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Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads LP
New. Sealed.
When 27-year-old Woody Guthrie appeared in New York City in the winter of 1940, he struck observers as a living, breathing embodiment of the characters John Steinbeck had written about in his best-selling novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which had just been turned into a motion picture. Hailing from Oklahoma, Guthrie had a detailed knowledge of the Dust Bowl conditions that had led to an exodus of Okies west to California, where they became migrant workers in often onerous conditions, and he used that knowledge to create songs with the tunefulness of Jimmie Rodgers and the wry wit of Will Rogers. Victor Records, looking for an answer to rival Columbia's folk singer Burl Ives, signed Guthrieand put him in a recording studio, resulting in two simultaneously released three-disc albums of 78s. On the first volume of Dust Bowl Ballads, he started out in humorous mode with "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues," though his comic observations did nothing to hide the circumstances as he spoke in the first person of an Okie taking his family to California. "Blowin' Down This Road" was more direct, with its defiant tag line, "I ain't a-gonna be treated this-a-way." "Do Re Mi," directed to the Okies from the voice of one who knows better, counseled that the promises about California were false and that, as dispossessed and desperate as they might be, the Okies were better advised to stay home unless they were ready to establish themselves immediately in the West, unless they had "the do re mi," (i.e., money). "Dust Cain't Kill Me" acknowledged the destruction wrought by the dust storms; the singer admitting it could kill his family, for instance, but nevertheless asserting that it wouldn't kill him. And in case the connection to The Grapes of Wrath was not clear enough, Guthrie concluded the album with the two parts of "Tom Joad," which was nothing less than a musical retelling of the plot of the novel. Guthrie played acoustic guitar rhythmically and efficiently, occasionally also blowing on a harmonica to accompany his singing, which was full of rural diction and country twang, but still got his points across clearly. Victor got more than it bargained for in signing Guthrie. He was far more serious, and far more accomplished, than a light entertainer like Ives. The whole panoply of a national disaster was set out in his music, expressed with both humor and conviction.
Black Rooster Records