Kerouac was packaged and marketed as a jazz poet

Evidence

Continuing to push the bandwagon, Millstein suggested Kerouac’s box-office potential to Max Gordon, owner of the venerable Village Vanguard, a cellar nightclub just across Seventh Avenue from the Village Voice office. Gordon booked Kerouac as the Christmas week attraction on a bill that included bop trombonist J. J. Johnson and the young singer Beverly Kenney, whose act included an original composition, “I Hate Rock and Roll.” Kerouac was packaged as a jazz poet. Gordon insisted on having the house pianist noodle behind him. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 33

Categorization

• SEED: The critic-turned-talent-agent moment — Millstein pushing Kerouac’s box-office potential to a club owner — is a concrete image of the critic-to-promoter pipeline that turns a scene into a market, relevant to the reader’s two-part Subcultures-to-Countercultures structure.