Ken Nordine - Best of Word Jazz, Vol.1 (1990)

Amazon reviewer: “You've heard Ken Nordine before, his immediate baritone resonating like the voice of God in countless radio and TV commercials, hawking everything from Taster's Choice to Murine. In the late 1950s, though, Nordine created "word jazz"--a combination of storytelling, sound painting, and pre-beat improvisation--as a less commercial, more personal outlet for his natural speaking talents. Best gathers the brightest of his four initial albums--material that found him somewhere between the prosody of Jack Kerouac and the arch satire of Nichols & May. As the title suggests, there's a light jazz backing behind Nordine's incantations--ranging from the lighthearted "Hunger Is From" to the disturbing, absurd scenario "Flibberty Jib" to the harrowing memoir "Confessions of 349-18-5171." Good, curious stuff. --Michael Ruby”


The material on this album is a selection from Ken Nordine's word jazz albums: Word Jazz (1957), Son of Word Jazz (1958), Next! (Word Jazz) (1959), and Word Jazz Vol. II (1960).

Tracklist:

01 My Baby
02 Original Sin
03 What Time Is It
04 Confessions Of 349-18-5171
05 Hunger Is From
06 The Vidiot
07 Reaching Into In
08 Adult Kindergarten
09 The Sound Museum
10 Bury-It-Yourself Time Capsules
11 Anytime, Anytime
12 A Whistler
13 Flibberty Jib
14 Faces In The Jazzamatazz
15 I Used To Think My Right Hand Was Uglier Than My Left
16 Looks Like It's Going To Rain
17 Down The Drain
18 You're Getting Better