Entertainment blogging from The Oklahoman's Brandy McDonnell

Woodstock legend Melanie finds another ‘Brand New Key,’ plays Saturday at Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

Over her four-decade music career, Melanie Safka has played many now-legendary music festivals, from 1970’s record-setting Isle of Wight fest with its stellar lineup of Jimi Hendrix, The Who and The Doors to the infamous “greatest concert that never happened,” the Powder Ridge Rock Festival in Connecticut, where she was the only headliner to defy a court injunction and play anyway.

Yes, she even performed at that granddaddy of all now-mythical outdoor musical merriment, 1969’s Woodstock.

This weekend, the singer-songwriter known simply as Melanie will play another milestone festival: the 2012 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah. Along with Judy Collins, Ellis Paul and Terri Hendrix with Lloyd Maines, the “Brand New Key” crooner will headline WoodyFest on Saturday, which would have been Guthrie’s 100^th birthday.

“It’s exciting. I’ve never been and I’m really glad that I’m going this year,” Melanie said in a phone interview from Nashville, Tenn., where she makes her home. “My mom was a jazz singer and my uncle was a union organizer so I learned the Woody Guthrie songs from my uncle and Billie Holliday songs from my mother and I guess both of those influences worked themselves into my music.”

“I’m probably one of the few pop artists — well, when I was having pop records — who put a Woody Guthrie song on my like second album. It was his ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ song; I love that song,” she added. “I mean, ‘Some are gonna rob you with a six-gun; some will do it with a fountain pen.’”

In its 15^th year, the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is organized annually in the Oklahoma icon’s hometown around his birthday: July 14, 1912. The family of the folk legend, who died of Huntington’s disease on Oct. 3, 1967, at the age of 55, has worked closely with the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles to plan “Woody at 100,” a series of all-star concerts, album releases and tributes of all kinds during 2012.

In her WoodyFest debut, Melanie, 65, becomes the second Woodstock performer to play this year’s Okemah event. Guthrie’s son, Arlo Guthrie, kicked off the festival’s centennial celebration Wednesday with a special show at the historic, newly renovated Crystal Theatre, where his father went to the movies in his youth.

“We’ve done so many tours together, Arlo and I,” she said, recalling one memorable stop in Austria, where the gallant Guthrie helped her carry an armload of rocks she had collected on a hike back to the venue, though not without wisecracking, “I’ll always be known as the man who got Melanie’s rocks off — the mountain.”

At Woodstock, Melanie crooned her bittersweet ballad “Beautiful People” so prettily that the crowd raised cigarette lighters and lit candles in response. The now-iconic sign of audience approval prompted the Queens, N.Y., native to pen the gospel-inspired epic “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” which sold more than 1 million copies in 1970 and prompted Billboard to name her its female vocalist of the year.

“My career really took off in Europe first. I had my first hit in France. It was with an obscure song on my first album called ‘Bobo’s Party’ and I went to Paris … in 1969 and had a hit record and was onstage with Gilbert Bécaud, who was like the Frank Sinatra of Europe, and Julien Clerc. It was like the variety show extraordinaire with jugglers and dancers and comedians and young singers and older singers and international singers. And I was Melanie, being introduced to France,” said Melanie, who spent the past month touring in Germany.

“There was very little here happening (in the U.S.), might have been a little bit of an industry buzz, but I hadn’t performed in front of more than 500 people before things started happening.”

Woodstock became a defining moment in her career, and “Lay Down” might have been her signature song had she not written a lively little ditty called “Brand New Key,” nicknamed “The Roller Skate Song.” The novelty hit topped the charts in 1971-72 and became her signature — whether she liked it or not.

“At first it was terrible. I mean, I became known by this song even though I had other songs like ‘Beautiful People’ and ‘Candles in the Rain’ and ‘Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma.’ That was the song. When that became a hit, it was all over. I always joked that I was doomed to be cute for the rest of my life,” she said.

