Woody was born in 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma and started on his ramblin’ ways at an early age.  He moved from Pampa, Texas to California to New York City; drifting through the rest of America in between.  The musical impact of Guthrie is immeasurable to modern folk music as well as popular music as a whole.  Woody’s music in my opinion is wildly under appreciated, so I hope I can help turn a few people on to it.  His music brims with American authenticity and down to earth charm.  Guthrie in my mind served as a very important bridge between the golden age of real American folk music and the very influential Greenwich Village based NY Folk Movement of the 1960s.  Not to mention the specific singer songwriters that he influenced over the years which include, but are not limited to Pete Seeger, Rambling Jack Elliott, Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan and Joe Strummer.

Now that I’ve read Woody’s memoir, seen the motion picture based on it, listened to almost all of his recorded works, seen both major documentaries, I think I can say I know quite a bit about the man.  I’m not equipped to give you the whole story, but I have put together a quick list of surprising facts about the man that may just prompt you to dig further.

Interesting Facts:

• When Woody moved to NY he hooked up with America’s musical elite, including Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Josh White, and Brownie McGee.  I think its important to mention that this group was integrated which was unusual for that time even for musicians.
• Most may be surprised to find out Woody had some interesting political connections.  In California Woody found Communism to be sympathetic to his views on labor rights and the poor.  Woody also wrote a column called “Woody Sez” for a Communist newspaper.  Granted this was before the second red scare (1947 – 1957) so the worlds views of Communism was much different.
• Woody’s life and family was plagued by fire.  His mother started his first family home on fire, his sister was killed in a fire, and his mother tried to set his father on fire.  Later in his life his daughter life would also claimed by fire.
• Woody’s mother was very troubled and was put in an insane asylum early on in his life.  Later on Woody would find out that she suffered from Huntingtons disease and it would be his fear that he too would develop the symptoms.  Sometime in the late 1940s Woody started to show the signs and eventually died from complications of the disease.
• Woody married 3 times, the third was with a woman much younger than him named Anneke who he met on one of his many hobo journeys away from his family in NY.
• In one strange turn of events, Woody was sent to a mental hospital in New Jersey and they just assumed he was making the story up about the fact that he was a famous folk singer.

Woody’s recordings are difficult to navigate.  Most of what you will find available now are second rate budget compilations and a handful of quality legitimate releases.  The transfer of his music over the years has been a slow process from the now defunct formats over to today’s digital formats.  Below I have provided a guide to the highlights of Woody’s recorded output as it is available today with notes.

• Dust Bowl Ballads
  – In 1940 Woody had a professional breakthrough when he was commissioned by RCA Victor to write some dust bowl songs on the heels of the success of the film version of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.  This release contains the songs from both volumes of Woody’s original RCA Victor releases.

• Library of Congress Recordings, Vols. 1-3
  – An interesting listen as you hear Alan Lomax interview Woody as he tells his story in his own words.  It is unfortunate that the dialog is not tracked out from the songs though which makes it un-listenable as an album.  Recorded in 1941.

• Columbia River Collection
  – Contains all the songs that the Bonneville Power Administration commissioned Woody to record for a film promoting the Grand Coulee Dam being built on the Columbia River in Oregon.  This material was recorded in 1941.

• Almanac Singers:  Their Complete General Recordings
  – A collection that compiles all of the Almanac Singers recordings with General Records in 1941.  Although you can find two other albums of material from The Almanacs this material is the only that features Woody Guthrie in the recordings.  He sings only 5 songs but is there to accompany for the rest of the material.

• The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1-4
  - This 4 disc box set is compiled from the wealth of material that Woody recorded between 1944 and 1947 for Folkways record label owner Moses Asch.  The discs organize Woody’s songs into themes, the first volume being a sort of best of collection, Volume two being a set of mainly folk and country standards, Volume 3 is a collection of topical/political songs, and fourth volume is made up of cowboy/western songs.

• My Dusty Road
  Boxset – Another stash of songs that were recorded in the mid 1940s this time for Moses Asch and Herbert Harris that were recently recovered in an old woman’s basement.  By far the best collection of Woody’s songs available today – the song selection is great, and everything sounds clear as it has all been restored from the pristine masters.  Similar to the Asch Recordings boxset each disc has a loose theme and are entitled as follows:  Disc one – Woody’s Greatest Hits, Disc two – Woody’s Roots, Disc three – Woody The Agitator, and Disc four – Woody, Cisco and Sonny Jam the Blues, Hollers, and Dances.

• Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti – Unfortunately not a very good record. The album is a bit sloppy and suffers from Woody’s freewheelin’ verse, most of which just doesn’t quite fit.  It could however be called the first concept album having been recorded between 1946 and 1947 about two Italian radicals who were executed in America in 1927.

