Woody Guthrie box set to be released in August
Woody Guthrie (The Oklahoman Archives)
Rounder Records, in conjunction with The Woody Guthrie Archives, will inaugurate the new Woody Guthrie Legacy Series with a four-CD boxed set, “My Dusty Road” on Aug. 25.
Guthrie was born in Okemah, where a festival is held annually during July to honor his influence and legacy.
The original metal masters for these songs, recorded in the mid 1940s by Herbert Harris and Moses Asch, languished for years in the Brooklyn basement of an elderly woman, stacked in cardboard barrels.
Reissue co-producer Michael Creamer, who had learned of the cache from his cousin, took a few of the discs to the renowned mastering engineer Doug Pomeroy. The clarity and presence of the sound was revelatory, according to a news release.
When Guthrie’s daughter Nora Guthrie heard them for the first time she said, “Wow! Just the fact that I could hear the music so clearly was ‘wow’ enough! But then, this soft flow of old feelings followed, as I heard my father’s voice start to fill the room and I absolutely remembered it, and then he was right there with me…These recordings are treasures.”
Documentary film producer Peter Frumkin who used six of these recordings in the American Masters production of “Woody Guthrie: Ain’t Got No Home,” said “Hear these recordings for the first time and your jaw will drop, the sound is so clean and crisp that you’ll hear the songs in ways you never have before. The only way to hear them any cleaner would be to have been sitting in the studio 60 years ago.”
The boxed set includes 54 songs on four compact discs, including six previously unreleased tracks as well as Guthrie’s hits such as “This Land is Your Land,” “Going Down the Road (I Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way),” “Talking Sailor,” “Hard Travelin,” “The Sinking Of The Reuben James”and “Pretty Boy Floyd,” to name a few.
In preparing the package and accompanying 68-page full color book, written by Guthrie historian Ed Cray and Rounder’s Bill Nowlin, Rounder worked closely with The Woody Guthrie Archives, which contributed several previously unpublished photos, as well as artwork and illuminated lyric sheets by Guthrie himself.
Also included are facsimiles of Woody’s business card, a postcard sent from Florida to his wife, and a booking card from the 1940s.
The entire package, with thematically-organized discs in separate sleeves, will come in a durable replica of a 1940s-style vintage suitcase, complete with handles and latches.
-BAM
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