“It was banned by certain radio stations as, oh, it had all kinds of hidden meanings. And quite honestly, it was one of those songs that just popped out. I didn’t think about it. I wasn’t thinking of sexual innuendos. Or some people thought it key as in kilo of some kind of drug. Or a wife-swapping song, there was that thing going on at some point in this crazy world where there were key clubs and people would do wife-swapping and they thought it was a song about that. And I was completely innocent. I just wrote the song, I didn’t think in terms of ‘what does this really mean?’ or anything. When it came out, I realized what that looked like.”

Although she has been in the music business for 45 years and created by her count 47 albums of original material — not counting the bootlegs that have surfaced over the decades or material she’s been working on the past two years since the sudden death of her producer/manager husband Peter Schekeryk — Melanie remains known primarily for “Brand New Key” and Woodstock. That’s even after winning an Emmy in 1989 for writing the theme song for the TV show “Beauty and the Beast.”

In recent years, she has developed a newfound appreciation for her own musical legacy. While trying to fulfill her late husband’s wishes that she write a memoir, she ended up penning a musical about their love story called “Melanie and the Record Man,” which will be staged for the first time in October at Blackfriars Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. Plus, she and her guitarist/producer son Beau Jarred Schekeryk, who tours with her, have even recorded a new version of “Brand New Key.”

“Now I’m very proud of it. I think it’s amazing. It transcends any time. It has a vintageness about it, but it doesn’t have a dated thing,” she said. “It’s endearing. … It’s not meaningful and it’s not supposed to do anything other than lift people a little bit.”

In 2010, she released an album of new originals cannily titled “Ever Since You Never Heard of Me.” What keeps her writing, singing and touring is “what got me started: just being in the music.”

“I don’t regret any of my life. It was all amazing. I mean, who would have thought me I would become a part of history but … I’d like to be thought of as a person who’s never had an album out before,” said Melanie, who also has two daughters who are songwriters.

“You want people to listen to your music, and if they have all these preconceived notions that you’re the hippie girl from Woodstock or whatever, the ‘Brand New Key’ girl — ‘Oh, the roller skate song!’ —that’s it. You get frozen in those moments. That’s probably why I keep on singing. I just want people to hear the songs. They are my children; they really, really are. And I want them to get out there and flourish and prosper.”

GOING ON

15^th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

When: Through Sunday.

Where: Various venues in Okemah

What: Musical performances, children’s activities, open mike, poetry readings, guitar workshop, fundraisers for the state chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and more.

Admission: Free.

Parking: Free for daytime events; $15 per car evenings at the Pastures of Plenty Stage. Cost includes a festival program.

Information: Ö www.woodyguthrie.com.

---

Remembering Karen Dalton: The late cult favorite Oklahoma folk singer would have turned 75 next week

On Saturday, the folk music world will commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of one of its legendary forefathers, Woody Guthrie. And the celebration will arguably be at its most festive and tuneful in the troubadour’s hometown of Okemah.

Now in its 15th year, the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is planned annually around Guthrie’s July 14 birthday in the Okfuskee County town where he was born. The music legend, who died of Huntington’s disease on Oct. 3, 1967, at age 55, would have been a centenarian this year.

Once the last slice of well-deserved commemorative birthday cake has been consumed in honor of the famed Dust Bowl balladeer, I’m hoping folkies and Okies will take the time to celebrate the milestone birthday of another Sooner State voice that was silenced too soon: Karen Dalton.

According to most biographies — there aren’t many and they vary quite a bit on the details — Dalton would have turned 75 on Thursday, July 19. Like Guthrie, she died at the relatively young age of 55 in New York after spending much of her troubled life rambling and making music.

While Guthrie has become an Oklahoma icon, Dalton is more of an Oklahoma enigma. If you’ve never heard of her, you’re hardly alone.

But if you’ve ever heard her goose-bump-inducing voice, you’re unlikely to forget it.

Just as Bob Dylan idolized Guthrie and helped introduce a new generation to the Okemah native’s protest anthems, children’s songs and sweeping ballads, Bobby the Bard also helped perpetuate Dalton’s legacy, such as it is. In his 2004 autobiography “Chronicles: Volume One,” Dylan called Dalton his favorite singer on the 1960s Greenwich Village folk revival.

“Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed,” Dylan wrote.

Other acclaimed musicians who have cited her as an influential favorite include Nick Cave, Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart. Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson are said to have written the song “Katie’s Been Gone” about her; the ballad was featured on The Band’s 1975 album with Dylan, “The Basement Tapes.”

Like Guthrie, Dalton boasted a rootsy, authentic voice that folk revivalists appreciated. Born around 1937 in either Oklahoma or Texas and brought up in Enid, she migrated from the Sooner State to New York City in the early ‘60s. Legend has it that she left her husband behind in Oklahoma but had her banjo and 12-string guitar in tow when she arrived on Greenwich Village’s burgeoning folk scene. While it was a time and place dominated by singer-songwriters, Dalton didn’t pen her own material, instead covering traditionals like “Cotton Eyed Joe” and “Green Rocky Road” as well as tunes from her folkie pals Tim Hardin and Fred Neil.

She may not have been a writer, but Dalton was a natural master of interpretation; she croons the folksong “Katie Cruel,” widely considered her signature, with a cold resignation that causes every lyric to ring true. Her quietly wrenching cover of Hardin’s “Reason to Believe” makes Rod Stewart’s commercially successful version sound like so much pop-rock bombast. And her cover of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” is probably the only one that can hold a candle to Lady Day’s original.

Dylan isn’t the only one to compare Dalton to the legendary jazz singer: Both boasted strangely mesmerizing voices, with distinctive gifts for unusual phrasing and wounded-dove deliveries that hinted at their tragic lives. Both struggled mightily with dysfunctional relationships, drug abuse and alcoholism, circumstances that plagued their lives and ultimately cut them short. Holiday died practically destitute of heart and liver disease in 1959 at the age of 44; Dalton is said to have been virtually homeless when she passed in 1993, reportedly of AIDS.

For such an exceptional singer, Dalton was ill at ease in a recording studio and uncomfortable performing in front of strangers. She only made two albums in her lifetime: 1969’s “It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best” and 1971’s “In My Own Time.” Since Dylan penned his glowing 2004 endorsement, both albums have been reissued and more recordings have been unearthed and released.

Perhaps it’s fitting given Dalton’s penchant for wandering, but her music has a tendency to crop up in odd places, from the 1970 clip a French film crew recorded of her crooning “Blues Jumped the Rabbit” that you can find on YouTube to her twangy rendition of “Something on Your Mind” that appeared in the trailer for the indie film “Natural Selection.”

Delmore Recordings earlier this year issued “1966,” a collection of impromptu, previously unheard tracks of Dalton and her then-husband, guitarist Richard Tucker, rehearsing for a gig at their remote, primitive cabin near Summerville, Colo. Listen to her warbling Neil’s “Other Side to This Life,” and it becomes clear that Dalton’s legacy deserves to be preserved decades after she has passed from this life.

-BAM

---

Arlo Guthrie kicks off 15th annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah

OKEMAH – Folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, son of Oklahoma icon Woody Guthrie, kicked off the 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Wednesday night in the late, great troubadour’s hometown of Okemah.

Woody Guthrie, who died of Huntington’s disease in 1967, would have turned 100 on Saturday, July 14. The 100th anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s birthday has the entire musical world as well as his hometown celebrating.

The Oklahoman’s Conner Rohwer covered Wednesday night’s show and reports that Arlo Guthrie, who turned 65 this week, treated the packed house at Okemah’s historic Crystal Theatre – where his father went to the movies as a youth – to several of his father’s songs as well as a few stories about the late folk singer.

Like his father, Arlo loves to talk as much as he loves music, Conner reports. While singing “This Land is Your Land,” he stopped abruptly in the middle of the song to talk about how the song caught on around the world. He cracked a few more jokes and about 10 minutes into his story, he resumed playing the song without skipping a beat.

Wednesday night’s show marked Arlo Guthrie’s seventh appearance at Okemah’s WoodyFest.

