All this week is pioneers of rock or the birth of rock. These are the pioneers that laid the foundations of rock music. And influence all that came after them. Today is also twofer Tuesday so the two classic albums for today are The Complete Recordings (1990) by Robert Johnson and Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie. The first classic album of the day is The Complete Recordings (1990) by Robert Johnson. Though a street singer whose repertoire was not limited to the blues, Robert Johnson is among the first and most influential Delta bluesmen, despite his having recording only 29 songs before dying at the age of 27. He is credited with writing blues standards like Dust My Broom (which Elmore James made into a postwar electric-blues anthem), Sweet Home Chicago, Ramblin on My Mind, Crossroads (covered by Cream), Love in Vain and Stop Breaking Down (covered by the Rolling Stones), and Terraplane Blues (covered by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band on Mirror Man). Equally important, Johnsons persona and his songs introduced a musical and lyrical vocabulary that are the basis of the modern blues and blues-based rock. The Complete Recordings is a compilation album by American blues musician Robert Johnson, released August 28, 1990 on Columbia Records. The albums recordings were recorded in two sessions in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas for the American Record Company (ARC) during 1936 and 1937. Most of the songs were first released on 78rpm records in 1937. The Complete Recordings contains every recording Johnson is known to have made, with the exception of an alternate take of Travelling Riverside Blues. The Complete Recordings peaked at number 80 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album has sold more than a million copies, and won a Grammy Award in 1991 for Best Historical Album. In 1992, the Blues Foundation inducted the album into the Blues Hall of Fame. It also was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2003. The board selects recordings in an annual basis that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Prior to his death in 1938, through the help of H. C. Speir Johnson recorded 29 songs for the American Record Company (ARC). His complete canon of recordings includes these 29 masters, plus 13 surviving alternate takes, all recorded at two ARC sessions held in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas. The Mississippi Delta—two hundred miles of fertile lowlands stretching from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south—was one of the primary locales in which the blues originated and developed. He is said to have been heavily influenced by early blues artists like Skip James, who was recorded in 1931, around the same time that Johnson amazed his elders with his mastery of the guitar. Jamess eerie, distinctive style is reflected throughout Johnsons recordings, most notably in 32-20 Blues, which he adapted from Jamess 22-20 Blues. Johnsons first session in San Antonio, Texas lasted three days, on the 23rd, 26th, and 27th of November 1936, sixteen songs were recorded in the Gunter Hotel, where ARC had set up equipment to record a number of musical acts. Kind Hearted Woman Blues was the first song recorded. Also captured in San Antonio were I Believe Ill Dust My Broom and Sweet Home Chicago, both of which became post-war blues standards. Terraplane Blues, known for its metaphoric lyrics, became a regional hit and Johnsons signature song. Most of the selections were released on Vocalion 78s, but three songs and several interesting alternate takes remained unissued until they appeared on the Columbia albums. Six months later, on the 19th and 20th of June 1937, other recording sessions took place in a Dallas, Texas warehouse where, once again, ARC had set up its recording equipment to capture many different acts. This time 13 songs were recorded and 10 were released during the following year. The song Cross Road Blues is one of his most popular, thanks to Eric Clapton and Cream (Wheels of Fire), whose interpretation popularized the song in the late 1960s. Johnsons recordings became popular in the early 60s when Columbia Records released a collection of called King of the Delta Blues Singers. Bluesmen like Clapton and Keith Richards viewed the release as something of a blues bible, considered by some to be the King of the Delta Blues Singers The Rolling Stones recorded Love in Vain on their 1969 album, Let It Bleed, and Stop Breakin Down on their Exile on Main St. (1972) album. While Robert Johnsons professional recording career can be measured in months, his musical legacy has survived more than 70 years. Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf, two prominent Chicago bluesmen, have their roots in the Delta: both knew Robert Johnson, and were heavily influenced by him. Johnsons emotive vocals, combined with his varied and masterful guitar playing, continue to influence blues and popular music performers to this day. In 2004, Eric Clapton recorded Me and Mr. Johnson as a tribute to legendary bluesman; the album reached number 6 on the Billboard 200 and has sold more than 563,000 copies in the United States. The Chicago Tribunes Greg Kot wrote that The Complete Recordings, along with Claptons The Layla Sessions (1990), survive as monuments of 20th Century music that will rarely, if ever, be equaled. A new remastered edition of the album was released in 2011 in commemoration of Johnsons 100th birthday. The Centennial Edition was released in both standard and deluxe editions. The track order was changed so that all of the alternate takes were placed at the end of the discs, rather than side-by-side with the master tracks—as the 1990 release had placed them. The second classic album is Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie. Weathered, lean, and kindly, Woody Guthries face is the face of American folk music. Born in 1912, this astonishingly prolific composer is to the gritty, acoustic story-song what Louis Armstrong is to jazz and Elvis Presley is to rock & roll — the clearest, deepest source. In the Thirties and Forties he reinvented the American folk ballad as a vehicle for social comment and protest, laying the groundwork for Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Odetta, Bruce Springsteen, John Doe, Joe Strummer, John Mellencamp and numerous other folk and rock singer/songwriters. Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by Woody Guthrie, recorded for Victor Records during Guthries time in New York City in 1940. It was Guthries first commercial recording and the most successful album he made. It is considered to be the first or one of the very first concept albums. The Dust Bowl Ballads was originally released as two three-disc collections of 78 rpm records. Twelve sides, including the double-sided Tom Joad, were included in this release, but two of the thirteen songs, Pretty Boy Floyd and Dust Bowl Blues were left out due to length. All tracks were recorded at RCA Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey on April 26, 1940, except Dust Caint Kill Me and Dust Pneumonia Blues which were recorded on May 3. In 1964, during the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, a reissue including all tracks from the sessions was released in LP format by Folkways Records after RCA Warner refused Guthries request to re-issue the album. The complete Dust Bowl Ballads remains available on compact disc, audio cassette, and digital upload through the Smithsonian Institutions Folkways Collection. The songs on Dust Bowl Ballads are semi-autobiographical, chronicling Guthries experience as a so-called Okie during the Dust Bowl era, where Guthrie witnessed the economic hardship that many migrant workers faced in California. Like many of Guthries later recordings, these songs contain an element of social activism, and would be an important influence on later musicians, including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs and Joe Strummer. Woody Guthrie didnt invent American folk music. Its been around for centuries. Instead, Woody Guthrie arguably invented MODERN American folk music. He did it with these 1940 recordings. You can read about the Dust Bowl years in any American History book. But these songs actually take you there. Having grown up in Oklahoma (hardest hit dustbowl state) and having lived as a Dustbowl Refugee, Woody Guthrie sang many of these songs from experience. Woody takes you there with such harrowing tales as The Great Dust Storm, Dusty Old Dust, Dust Bowl Refugee, and Vigilante Man. Fortunately, Woody also had a sense of humor (Talking Dust Bowl Blues). The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd In March 1939, five years after Floyds death, Woody Guthrie, a native of Oklahoma, wrote a song romanticizing Floyds life, called The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd. The song has the form of a Broadside come-all-ye ballad opening with the lines If youll gather round me, children, a story I will tell Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an Outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well. The lyrics play up Floyds generosity to the poor, and contain the famous lines: As through this world you travel, youll meet some funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen. Tom Joad has long been an icon of social justice and protest movements. Woody Guthrie used his name in the song, The Ballad Of Tom Joad. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called The Ghost of Tom Joad, the title track of his 1995 album. Springsteens song has been covered by Rage Against the Machine, including a performance by Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machines guitarist) at the Rock Hall of Fame concert in 2009, and José Gonzálezs group, Junip. Springsteen added a new version of the song (featuring Tom Morello) on his 2014 album, High Hopes. Mumford and Sons, with Elvis Costello covered the Ghost of Tom Joad in June 2013. Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath narrates the story of Tom Joad and his family as they travel from Oklahoma to California in the midst of the Great Depression. The novel begins as Tom returns from prison to his familys farm. His family is forced to leave the farm as a result of the economic turmoil caused by the Dust Bowl. Tom breaks his parole and chooses to help his family. Throughout the novel Tom defends a humanistic point of view. He is willing to break civil law or stand against broader economic mechanisms to follow more humane and universal principles of morality and justice. Do Re Mi is a folksong by American songwriter Woody Guthrie. The song deals with the experiences and reception of Dust Bowl migrants when they arrive in California. It is known for having two guitar parts, both recorded by Guthrie. The song takes the form of a warning to would-be migrants to stay where they are (places of origin mentioned include Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia and Tennessee). The argument is made on the basis that there are already too many migrants, and not enough money or work available to make the hardships and expense of the trip worthwhile. The message of the song parallels a theme of John Steinbecks seminal novel The Grapes of Wrath, wherein the Joad family makes a dangerous, expensive trip from their home in Oklahoma to California. They encounter a fellow Dust Bowl migrant at a roadside rest-stop who tells them to turn back, echoing the cautionary tone of the song. He cites his own loss and misfortune (he mentions the trials of his dead wife and his underfed children moaning like pups) as a warning to others to avoid the same fate. Continuing on in spite of this, the Joads arrive in California nearly penniless, and having buried the two oldest members of the family. There they find there is indeed not enough work or pay to make ends meet. The song appeared on the compilation Bound for Glory, and was later released on the album Dust Bowl Ballads. It is heavily referenced in Andrew Jackson Jihads song Survival Song. Do Re Mi was covered by Ry Cooder on his self-titled debut album in 1971, by Nanci Griffith on her 1993 album Other Voices, Other Rooms (duet with Guy Clark), by Ani DiFranco on her 2000 EP Swing Set and on the Woody Guthrie tribute Til We Outnumber Em, and by Bob Dylan in The People Speak documentary in 2009.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 18:16:31 +0000
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