David Amram is an American composer, musician and writer. His eclectic use of jazz, ethnic and folk music has led him to work with the likes of Thelonious Monk, Willie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Leonard Bernstein and Jack Kerouac throughout the course of his career.
David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway Theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor in The Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books, Vibrations, an autobiography, Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir, and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.”
Perhaps no one understood Kerouac’s psyche, his dedication to his writing and his disdain of the beatnik myth better than Kerouac’s musical collaborator and close friend David Amram. In his interview at the Village Vanguard, he said, “Many people might think Jack was naïve. That was part of his greatness because it was purity of spirit and almost a childlike quality that kept him in touch and in tune on a humanistic spiritual level.”