“I’ve been visiting family and friends in Okemah since I was a little kid. Family has always been an important part of my life and that includes our extended family, the ones we know so well they might as well be related,” he told me in a recent email interview.

To read more of my recent interview with Arlo Guthrie, click here.

This year, WoodyFest is part of the larger “Woody at 100,” a worldwide celebration of the folk icon organized by the Grammy Museum. Although WoodyFest continues through Sunday, Arlo won’t be staying for the duration this time; he and his children are due to play a show in honor his father Sunday in New York’s Central Park.

Still, there will be plenty of musicians in Okemah today-Sunday to celebrate the enduring legacy of Woody Guthrie. This year’s WoodyFest features returning favorites like Billy Bragg and Judy Collins; regulars such as Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave and the Red Dirt Rangers; first-timers Melanie, John McCutcheon and Carolyn Hester; and up-and-coming Oklahoma performers like Okemah-area native John Fullbright, The Damn Quails, Samantha Crain and Jesse Aycock.

The free festival also will include children’s activities, book signings, an open mike, poetry readings, guitar workshop, fundraisers for the state chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and more.

I’ll be heading to Okemah later today to cover WoodyFest; look for my reports.

For more information, go to www.woodyguthrie.com.

-BAM

---

Wednesday Video Spotlight: Arlo Guthrie opens Woody Guthrie Folk Festival tonight in Okemah

OKEMAH – Folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, son of Oklahoma icon Woody Guthrie, will perform at 7:30 tonight as the 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival kicks off in the late, great troubadour’s hometown of Okemah.

Arlo Guthrie will play a solo acoustic show benefiting the festival tonight at the newly renovated Crystal Theatre, 401 W Broadway. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Songwriter Gretchen Peters will open the show. Tickets are $25 for balcony seating and $35 for general admission; gold circle seating is sold out.

A July baby like his dad, the younger Guthrie celebrated his 65th birthday on Tuesday.

“When you have a parent, living or dead, whose 100th birthday comes around, the first thing you think of is ‘I must be getting old myself.’ At least, that is what I thought. As I turn 65 this year the question ‘will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?’ has already been answered. It’s a comfort to be needed or at least fed as the years go by,” Arlo Guthrie said, referencing his contemporaries The Beatles in an email interview.

“How much anyone needs Woody Guthrie has also been answered. It turns out that at 100 years since his birth in Okemah there are still hundreds of thousands (maybe more, maybe less) of people who are in some way celebrating my father’s life and work. By any measure it seems he is being remembered fondly even as the voices of his critics fade. I hope the lives of those who attempted to discredit him have not become as irrelevant as those opinions sound these days. And while it may always be true that ‘No man is a prophet in his own country,’ my father seems to have at least become more profitable.”

To read more of my recent interview with Arlo Guthrie, click here.

Organized annually around Woody Guthrie’s July 14, 1912, birthday, the free Woody Guthrie Folk Festival continues through Sunday with musical performances, children’s activities, open mike, poetry readings, guitar workshop, fundraisers for the state chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and more.

This year, WoodyFest is part of “Woody at 100,” a series of all-star concerts, album releases, conferences and tributes of all kinds. The music legend, who died of Huntington’s disease on Oct. 3, 1967, at the age of 55, would have turned 100 on Saturday.

For more information on WoodyFest, go to www.woodyguthrie.com, and check out these videos of Arlo performing:

-BAM

---

Up-and-coming Oklahoma musicians John Fullbright, Damn Quails, Samantha Crain, Jesse Aycock playing Okemah’s WoodyFest

Bryon White and Gabriel Marshall started out playing in punk bands in high school.

Until they began making pilgrimages to the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, the hometown of the famed folk troubadour, that is.

“Obviously, Oklahoma’s got a real rich history musically and Woody was one of the forerunners of that. He was the one that ended up going out into the world and taking the stuff that he learned when he was a kid and going out into the Dust Bowl and perpetuating it. I was real proud of that,” said White, who with Marshall forms the core of Norman-based Americana band The Damn Quails.

