120742bk Woody 10/6/04 3:59 PM Page 2 1. Talking Dust Bowl Blues 2:43 9. Jesus Christ 2:45 16. This Land Is Your Land 2:17 19. Talking Columbia Blues 2:37 (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) Victor 26619, mx BS 050146-2 Asch 347-3, mx MA 135 Folkways FP 27 Disc 5012, mx D 202 Recorded 26 April 1940 Recorded c. April 1944 Recorded c. 1945 Recorded c. April 1947 2. Blowin’ Down This Road 3:05 10. New York Town 2:40 17. Pastures Of Plenty 2:31 Woody Guthrie, vocal and guitar (Woody Guthrie–Lee Hays) (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) All selections recorded in New York Victor 26619, mx BS 050150-1 With Cisco Houston Disc 5010, mx D 199 Recorded 26 April 1940 Asch 347-3, mx MA 21 Recorded c. April 1947 Transfers & Production: David Lennick 3. Do Re Mi 2:38 Recorded 19 April 1944 18. Ramblin’ Blues 2:19 Digital Noise Reduction by K&A Productions Ltd (Woody Guthrie) 11. Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little (Woody Guthrie) Original recordings from the collections of David Victor 26620, mx BS 050153-1 Feet 2:35 Disc 5011, mx D 201 Lennick & John Rutherford Recorded 26 April 1940 (Traditional) Recorded c. April 1947 4. Tom Joad 6:31 With Cisco Houston Asch 432-4, mx MA 27 Original monochrome photo of Woody Guthrie from Rue des Archives/Lebrecht Music & Arts; (Woody Guthrie) background from Corbis Images. Victor 26621, mx BS 050159-1, 050152-1 Recorded 19 April 1944 Recorded 26 April 1940 12. Mule Skinner Blues 2:53 5. Dusty Old Dust (So Long It’s Been (Jimmie Rodgers) Also available in the Naxos Folk Legends series ... Good To Know Yuh) 3:08 With Cisco Houston, vocal, and Pete (Woody Guthrie) Seeger, banjo Victor 26622, mx BS 050148-1 Asch 432-1, mx MA 12 Recorded 26 April 1940 Recorded 19 April 1944 6. Talking Sailor 3:07 13. Biggest Thing Man Has Ever Done 2:23 (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) Asch 347-1, mx MA 20 Asch 432-3, mx MA 15 Recorded 19 April 1944 Recorded 19 April 1944 7. Grand Coulee Dam 2:15 14. Ludlow Massacre 3:33 (Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) Asch 347-1, mx MA 17 Asch 360-2, mx 902 Recorded 19 April 1944 Recorded 24 May 1945 8.120675 8.120728* 8.120737* 8. Gypsy Davy 2:55 15. 1913 Massacre 3:40 (arr. Woody Guthrie) (Woody Guthrie) * Not available in the USA Asch 347-2, mx MA 139 Asch 360-2, mx 901 Recorded c. April 1944 Recorded 24 May 1945 NAXOS RADIO Over 50 Channels of Classical Music • Jazz, Folk/World, Nostalgia www.naxosradio.com Accessible Anywhere, Anytime • Near-CD Quality 5 8.120742 6 8.120742 120742bk Woody 10/6/04 3:59 PM Page 1 WOODY GUTHRIE Talking Dust Bowl Blues is a humorous for the verses was borrowed from “Billy the Kid” by word pictures, including the line “in the misty crystal twenty of their group, a dozen of whom were commentary on Guthrie’s life as a migrant Okie, in Carson Robison, but Guthrie wrote the chorus glitter of that wild and windward spray.” women and small children. Guthrie would later use ‘Pastures of Plenty’ Original Recordings 1940-1947 which he leaves his dust blown farm, fills his Ford himself. It later became better known as “So Long, The BPA project also resulted in Pastures of the same melody for his children’s song, “Clean-O.” with “gas-eye-leen,” and heads west to California It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”. Plenty (sung modally to the tune of “Pretty Polly”), The 1913 Massacre refers to a Christmas Eve party Writer Robert Shelton once called Woody Guthrie family and friends, and essays about his travels in for better conditions. Guthrie’s “talking blues” was In 1944, Alan Lomax introduced Guthrie to in which Guthrie dreamed of government sponsored in Calumet, Michigan for another group of “a wry-witted word-volcano”, an alliterative phrase numerous articles and books such as Bound for Glory. derived from a series of recordings made in that Moses Asch, whose tiny Asch Records label on irrigation providing water and electricity for migrant organizing miners. In the crowded Italian Hall, that would have no doubt pleased the legendary Guthrie began writing about the same time style beginning in 1926 by hillbilly singer Chris West 46th Street in New York was recording workers. Talking Columbia Blues is another wry someone yelled “fire!” causing a mass panic that American folk singer, whose shingle might also bear another American folk hero, Will Rogers, died. Bouchillon. American folk music. Asch immediately recognized commentary in the talking blues style in which he resulted in the death of 74 people (59 of them the words prophet-singer, fascist-killer, folk-poet, Guthrie picked up where Rogers left off, speaking Blowin’ Down this Road was adapted from Guthrie’s genius and, over the next few weeks, made