This coming weekend I will be attending the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference (NERFA) at Kutsher’s in Monticello, NY. At the conference, I will be producing a unique event that will be recorded for broadcast on WFDU-FM, currently scheduled to air on Sunday November 26th at 3pm.

This Friday November 10th at 12 noon, a group of talented musicians will gather together at NERFA to re-create the historic “Bound For Glory” revue that was originally presented in 1956 as a musical tribute to Woody Guthrie. The event will take place in the Marquis Lounge at Kutsher’s.

On March 17, 1956 a musical revue in honor of Woody Guthrie was performed at Pythian Hall in NYC. Original titled “California to the New York Island: Being a Pocketful of Brags, Blues, Bad Men Ballads, Love Songs, Okie Laments and Children’s Catcalls by Woody Guthrie” , the name was shortened to “Bound For Glory”.

The revue featured a script put together by Millard Lampell, a member of the Almanac Singers, featuring the words and music of Woody Guthrie. The revue became a look at America through the eyes of one man. The original production featured Lee Hays and Earl Robinson as the narrators and the performers included Pete Seeger, Rev. Gary Davis, Ed McCurdy, the Kossoy Sisters and other folk names of that era. At the end of the performance, Pete Seeger pointed up to the balcony as a spotlight shone on a frail Woody Guthrie, who was released from the hospital for the evening. (You may have seen the well known photograph of Woody standing in the balcony to acknowledge the applause.)

The original performance was recognized as a milestone moment of the folk revival. Joe Klein, in his biography of Woody Guthrie, called the evening “the beginning of Woody Guthrie’s canonization”. In 1957, Will Geer adapted portions of the script to create an LP called “Bound For Glory” that was released on Folkways Records, and following Woody’s death it was adapted for use in the memorial concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, the recordings that were released on LP.

Realizing it was the 50th anniversary of the original event, I contacted the Woody Guthrie Archives to get permission to re-create the event for radio. My intent was to gather a group of contemporary musicians to recreate the production and I quickly realized that staging this at NERFA would be a superb opportunity to get such a talented group together. Thanks to everyone at NERFA, this idea became a reality.

In honor of the 50th anniversary or the original concert, WFDU-FM & NERFA will present a recreation of the original script, featuring a talented cast of contemporary musicians.

Three time Grammy Award winner Tom Chapin will narrate as the voice of Woody Guthrie along with Robert Cohen of the Philadelphia Folksong Society.

The music will be performed by:

I do hope those of you who are attending NERFA might be able to join our audience, but I also understand that there are some other great workshops going on at the same time.

If you can’t make it, be sure to listen in to the broadcast of the concert which is scheduled for Sunday November 26th at 3pm on WFDU-FM (89.FM in the NYC/NJ area). You can also listen in on the Internet through our website at www.wfdu.fm

I am really honored to be able to produce such a program, and I am especially honored to be able to work with such a talented group of artists. Their enthusiasm for this project is inspiring! This promises to be a very unique event and radio broadcast!

Sincerely,
Ron Olesko
Producer/Host TRADITIONS