The “Listen Again” series was popular enough that your favorite record reviewer has decided to follow the lead of some TV execs and do a spin-off. In this series we'll once more examine previously-released albums BUT the platters we will peruse in this particular series will be (Rolling Stone magazine) FIVE-STAR albums. This time we look at Woody Guthrie's Woody Guthrie: Library of Congress Recordings.
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter/guitarist who was born in 1912 and died in 1967 of Huntington's Disease. Although his musical legacy includes hundreds of ballads, children's songs, improvisations, political tunes and traditional anthems he is perhaps best known for his song "This Land is Your Land" which is as beautiful a portrayal of natural American glory as has been created in any medium.
Guthrie, father of singer-songwriter Arlo ("City of New Orleans") Guthrie and grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie, ranks right up therewith perhaps a half-dozen most important names in the history of American music. Born in Oklahoma Guthrie traveled to California with migrant workers and learned traditional folk and blues songs. From the 1930s until some time in the 1950s when he was no longer able to do so, Guthrie was the most influential songwriter on the American political left.
Although he was associated with American communist groups throughout his life he never actually ever belonged to one. He was an energetic, amazing character who penned many songs including those about his depression-era experiences in the Dust Bowl which earned him the nickname, "the Dust Bowl Troubadour". Not only did he write hundreds of tunes but he also wrote poems, journals, autobiographical material and novels.
It was in March 1940 that he would complete his one of his most important five-star works: Woody Guthrie:Library of Congress Recordings. It was here that he sat down with American guitarist/folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (born in 1915 and died in 2002). Guthrie would make what would later be labeled The Library of Congress Recording Sessions.
Recorded in Washington, D.C. by interviewer Lomax, they were cataloged in the United States Library of Congress. They are the first recordings made of Woody Guthrie. They include many traditional songs and three of Guthrie's best known songs, "Do-Re-Me", "So Long It's Been Good To Know You" and "Talking Dust Bowl Blues".
The recordings also include Guthrie's autobiographical recollections of Oklahoma, the Dust Bowl, riding the freight trains and interesting observations on life and America's great depression in conversations with Lomax. These were in no way meant to be commercial recordings. Nevertheless, about fifty tracks (including conversations) were later released as a three-LP box set on the Elektra label in 1964. The sessions would later be released in their entirety on CD as The Library of Congress Recording Sessions.
Guthrie was as writer Dave Marsh put it, "the very incarnation of John Steinbeck's Tom Joad (in The Grapes of Wrath) about whom he wrote a ballad." His musical approach was primitive and raw. His performances were always simple involving nothing more than his unprocessed vocals, an acoustic guitar and a little bit of basic harmonica work.
While Guthrie enjoyed projecting a sense of naivete it was totally belied by the quality of his songs and the intensity of his playing totally belied that. An ignorant Okie certainly could not have written the song "Deportee" which subtly painted perhaps the best picture of discrimination against migrant workers to date. Throughout the songs on these historical recordings, from such outlaw audios as "Pretty Boy Floyd" to the various representations of the dust bowl catastrophe in songs such as "Dust Pneumonia Blues", to his "political calls-to-arms", there is a definite artistic vision at work, thought by some critics to be "one of the greatest of its generation". No wonder the greatest American composer of the next era, Bob Dylan, was so awestruck by Guthrie that he attempted to emulate him in his own career.
Woody Guthrie: Library of Congress Recordings contains not only noteworthy discussions between Guthrie and Lomax but a good share of both his best, original cuts and traditional tunes. Other noteworthy numbers included here are "Rye Whiskey", "Greenback Dollar", "They Laid Jesus Christ in His Grave", "California Blues", "California-The Promised Land" and "Los Angeles New Year's Flood". It was music like this that inspired not only Bob Dylan but The Byrds, Phil Ochs, Mungo Jerry, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Bruce Springsteen and many others. Indeed, five-star recordings such as Woody Guthrie: Library of Congress Recordings/Elek. 271/272 are what helped Guthrie earn his position as a legendary figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians.
My name is Phoenix and . . . that's the bottom line.
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