It's been some time since we visited the folk/blues/early jazz category, and what better way to add to that collection than with a Woody Guthrie album.
This is a Folkways LP that came out in 1950, but it collects some of the first commercial recordings that Guthrie made - for RCA Victor in 1940. On the A side you will find four classic dust bowl ballads; on the flip side, songs about the migrants who were chased from the southwest by the storms of the 1930s. These include a piece that Guthrie based on John Steinbeck's Tom Joad character.
It's interesting that Guthrie, thought of as a true folk artist, was influenced by Steinbeck's novel and (according to the notes to this album) even the film of the Grapes of Wrath. His work in turn became part of the collective consciousness, in a sense - I remember singing So Long and This Land Is Your Land in elementary school in the 1950s, well before I ever heard of Woody himself.
Guthrie's RCA session was tremendously successful artistically - this record doesn't include Do Re Mi, Vigilante Man, and Pretty Boy Floyd, all of which he recorded at the same session.
The cover of this album, by an artist named Carlis, is perfect for its contents. A great record and great package.
