the signing.

In 2007, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of ''On the Road'''s publishing, Viking issued two new editions: ''On the Road: The Original Scroll,'' and ''On the Road: 50th Anniversary Edition''. By far the more significant is ''Scroll,'' a transcription of the original draft typed as one long paragraph on sheets of tracing paper which Kerouac taped together to form a scroll. The text is more sexually explicit than Viking allowed to be published in 1957, and also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends rather than the fictional names he later substituted. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay paid $2.43 million for the original scroll and allowed an exhibition tour that concluded at the end of 2009. The other new issue, ''50th Anniversary Edition,'' is a reissue of the 40th anniversary issue under an updated title.

The Kerouac/Burroughs manuscript, ''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'' was published for the first time on November 1, 2008 by Grove Press. Previously, a fragment of the manuscript had been published in the Burroughs compendium, ''Word Virus''.

Works

Style

Kerouac is generally considered to be the father of the Beat movement, although he actively disliked such labels. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas he developed from his Buddhist studies that began with Gary Snyder. He often referred to his style as ''spontaneous prose'', a literary technique akin to nothing. Although Kerouac’s prose was spontaneous and purportedly without edits, he primarily wrote autobiographical novels (or Roman à clef) based upon actual events from his life and the people with whom he interacted. Many of his books exemplified this approach, including ''On the Road'', ''Visions of Cody'', ''Visions of Gerard'', ''Big Sur'', and ''The Subterraneans''. The central features of this writing method were the ideas of breath (borrowed from Jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and not editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in Beat Generation poetry who edited some of Ginsberg's work as well). Connected with his idea of breath was the elimination of the period, preferring to use a long, connecting dash instead. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks. When spoken, the words might take on a certain kind of rhythm, though none of it pre-meditated.

Kerouac greatly admired Gary Snyder, many of whose ideas influenced him. ''The Dharma Bums'' contains accounts of a mountain climbing trip Kerouac took with Snyder, and also whole paragraphs from letters Snyder had written to Kerouac. While living with Snyder outside Mill Valley, California in 1956, Kerouac was working on a book centering around Snyder, which he was thinking of calling ''Visions of Gary''. (This eventually became ''Dharma Bums'', which Kerouac described as "mostly about [Snyder].") That summer, Kerouac took a job as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades in Washington, after hearing Snyder's and Philip Whalen's accounts of their own lookout stints. Kerouac described the experience in his novel ''Desolation Angels''.

He would go on for hours, often drunk, to friends and strangers about his method. Allen Ginsberg, initially unimpressed, would later be one of its great proponents, and indeed, he was apparently influenced by Kerouac's free flowing prose method of writing in the composition of his masterpiece "Howl". It was at about the time that Kerouac wrote ''The Subterraneans'' that he was approached by Ginsberg and others to formally explicate his style. Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be ''Belief and Technique for Modern Prose'', a list of 30 "essentials".

# Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy # Submissive to everything, open, listening # Try never get drunk outside yr own house # Be in love with yr life # Something that you feel will find its own form # Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind # Blow as deep as you want to blow # Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind # The unspeakable visions of the individual # No time for poetry but exactly what is # Visionary tics shivering in the chest # In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you # Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition # Like Proust be an old teahead of time # Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog # The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye # Write in recollection and amazement for yourself # Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea # Accept loss forever # Believe in the holy contour of life # Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind # Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better # Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning # No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge # Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it # Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form # In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness # Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better # You're a Genius all the time # Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote famously said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing". Despite such criticism, it should be kept in mind that what Kerouac said about writing and how he wrote are sometimes seen to be separate. According to Carolyn Cassady, and other people who knew him, he rewrote and rewrote. However, it should be taken into account that throughout most of the '50s Kerouac was constantly trying to have his work published, and consequently he often revised and re-arranged manuscripts in an often futile attempt to interest publishers, as is clearly documented in his collected letters (which are in themselves examples of his style). ''The Subterraneans'' and ''Visions of Cody'' are possibly the best examples of Kerouac's free-flowing spontaneous prose method.

