Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970

Bear Family Records

woodyguthrie.org

Woody Guthrie, one of the most important, iconic and influential of 20th century folksingers, songwriters, authors, activists, and social commentators died 50 years ago this month on October 3, 1967. Woody was 55 when he died after spending 13 years in hospitals due to Huntington’s disease, a hereditary neurological disease.

Woody left an extraordinary body of work created in a remarkably brief career. It used to be said that he wrote about 1,000 songs. Now thanks to the archival work of Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, we know that he wrote about 3,000 songs – some of which have come to life over the past couple of decades as Nora has passed lyrics on to contemporary artists to set to music, and many of more of which we can still look forward to hearing in years to come.

I was barely into my teens when Woody died and it was right around that time that I was developing a serious interest in folk music. I bought my first Woody Guthrie LP within a week or two of hearing that he’d died. Pretty soon I also read Bound for Glory, his autobiography published in 1943. I was hooked on Woody’s songs and writings. Within a couple of years I was meeting some of Woody’s real life friends –  Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Logan English, Pete Seeger and others – who were all open to sitting and chatting with a kid who wanted to hear stories about their travels and adventures with Woody. Later on, I got to know Arlo Guthrie and Nora Guthrie and hear some of their stories about growing up as Woody’s kids.

After Woody died, multi-artist tribute concerts in his honor were held at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 20, 1968 and at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on September 12, 1970, both produced by Harold Leventhal. The concerts were recorded and a couple of LPs with excerpts from those concerts, including scripted narration, were released in 1972 on Columbia and Warner Bros. Records. I eagerly bought those LPs when they first came out and returned to them frequently over the years.

But those LPs only gave us highlights of those wonderful concerts. A half-century later we have Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970, an amazing boxed set of three CDs and two hardcover books.

Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Garth Hudson, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Rick Danko, Jack Elliott, Levon Helm, Odetta, Robbie Robertson, and Richie Havens at Carnegie Hall, January 1968. Photo by Dave Gahr.

The first CD includes most of the Carnegie Hall concert (apparently one reel of the original tapes was lost) including singing performances by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, and Bob Dylan, and narration by actors Will Geer and Robert Ryan. There is also a recording of Woody himself singing his great kids’ song, “Riding in My Car,” that must have been played for the audience at the concert. The backup musicians included bassists Raphael Grinage and Bill Lee and a group that would soon come to be known as The Band: Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. I would note that there were actually two Carnegie Hall concerts that day that followed the same script – an afternoon show and an evening show.

The second CD and part of the third includes the entire Hollywood Bowl concert including singing performances by Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Country Joe McDonald, Jack Elliott, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Earl Robinson, and narration by actors Will Geer and Peter Fonda. The backup musicians were John Beland (Dobro), Ry Cooder (guitar, mandolin), Chris Ethridge (bass), Gib Guilbeau (fiddle), Thad Maxwell (guitar), John Pilla (guitar) and Stan Pratt (drums).

There are a good 20 performances on these CDs that were not on the original LPs. As well, the concerts have been restored to their original set orders rather than the artificial sequencing of tracks from the two shows on the LPs.

I can’t list highlights from these concerts because if I mention Tom Paxton singing “Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done,” how can I not mention his versions of “Pretty Boy Floyd” or “Pastures of Plenty”? And If mention Tom Paxton, how can I not mention the great performances by Odetta, Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Richie Havens, and Earl Robinson? I loved almost all of them – particularly the many collaborations on songs featuring two or three or more of the artists. Of course, the moving finales to the two concerts were full cast performances of “This Land is Your Land.”

I will say something about Bob Dylan’s Carnegie Hall performances of “Grand Coulee Dam,” “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt” and “I Ain’t Got No Home” with The Band. It was Dylan’s first public concert since his 1966 motorcycle accident and came after he’d spent much time in 1967 holed up with The Band recording what would later emerge as The Basement Tapes and more recently and much more intriguingly as The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete. Dylan’s folk rock arrangements of these three Woody Guthrie songs, I think, can be seen as an outgrowth of the basement tapes process. The arrangements, I would add, don’t sound at all like Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album which was recorded after The Basement Tapes but before the Woody Guthrie tribute concert at Carnegie Hall.

It’s also interesting to note that Dylan – wisely, I think – left out the verses to “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt” pertaining to the Second World War-era summits in Tehran and Yalta, particularly the one that seemed to praise Joseph Stalin. It’s a verse that might have made sense in the 1940s – but certainly not after what the world started to learn in 1956 about the former Soviet dictator.

Earl Robinson, Odetta, Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and Peter Fonda at Hollywood Bowl, September 1970. © Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.

