Great Album

The first words of Richard Penniman’s debut album, Here’s Little Richard, are seminal. In the years since the song was released in 1955, they have come to define the explosive birth of rock and roll music into the world and have been quoted countless times by countless musicians. Also, the first words of Here’s Little Richard are, in fact, not words at all, but some kind of inspired vocalized scat of an imaginary drumbeat. Penniman was probably the last person to think that, in writing down the phrase “A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom”, he was in fact writing musical history that would be remembered for decades and decades to come. It isn’t just the words that are sung, but the way the singer sings them. Elvis Presley and Pat Boone each tried their hand at “Tutti Frutti”, the song about which I’ve been writing. Presley’s is pretty good, but I feel that even attempting to do something Little Richard did first is setting yourself up for failure. Here’s Little Richard, an album made up of Little Richard’s previous singles and some new songs, is an explosive record of sheer rock and roll energy, and time has not dulled its razor-sharp edge.

Richard Penniman’s life was lived serendipitously in the thick of the musical developments that would inevitably lead to the explosion of rock and roll in the 1950s. Growing up in a religious family in Georgia, Penniman was exposed to gospel music at a young age, and he especially admired performers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe. After meeting Tharpe and opening one of her shows at the age of 14, as well as learning to play the piano upon hearing the record “Rocket 88”, Penniman began to pursue music as a career. He performed in countless settings, each one adding a little more to his increasingly impressive resume: a traveling voodoo show, gospel concerts, drag shows, the Atlanta club scene. Eventually, Penniman began to form his own distinctive sound, combing gospel and rhythm n’ blues. Nevertheless, his early recordings failed to generate any kind of interest. The turning point came while Penniman, recording with producer Robert Blackwell and Fats Domino’s band, introduced a risqué song called “Tutti Frutti”. Needless to say, the song was a hit in 1955, and the rest, as we know, is history. “Tutti Frutti” was followed by four other hit singles during the next year or so, during which time Little Richard became something like a rock god.

Here’s Little Richard is something like a victory lap for Little Richard. Here, we have the six singles that made him a star: “Tutti Frutti”, “Long Tall Sally”, “Slippin’ and Slidin’”, “Ready Teddy”, “Rip it Up”, and “She’s Got It”; as well as six new songs. It all begins with those famous words we all know and love, and it never slows down from there. One caveat of the early rock and roll of the mid-1950s is the reliance of many songs on the 12-bar blues format. Make no mistake, the 12-bar blues is a timeless and endlessly thrilling song structure, but many older songs can feel quickly dated as soon as the listener perceives its presence. What’s remarkable about Little Richard’s songs is that they all sit very firmly in the rhythm n’ blues tradition. There’s very little deviation from the 12-bar blues. Despite this, each song feels wonderfully fresh and unique, because Little Richard knew how to take a standard structure and make magic with it. Sometimes it comes from changing up the beat, as in “Slippin’ and Slidin’”. Mostly, though, it’s the performance that sells it. Little Richard’s style was considered harsh and aggressive in it’s day. And it still should be. I mean, listen to that. He screams into the microphone so hard, the track overloads and distorts. Less noticeable, but still important, is his piano playing. Listen to the piano in the introduction to “True, Fine Mama.” Those are some intense keys. The other musicians deserve their share of praise, too. I love the saxophone solos provided by Lee Allen and Alvin Tyler, as well as Edgar Blanchard’s iconic guitar in “Rip It Up”.

Little Richard was never quite as popular in his day as his contemporaries: Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, or Chuck Berry. Nevertheless, his influence is felt radiating throughout all of rock and roll music. Songs like “Ready Teddy”, “Long Tall Sally”, “Rip It Up”, and of course, “Tutti Frutti” have been covered by Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Wanda Jackson, and many others. Sometimes it’s almost as good as the original. But nothing compares to that burst of sheer energy emanating from Penniman’s mouth and hands. It’s easy to see how so much of rock and roll finds its origin point here in these raucous recordings. Richard Penniman just died earlier this year. He tossed the rock into the pond, and he lived to see the ripples spread out all the way to the edges and return again. There are not very many people who can lay claim to that, and there’s really only one proper response. You’ll find it recited in the beginning of this album’s first track.

