American Radical Patriot

There is a certain irony that America’s great hobo poet, whose songs packed such a punch because they were so simple and so true, is currently the object of one of the most lavishly marketed reissue programmes of recent years. My Dusty Road [reviewed in #65], the last massive Guthrie multi-disc set, came in an ostentatious box, dinkily designed to resemble a hobo’s suitcase. The packaging of American Radical Patriot is less gimmicky, but the collection is every bit as deluxe: 157 tracks spread across six CDs, plus a DVD, reproduction 78rpm disc and 258-page booklet with photos and previously unpublished Guthrie drawings. The material was all recorded by Guthrie for the US government which, given his political radicalism, creates perhaps another paradox. The set begins with the complete recordings made by the field recordist and ethnographer Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1940. They were Guthrie’s first recorded sessions and at 28, with half a lifetime of hard-travellin’ already behind him, he distilled his experience into a brilliant set of songs such as ‘Talking Dust Bowl Blues’, ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Do Re Mi’, which gave voice to the dispossessed, and devastatingly chronicled what the Depression and capitalist greed had done to the US.

A second set of sessions from 1941 was recorded for the Bonneville Power Administration, a government programme to tap water power to produce electricity, and it includes a previously unreleased version of ‘Pastures of Plenty’, the song’s message enhanced by its unfamiliar transposition to a minor key. Also included are radio recordings made during World War II for the Office of War Information and songs recorded in the late 40s for a public health service VD education programme. It all makes for a fascinating historical document, and one that also has extraordinary resonance for today’s hard times too.