1st recording of "Howl" discoverd

Don Cauble just sent me this from today's The Oregonian. I'm on the run today & can't quite get a link made but it's an easy google to the full story

'Howl' tape gives Reed claim to first
Allen Ginsberg - The beat poet's recording is earlier by a month than a Berkeley reading

Tuesday, February 12, 2008
JEFF BAKER
Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg hitchhiked to Portland in the winter of 1956. The two friends were poets, unknown outside the San Francisco area, and were on the front edge of the cultural movement that became known as the Beat Generation.
Snyder, who grew up in Portland and graduated from Reed College, brought Ginsberg to the Southeast Portland campus for a couple of readings. On Feb. 13, 1956, they read to about 20 people in the Anna Mann Cottage, and on Feb. 14, they gave another reading that was recorded on tape.
At both readings, Ginsberg read a version of "Howl," the long poem that made him famous when it was published a few months later.
(it continues...)