Although Kerouac is known mainly as being a novelist, he was a poet as well and performed his work as spoken word. He “developed a new definition for American haiku in his journal ''Some of the Dharma'' which are short three-line confessional poems that served to enlighten. The haiku style he used was not meant to be difficult nor apply to any traditional methods of prose. Some were as quick as a breath and just as witty, honest, abstract and sometimes glum. For example, "Arms folded/ to the moon,/ among the cows", is direct and honest but also draws a picture of a man staring at the moon in the middle of the country side among animals. There is a hint of desolation in the voice of a man who is standing "arms folded" pondering during the night. Kerouac experimented with a variety of methods, including strong jazz influence as can be seen with the dashes. Jack Kerouac performed several spoken word pieces that are still available for listening today. His haiku had a spontaneous sound which described minute everyday occurrences as seen below.

Close your eyes -

Landlord knocking

On the back door.

The bottoms of my shoes

are wet

from walking in the rain

In my medicine cabinet,

the winter fly

has died of old age.

Evening coming—the office girl

Unloosing her scarf.

November - how nasal

the drunken

Conductor's call

Although the body of Kerouac's work has been published in English, recent research has suggested that, aside from already known correspondence and letters written to friends and family, he also wrote unpublished works of fiction in French. A manuscript entitled ''Sur le Chemin'' (On the road) was discovered in 2008 by Québécois journalist Gabriel Anctil. The novela was completed in five days in Mexico during December 1952 is a telling example of Kerouac's attempts at writing in Joual, a dialect typical of the French-Canadian working class of the time, which can be summarized as a form of expression utilising both old patois and modern French mixed with modern English words (''windshield'' being a modern English expression used casually by some French Canadians even today). Set in 1935, mostly on the American east coast, the short manuscript (50 pages) explores some of the recurring themes of Kerouac's literature by way of a narrative very close to, if not identical to, the spoken word. It tells the story of a group of men who agree to meet in New York, including a young 13-year-old Kerouac whom he refers to as ''Ti-Jean''. Ti-Jean and his father Leo (Kerouac's father's real name) leave Boston by car, traveling to assist friends looking for a place to stay in the city. The story actually follows two cars and their passengers, one driving out of Denver and the other from Boston, until they eventually meet in a dingy bar in New York's Chinatown. In it, Kerouac's "French" is written in a form which has little regard for grammar or spelling, relying often on phonetics in order to render an authentic reproduction of his French-Canadian vernacular. The novel starts: ''Dans l'mois d'Octobre 1935, y'arriva une machine du West, de Denver, sur le chemin pour New York. Dans la machine était Dean Pomeray, un soûlon; Dean Pomeray Jr., son ti fils de 9 ans et Rolfe Glendiver, son step son, 24. C'était un vieille Model T Ford, toutes les trois avaient leux yeux attachez sur le chemin dans la nuit à travers la windshield.'' Even though this work shares the same title as one of his best known English novels, it is rather the original French version of a short text that would later become ''Old bull in the Bowery'' (also unpublished) once translated to English prose by Kerouac himself. ''Sur le Chemin'' is Kerouac's second known French manuscript, the first being ''La nuit est ma Femme'' written in early 1951 and completed a few days before he began the original English version of ''On the Road'', as reveiled by journalist Gabriel Anctil in the montreal daily Le Devoir. .

Influences

Kerouac's early writing, particularly his first novel ''The Town and the City'', was more conventional, and bore the strong influence of Thomas Wolfe. The technique Kerouac developed that later made Kerouac famous was heavily influenced by Jazz, especially Bebop, and later, Buddhism, as well as the famous "Joan Anderson letter" authored by Neal Cassady. The Diamond Sutra was the most important Buddhist text for Kerouac, and "probably one of the three or four most influential things he ever read". In 1955, he began an intensive study of this sutra, in a repeating weekly cycle, devoting one day to each of the six Pāramitās, and the seventh to the concluding passage on Samādhi. This was his sole reading on Desolation Peak, and he hoped by this means to condition his mind to emptiness, and possibly to have a vision.

