Ruth Weiss, 'Mother of the Beats,' Dies at 92

Ruth Weiss, early member of the Beat scene in the Bay Area and the first person to read alongside live jazz, has died at her home in Mendocino County, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "Jazz was the scene in the late 1940s and early ’50s, so by combining her poetry with jazz, Ruth created a whole new performance art," said historian of the Beats Jerry Cimino to Sam Whiting. More:

Weiss’ performance art usually happened in spontaneous fashion. It would be late at night at the Black Cat on Montgomery or the Cellar on Green Street. A combo might be honking Bebop or improv when out of the smoke would come Weiss, 5 feet tall, her hair cut short and dyed teal, after the war-orphan hero in the 1948 film “The Boy with Green Hair.”

One of her most popular poems was “Ten Ten,” describing her arrival in San Francisco, where she found a $10 room at 1010 Montgomery, later home to Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac would come by after midnight and they’d go up on the roof with a bottle of cheap red wine. Weiss drank only beer, and always took a bottle with her onto the stage, along with a lit cigarette.

Once up front, her poetry moved along like a locomotive, and the musicians would encourage it along.

“When you see it with the drama and the force of the music, it brings (the poetry) to life,” said Cimino. It was a style of cadenced riffing that Kerouac later took to New York City and took when he read from his novel “On the Road,” accompanied by Steve Allen on piano, during a famous episode of the “Steve Allen Show.”

“Kerouac got all the credit,” said Cimino. “But the accepted understanding in San Francisco is that Ruth was performing her words to music even before  Jack was doing it.”

Read on at the SF Chronicle. A new documentary about Weiss, ruth weiss, the beat goddess, by filmmaker Melody C. Miller, premieres in the UK this August.