• Nursery Days & Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child – These two volumes of kids songs were released by Smithsonian Folkways long after Woody wrote and recorded these songs in 1947.  Written during Woody’s last burst of creativity before he lost control of himself due to his Huntingtons.

Shockingly, what you will not find is one solid compilation out there that showcases all of Woody’s best songs.  Both boxsets that are available have the first disc which is devoted to giving you a version of Woody’s “Greatest Hits” but I would say both fall short, as do all the budget compilations.  What the compilers have to contend with of course is a very large body of work that spans from around 1940 to around 1947 in which Guthrie recorded for many different labels.  What I have put together below is my version of Woody’s Greatest songs which span that whole period and pull from every label.  I even pulled from his work with the Almanac Singers although the only thing I ended up including was their version of the Woody Guthrie penned songs “Union Maid”, which Guthrie does not actually appear.  I hope you enjoy it, as it took me a lot of time and contained a lot of difficult choices.  (If you can not see the embedded playlist below, follow this link.)

There are two documentary films available about American Folk legend Woody Guthrie.  The first released in 2005 is called Woody Guthrie: This Machine Kills Fascists.  The other is a PBS documentary from the American Masters series that was released in 2007 called American Masters: Woody Guthrie.

Both films are pretty similar, obviously sharing the same subject matter and the chronological method by which they tell Woody’s story.  Each film features a introduction then eventually switches to a chronological narration of his story (w/ periodic meanderings off topic).  The 2005 doc separates Woody’s story into chapters which unfortunately doesn’t do much for the film.  For the most part they also feature the same interview subjects (Pete Seeger, various experts/biographers, and living relatives including his daughter Nora Guthrie), although the longer of the two films has quite a few more interviews.  The 2005 version is the longer of the two coming out at 2 hours and 40 minutes and the PBS doc is 90 minutes long.  The two films feature high profile narrators, the 2005 release features British Singer/Songwriter Billy Bragg, and the PBS film boasts the narration by actor Peter Coyote.  In the 2005 version Billy Bragg appears in the film in a handful of segments which honestly come off a little stiff.   The two films expertly make use of Guthrie’s large catalog of recorded material, including audio clips from interviews and radio shows.

One of the joys of watching these documentaries is you are visually given the context in which the music was created and you get a history lesson for those songs that were about actual events.  Much of the music Woody wrote was about the American experience or specific events.  It is great to have these films to walk us through those pieces of history we may not remember or be aware of.  Great examples of this are his songs “The Sinking of the Reuben James” and “Dusty Old Dust (So Long It’s Been Good To Know Yuh)” which are about about a US Navy warship that sank in WWII and the American Dust Bowl of the early to mid 1930s, both of which are discussed in the these films.

It was a great surprise to me to find out how much I didn’t know about Guthrie and these films did a great job at filling in those gaps.  This surprise was magnified by the fact that I have read Woody Guthrie’s Autobiography Bound For Glory.  Granted the book was written and published (1943) before a big chunk of Guthrie’s formative years, it did not do the job.  Let me be clear, I never found it to be boring… I just didn’t find it to be particularly informative and since watching these films I find out large chunks of it were embellished or untrue.  Woody had a way of portraying himself as a uneducated country boy, it was a part of his charm and I think that the autobiography follows that line.

Out of the two films I felt that the American Masters version was by far the most enjoyable.  This Machine Kills Fascists has its merits and among them is it’s extremely thorough and detailed.  Unfortunately with that it is just way too long and honestly when looking back came off a little flabby and a bit repetitive.  I would say that the American Masters film is just the right amount of detail and the information portrayed is also better organized.

Stay tuned to my site as I will be posting more about my studies of Guthrie including a post that will get into his life and music in a little more detail.  If you are interested in the watching the films you can find them both as part of the Netflix library or click the pics above as they are linked to the Amazon product pages.  Other suggested material would be the feature film based on Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory.  Although I have not read them, you also have the pick of two print biographies that have been released in the last 10 years, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Studs Terkel and Ed Cray as well as This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie by Elizabeth Partridge.

It was always inevitable that I eventually would pick up some Lester Bangs, seeing as he could be considered the king of all music snobs and is one of the most influential figures in music criticism.  Best known for his album reviews in Rolling Stone and the more underground Creem, Bangs starting getting published in 1969 and was still working all the way up to his death in 1982.  Lester started writing on Rock N Roll just as the hippie dream of the sixties was dying.  For Lester the 70's were a tough time for music but a great time to establish himself as an eccentric music critic.  By the time he had made a name for himself by blasting the music industries status quo, Punk (a term that he has said to have coined) started bubbling out from under America's rough urban areas.  Punk rock was visceral and exciting and he wasted no lime wading into the thick of it.  By the time of his tragic death in 1982 Lester was still truckin', albeit a little less enthusiastically as he had to adjust to another shift in popular music  – this time the "new wave". 