However, often overlooked but perhaps his greatest literary influence may be that of James Joyce whose work he alludes to, by far, more than any other author. Kerouac had the highest esteem for Joyce, emulated and expanded on his techniques. Regarding ''On the Road'', he wrote in a letter to Ginsberg, "I can tell you now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like Ulysses and should be treated with the same gravity." Indeed, Old Angel Midnight has been called "the closest thing to Finnegans Wake in American literature."

Legacy

Kerouac is considered by some the "King of the Beats", a title with which Kerouac himself was deeply uncomfortable. Kerouac's plainspeaking style of prose and his nearly long-form free verse style of novelistic "neologism", inspired countless beat writers and neo-beat writers and artists, such as painter George Condo, poet and philosopher Roger Craton, and filmmaker John McNaughton.

In 1974 the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics was opened in his honor by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa University, a private Buddhist university in Boulder, Colorado. The school offers a BA in Writing and Literature, MFAs in Writing & Poetics and Creative Writing, and a summer writing program.

From 1978 to 1992, Joy Walsh published 28 issues of a magazine devoted to Kerouac, ''Moody Street Irregulars''.

In 1997, the house on Clouser Avenue where ''The Dharma Bums'' was written was purchased by a newly formed non-profit group, The Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project of Orlando, Inc. This group provides opportunities for aspiring writers to live in the same house in which Kerouac was inspired, with room and board covered for three months.

In 2007, Kerouac was awarded a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In 2009, the movie ''One Fast Move or I'm Gone - Kerouac's Big Sur'' was released. It chronicles the time in Kerouac's life that led to his novel ''Big Sur'', with actors, writers, artists, and close friends giving their insight into the book. The movie also describes the people and places on which Kerouac based his characters and settings, including the cabin in Bixby Canyon. An album released to accompany the movie, "One Fast Move or I'm Gone", features Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt) performing songs based on Kerouac's ''Big Sur''.

In 2010, during the first weekend of October, the 25th anniversary of the literary festival "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac" was held in Kerouac's birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. It featured walking tours, literary seminars, and musical performances focused on Kerouac's work and that of the Beat Generation.

Bibliography

Discography

;Studio albums

''Poetry for the Beat Generation'' (with Steve Allen) (1959)

''Blues and Haikus'' (with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims) (1959)

''Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation'' (1960)

;Compilation albums

''The Jack Kerouac Collection'' (1990) [Box] (Audio CD Collection of 3 studio albums)

''Jack Kerouac Reads On the Road'' (1999)

References

Further reading

Amburm, Ellis. ''Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac''. St. Martin's Press, 1999. ISBN 0-312-20677-1

Amram, David. ''Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac''. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.ISBN 1-56025-362-2

Bartlett, Lee (ed.) ''The Beats: Essays in Criticism''. London: McFarland, 1981.

Beaulieu, Victor-Lévy. ''Jack Kerouac: A Chicken Essay''. Coach House Press, 1975.

Brooks, Ken. ''The Jack Kerouac Digest''. Agenda, 2001.

Cassady, Carolyn. ''Neal Cassady Collected Letters, 1944-1967''. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200217-8

Cassady, Carolyn. ''Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg''. Black Spring Press, 2007.

Challis, Chris. ''Quest for Kerouac''. Faber & Faber, 1984.

Charters, Ann. ''Kerouac''. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973.

Charters, Ann (ed.) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Charters, Ann (ed.) ''The Portable Jack Kerouac''. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Christy, Jim. ''The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac''. ECW Press, 1998.

Clark, Tom. ''Jack Kerouac''. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984.

Coolidge, Clark. ''Now It's Jazz: Writings on Kerouac & the Sounds''. Living Batch, 1999.