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Don’t call it a comeback. Or do call it a comeback, as that’s essentially what it is. A lot happened to Miles Davis between the Birth of the Cool and 1955. Within that time, Davis struggled with a debilitating heroin addiction that almost destroyed his entire career. After several humiliating incidents caused by his addiction and seeing that his trumpet-playing was beginning to suffer, Davis began to recover, and eventually made a comeback performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz festival, getting him a record deal with Columbia. Davis formed the “first great quintet,” with Red Garland on the piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on the drums. The most noticeable addition, however, is John Coltrane on the tenor saxophone. This is the first time we’ve encountered Coltrane on this journey, and it sure won’t be the last. With this dynamite line-up, Davis started to do something very interesting with his music. You see, Miles Davis had a knack for practically inventing brand-new jazz trends with his recordings. He had developed bebop alongside Charlie Parker. Later on, Birth of the Cool was hugely influential for cool jazz, while Walkin’ was seminal for hard bop. For now, having had his fill of inventing new genres, ‘Round About Midnight sees Davis streamlining and combining many existing styles of jazz into one, archetypical mode. At the time, ‘Round About Midnight was generally well-received by critics but criticized for its lack of innovation; all of it had been heard before. But that’s just the point – ‘Round About Midnight was everything that had been heard before, all at once. It’s an idea so ambitious it’s absurd, but even more absurd is that Davis, on this album and subsequent releases, actually succeeded.

The album opens up with “Round Midnight,” the classic Thelonious Monk tune that put Miles Davis back on the spot at Newport. Davis, by this point, had begun to use the mute on his trumpet as a signature style. Here, Davis plays long, relaxed, legato lines, and you can tell that he’s right up to the microphone. This style is maintained throughout the record – it’s delicate, sensitive, and quite delicious. Whenever Davis plays the horn, the whole rest of the band quiets down so that we can hear each soft, breathy note. On the other hand, John Coltrane’s fast, bombastic saxophone contrasts quite sharply, as exemplified in “Round Midnight,” when he is introduced by several loud, big-band bursts, and accompanied by hard-hitting percussion. Coltrane’s virtuosic soloing works in opposition to Davis’ relaxed playing, and both of them work together to streamline several types of post-bebop jazz. “Round Midnight” is followed by the Charlie Parker standard “Ah-Leu-Cha”, by far the fastest and most bebopy track. It stands out from the rest of the tracks due to Davis’ muteless horn and fast soloing, and it also showcases some of the best duet work done between trumpet and saxophone. “All of Me” and “Bye Bye Blackbird,” two of Davis’ most well-known recordings, are hard-bop renditions of classic swing standards, and exemplify everything wonderful about this record that we’ve already seen in the first track. And I absolutely fall head over heels for Davis’ trumpeting during these two songs. Before listening to these tracks, if you had asked me what a romantic trumpet solo would sound like, I would shrug my shoulders and plead the fifth amendment. Allow me to tell you right here: a romantic trumpet solo sounds like “All of Me” and “Bye Bye Blackbird.” It’s the warmest, fuzziest jazz I’ve ever heard.

While Davis and Coltrane certainly are the highlight performers of the record, I certainly do not want to shortchange Garland, Chambers, and Jones. Red Garland’s piano, often using soft staccato chords to punctuate melody lines, whether playing solo or accompaniment, never ceases to be a treat. Garland’s playing on “Blackbird” is especially delightful – pay attention to it, the way it feels as Davis plays the theme in the beginning. The record contains very few moments for Chambers and Jones to solo – they are almost exclusively the rhythm section accompaniment, but their dexterity in fitting underneath the varying styles of the soloists is more than impressive. “Tadd’s Delight,” is a highlight for the rhythm section, with a tricky theme section that changes time quite frequently. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it, but Chambers and Jones work with it effortlessly.

The record as a whole represents a turning point for Davis musically. Miles Davis was an exceptional talent prior to 1955 (though this record was not released until 1957), but this time period represents his ultimate peak in the eyes of many. For many people who don’t listen to very much jazz, Miles Davis is quite often one of the few – perhaps the only jazz musician they know and listen to. His recordings that appear on ‘Round About Midnight represent the start of momentum that would lead Davis to cross over into mainstream American music in a huge and unheard-of way. The way that this quintet handles these classic standards feels in some ways like a quintessence of jazz, and Davis would continue to follow through on this instinct, soon to cement his place as possibly he most well-known jazz musician of all time.

