Words by Woody: Guthrie's Greatest Gifts

Listening to the new box set, from Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions got me thinking about what are the best adaptions of Woody Guthrie's words to the music of others:

1: Bob Dylan & Joan Baez: Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
When schoolteacher Martin Hoffman set this 1948 Guthrie poem about the dehumanization of immigrants to music he really could not have know how germane those words would be to American politics fifty years later or that he would start a trend still booming to this day. His version was spread by Pete Seeger and became a centerpiece of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue of the mid-seventies.


Bob Dylan & Joan Baez - Deportee by vicky7xthomas


2: Billy Bragg & Wilco: Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key
The nineties may not have been Brit folk-punker Billy Bragg's best decade as a solo artist but his success in bringing Woody Guthrie into the 21st century, a task for which he was anointed  by Nora Guthrie, will remain one of the most celebrated accomplishments of his life.




3: Wilco & Billy Bragg: California Stars
Despite having a less reverent, historically-minded view of the task of adapting Guthrie's words than Mr. Bragg, Chicago alt-country/NOT alt-country band Wilco drew up a stellar set of songs in order to play The Band to Bragg's Dylan.




4.  Jim James, Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, and Anders Parker: Careless Reckless Love
Curious that Nora Guthrie chose to have Jay Farrar, former partner of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, into the archives but the results are pretty as hell, so let us ignore any subtext in her choice.




5. The Dropkick Murphys: Shipping Up to Boston
Boston celtic-punks The Dropkick Murphy's earned a trip to the Guthrie Archives and came out of with one of their most famous songs and an appearance in Martin Scorsese's The Departed.




6. The Klezmatics:  Mermaid Avenue
New York Jewish-folk preservationists, the Klezamtics celebrated another aspect of Woody's words with two [!] collections, Wonder Wheel (2006) and Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah (2006).




So what's the most successful melding of Woody's words and modern music? Let us know in  the COMMENTS section.

Billy Bragg & Wilco: Mermaid Avenue Bonus E.P

As a thanks to all the people who left comments! on the series of Bragg posts, here's one more little out-of-print item. This e.p. features two unreleased Bragg items from these sessions as well as one unheard Wilco song and a live version of "California Stars".

Mermaid Avenue Bonus E.P link is in the comments!

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Blogging Against the Silence

I started this blog two years ago, and I've often asked myself, "Is it worth it?"

There's much good to be said for blogging; introducing people to bands they've never heard of or letting them re-listen to bands (or albums) they'd already passed judgment on plus forging connections with others in this clumsily-named Blogosphere. Blogging lets us communicate in our own fucked-up style and reach the world (or at least tiny pockets within it).

Of course, there is the silence.

Some bloggers don't give a rat's ass about the response but I want to know, good or bad, how others react to the music and the words. It is discouraging when, following a good post (and Lord know there's been some dogs here), you get one or two comments (some of which are complaining about the rip, the link or the spelling of the violinist's name etc.). Perhaps my disappointment springs from the damnable fact that I just like to talk about music too much.

I shan't whine too much about it, if you set up a blog offering music downloads (even of out-of-print music) most people will take or leave what you offer with nary a thought. And ~140,000 visitors from all over the globe (many of whom are not fluent in English) is no great shame.

Thanks to the many incisive people who have offered their comments (you excellent people know who you are), you've kept this enterprise afloat when it might've gone down long ago.

I started with Billy Bragg's Peel Sessions twenty-four months ago, so now I'll come full circle with this single from Bragg's 1998 collaboration with Wilco (and Natalie Merchant). The single contains the awe-inspiring title track (later pilfered by the Gaslight Anthem) plus two pure Bragg songs with no Wilco, Cara Tivey or Ian McLagen to get in the way.