Cook, Bruce. ''The Beat Generation''. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. ISBN 0-684-12371-1

Dagier, Patricia; Quéméner, Hervé. ''Jack Kerouac: Au Bout de la Route ... La Bretagne''. An Here, 1999.

Dagier, Patricia ; Quéméner Hervé. ''Jack Kerouac, Breton d'Amérique''. Editions Le Télégramme, 2009.

Edington, Stephen. ''Kerouac's Nashua Roots''. Transition, 1999.

Ellis, R.J., ''Liar! Liar! Jack Kerouac - Novelist''. Greenwich Exchange, 1999.

French, Warren. ''Jack Kerouac''. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Gaffié, Luc. ''Jack Kerouac: The New Picaroon''. Postillion Press, 1975.

Giamo, Ben. "''Kerouac, The Word and The Way''". Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.

Gifford, Barry. "''Kerouac's Town''". Creative Arts, 1977.

Gifford, Barry; Lee, Lawrence. "''Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac''". St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-14-005269-0

Goldstein, N.W., "Kerouac's On the Road." Explicator 50.1. 1991.

Haynes, Sarah, Exploration of Jack Kerouac's Buddhism:Text and Life"

Heller, Christine Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder: Chasing Zen Clouds

Hemmer, Kurt. ''Encyclopedia of Beat Literature: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of the Beat Writers''. Facts on File, Inc., 2007.

Hipkiss, Robert A., ''Jack Kerouac: Prophet of the New Romanticism''. Regents Press, 1976.

Holmes, John Clellon. ''Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook''. tuvoti, 1981.

Holmes, John Clellon. ''Gone In October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac''. Limberlost, 1985.

Holton, Robert. ''On the Road: Kerouac's Ragged American Journey''. Twayne, 1999.

Hrebeniak, Michael. ''Action Writing: Jack Kerouac"s Wild Form''. Carbondale IL., Southern Illinois UP, 2006.

Huebel, Harry Russell. ''Jack Kerouac''. Boise State University, 1979. available online

Hunt, Tim. ''Kerouac's Crooked Road''. Hamden: Archon Books, 1981.

Jarvis, Charles. ''Visions of Kerouac''. Ithaca Press, 1973.

Johnson, Joyce. ''Minor Characters: A Young Woman's Coming-Of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac''. Penguin Books, 1999.

Johnson, Joyce. ''Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958''. Viking, 2000.

Johnson, Ronna C., "You're Putting Me On: Jack Kerouac and the Postmodern Emergence". College Literature. 27.1 2000.

Jones, James T., ''A Map of Mexico City Blues: Jack Kerouac as Poet''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.

Jones, James T., ''Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Jones, Jim. ''Use My Name: Kerouac's Forgotten Families''. ECW Press, 1999.

Jones, Jim. ''Jack Kerouac's Nine Lives''. Elbow/Cityful Press, 2001.

Kealing, Bob. ''Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends''. Arbiter Press, 2004.

Kerouac, Joan Haverty. ''Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats''. Creative Arts, 2000.

Leland, John. ''Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think)''. New York: Viking Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-670-06325-3

Maher Jr., Paul. ''Kerouac: The Definitive Biography''. Lanham: Taylor Trade P, July 2004 ISBN 0-87833-305-3

Maher, Paul, Jr. We Know Time: The Literary Cosmos of Jack Kerouac (unpublished work-in-progress)

McNally, Dennis. ''Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America''. Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81222-3

Miles, Barry. ''Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats''. Virgin, 1998.

Montgomery, John. ''Jack Kerouac: A Memoir ...'' Giligia Press, 1970.

Montgomery, John. ''Kerouac West Coast''. Fels & Firn Press, 1976.

Montgomery, John. ''The Kerouac We Knew''. Fels & Firn Press, 1982.

Montgomery, John. ''Kerouac at the Wild Boar''. Fels & Firn Press, 1986.