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In the world of strange, highly experimental, virtuoso-driven, avant-garde jazz, Saxophone Colossus can seem like an oasis, or an eye in the storm. This is not to say that Sonny Rollins is less talented, or bland, or anything like that. But the opening bars of “St. Thomas”, the first track, are comprised of some of the loveliest sounding jazz I’ve heard on this quest so far. Where Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk consistently challenge me with their complex melodies, harmonies, and solos, Sonny Rollins crafts exquisite pieces that are very listenable, very digestible, while still proving himself to be an astoundingly talented player. Saxophone Colossus is a seminal record in the development of a new sort of jazz called “hard bop.” After the wild craziness of bebop pushed jazz past sonic boundaries, musicians began to explore in two contrasting directions. One direction was a more classical, composed, impressionistic style, known as “cool jazz”, pioneered by Miles Davis and Gil Evans (see my blog post on Birth of the Cool for more on that). The other direction took influence from the exploding popularity of rhythm-and-blues, striving for a style that retained the musical complexity of bebop, while remaining danceable, accessible, and fun to listen to. The Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Sextet were instrumental in popularizing this new style in the early 1950s, and Saxophone Colossus is saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ take on hard bop, where he combines the blues, Caribbean music, and some great saxophone soloing.

Rollins grew up in Harlem, New York, to parents originally from the Virgin Islands. That heritage is the source of “St. Thomas”, based on a traditional lullaby that his mother would sing to him as a child (The original tune comes from the English folk song “The Lincolnshire Poacher”). The entire band on Saxophone Colossus comes together to make this fantastic and now widely-renowned recording – Max Roach opens the track with the percussion, lightly tapping a sprightly beat. Later on, Rollins plays the main theme on the sax, with Tommy Flanagan and Doug Watkins coming in on piano and bass respectively. Rollins’ style creates a soft, delicate tone with the saxophone, breathy and wavering, in contrast to the straight, cleaner tones of some of his contemporaries like John Coltrane. Rollins also enjoys playing with rhythm – his first solo on “St. Thomas” is a prime example of how Rollins is concerned just as much with modulating the beat as he is the notes. Roach is the other amazing part of this album – if you listen closely on “St. Thomas”, you can actually hear how, during his solo, he actually imitates Rollins’ solo using only the percussion. The long drum solos of post-bebop jazz are probably the most challenging thing to swallow when you’re relatively uninitiated to the genre, but when you really listen closely to what’s going on, you’ll find yourself immensely rewarded by the rhythm section. Some of the record’s best moments come when Rollins and Roach trade off solos in a call and response style – this happens most thrillingly in “Strode Rode” and “Moritat”.

If you’ve been following along with the last few posts, you’ll notice that the jazz track recordings are getting longer and longer. As interest in bebop and post-bebop jazz grew, musicians began to grow away from the two to five-minute-long recordings and opted for tracks that were more like the live performance. While “Strode Rode”, the shortest track, is a relatively brief five minutes, the tracks only get longer, with the last track, the much discussed and analyzed “Blue 7”, clocking in at a whopping eleven minutes. This can be intimidating, but it’s also an opportunity for the musicians to really explore with their soloing, rather than try to cram things down into something that would fit on a 7-inch 45 record. And no better example of this is the challenging album closer, “Blue 7”. Monstrously long, with an improvised, avant-garde melody, it’s a slow-burning blues piece that goes on and on, and definitely falls much farther on the bebop side of the spectrum, as opposed to the blues side. It’s a really amazing look at the spontaneous creativity that jazz can allow, especially within the context of 1956, when Elvis Presley began to dominate the airwaves with rock and roll, and the musical landscape was beginning to change in ways that no one could foresee.

Saxophone Colossus is worth repeat listens to glean the various little treasures that hide inside. It’s also a pretty fun album to listen to, thanks to its dedication to playing jazz in a catchy rhythm-and-blues style. It’s like holding up the popular music of the 1950s to a twisty, fun-house mirror, creating sonic distortions that sometimes entertain, sometimes amuse, sometimes provoke thought and meditation on how the great cultural exchange of music goes on and on through the years.