Linking the songs in both concerts is the narration from a script based on Woody Guthrie’s writings that was first put together by Millard Lampell – a member of the Almanac Singers with Woody, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Sis Cunningham and others in the early-1940s – for a benefit concert in 1956 after Woody had been hospitalized. Most of the narration was read by actors Robert Ryan, Will Geer and Peter Fonda but we also hear a poignant passage read by Judy Collins (Carnegie Hall) and Joan Baez (Hollywood Bowl) in which Woody recalled the childhood death of his sister Clara. My favorite passage in the narration comes when Will Geer recites Woody’s “I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good…” quote.

The bonus tracks that complete the third CD are mostly interviews about the concert – most of them newly recorded with performers who were part of the events like Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Judy Collins. It’s interesting to hear about Arlo’s discomfort at the time about the how the concerts followed a script – particularly given Woody’s spontaneous nature.

While most of the artists and other interviewees look back with awe at their experiences, the set also includes a four-minute passage from a 1968 interview with Phil Ochs conducted by Gordon Friesen of Broadside Magazine (and released after Ochs’ death in 1976 on an LP, Broadside Vol.11: Interviews with Phil Ochs) in which Ochs speaks very resentfully about the Carnegie Hall concert and about his not having been invited to be part of it. It’s not pretty hearing him attack the concert itself and speak bitterly about certain artists he felt were less worthy than himself.

The final bonus track is Bob Dylan’s stunning spoken word piece, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” that he recited at a Town Hall concert in New York on April 12, 1963 and that was previously released on the boxed set, The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3: Rare and Unreleased, 1961-1991. A perfect ending.

The two coffee-table-sized hardcover books included in the set are stunning. The main book includes substantial essays about Woody Guthrie, the concerts and the artists – with many amazing photographs – and much more Woody-related information. There are also reproductions of some of Woody’s drawings and original hand- and typewritten lyrics. The second book is a hardbound version of the songbook released in conjunction with the 1972 LPs that includes more great photos of Woody and the concert performers as well as the script and songs (music and lyrics) as they were sequenced on the LPs. Both books are something to behold.

Producers Nora Guthrie, Michael Kleff and Steve Rosenthal have done a magnificent job in restoring the Carnegie Hall and Hollywood Bowl concerts on the CDs and in putting together the magnificent books. Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970 is a beautiful collectors’ item.

I will be featuring excerpts from Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970 when I host the Saturday Morning program on CKCU on November 11 (7-10 am Eastern time).

Michael Kleff, Nora Guthrie & Mike Regenstreif  at the Kansas City Folk Festival (2017)

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--Mike Regenstreif

John McCutcheon – Joe Hill’s Last Will

JOHN McCUTCHEON

Joe Hill’s Last Will

Appalsongs

folkmusic.com

Joe Hill (1879-1915) is a legendary figure in the history of folk music and the labor movement. A Swedish immigrant (born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund), he immigrated to the United States in 1902 and learned to speak English as a migrant laborer. Sometime around 1910, Hill joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Wobblies, a union that believes in industrial unionization, “One Big Union,” as opposed to trade unionism, and began to write songs for them – often set to tunes borrowed from popular songs of the day. In some ways, Woody Guthrie followed in Hill’s footsteps a generation later.

In 1914, Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah for a murder he did not commit, and was tried and convicted. He was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915 at the age of 36.

Like many of my generation, I initially learned about Joe Hill from the song written about him in the 1930s by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson via recordings by Paul Robeson and recordings and performances in the ‘60s by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Much of what I know about Joe Hill, though, came from another great Wobblie songwriter, my late friend Bruce “Utah” Phillips, who I heard sing many of Joe Hill’s songs, and tell many stories about him, over a period of many years.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Hill’s execution and John McCutcheon marks the occasion with Joe Hill’s Last Will, an inspired and inspiring collection of Joe Hill songs – a couple of which I’m hearing for the first time on this CD, others which I know from recordings by such artists as Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, and Hazel Dickens.

One of the astounding things that hits home about these songs is the so very brief period in which they were created. The earliest is from 1911 and the latest from 1915 – just a four year period. But, although these songs date from a century and more ago and are essentially topical songs, most – particularly with John’s infectious and creative arrangements – seem relevant to the (economic) times we’re living in now.

While the entire album is entirely praiseworthy, some of the finest moments include “It’s a Long Way to the Soup Line,” a song Hill wrote in prison in 1915 to the tune of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”; “The Preacher & the Slave,” a parody of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” that Hill used to mock the Salvation Army (the “Starvation Army”) and their brass bands that were used back in the day to disrupt IWW rallies; and the rousing finale, “There is Power in the Union,” on which John is joined by a bunch of fellow workers from the American Federation of Musicians, Local 1000 (the folksingers' local), and the Seattle Labor Chorus.

