A tape of beat novelist JACK KEROUAC reading from his most famous work On The Road has surfaced and will be released by Rykodisc on an album called ‘Jack Kerouac Reads On The Road’ on September 13.
Recorded in 1955, the reading has always been presumed lost – the acetate recording was originally mislabelled – and was recently re-discovered and remastered.
The album also features recordings of Kerouac poems as well as him singing jazz standards (very badly) such as ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’ and ‘Come Rain Or Shine’. There’s also a song called ‘On The Road’ – music by Kerouac, based on an old French Canadian folk tune – which is also reworked by Tom Waits and Primus as the album’s closing track. The album was produced by Sonic Youth‘s Lee Ranaldo.
A companion volume of City Lights (beat generation publishing house and bookshop) supremo and beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading from his 1950s collection A Coney Island Of The Mind with a jazz soundtrack by Dana Colley is released on the same day.