Beat Kitsch

Every once in a while, we visit Beat kitsch (with the essential caveat that “Beatnik” is not “Beat” – that sneering contemporary put-down term, coined, as is now universally recognized, by San Franciscan newspaper-columnist, Herb Caen). Hear Allen with Margaret Mead, as early as 1959, setting the record straight.
Rod McKuen, the veritable poster-boy for poetic kitsch, was, it seems, under a pseudonym, significantly responsible for this “Beatnik anthem”

We, frankly, prefer this version – Bluekilla (from 1989)

and doesn’t it have more-than-a-passing-resemblance to this “anthem”? (from the heady ol’ days of 1977)

Louis Armstrong (yes, Louis Armstrong!) surely should’ve known better (we guess “Pops” just loved a good tune) when he recorded this (in 1959)

covering the unquestionably-more-kitschy Mamie Van Doren

(tho’ our award for misplaced hypocritical ’50’s American Hollywood moralizing has to go to Beverly Garland (or perhaps Marion Kay, since she (he?)’s credited, on the single, with having penned the words) – “Tempest In A Teapot” – “Non-conformists, they call themselves, (but) these babes in the woods (are) still fast asleep”!
Listen and weep!