predicts everything would be made of plastic children). Mother Ella Reeve Bloor, a political talker, hummer, whistler, dancer, rambler, fighter, up and fighting for the workers and the “Goin’ Down This Road Feelin’ Bad”, a traditional hundreds of recordings of Guthrie, Cisco Houston, someday and that the country would be better off if organizer and founder of the American Communist and all-time balladeer hero. Because of his long disenchanted everywhere; his voice joining those of song that can be found in country, blues, folk, and Sonny Terry, Lead Belly, and others on the New York it were run not by pol-i-tish-uns but by ee-leck- Party, was an eyewitness to the tragedy and wrote bout with Huntington’s disease, which eventually other political activist/singers including Pete Seeger, bluegrass traditions. Guthrie wrote Do-Re-Mi in folk music scene. Another talking blues number, trissity. Rambling Blues, one of Guthrie’s most about it in her autobiography. Both Ludlow killed him in 1967 at the age of 55, Guthrie spent Cisco Houston, Josh White, and Lee Hays. 1937 when, after arriving in Los Angeles, he found Talking Sailor, extolled the National Maritime autobiographical songs, borrows part of its melody Massacre and 1913 Massacre were issued on an almost as much time out of the folk music scene as Much of Woody Guthrie’s musical inspiration that the Los Angeles Police Department had set up Union (NMU) and was recorded on 19 April 1944, from Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene.” Asch 78 set entitled Struggle. he did in it. But during the 1930s and ’40s, came from phonograph records. Although he was illegal roadblocks on the major highways at the with Cisco Houston, Guthrie’s buddy in the Three songs come from an Asch 78 album This Land Is Your Land was originally titled Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, with his shock of unruly not an adept composer, Guthrie based his songs on California border to turn back those whom they merchant marines, accompanying him on guitar. called American Folksay featuring traditional ballads “God Blessed America”. Guthrie’s original intent hair and beat-up guitar with “This machine kills traditional ballads and recordings by early country thought were “unemployable vagrants”. It was the Guthrie’s first album for Asch also included and songs brought to New York by Guthrie and was not to celebrate the beauty of America’s natural fascists” scrawled on it, laid out the blueprints for music performers, most notably the Carter Family. racism and class distinction experienced during this Gypsy Davy, a westernized version of “The Gypsy other members of the Almanac Singers. Who’s landscape but to protest against privatization of what would become the so-called urban folk music It was one of the unlikeliest songwriting period that helped influence Guthrie’s left-leaning Laddie” (Child No. 200), “Jesus Christ” (set to the Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet is of Scottish land by the American government and reclaim it for revival of the 1950s and ’60s, a social and musical collaborations ever; the staid, conservative, political beliefs, which would eventually result in his tune of “Jesse James”), whom Guthrie depicts as origin, based on “The Lass of Roch Royal” (Child the American worker. After its publication, the movement that he could only observe from the Appalachian-bound Carters and the dust-bowl bred joining the Communist Party. simply a union organizer, and New York Town, No. 76). Jimmie Rodgers’ Mule Skinner Blues (Blue offending verses were removed and the sanitized distant vantage point of a hospital bed. Communist-leaning free spirit from Oklahoma. The two-part Tom Joad (written to the tune of Guthrie’s wry observations on first arriving in the Yodel No. 8) was described by Guthrie as a migra- version has since become a patriotic standard. The There was probably no performer who better On 26 April 1940, Guthrie made his first “John Hardy”) was Guthrie’s outlaw ballad about Big Apple, with music inspired by blues singer Blind tory work song, appropriate for his union-leaning melody was adapted from the Carter Family’s embodied the spirit of what America was all about commercial recordings for RCA Victor in New York the fictional hero of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Lemon Jefferson. interests. The Biggest Thing is a nonsense song also “When the World’s on Fire”, which in itself came during the Great Depression. During this darkest City. The album, which would be called Dust Bowl Wrath. Guthrie had seen the motion picture In May 1941, Guthrie was hired by the known as “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago” from a Baptist hymn called “Oh My Lovin’ Brother”.