“I think Woody was one of the first people that really didn’t give a damn. And I really like that, the thought that he could talk about politics and he could talk about angst and rock ‘n’ roll and then he could go back and write a song about a woman that was real sweet and real sultry. … Woody was the man at that.”

The 15^th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival launches Wednesday night with a concert by Arlo Guthrie, the late music icon’s son, and continues through Sunday in Okemah. The festival is planned annually around Guthrie’s birthday — July 14, 1912 —  and with 2012 marking his centennial year, this year’s WoodyFest features returning favorites like Billy Bragg and Judy Collins; regulars such as Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave and the Red Dirt Rangers; and first-timers Melanie, John McCutcheon and Carolyn Hester.

In addition, the WoodyFest lineup includes up-and-coming Oklahoma entertainers like Okemah-area native John Fullbright, Samantha Crain and Jesse Aycock, who have not only been influenced by Guthrie’s music but also by the hometown festival that bears his name.

Marshall, 30, has attended every WoodyFest, while White, 29, is making his 12^th trek to the festival. They will play Thursday their first official slot as The Damn Quails.

“We grew up at WoodyFest,” White said. “Ellis Paul he goes there like every year and was one of my favorites and still is. Like I love that guy. I would always go down and catch his show and Don Conoscenti. Those guys have both been real big helps to me personally, just kind of lighting a fire and figuring out you don’t have to be real loud to say something. … (They) introduced me to Woody and that’s where I got to learn a lot of Woody’s music, met some Woody’s family — Arlo and all those guys — and everything and that kind of kicked me in the right direction.”

Hometown influence

For Fullbright, 24, WoodyFest is like a family reunion right in his neighborhood. He hails from and still lives in Bearden, what he calls an Okemah suburb. The singer-songwriter started attending the festival when he was 16. about the time that he started to realize that a musician from his neck of the woods really was famous.

“The festival itself was kind of big for me because it was where I learned. I kind of had a lonely musical upbringing. I was kind of the only one of my age that did what I do. When I started going to that festival, it was like once a year all these people would just come to town and they all had guitars, and they would all get together and they all seemed to know the same songs. And I hadn’t heard any of them, but I had a guitar, too. … So that’s how I kind of cut my teeth was at that festival. I’m really grateful for it for that reason,” he said.

For the musicians who play and attend, the casual after-hours motel parking lot and campground jams are among the highlights — and for the younger generation, a core part of the learning experience.

“It’s kind of a little family. There’s such a sense of community in that festival,” Fullbright said. “The campgrounds were huge. … They grabbed me not knowing anything about me. I just had a guitar. And everybody there just kind of scooped me up, sat me down in a circle full of people and told me to play something. And I’d never done that before.”

While he has performed at the festival a few times, Fullbright this year will play a Friday night set on the big Pastures of Plenty Stage.

“Woody taught that you can literally write a song about anything. You know, you can write a song about washing your hands or buying a hat,” You could write about anything and he was one of the first guys that did that,” he said with a laugh. “But his message was always really clear … which is ‘help the next guy in line.’”

Festival returns

Crain, 25, of Shawnee, gave her first WoodyFest performance in 2007 at the tender age of 20 and returned the next year to play again. After spending the past few summers touring, the singer-songwriter is coming back to the festival for a Friday show at the Brickstreet Cafe.

“Right at the beginning of me coming into songwriting, Woody Guthrie was a really big influence just because of the way that his songs were structured … sort of long, lots of verses, pretty simple melodies,” she said.

“I think the first time I met Randy Crouch was at the Woody Guthrie Festival. The Red Dirt Rangers, that was the first time I met those guys,” she added. “The people that are there to play there aren’t playing there because they’re making a lot of money. They’re there because they’re celebrating Woody Guthrie, so there’s just sort of a down-to-earth, laid-back nature to that festival.”

Like The Damn Quails, Aycock, 29, of Tulsa, has attended WoodyFest several times, including the inaugural event. After spending a few summers at other gigs, he will return to play his first official set Friday at the Brickstreet Cafe, where he has seen so many memorable performances.

