When I was a teenager in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1960s I was a dedicated reader of Sing Out! Magazine. I couldn’t always afford to buy a copy but the music store where I took guitar lessons let me read each new issue as I waited for my bus ride home. I also lived on the reprints from Sing Out! and usually bought them when they came out. Those pages are where I first heard of Woody Guthrie. I already had an LP of some of his classic recordings and was aware of Bob Dylan’s “Song to Woody” when I read of his passing in the pages of Sing Out! in 1967.
Elektra Records has released “Home in this World,” a collection of new renditions of some of his Dust Bowl Ballads. This week and next we’ll celebrate that recording with selections from the CD, mixed with classic versions of Woody’s songs, and songs about him … this week on the Sing Out! Radio Magazine.

LISTEN:

Artist/”Song”/CD/Label

Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian
              Folkways
Milnes and Hammond / “Sandy River Belle” / Hell Up Coal Holler / Shanachie
Shovels and Rope / “Dust Bowl Blues” / Home in this World-Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads / Elektra
Woody Guthrie / “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” / The Ultimate Collection / Not Now
John McCutcheon / “Ludlow Massacre” / This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America / Appalsongs

The Duhks / “Pretty Boy Floyd-Stoney Point” / Your Daughters & Your Sons / Sugar Hill
Ramblin’ Jack Elliot / “New York Town” / Jack Elliot Sings Songs of Woody Guthrie / Prestige-Folklore
Ry Cooder / “Jesus and Woody” / The Prodigal Son / Fantasy
Milnes and Hammond / “Red Buck-Jodie-West Fork Girls” / Hell Up Coal Holler / Shanachie

Watkins Family Hour / “Blowin’ Down this Dusty Road” / Home in this World-Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl
              Ballads / Elektra
Woody Guthrie w/ Cisco Houston / “Train Ride Medley Part 1&2” / Long Ways to Travel /
              Smithsonian Folkways
The Maddox Brothers & Rose / “Philadelphia Lawyer” / Vol.1 / Arhoolie
Will Geer / “Reading Woody Guthrie” / Folkways The Original Vision / Smithsonian Folkways
Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer” (excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian
              Folkways