Who? Ken Nordine. One of the most recognizable voices of the twentieth century. Nordine's career began in the 1940's as the voice behind slugetta snail bait, Levis jeans, Taster's Choice coffee and the Chicago Blackhawks. The father of word jazz - - proto rap - not singing, not talking. Storytelling in lyric form with a sense of grooving to the music. His discography include a 1958 release on DOT records - arguably the first word jazz album and a handful of other DOT releases, the 1995 rerelease of the 1967 Philips Classics album Colors on Asphodel records, the 1991 Rhino compilation of the early DOT releases called the best of word jazz vol.1, the 1991 Devout Catalyst on Grateful Dead records with Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and Tom Waits; the 1993 Grateful Dead records release UpperLimbo and a rumored soon to be released album on Knitting Factory records. He's also been featured on various period anthologies such as the Rhino Beat Generation box set, though he says he doesn't consider himself a member of the beat generation or it's artistic/cultural milieu.

Vox: I don't know where to begin...

KN: Well that's everybody's problem-where to begin.

Vox: How about with Colors.

KN: That was fun doing that. you know, the amazing thing about Colors is that it was done a long time ago.

Vox: You started it by doing commercials for a paint company.

KN: That's exactly what happened. The commercials won an international broadcast award for the agency to dust off up on their wall. It had been on the air and people liked them because they were different and they would call the radio station and they'd say 'Play that again!' he he he

Vox: ha ha ha

KN: But they couldn't because it was a commercial.

Vox: How did Colors become an album?

KN: I felt sort of sad because we did nine colors plus 'spectrum' --all of the colors together--for this paint company, and it was only on for the thirteen weeks and then they took it off because people were calling up...you know they got nervous...'Why should we bide more time for the commercial? They had a budget for just so many times a week.' So it went off and I felt sorry for the colors so I did about thirty more--a little more than that--there were forty-four that I did all together and I said "This should be an album," so it came out as an album. Remember this is 1967. It was out for a short time and they didn't know how to categorize it--what bin put it in, in the record store because this was before spoken word or that sort of thing achieved any notoriety.

Vox: Here in New Orleans we weren't aware that Nutria was a color. What does it look like?

KN: Well, Nutria sort of has a, well, neutral is a good way to look at it. It's sort of the way pale would look if it was nervous.

Vox: There's this mammal that was imported by Mcillhenny (Tabasco sauce king), when he was planning a foray in the furrier business. One night a tornado hit and destroyed the nutria pens he had set up on Avery island. The nutria swam ashore, bred like crazy, and ate everything in their path. Now we have an overpopulation of nutria.

KN: Ha ha ha. Well what the heck--get cerise (cherry red) after nutria because you know cerise is connected to the police and so...if nutria hears about it well he'll have to run away to somebody else's state. Who's next door?

Vox: To Louisiana? Mississippi and Texas.

KN: Mississippi and Texas will have a terrible problem. They'll be buying cerise from you to help them. Oh, do you know about that funny thing they had to keep insects off a guy's forty acres . . . it was an electronic device that would give a little tone and all the boll weevils or whatever the heck was eating the crops, would all disappear. It Was a great idea except that the flies would go to the farm next door and...it was an idea that never got up off--well it was on the ground but it never got up off the ground. He he he.

Vox: Oh.

KN: It can be made no matter where you look at it...it you get to cerise before I do, we'll split! ( (?) at this point, the Vox staff is really fucking confused).

Vox: O.K......Is cerise like being incommunicado? {a pun. Think about it}

KN: Very much. Of course the place I'd really like to go--they have it now--is called Random Access. Now there's a place. (Anthony laughs).

Vox: Yeah.

KN: You get confused. In fact everywhere you go there's a little fork in the road--you say 'I think I'll go this way' and then right in front of you there's another fork in the road so that's what happens to you. It's fun actually, because you never know where you're going to wind up.

Vox: Speaking of Random Access, how did you start with doing spoken word stuff? Was it a fork in the road that turned into a lifetime of work or...

KN: Well, I have to tell you the truth, as a teenager I used to memorize poetry. I'd memorize it and would use it--this is a (personal) giveaway--I'd use it as ammunition against or for getting girls. I'd get on the phone and I'd start out 'Hi, I sometimes think there never blows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled' and she'd say "Oh".

