# Quote — Jack Kerouac, On the Road

> Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety — leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother's woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest — Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonius Monk and madder Gillespie — Charlie Parker in his early days when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while playing.

- Author: [Jack Kerouac](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac.md)
- Book: [On the Road](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Road#Part_three) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/once-there-was

## More from this book

> The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/the-air-was.md)

> I want to be like him. He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he's the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you'll finally get it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/i-want-to-be-like.md)

> The driver was a fiddler for a California cowboy band. He had a brand-new car and drove eighty miles an hour. ‘I don’t drink when I drive,’ he said and handed me a pint. I took a drink and offered him one. ‘What the hail,’ he said and drank.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/the-driver-was.md)