Lester's comes from an unconventional place as he wrote record reviews and cultural critiques that were influenced by drugs, drink and the beat authors whom he read heavily in his early years.  Surprising at first, as it usually doesn't have much of a form.  Instead of giving you straight criticism of albums or bands, Lester tells you a story, or come from the opposite angle completely by employing fake praise and searing sarcasm.  Additionally Lester had a rather inconsistent view point at times and if you look at his writing as a whole you will find many contradictions.  He would constantly flip flop on certain bands, or write a cultural piece that would come in clear conflict to other things he had said or written.  Definitely a complicated and talented figure.  I found his writing for the most part to be funny, confrontational, insightful and extremely bizarre.  While most of it is enjoyable, a lot of it comes off as over complicated, muddled, confusing and completely absurd. 

This book in particular is far from a complete work.  It is just a collection that was edited and compiled by Lester's friend and colleague Greil Marcus.  Marcus took great pains to sift through Lester's  unfinished scraps and unpublished works to include along with his selections from published writing.  The works are not presented chronologically as one might expect they are put in sequence by shared themes.  The bands you will find material here are Lester's staple groups such as Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Rod Stewart, and some more obscure garage rock bands such as Question Mark and The Mysterians, and the Troggs (just to name a few).  You will also find some great criticism of David Bowie, James Taylor, Grand Funk Railroad, The Guess Who, and again Lou Reed.  The segments on Lou Reed are some of the most enjoyable in the book, as you read all about Lester's love/hate relationship with this artist.  Particularly great is Lester's depictions of several of interviews between the two in which they go back and forth being incredibly insulting to each other.  

For those who are looking to go beyond the definitive collection of Lester's writing, you can find a more expanded compendium of his writing in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste:  A Lester Bangs Reader.  In addition there is also a biography available entitled Let It Blurt:  The Life and Times of Lester Bangs – America's Greatest Rock Critic by Jim Derogatis.

I also included a playlist featuring a bunch of songs that were discussed in the book or that I know to be some of Lester's favorites.  Towards the end of the list as an added bonus is 5 tracks from Lester Bangs himself as he produced and recorded some music towards the end of this life.  If you can not see the embedded playlist below, follow this link. 

What a great film.  The Cohen Brothers at their best in my opinion.  It’s a wonderfully clever retelling of Homer’s Iliad in the style of a 3 Stooges movie set in an alternate universe during a time period much like Depression/Dust Bowl era America.  But as this is not a film blog, I digress and transition into talking about one of the films main tools used in transporting the viewer into the past.  That being music of course.

Now there is the obvious – the soundtrack is pretty damn good.  A fact that is indisputably evident by its critical and commercial success; it’s a little polished for my taste but I really dig the spirit of the project.  The film’s music was written/produced/selected by T-Bone Burnett, who is best known for producing a bunch of pretty successful records by artists most would recognize, but is also a folk revival focused singer/songwriter who has released a few solo records.  T-Bone did a great job transporting us into the past while still keeping the sound fresh.  He did this by re-recording quite a few folk classics by current artists; for example you’ve got an artist like Chris Thomas King doing “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” which was originally written and recorded by Delta Blues Legend Skip James.  There is a few songs that are included in their original versions on the soundtrack, most notably Harry McClintock’s “Big Rock Candy Mountain” from 1939.

Personally, the most impressive and enjoyable aspects of the film is how they interweave the folklore and history that surrounds the music into the movie.  Here are a few examples.

In the film real life singer/guitarist Chris Thomas King plays a character by the name of Tommy Johnson who is on the run from the law and had just sold his soul to the devil on at the crossroads.  Sound familiar?..  Yes, its just the devilishly clever Cohens working in that old blues fable about the quintessential Delta Blues guitarist Robert Johnson into their film.

During a political event in the film there is a musical act identified as The Brightsiders, singing “Keep On The Sunny Side”.  The group is made up of 2 women and 1 man and is later joined by 3 girls for the song “In The Highways”.  Both tunes are songs by the Carter Family for which the film is so obviously making tribute.

Lastly, I’d like to point out the interesting amalgamation which makes up the character know in the film as Pappy O’daniel.  In the film he is the host of a radio show entitled “Pappy O’daniel’s Flour Hour” which is a reference to a more recent radio program called King Biscuit Flower Hour.  KBFH is based on the original old timey blues radio program called King Biscuit Time which started in 1941 and continues today on WFFA in Helena, Arkansas.  In the film the character is the Governor of Mississippi, and turns out to be loosely based two different real life radio personality/politicians:  Texas Governor Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’daniel and former Louisiana Governer Jimmie Davis.

Besides the soundtrack, for those that are interested there are a bunch of cash-in projects that came out shortly after the movie and soundtrack became such a hit.  Among those is a live concert featuring the same artists called Down From The Mountain.  Also there are a few compilations featuring selections from female Bluegrass musicians called O Sister! and a few budget imports CD compilations that compile the songs in their original incarnations.