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This is not the Frank Sinatra you know. This is not him. In the past decades, Sinatra has become rather well known as an almost mythological poster-child of wild, carefree love and infatuation as well as Christmastime music. And yes, that’s not entirely untrue. However, this is quite a different scenario we have here. For the duration of In the Wee Small Hours, Old Blue Eyes’ blue eyes brim with tears as he stays up late, late into the night, stewing in his isolation and loneliness, drowning his sorrows with self-loathing and regret. In the Wee Small Hours is a sucker punch of a record, a forty-nine-minute floodgate of despair, pioneering a formula that would become ubiquitously used by future musicians like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and Bon Iver. In fact, Sinatra is so unanimously remembered for his positive-thinking love songs that very few people realize that he was one of the very first musicians to release a full album of “sad music”. In the Wee Small Hours, released in 1955, also gave the whole “concept album” notion another try, even though the whole idea of concept albums wouldn’t really take off until the Beatles would experiment with it more than a decade later. It’s a dark, cold journey, so bundle up and hold your broken heart close – it’ll be your only comfort.

Like many similar records that followed, In the Wee Small Hours was created in the aftermath of an extreme personal crisis for the artist. Beginning in the early 50s, Sinatra’s popularity began a serious decline, with the loss of his original target audience and the rise of rock and roll. A suicide attempt in 1951, a failed TV show season, the loss of a record label, and the end of a marriage and several relationships only proved how bad things had gotten again and again. Picked up by a new record label, Sinatra and a minimal band convened to record the tracks on late, cold February and April nights in 1955. The process was apparently harrowing – Sinatra and the band would reportedly go on coffee the whole night, and the Singer himself would occasionally break down in tears during a session. The album, despite all odds, proved to be a resounding success, not only for Sinatra, but for the format of the “album” as art. In the Wee Small Hours is more than the sum of its parts – it transcends its status as a collection of music to become an intimate chronicle of Sinatra’s life through classic tunes.

In the Wee Small Hours has something for everyone. If you’re really into “Sad Music” and are looking for something new to stimulate catharsis, I can’t recommend this enough. The music selections, almost all selected from the Great American Songbook, are written well and executed even better. Sinatra’s natural skill in showmanship makes every song an enjoyable listen, even if it is thoroughly and profoundly “sad music”. Each song, in downtempo jazz orchestral style, positively stews with emotional negativity and cathartic pathos. Listen to the title track, with its tinkling piano, xylophone, and mournful strings. Listen to those lyrics: “You like awake and think about the girl/and never ever think of counting sheep”. The venomous self-loathing on “Glad to Be Unhappy” rivals the sharpest poison mustered by Elliott Smith or Conor Oberst many years later.

Sinatra leaves all trace of his usual love-struck mushiness behind. In the Wee Small Hours is formal and straightforward. It beats around no bush and pulls no punch. The slow, pulsing bass and strings propel the album along slowly, torturously, through Sinatra’s dark night, as he attempts to escape into dreams of his lost love (“Deep in a Dream”), then attempts to escape said dream (“I See Your Face Before Me”), and tries for love only to be friend-zoned (“Can’t We Be Friends”, and yes, this is the album where Frank Sinatra is friend-zoned).  In general, he runs madly through the endless labyrinth of heartbreak, chasing some kind of solace or distraction, pursued by a monstrous regret.

               This album’s value rises far above its ability to represent crippling heartbreak and depression, though, so don’t fret if you’re not into “sad music”. If anything, the jazz band arrangements, and Sinatra’s showmanship as a vocalist keep this record effortlessly engaging from start to finish – even if you do feel a little colder inside when it’s all over. The slow swing of “Mood Indigo” is especially lovely as a jazz tune, as well as the slow burn of “Dancing on the Ceiling” (also one of the record’s most horribly depressing songs). It’s also an album that’s important to the history of popular recorded music in general. Sinatra had always been in favor of pioneering and popularizing the format of the “album” since the beginning of his career as a recording artist, and this album can definitely be considered the high mark of an illustrious, influential career. Until then, get some sleep, Frank. There are plenty of fish in the sea.

