Woody Guthrie"This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1"

[RedEarth]

If you're looking for a gift for a music fan, you might want to consider this Woody Guthrie CD. My son gave it to me a few weeks ago and it's an outstanding collection of some of his greatest songs. Guthrie's music has had an enormous impact on many musicians(Bob Dylan in particular) through-out the years and listening to this CD you can understand why.

Here are some of the reviews from Amazon...you can also listen to some of the songs at Amazon...


Product Description

Amazon.com
What's most astonishing about Woody Guthrie is the way he created a whole, complete, living world of song. People, places, great and small events, nature, poetry, visions: He was so much more than a working class spokesperson, though, as this collection shows, he was the greatest one America has known. This first volume in the historic reissues of Guthrie's Smithsonian recordings is one of the finest: Guthrie's voice and verbal brilliance were at their peak in the 1940s and songs like "Do-Re-Mi," "Jesse James," and "Jesus Christ" continue to influence songwriters a half-century later. --Roy Francis Kasten

Product Description:
The first in a series of four, this recording presents many of Woody Guthrie's best known songs taken from the original masters. Included here is the original version of Woody's anthem "This Land Is Your Land," which contains never-before issued lyrics. A major force in the urban folk song revival, Guthrie created an intimate portrait of America - its land and people. He has influenced many contemporary artists, among them Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Billy Bragg, and Bruce Springsteen. During the 1930s and 40s, Woody Guthrie wrote more than a thousand songs, recording hundreds of them for Folkways founder Moses Asch. The surviving masters now reside in the Folkways archive at the Smithsonian Institution. Running time: 72 minutes; 36-page booklet includes historical and biographical notes on Woody Guthrie. Compiled by Jeff Place and Guy Logsdon. "The single finest Guthrie Collection Available." --Music Central

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had the four-CD set a few years ago, but my home was burglarized and all my CDs were stolen. When it came time to replace them, I opted to choose just CD1 of the Guthrie collection. Volumes 2-3 and OK, but the cowboy songs of Volume 4 just wasn't my cup of tea. Volume One, however, is easily on my list of the 10 best albums/CDs ever released. I've loaned it out to several friends who were not familiar with Guthrie and each has returned it with a, "Wow! That's great! I'm going to get that myself." The album opens with one of three (!) versions of This Land is Your Land that are on the CD. The same song closes the CD. In between are classics, such as Do-Re-Mi, Rambling Round Your City, the humorous Car Song, some great examples of Guthrie's talking blues that would so profoundly influence Bob Dylan, and, well, just a treasure trove of material. The CD clocks in at over 70 minutes, so there's not much "dead air" on this CD. If you're an old Guthrie fan, this CD blows away some of the other CDs out there (although the remastered "Dust Bowl Ballads" is classic, too) and you will really enjoy this. If you're new to the folk, or folk-rock scene, or Americana, and you want an introduction to the "Big Daddy" of 'em all, then this CD is absolutely the best place to begin. It's worth every cent that you pay for it!

....

This is a great collection, lovingly done by The Smithsonian staff that is saving and cleaning and re-issuing the old Folkways catalogue. The booklet alone is worth the purchase price, but the music is excellent as well. Woody's recording career only went a little over ten years due to the coming of the Chorea in the early l950's, but he still laid down too many good tracks to be confined to one album. However, if you can only afford one of his releases, this is a wonderful choice. Second choice would be the re-issue of "Dust Bowl Ballads" on Buddah Records...this was his l940 "concept" album that has had a profound effect on folk, country and protest music ever since. Also, I have to recommend a book to Guthrie fans: "Woody, Cisco and Me" by Jim Longhi. It shows the slice of Woody's life that involved a few journeys on Merchant Marine ships during WWII. It is an essential companion piece to Joe Klein's "Life of Woody Guthrie."

[dcfirefighter]

1. Private ownership of Land

now that's something to sink your teeth into