Certainly the most moving song is the title track, “Joe Hill’s Last Will,” whose words Hill wrote the day before his execution and which were smuggled out of the prison by a guard.

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kind don't need to fuss and moan –
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you.

Joe Hill

“Joe Hill’s Last Will” has been set to music several times over the years – I have a bluegrass version on the collaborative 1976 album by Country Cooking and the Fiction Brothers – but John’s lovely version is to a melody of his own. (I’ve also heard it performed as recitation by both Utah Phillips and the late Tex König.)

I’ll also note that a couple of the songs, “Overalls & Snuff,” and “Where the Fraser River Flows,” are of special Canadian interest as they were written for the strike against the Canadian National Railroad in 1912.

An essential recording and an excellent companion to John's Woody Guthrie tribute, This Land: Woody Guthrie's America.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Various Artists – Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Volumes 1 & 2

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Volumes 1 & 2
Smithsonian Folkways 
folkways.siu.edu

Between 1936 and 1939, prior to the Second World War, as fascism spread through parts of Europe, Spain’s fascists under Francisco Franco, with the military support of Hitler and Mussolini, fought a civil war against Spain’s democratically elected government. While the governments of the Western democracies in Europe and the Americas were not yet prepared to stand against the fascist evil that was seeking to conquer the world, about 40,000 young men from 52 countries went to Spain as volunteers in five International Brigades to fight fascism on behalf of the Republican, or Loyalist, side.

Among those volunteers were more than 1500 Canadians who formed the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the XV International Brigade and about 2800 Americans who formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. (One of the highest ranking members of the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, its political commissar, was John Gates (Solomon Regenstreif), who later became editor of the Daily Worker newspaper.)

Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Volumes 1 & 2 is a new CD that compiles two LPs of released by Folkways Records in 1961 and ’62. Those LPs were compilations of Spanish Civil War songs drawn from a variety of sources.

Volume 1, Part 1, originally released as Songs of the Lincoln Brigade, comprises six selections recorded in 1943 or ’44 in New York City by a group put together by Pete Seeger (then on a furlough from the U.S. Army). The section begins with Tom Glazer singing “Jarama Valley,” a song in English to the tune of “Red River Valley,” that was popular in Spain among members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Most of these songs – including “Viva La Quince Brigada (Long Live the 15th Brigade),” sung by Pete, and “Si Me Quieres Escribir (If You Want to Write to Me),” sung by the entire ensemble – would remain inspiring standards of the folk revival for many decades to come. I think Pete included at least one or more of them in virtually every one of the many concerts I saw him do over the years.

Volume 1, Part 2, originally released as Six Songs for Democracy, was recorded in Spain in 1938 in the midst of the war by Ernst Busch, a German singer and actor who was a volunteer with the International Brigades. Busch had fled Germany after the rise to power of the Nazis and his contributions include both Spanish songs like “Los Cuatro Generales (The Four Generals)” and German pieces like Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler’s “Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront (Song of the United Front).” Among the most poignant songs Busch sings is “Die Moorsoldaten (The Peat Bog Soldiers),” a song written by prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp at Börgermoor and smuggled to Spain.

Volume 2, Part 1, begins with Woody Guthrie’s version of “Jarama Valley” and then continues with for more songs sung by Ernst Busch. From the sound quality, and because a couple of them feature an orchestra, I’m sure these were recorded much later than Busch’s selections from Volume 1.

Volume 2, Part 2, subtitled Songs We Remember, is a set of two songs and an instrumental are field recordings, each recorded in a different part of Spain during the 1930, featuring unidentified singers and musicians. Although these selections do not particularly pertain to the Spanish Civil War, they were included as a tribute to the feelings the members of the International Brigades had for the people of Spain.

Volume 2, Part 3, is a set of four songs from Behind the Barbed Wire, an album recorded in New York City in 1938 featuring Bart van der Schelling, a Dutch singer who had been wounded while fighting in Spain, and the Exiles Chorus, led by Earl Robinson. The songs from Behind the Barbed Wire, variously sung in Italian, German and French, were all songs that had been sung in concentration camps where anti-fascists had been imprisoned.

The recordings reissued on Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Volumes 1 & 2 are an inspiring reminder of a time when thousands of idealists from around the world did what they believed needed to be done to save the world from the scourge of fascism that would soon lead to the Second World War and the Holocaust – despite the fact that their own governments were not yet prepared to take a stand.

Two other albums of Spanish Civil War songs that I highly recommend, and which include much later interpretations of many of these same songs are Pasiones: Songs of the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Jamie O’Reilly and Michael Smith and Spain In My Heart: Songs of the Spanish Civil War sung by a variety of contemporary artists.

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--Mike Regenstreif