“I’ve been exposed to so much good music by going to that festival. … It’s just a good chance to get together and share songs and be inspired,” Aycock said. “That’s the main thing: There’s something really inspiring to me about the whole festival, just the different artists that you hear and even the town of Okemah itself and the history with Woody. I don’t know, just walking around the town kind of gives you this magical feeling.”

GOING ON

15^th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

When: Wednesday-Sunday.

Where: Various venues in Okemah

What: Musical performances, children’s activities, open mike, poetry readings, guitar workshop, fundraisers for the state chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and more.

Admission: Free.

Parking: Free for daytime events; $15 per car evenings at the Pastures of Plenty Stage. Cost includes a festival program.

Fundraising concert: Arlo Guthrie will play a solo acoustic show benefiting the festival at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the newly renovated Crystal Theatre, 401 W Broadway, Okemah. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Gretchen Peters will open the show. Tickets are $25 for balcony seating and $35 for general admission; gold circle seating is sold out.

Information: www.woodyguthrie.com.

-BAM

---

What to do in Oklahoma on July 11, 2012: Hear Arlo Guthrie as WoodyFest begins in Okemah

Today’s featured event:

OKEMAH – Hear folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, son of Oklahoma icon Woody Guthrie, at 7:30 tonight as the 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival kicks off in the late, great troubadour’s hometown of Okemah.

Arlo Guthrie will play a solo acoustic show benefiting the festival tonight at the newly renovated Crystal Theatre, 401 W Broadway. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Songwriter Gretchen Peters will open the show. Tickets are $25 for balcony seating and $35 for general admission; gold circle seating is sold out.

To read my recent interview with Arlo Guthrie, click here.

Organized annually around Woody Guthrie’s July 14, 1912, birthday, the free Woody Guthrie Folk Festival continues through Sunday with musical performances, children’s activities, open mike, poetry readings, guitar workshop, fundraisers for the state chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and more.

This year, WoodyFest is part of “Woody at 100,” a series of all-star concerts, album releases, conferences and tributes of all kinds. The music legend, who died of Huntington’s disease on Oct. 3, 1967, at the age of 55, would have turned 100 on Saturday.

For more information on WoodyFest, go to www.woodyguthrie.com.

For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.

-BAM

---

Video: Wanda Jackson to release new album “Unfinished Business,” produced by Justin Townes Earle, in October

Oklahoma’s own “Queen of Rockabilly” Wanda Jackson will return to her roots with her forthcoming album “Unfinished Business,” which is set to release on Oct. 9 on Sugar Hill Records, the label announced today.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and country music icon worked with producer/folk musician Justin Townes Earle to bring her back to her roots and showcase a side of the singer that fans haven’t heard in some time.

“From day one I really liked Justin’s idea to take me back to my roots and make a record of country, blues, and rockabilly songs,” Jackson tells Rolling Stone. “The band was extra tight and great to work with during the whole process. The record just sounds terrific and I’m hoping that my fans enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.”

“Unfinished Business” will be the longtime Oklahoma City resident’s 31st studio album. Her last album was 2011′s rollicking “The Party Ain’t Over,” produced by rocker Jack White and released by Nonesuch/ Third Man Records.

Recorded in Nashville, Tenn., “Unfinished Business” will features performances of fellow Oklahoma icon Woody Guthrie’s “California Stars” (featured on the recently re-released 1998 Wilco/Billy Bragg album “Mermaid Avenue”) and Bobby and Shirley Womack’s “It’s All Over Now.”

Often known as the first lady of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Jackson was born in Maud on Oct. 20, 1937, so she will celebrate her 75th birthday shortly after the release of “Unfinished Business.”

In 1941, with the country caught in the throes of the Great Depression, her family moved to California. When she was about 12, the family returned to Oklahoma City, where Jackson has lived since. While attending Capitol Hill High School, she won a local talent contest and was offered a 15-minute daily show on radio station KLPR.