Vox: Did this work?

KN: Well, it didn't, but what happened is that the girls I called said to me " you know, you should go into radio' and that worked. Ever since then I've been sort of hooked on reading and I liked to do that...hooked on phonics I guess. So I started out memorizing poetry, but then in order to make a living, because in those days if you told your mother and father 'Hey, I'm going to become a poet', they would get nervous and throw you out of the house 'Get a regular job, quick!'.

Vox: Well it worked.

KN: I got a regular job in a little radio station...

Vox: Could you describe what you do during your word jazz radio shows? (New Orlean's NPR station does not broadcast these).

KN: Well, it's something that everybody does to tell you the truth. Word jazz is...well, you think a thought and then you think about the thought that your thinking about...sometimes it can be a giveaway to what your really thinking, I heard someone the other day do it and they didn't realize it. They saw someone, a friend, and said 'You look fine. Were you sick?' which immediately tipped off that they didn't look so fine, but it's that kind of revelation that thinking does. In other words if you were going to do what your doing today, you would write a sentence...it could be any sentence: 'I like popcorn'. And that would be the first paragraph. Then the second paragraph: 'Well. let me tell you why I like popcorn. It goes good with movies. I get it with butter but then I have to get a napkin because my hands get all buttery and also I have to eat popcorn because everybody--in the movie theater is eating popcorn too and it's a form of self-defense'. That'll be the second paragraph, were you're explaining why you eat popcorn and what it means to you. Then you come to the third paragraph which is a paragraph that is so long that you never finish it, really-you have to abandon it finally...in the third paragraph you say to yourself 'Why am I explaining this?' And that's where you sort of take off to the interior part of your mind and you'll discover that it's pretty much like everyone else's interior of their mind...they're thinking thoughts like that too.

Vox: Is eating popcorn for self-defense something to do while you're just sitting there or is that like chewing gum during an exam?

KN: Exactly. Then what do you do with it after your through with it? You shouldn't swallow it.

Vox: I stick it someplace.

KN: You should never swallow gum. It could get stuck! That's a terrible thought. In fact, inside of anybody is a terrible...well, I had to have a CAT Scan once...or whatever they call those image resonance things, and you could see the picture of your insides...I couldn't look! I didn't want to find out about that...it's fantastic. Fantastic what goes on, you know--in our minds, in our bodies, it's all on automatic pilot when you think about it. You don't tell your heart to beat. Did you see that funny commercial where that guy is operating on this fellow and it turns out...the nurse and the doctor are talking 'have you ever done one of these operations before?' and the guy being operated on, his eyes widen and you hear his heart instead of beat beat beat...it goes beatbeatbeat...ha ha ha

Vox: tehe! tehe!

KN: ...one of the funnier commercials on the air.

Vox: Are you doing any commercials now? Anything like the paint commercial?

KN: No, not that because that company was bought by another company and you really can't walk into the same river twice.

Vox: You won't do advertising anymore?

KN: I do some Levis commercials which are fun. In fact I did a lot of them, also Coors beer--I do a lot for them out on the West coast. I've just finished doing three commercials for Las Vegas, not about the gambling, but about what a great place it is to go, and the shows they have and how you can go play golf...because it's a great place. They're turning into a family theme park--so you'll see those on the boob tube.

Vox: I was listening to Indianapolis on the air. You introduced the show and it was like 'wow, I know that voice!'.

KN: Oh yeah, it's amazing. I look at the commercial side of our lives, which are quite necessary-the part on to allow you to do some of the things that people say 'we'll see, where's that going to fit? what's that good for?' And it's amazing, if you keep persisting, you can do all sorts of things that are very close to your heart...how did we get into this heart thing?! You know what I've been doing with my wife lately? I got a blood pressure kit at the drugstore and we compare blood pressures. I'll check her diastole and systole and pulse and the I'll check mine and whoever gets the best one wins.

Vox. I don't know how we got so far out here--physiology and all that.

KN: Back to the spectrum.

Vox: New Orleans has a lot of interesting street names and we were wondering if you could use those the same way you used different colors as a springboard for word jazz compositions.

KN: The street names?

Vox: Yeah. We have this one long road that runs along the river called Tchoupitoulas.

KN: Chop a Tulip?

Vox: It's got a lot of warehouse along it and...

