Word Jazz - Ken Nordine (1957)

ideated from: the weird world of pop music in 1957

There’s nobody quite like Ken Nordine. He was a radio and commercial voiceover guy who developed his own riff on beat poetry. Surreal stories that were absurd but emotionally honest and almost always funny, accompanied by jazzy (or occasionally more classical) instrumental tracks.

Social commentary on an era when I wasn’t alive isn’t really that interesting to me, but Nordine has a tendency to find timeless themes that anyone can identify with: addiction, self-control, the inner monologue of criticism we all deal with. It’s all so human and vulnerable, even when it sounds silly on the surface.