Mortenson, Erik R., "Beating Time: Configurations of Temporality in Jack Kerouac's On the Road". College Literature 28.3. 2001.

Motier, Donald. ''Gerard: The Influence of Jack Kerouac's Brother on his Life and Writing''. Beaulieu Street Press, 1991.

Nicosia, Gerald. ''Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac''. Berkeley: U of Cal P, 1994. ISBN 0-520-08569-8

Parker, Brad. "''Jack Kerouac: An Introduction''". Lowell Corporation for the Humanities, 1989.

Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac''. Hamlyn, 1999.

Swick, Thomas. "''South Florida Sun Sentinel''". February 22, 2004. Article: "Jack Kerouac in Orlando".

Theado, Matt. ''Understanding Jack Kerouac''. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2000.

Turner, Steve. ''Angelheaded Hipster: A Life of Jack Kerouac''. Viking Books, 1996. ISBN 0-670-87038-2

Walsh, Joy, editor. ''Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter''

Weinreich, Regina. ''The Spontaneous Prose of Jack Kerouac''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Wills, David, editor. ''Beatdom'' Magazine. Mauling Press, 2007.

External links

Jack Kerouac Papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University

Category:1922 births Category:1969 deaths Category:Alcohol-related deaths in Florida Category:American nomads Category:American novelists Category:American people of Breton descent Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:American poets Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American sailors Category:Beat Generation writers Category:Buddhist writers Category:Columbia Lions football players Category:Deaths from cirrhosis Category:English-language haiku poets Category:French-language writers Category:History of Denver, Colorado Category:People from Florida Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York Category:People from Lowell, Massachusetts Category:People from New York City Category:People from Orlando, Florida Category:Postmodern writers Category:Travel writers

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Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
Name	Jonathan Winters
Birth name	Jonathan Harshman Winters III
Birth date	November 11, 1925
Birth place	Bellbrook, Ohio, US
Medium	Comedian, actor
Nationality	American
Active	1953–present
Influenced	George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, Conan O'Brien, Patton Oswalt, Frank Caliendo
Spouse	Eileen Schauder (1948–2009; her death; 2 children)

}} Jonathan Harshman Winters III (born November 11, 1925) is an American comedian and actor.

Early life

Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, the son of Alice Kilgore (née Rodgers), a radio personality, and Jonathan Harshman Winters II, an investment broker. He is a descendant of Valentine Winters, founder of the Winters National Bank in Dayton, Ohio (now part of JPMorgan Chase). Of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry, Winters has described his father as an alcoholic who had trouble holding a job. When he was seven, his parents separated, and Winters' mother took him to Springfield, Ohio to live with his maternal grandmother.

At age 17, Winters quit high school and joined the United States Marine Corps and served two and a half years in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Upon his return he attended Kenyon College. He later studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, where he met Eileen Schauder, whom he married in 1948.

Winters is a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Lambda chapter).

Career

His career began as a result of a lost wristwatch, about six or seven months after his marriage to Eileen. The newlyweds couldn’t afford to buy another one. Then Eileen read about a talent contest in which the first prize was a wristwatch, and encouraged Jonathan to “go down and win it.” She was certain he could…and he did. His performance led to a disk jockey job, where he was supposed to introduce songs and announce the temperature. Gradually his ad libs, personas and antics took over the show.

He began comedy routines and acting while studying at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He was also a local radio personality on WING (mornings, 6 to 8) in Dayton, Ohio and at WIZE in Springfield, Ohio. He performed as Johnny Winters on WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio for two and a half years, quitting the station in 1953 when they refused him a $5.00 raise. After promising his wife that he would return to Dayton if he did not make it in a year, and with $56.46 in his pocket, he moved to New York City, staying with friends in Greenwich Village. After obtaining Martin Goodman as his agent, he began stand-up routines in various New York nightclubs. His big break occurred (with the revised name of Jonathan) when he worked for Alistair Cooke on the CBS Sunday morning show Omnibus. In 1957, he performed in the first color television show, a 15-minute routine sponsored by Tums.

Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for the Verve Records label, starting in 1960. Probably the best-known of his characters from this period is Maude Frickert, the seemingly sweet old lady with the barbed tongue. He was a favorite of Jack Paar and appeared frequently on his television programs, even going so far as to impersonate then-US President John F. Kennedy over the phone as a prank on Paar. In addition, he would often appear on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', usually in the guise of some character. Carson often did not know what Winters had planned and usually had to tease out the character's back story during a pretend interview. Carson invented a character called "Aunt Blabby" that was an impression of Maude Frickert.

Winters has appeared in nearly 50 movies and several television shows, including particularly notable roles in the film ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' and in the dual roles of Henry Glenworthy and his dark, scheming brother, the Rev. Wilbur Glenworthy, in the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's ''The Loved One''. Fellow comedians who starred with him in "Mad World," such as Arnold Stang, claimed that in the long periods while they waited between scenes, Winters would entertain them for hours in their trailer by becoming any character that they would suggest to him. He also appeared in ''Viva Max!'' (1970) and ''The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming'' (1966).

He appeared as a regular (along with Woody Allen and Jo Anne Worley) on the Saturday morning children's television program ''Hot Dog'' in the late sixties. He also had a CBS nighttime show from 1967 to 1969, and had his own show, ''The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters'' during 1972–74. Winters did dramatic work in the ''The Twilight Zone'' episode "A Game of Pool" (episode #3.5, October 13, 1961). He recorded Ogden Nash's ''The Carnival of the Animals'' poems to Camille Saint-Saëns' classical opus. He appeared on ABC's ''The American Sportsman'', hosted by Grits Gresham, who took celebrities on hunting, fishing, and shooting trips to exotic places around the world. He appeared regularly as a panelist on ''The Hollywood Squares'' and made many very memorable appearances on both the Dean Martin Show and The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts.YouTube In the fourth and last season of the sci-fi-based TV comedy ''Mork & Mindy'', Jonathan Winters (one of Robin Williams' idols) was brought in as Mork & Mindy's child, Mearth. Due to the different Orkan physiology, Mork laid an egg, which grew and hatched into the much older Winters. It had been previously explained that Orkans aged "backwards," thus explaining Mearth's appearance and that of his teacher, Miss Geezba (portrayed by then-11-year-old actress Louanne Sirota). Mork's infant son Mearth in ''Mork & Mindy'' was created in hopes of improving ratings and as an attempt to capitalize on Williams' comedic talents. Winters had previously guest-starred in Season 3, Episode 18 as Dave McConnell, Mindy's uncle. However, after multiple scheduling and cast changes, ''Mork & Mindy'''s 4th season was already pretty low in the ratings and ended up being the show's last season.

He was a regular on ''Hee Haw'' during the 1983–84 season. Shortly after this, in 1987, Winters was featured in NFL Films' ''The NFL TV Follies''. He was the voice of Grandpa Smurf from 1986–1990 on the television series The Smurfs.

In 1991 and 1992, he was on ''Davis Rules'', a sitcom that lasted two seasons (25 episodes). He played Gunny Davis, an eccentric grandfather who was helping raise his grandchildren after his son lost his wife. In addition to his live action roles, he was also a guest star on ''The New Scooby-Doo Movies''and the narrator in ''Frosty Returns''. Winters appeared as himself on an episode of Scooby-Doo, where the Scooby Gang was looking forward to his promised performance as Maude Frickert. Along with numerous roles in Scooby-Doo, Winters also provided the voice for the thief in ''Arabian Knight''.

From 1959 to 1964, Winters' voice could be heard in a series of popular television commercials for Utica Club beer. In the ads, he provided the voices of talking beer steins, named "Shultz and Dooley." Later, he became a spokesman for Hefty brand trash bags, for whom he appeared as a dapper garbageman known for collecting "gahr-bahj," as well as Maude Frickert and other characters.