KN: Oh? well actually anybody could--Chop was probably a woodsman and he couldn't say 'tulips'. Warehouses. Did you know that warehouses --they change them and turn them into lofts and then you'll clean them, and you might be surprised. Tchoupitoulas could really be the place to go to. They could make a shopping center there. The 'chop-a-tulip shopping center."

Vox: The chopping center.

KN: Hey, that's spelled with an 'SH 'though...heh heh...

VOX: ha ha ha

KN: ...'Shopitoulas'. We have to change the name of the street.

Vox: Other good street names are Calliope--but that's pronounced 'cali-ope'. We have streets named after the garden muses and they're all mispronounced. 'Terp-sick-or' instead of 'Terp-sick-ory' (Terpsichore).

KN: Caly-oope, Terp-sick-ory, goddess of hickory. Names are funny. You know Rudy Vallee this singer from a thousand years ago, he used to sing with a megaphone-you know those things they had for cheerleaders to yell through, well when he got close to the end of his life out there in Hollywood he wanted to have a street named after him called 'Rue de Valee' and they wouldn't. They burned him, the poor guy. For all the singing that he had done they should have at least named a street after him.

Vox: Hmmm...in the French Quarter we have a street that's also a color. BurGUNdy street. you've done burgundy...

KN: Yes! BurGUNdy is what they call it? Well see, it's that Southern accent. Of course there are a lot of names that get changed but I guess that's the nature of language. If some people say 'eyether', some say 'eether'. It's the way language developed. For example, 'harrass' and 'harass'. 'Harass' was the preferred pronunciation and then they ahd all that harassment so it became 'har-ras-ment' and you can't argue with usage. Of course some people say 'New Orleens' instead of 'New Orlee-ans'. They drop some of the uh...I've never been to New Orleans. I'd love to but I've been there in spirit watching the Mardi Gras and from the cooking shows I see on the tube. there must be some places where you can get very fat--though burgundy, I did burgundy as fat. Sorry to say that, but that's burgundy.

Vox: Fat?

KN: Yes. Very. Fat as a burgundy cat. The nice thing about colors is that you can really take off--it's sort of like interior decorating the inside of you mind. In fact, they used the Colors album as a tool for teaching school children to free their writing because there was no emotional charge--or at least not any that is excited by, say, writing about you mother or father which could be difficult for some people. With colors nothing was categorized. It's very, very free to the imagination. In fact a good thing to do is get a very abstract picture-as abstract as can be; a doodle will do if you want to-and then describe what it is. I've done that with what I call 'psychosomatic microscopy.' I do a doodle and then play with it in the computer until it looks absolutely-well almost looks like a cross section that you might see in a microscope. It's nothing but a doodle. Then I color, say a beautiful shade of varying purple, and I'll write 'psychosomatic microscopy slide #___ " and then I'll put somebody's social security number 34918--whatever it is. Then I'll look at the thing and I'll say 'Hmmmm.'

Vox: Do you have any of these hanging in a gallery somewhere?

KN: Yes, I had an exhibit with Jerry Garcia at the Dessin Saunders Gallery. He'd like to do that too. he loved to play with the computer. With a program like photo shop you can take, as I said, a doodle and turn it into something that looks absolutely gorgeous--through no talent of you own. It's the computer that helps you manipulate the image. I had seven of these little psychosomatic slides and they would say 'you can see in this cross section that limbic system is in terrible shape. Probably caused by contested tax returns.' I did seven of them and it was fun. It's something nice to send to Scientific American as a put on or maybe the Journal for Irreproducible Results, which is a funny little magazine put out by the scientists there who work for NASA.

Vox: have you ever heard any of your own pieces which had been deconstructed and shifted around a bit--there was this group who did ad-deconstruction where billboards were changed around to make different messages--sometimes with political agendas, sometimes simply as a gag.

KN: I had a call from Sheffield, England from a group called Molocho, and I'd never heard of them but they did a lot of sampling and they took 'Fliberty Jib on the Biberty Bop,' which is a thing I did a long time ago, and 'Looks Like its Gonna Rain' and the sampled it and called me up and sent me a copy of it.

Vox: Yuk Yuk.

KN: ...They were afraid to take their sampler in public.

