Grateful Dead - 40152 (1992)
Word Jazz is the name Ken gave to the unique art form he invented as a creative diversion from his day job. Falling into the cracks somewhere between Beat poetry, shaggy-dog storytelling and standup comedy (delivered sitting down), Word Jazz earned Nordine an avid cult following, with the release of a string of albums on various labels in the late 1950s and early '60s, and a National Public Radio series in the 80s. Among Ken's earliest and most rabid fans was a loose collection of Northern California seekers of fun, truth and music that eventually mutated into the Grateful Dead.
In 1991 the Dead's longtime sound wizard, Dan Healy, came up with the inspired notion of hooking up Nordine's golden throat and beautifully skewed vision with the music of such confirmed Ken-heads as Jerry Garcia, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman and piano/harmonica ace Howard Levy (of Bela Fleck's Flecktones). With Grisman's band-mates Joe Craven and Jim Kerwin completing the line-up (and another Word Jazz disciple, Tom Waits making a memorable cameo appearance,) Healy marched Ken & Co. into the Dead's recording studio and emerged with "Devout Catalyst," an amazing act of collaborative improvisation, with the musicians providing telepathic soundtracks for Nordine's strange and wonderful word-pictures. Ken said that recording with Garcia and friends was one of the two most rewarding experiences of his career the other being Fred Astaire dancing to Word Jazz on a 1960s TV special (not bad company, that!) Just about everyone who heard "Devout Catalyst" shared Nordine's enthusiasm the album was released to ecstatic acclaim, making many critics' lists of 1992's top albums, and was nominated for a Grammy Award as "Best Spoken Word Recording". The renewed interest in Word Jazz encouraged Nordine to try something he had rarely done before performing in front of a live audience. A highly successful appearance in Ken's hometown of Chicago was followed by a triumphant pair of shows at Bimbo's nightclub in San Francisco, as part of the 1992 S.F. Jazz Festival. Happily, Ken seems to have been bitten by the performing bug he joined the Grateful Dead onstage in Chicago last spring, and will be returning to the San Francisco Jazz Festival in November. The best news of all is that Nordine's 1992 shows were captured on tape by Dan Healy, for the brand-new live album "Upper Limbo," coming this fall from Grateful Dead Records. Word Jazz lives!
Garcia on Ken Nordine:
"Doing this record with him was an absolute thrill for me, because I can't emphasize how important this stuff was for me when I was growing up. When I told some of my really old friends I was going to be doing this, they were really excited. He's just a special guy.
"[Nordine's work in the '50s] wasn't part of the common knowledge, which made it that much more exciting for a kid — 'This is not something you hear on the radio. This is not something they play at parties.' This is something people hand around like a treasure, like, 'Hey listen to this!'"
The admiration was mutual. "Jerry is in tune with what's happening in my head," Nordine said shortly after the Devout Catalyst sessions. "It was a sound at first sight kind of thing. ... What he could do [was] hear what was being said with an empathy that really came from an unbelievable facility and heart. He could play and his music became part of the language."