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Jazz can be hard. Music doesn’t have to be hard. It’s music, a universal human art-form that has been around forever. But sometimes, music can get complicated. Someone who knows what’s going on can appreciate the works of Johann Sebastian Bach in the way he uses mathematical parallels in tonality and recursive melodies in his fugues and Brandenburg concertos, but to the uninitiated, it’s all rather quite overwhelming. The same goes for jazz. With its complex voicing, chord structures, and its emphasis on off-the-cuff improvisation, jazz can often come across as hopelessly opaque and bewildering to people who are not used to it. And I totally understand that. Listening to all of these albums in chronological order means that I have a lot of jazz front-loaded into the list, and that was certainly intimidating at first. But jazz, for all of its convolutions, has the ability to captivate and bewitch those who have become dissatisfied with other types of music. Jazz as a genre is fundamentally different than the vast majority of genres that came before and after, and it can grab you the way it grabbed Reinhardt and Grappelli.

Meet Django Reinhardt. A Romani-born man, he grew up living the traditional lifestyle of his people – in caravans, on the road, playing music, usually with traditional European string instruments. Reinhardt showed great and amazing talent as a guitarist from early on, a talent that was almost taken away from him permanently when his left hand was irreparably damaged in a caravan fire. But Reinhardt, being the sort of musician that he was, relearned the guitar, using only his thumb, index, and middle fingers to press the strings, becoming even better than he used to be, even when starting again with less. Django eventually left the Romani life and began to busk full-time, and then one day he heard records of American icon Louis Armstrong that changed his life. Reinhardt set himself to learning this new music, “jazz”, for himself, and it was during that time that he met Grappelli.

Meet Stephane Grappelli. His life is something like myth: a father off fighting World War I, a childhood in a brutal orphanage under horrid conditions. Upon his father’s return, Grappelli received a violin, and he began to teach himself, fascinated with the life of buskers who made their money playing on the street. Grappelli’s musical outlook changed upon hearing American violinist Joe Ventui play a standard called “Dinah”. You see, the thing about jazz in those days is that it was very much American, and very much lacking in string instruments, especially guitar and violin. But Grappelli and Reinhardt sought to change that, and, finding a musical kinship, formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France, an all-string European jazz band. The group disbanded at the start of World War II, but Reinhardt and Grappelli got back together afterwards and toured extensively, a time during which the recordings of Djangology were created. These recordings were never compiled and released as a whole until 1961, but the collection gives us more than an hour of some of the earliest gypsy-jazz guitar and violin from two of the most talented and influential jazz musicians of all time.

And this is where I kind of come back to jazz being hard. Djangology will probably work better as background music for most of you. Sometimes, it does for me. But sometimes, I listen closely and it blows me right over. Reinhardt’s guitar playing is more than amazing, and it’s actually more than more than amazing because he’s playing all of his solos with only three fingers! That alone should be enough to encourage you to listen a little bit more closely. You may not always understand the scales, voicings, and turnarounds that Reinhardt uses to create an inventive, wonderful solo, but it will sure be fun to listen to if nothing else. The same goes for Grappelli’s violin as well. Their Romani-inflected jazz joy romp, when you peer under the surface, is actually quite engaging and engrossing. Several of these songs are originals and have since become standards, like “Minor Swing” and “Heavy Artillery”. Others are cover recordings of standard classics like “Beyond the Sea” and “I Got Rhythm”, which are brought to life in a new European way through Djangology’s incessant invention. Other songs still are jazzed up versions of classical pieces by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Djangology is a record of reckless, ruthless experimentation. For Reinhardt and Grappelli, nothing was sacred, but jazz could assimilate just about anything and turn it into something new. It’s an enduring quality of the genre that has influenced jazz musicians from that period of time onward, especially Miles Davis’ later work.

If anything, Djangology is a great introduction to jazz (though I would also recommend the recordings of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives and Sevens) because it allows you to discover jazz alongside two great musicians discover it as they play. Peer through this window into post-war Europe and see Grappelli and Reinhardt trading off solos, tinkering with songs and style, creating something altogether new and wonderful in the process.