Vox: Do you often appear in public yourself? You are one of a handful of voices from the twentieth century--like say James Earl Jones--that people will recognize immediately or at least feel familiar with--but nobody knows what you look like.

KN: Well, I think that's just as well actually, because I think the fact that each of us has a personal art director in the brain and you can picture how someone looks to yourself and then when you really see them...it always is a shock I think.. Because after all, here I am in the real life. I'm about two feet tall, really. I have to get on a stool to be able to answer the phone.

Vox: I'm particularly fond of your version of the 'Emperor of Ice Cream.' I was wondering what poets-other than Wallace Stevens-you consider to be great influences.

KN: There are so many. Dylan Thomas-he wrote lyrics that were so easy to memorize because they were all written like: 'In my craft and sullen art/emphasized in this still night/when only the moon reaches...' All those lines are seven beats long so it really makes it easy. Omar Khayam does the same thing. A moment ago I was talking about how 'Sometimes I thing there never blows so red the rose/as where so buried Caesar bled/that every hyacinth the garden wears/dropped in its lap from someone's lovely head.' Well all of Omar Khayam--by the way his middle name was Hakim, which means tent maker--I memorized the whole book of Omar Khayam because it was easy; 'come fill the cup in the fire of spring/the winter garment of repentance fling'--that was a great line with girls, the garment of repentance.

Vox: (incredulous) That worked?

KN: Yeah. 'The bird of time is but a little way the fly and lo the bird is on the wing'; maybe we could go see a movie together? Oh how guilty I was...plagiarizing!

Vox: Did any of these women ever not answer you. Were they so stunned they were speechless?

KN: In fact the world's greatest woman fell for it hook, line, and sinker. We just celebrated our fiftieth anniversary--thanks to her patience. I lucked out. Poetry helped me find the perfect woman. I should record this and give it to her. She's special.

Vox: Other than Tom Waits, what other musicians have you worked with?

KN: Hal Wilner in New York had me come in and do things with Sonny Rollins, Was Not Was, Leonard Cohen was there and Howard levy who used to be with Bela Fleck-I've worked with him. Paul Wertigo who was with Metheny, David Grisman, Jeffrey-a fellow out on the west coast. I was supposed to do a thing with Laurie Anderson. She wants me to write an opera with her...an opera would be kind of funny. She does some marvelous things though I've often felt she gets trapped in the constructed hat she's in. I saw her do a fabulous show at the Chicago theater. it was such a complex mixture of what you see and what you hear, and the changes. It's fascinating. She went on a world tour with the thing. That would drive me off the wall--doing the same thing over and over again. I'm reminded of Hericlitus and that you should never walk in the same river twice. I imagine a play would do that too. Tom Waits did a play with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs in New York (called The Black Rider). It lasted for about two weeks of performances. One of those things that brilliantly comes together at its moment. It got great reviews. Keith Richards and Tom were doing some things at the Grateful Dead Studio in new Rochelle. He had a rough time for a while--Tom and his wife Kathleen. They had a little baby and I guess there was a family -little waves--things got a little rough but now they're back together and he's up in a big beautiful place north of San Francisco, where he did about $100,000 worth of damage over time trying to make it not look so nice. Make it seem like an ordinary regular guy was living there.

Vox: What are your favorite recordings...things that you've done?

KN: I like 'Don't You Wish' and 'Seven Ways of the Meek,' where I changed the names of the days of the week to Dumbday, Bluesday, Endday, Blurday, Cryday, Shatterday, and Stunday. It was a way of getting even with the heat wave up in Spread Eagle, Wisconsin where I come from. I also like 'Ripples' because it gave me a chance to work with Bonnie Herman. She's the girl with a most beautiful voice. She's a musician really, and I had her sing, antiphonically, lines that I recited. She's so surprising and as beautiful-looking as her voice. I have very warm spot in my heart for what she does...she's very talented. I was supposed to do something for Marianne Faithful at the St. Agnes church in Brooklyn for Halloween so I sent them a strange reading of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Crossing the Paragraph.' Poe did some things--he did one on noseology that was very funny. He's written some things that could be in the New Yorker though he's known more for those horror stories. It was fun. Hal Wilner who arranged it was supposed to have Soupy Sales there...but I couldn't go to New York so I just sent the tape and a picture of a demon.

Vox (July 1996)