Country singer Hank Thompson heard her perform and urged her to record with the Brazos Valley Boys. In 1954, when she was just 17, “You Can’t Have My Love” became her first hit. She started singing rock ‘n’ roll in 1956. She tried the style at the urging of up-and-coming singer Elvis Presley, with whom she toured and dated.

The two-time Grammy nominee later returned to recording country music and also performed as a gospel artist. A perennial rock star in Europe and Japan, her rock career revived in the U.S. in the 1990s with a resurgence of rockabilly.

She was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2000, and in 2005, she earned the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship Award. A documentary, ” Wanda Jackson: The Sweet Lady With the Nasty Voice,” featuring Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Lemmy Kilmister, was released in 2007.

In 2009, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under the early influences category.

Here is the track listing for “Unfinished Business”:

“I’m Tore Down”

“The Graveyard Shift”

“Am I Even a Memory” (feat. Justin Townes Earle)

“Pushover”

“It’s All Over Now”

“Two Hands”

“Old Weakness”

“What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome”

“Down Past the Bottom”

“California Stars”

-BAM

---

Lost Woody Guthrie novel to be published, with assist from Johnny Depp

Author Douglas Brinkley and actor Johnny Depp are teaming up to edit “House of Earth,” a previously unpublished novel by iconic Oklahoma-born and bred folk troubadour Woody Guthrie, reports the New York Times’ Arts Beat Blog.

The manuscript, which Guthrie finished in 1947, follows a West Texas couple who battle banks and lumber companies as they try to build adobe homes as protection against treacherous weather. The book is set to be released in spring 2013.

According to the NY Times report, Brinkley uncovered a mention of the book while doing research for a Bob Dylan story for Rolling Stone. With help from the Tulsa-bound Woody Guthrie Foundation and Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, he found the manuscript last fall.

Woody Guthrie was born July 14, 1912, in Okemah. The singer-songwriter, who died of of Huntington’s disease on Oct. 3, 1967, at the age of 55, would have been 100 years old on Saturday.

Woody Guthrie’s rich artistic legacy — he wrote about 3,000 songs along with essays, newspaper columns and his partially fictionalized autobiography “Bound for Glory” and as a visual artist created many paintings and illustrations — has been celebrated throughout 2012, with even more events planned throughout his centennial year. Arlo and his sister Nora Guthrie worked closely with officials at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles to plan “Woody at 100,” a series of all-star concerts, album releases, conferences and tributes of all kinds.

The centennial celebration moves to Guthrie’s home state this week. The 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival kicks off Wednesday night with a special performance by Arlo Guthrie and continues through Sunday. The festival, known as WoodyFest, takes place in Okemah every year around Guthrie’s birthday.

To read my recent interview with Arlo Guthrie, click here. 

For more on the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, go to www.woodyguthrie.com.

-BAM

---

New releases for July 10, 2012: Elizabeth Mitchell’s “Little Seed: Songs for Children By Woody Guthrie.”

Folk singer/guitarist Elizabeth Mitchell and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings are releasing today “Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie.”

“Little Seed” features re-imagined renditions of 13 kid-friendly Guthrie classics, including “Riding in My Car,” “Grassy Grass Grass” and “Bling Blang.” The album also includes her version of “This Land Is Your Land,” Guthrie’s signature song that many people consider a second national anthem.

Smithsonian Folkways is a sponsor of the Woody Guthrie Centennial, celebrating the 100th birthday on July 14, 2012, of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters.

The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration is coming to the Oklahoma icon’s hometown of Okemah this week. The 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival kicks off Wednesday night with a special performance by Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son, and continues through Sunday. To read my recent interview with Arlo Guthrie, click here.

For more on the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, go to www.woodyguthrie.com.

Here is a list of other new CDs, DVDs and books out this week, from Amazon.com and VideoETA.com:

CDs

Elizabeth Mitchell, “Little Seed: Songs for Children By Woody Guthrie.”

Zac Brown Band, “Uncaged.”

Hank Williams Jr., “Old School New Rules

The English Beat, “The Complete Beat” (5-CD box set).