Later years

In 1999, Winters was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He now lives near Santa Barbara, California, and is often seen browsing and hamming for the crowd at the antique show on the Ventura County fairgrounds. He often entertains the tellers and other workers whenever he visits his local bank to make a deposit or withdrawal. He spends time painting, and has been presented in one-man shows of his art. In 1987, he published ''Winters' Tales: Stories and Observations for the Unusual''. Other writings have followed, and he is said to be working on his autobiography.

In June 2008, Winters was presented with the TV Land Pioneer Award by his friend Robin Williams.

On February 11, 2010 it was announced that Winters would provide the voice of Papa Smurf in the live-action Smurfs movie.

Personal life

In his "Archive of American Television Interviews," Winters reported that he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent eight months in a private mental hospital in the late 1950s. Although he was not given a diagnosis while in the hospital, he was later diagnosed with manic depression (known today as bipolar disorder). The comedian referred to this incident obliquely in his stand-up act, most famously on his 1960 comedy album ''The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters''. During his classic "flying saucer" routine, Winters casually mentions that if he wasn't careful, the authorities might put him back in the "rubber room," referring to the institution.

On January 11, 2009, Eileen, Jonathan's wife of 60 years, died at the age of 84 after a 20-year battle with breast cancer.

Discography

''Down to Earth'' (1960)

''The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters'' (1960; reissued in 2003)

''Here's Jonathan'' (1961)

''Another Day, Another World'' (1962)

''Humor Seen through the Eyes of Jonathan Winters'' (1962)

''Jonathan Winters' Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963)

''Whistle Stopping with Jonathan Winters'' (1964)

''Movies Are Better Than Ever'' (1966)

''Jonathan Winters… Wings it!'' (1969)

''Stuff 'n Nonsense'' (1969)

''Answers Your Telephone'' (1988)

''Finally Captured'' (1988)

''Into the '90s'' (1990)

''Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3'' (1992)

''Crank(y) Calls'' (1995)

''Outpatients'' (2000)

''Paul Bunyan'' (2001)

''Old Folks'' (2006)

''The Underground Tapes'' (2007)

''Final Approach'' (2011)

Filmography

Features:

''Alakazam the Great'' (1960) (voice in English dubbed version)

''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963)

''The Loved One'' (1965)

''The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming'' (1966)

''Penelope'' (1966)

''Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad'' (1967)

''Eight on the Lam'' (1967)

''Viva Max!'' (1969)

''The New Scooby-Doo Movies'' (1972)

''The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh'' (1979)

''Pogo for President: I Go Pogo'' (1980) (voice)

''Mork and Mindy'' (1981)

''E. Nick: A Legend in His Own Mind'' (1984)

''The Little Troll Prince'' (1985)

''The Longshot'' (1986)

''Say Yes'' (1986)

''On The Ledge'' (1987)

''Moon over Parador'' (1988)

''Frosty Returns'' [Narrator] (1992)

''The Flintstones'' (1994)

''The Shadow'' (1994)

''Arabian Knight'' (Miramax 1995)

''The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'' (2000)

''Swing'' (2003)

''Comic Book: The Movie'' (2004)

''Tell Them Who You Are'' (2004) (documentary)

''National Lampoon's Cattle Call'' (2006)

''Certifiably Jonathan'' (2011) ''The Smurfs'' (2011) Short Subjects:

''Sonic Boom'' (1974)

''Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big'' (2000) (voice)

''Santa vs. the Snowman 3D'' (2002) (voice)

References

External links

Jonathan Winters' Official Homepage

Archive of American Television interview with Jonathan Winters Part 4 of 5[dead link]

Archive of American Television Interview with Jonathan Winters — Index

Official Website of the Jonathan Winters film, Certifiably Jonathan

video: "Jonathan Winters roasts Ronald Reagan", on Dean Martin Roasts TV show, 3 minutes

Marc Maron interviews Jonathan Winters - WTF Podcast Episode 173 - May 2011

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