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Remember that song you sang in grade school, “This land is your land/this land is my land/from California/to the New York Islands”? Who doesn’t? That song was written by a certain Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, who can possibly lay the claim to be the most influential American songwriter of all time. That’s a pretty bold statement for me to make, but when you listen to many of the other folk musicians that rose out of the twentieth century, they all lift material off Guthrie. From Dylan to Seeger to Springsteen, Guthrie is the root of many branches that have sprouted in the American folk and rock scene. What you may not remember, or even know, is that “This Land Is Your Land” was a political protest song against the nationalism and patriotism of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” being played incessantly on the radio.

Woody Guthrie was a man who constantly lived on the run. His whole life, he was on the run from the Huntington’s Disease, which previously had claimed the life of his mother. Guthrie was also on the run from the poverty of the Great Depression and the endless blight of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Guthrie ran towards something for most of his life as well, “bound for glory”, in his own words. He may in fact have found it, but only after a long and difficult quest, the details of which are revealed in his 1940 album, Dust Bowl Ballads.

For readers who may not know, the Dust Bowl was a drought that occurred in the American Midwest during the Depression in the 1930s. The scope of the drought was enormous, centering in Kansas but extending outwards to Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Guthrie’s home state of Texas, along with many other states and parts of states. Today, it’s ranked as a natural disaster alongside the Great Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina. But, while many of the aforementioned disasters were sudden cataclysms that did their work with swift deadliness, the Dust Bowl worked slowly over the course of a decade to sap the life from the inhabitants of the American Midwest, resulting in many years where almost no precipitation was seen, making already financially difficult times even more so. Guthrie and his family were one of the many who realized that there was no prosperity to be had in the bone-dry land of Texas, so Guthrie left his family and struck out for California like so many others, hoping to find a way to make a living. It is out of this period of his life whence Dust Bowl Ballads comes. Dust Bowl Ballads ranks on par with John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath as one of the foremost works of art that brought the struggles of the Depression to the front of American consciousness. Guthrie even has a two-part song entitled “Tom Joad” on the record, which retells the novel in song. However, Dust Bowl Ballads holds a forever unique place in record music history as most likely the first album to feature a continuous narrative theme – the first concept album, if you will.

Of course, Guthrie’s music is, like all great art, political. But Guthrie, the clever songwriter that he is, often relates his politics by narrowing his to a particular story for a song. He observes the microcosmos and fits them into their place in the macrocosmos. Take, as an example, “Blowin’ Down This Road”, telling the simple story of a mistreated vagabond trudging down the road, hoping to make it to where “the water tastes like wine”. On the surface, it’s a pretty straightforward account of Guthrie’s story, as well as many others. Like many of the songs on this record, it’s told as plainly as possible, with minimal figurative language. Nevertheless, when the narrator of the song shouts: “I ain’t gonna be treated this-a way!”, we sense both the personal urgency of a personal situation and the broad urgency of a national situation, the helplessness of many vagabonds suffering abuse by the wealthy and the government. Woody’s simplicity is actually his greatest strength. Many songwriters are praised for their command over elaborate and sometimes extravagant poetic language. For Guthrie, simple, sing-along choruses like “So Long (It’s Been God to Know You)” and “Do Re Mi” are their enduring strengths. They’re written for the people they’re written about – common folk scraping dollars together to get by. It’s a lofty achievement that Guthrie claims here, a gold standard chased by many an American songwriter, but rarely ever realized.

Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is a landmark of American folk music and tradition that certainly deserves to be studied and enjoyed to this day. Often, popular music helps people to sort out and work through the social problems and issues of the current day. The 1930s, a period where recorded music was not nearly as prevalent as in the present, can be illuminated and seen through the light of song and poetry with this record. Guthrie’s voice is nothing special; he has a very plain, blunt singing style. His guitar amounts to simple strumming with melodic voicings that any guitar student can nail with minimal practice. His lyricism is concise and direct, lacking the extravagant metaphors that sometimes characterized his followers. And yet, that directness only makes his political poetry even stronger, even more prevalent when listening today. Guthrie’s bold statement, a Depression-era concept album of hard times and tragedy, has become the root of a great, wonderful tree that forms the body of modern American folk music.

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