Muddy Water & The Rolling Stones, “Muddy Waters & The Rolling Stones Live At The Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago 1981” (DVD/CD).

Rhonda Vincent, “Sunday Mornin Singin’.”

P.O.D., “Murdered Love.”

Duran Duran, “A Diamond in the Mind.”

The Dirty Projectors, “Swing Lo Magellan.”

DVDs/Blu-rays

Adventure Time: The Complete First Season

American Reunion

Being Flynn

Despicable Me Presents: Minion Madness

Father Dowling Mysteries: The Second Season

The Flowers of War

The Glades: The Complete Second Season

I Kissed a Vampire

iCarly: The Complete 4th Season

Warehouse 13: Season 3

Books

Shadow of Night: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy) by Deborah Harkness

Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day

Batman: Earth One by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank

Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game by Jack McCallum

Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer

-BAM

---

Ronnie Dunn nominated for induction into Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame

Former Tulsan Ronnie Dunn and his ex-musical partner Kix Brooks are among the 12 renowned songwriters who have been nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

According to a news release, the four nominees in the Songwriter/Artist category are: Dunn (whose credits include the hit “Believe”), Brooks (“Only In America”), Mary Chapin Carpenter (“Down At The Twist And Shout”), and Larry Gatlin (“Broken Lady”).

The eight nominees in the Songwriter category are: Tony Arata (“The Dance” by Garth Brooks ), Robert Byrne (“I Can’t Win For Losin’ You” by Earl Thomas Conley), Beth Nielsen Chapman (“This Kiss” by Faith Hill), John Jarrard (“Blue Clear Sky” by George Strait), Tony Martin (“Baby’s Gotten Good At Goodbye” by George Strait), Gretchen Peters (“Independence Day” by Martina McBride), Victoria Shaw (“I Love The Way You Love Me” by John Michael Montgomery) and Kim Williams (“Three Wooden Crosses” by Randy Travis).

A Texas native, Dunn got his start as a country singer in Tulsa, where he penned future Brooks & Dunn hits like “Neon Moon” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” Oklahoma State University alumnus Tim DuBois, then an executive of Arista Nashville, paired Dunn with Brooks initially as songwriters and they soon became a formal duo. During their 1990-2010 partnership, Brooks & Dunn became the most popular duo in country music history.

Dunn also penned the Brooks & Dunn hits “She’s Not The Cheatin’ Kind,” “She Used To Be Mine” and “Hard Working Man.” He co-wrote “Brand New Man,” “Working On My Next Broken Heart,” “Cowgirls Don’t Cry,” “Ain’t No Way To Go,” “Believe,” “Play Something Country,” “Red Dirt Road,” “A Man This Lonely,” “Whiskey Under The Bridge,” “Little Miss Honky Tonk,” “Proud Of The House We Built” and more.

The nominations seek to recognize songwriters whose first significant works achieved commercial success and/or artistic recognition at least 20 years ago and who have “positively impacted and been closely associated with the Nashville Songwriting community and deemed to be outstanding and significant.” Two from the Songwriter category and one from the Songwriter/Artist category will be honored with induction on Oct. 7 at the Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction Ceremony.

According to Oklahoma Rock Newsblog, if chosen for induction, Dunn would become the 20th Oklahoman in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, joining Gene Autry (1970), Johnny Bond (1970), Albert E. Brumley (1970), Floyd Tillman (1970), Merle Travis (1970), Bob Wills (1970), Jimmy Wakeley (1971), Roger Miller (1973), Carl Belew (1976), Dallas Frazier (1976), Woody Guthrie (1977), Jimmy Webb (1990), Conway Twitty (1993), Hank Thompson (1997), Merle Kilgore (1998), Tommy Collins (1999), Wayne Kemp (1999), Vince Gill (2005) and Garth Brooks (2011).

Also, Oklahoma fans can see Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame nominee Gretchen Peters play at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Crystal Theatre in Okemah, where she is opening for Arlo Guthrie during the first show of the 2012 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. For more information, go to www.woodyguthrie.com.

-BAM

---