Maps of Music

Dust Bowl Ballads (1940)

Where the lyrics of Dust Bowl Ballads take you, and where it was really made.

Two of the thirteen songs recorded in April 1940 were left off the original release because of their length.

Key places

Recording at Victor studios in Camden (1940)

Recording site Victor Studios — The tracks for Dust Bowl Ballads were recorded at Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, on 26 April 1940. Two more songs were recorded there on 3 May. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie
• Released by Victor Records in 1940
• All songs deal with the Dust Bowl and its effects on the country and its people
• Considered one of the first concept albums
• Guthrie's first commercial recording and the most successful album of his career
• Originally issued as eleven songs on two simultaneously released 78 rpm sets, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
• The twelve sides had one song each, except the double-sided Tom Joad, which was too long for one side of a 78

Background

• Chronicles the 1930s Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression in the United States
• Drought, depleted topsoil and heavy winds created the dust storms of the title
• Foreclosures pushed many midwesterners, especially Okies from Oklahoma, to migrate to California
• Guthrie came from this culture and knew many Okies who lived under these conditions
• Victor Records wanted a rival to folk singer Burl Ives on Columbia Records and signed 27-year-old Guthrie
• This was the only major label for which Guthrie ever recorded
• The album is semi-autobiographical, mirroring Guthrie's life and John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath

Recording

• Recorded at Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, on 26 April 1940
• Two songs, Dust Cain't Kill Me and Dust Pneumonia Blues, were recorded on 3 May
• Pretty Boy Floyd and Dust Bowl Blues were left out of the original release due to length
• Thirteen songs were recorded in the sessions in total

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma; died October 3, 1967 in New York.
• Left Okemah in 1929 and followed his father to Pampa, Texas, where he began busking and playing music.
• Moved to California during the Dust Bowl period and worked at Los Angeles radio station KFVD.

Members

• Solo artist; no group members.
• Married Mary Jennings (1933), Marjorie Greenblatt (1945), and Anneke van Kirk (1953); fathered eight children in total.
• His son Arlo Guthrie became a nationally known musician.

Career

• Known for songs such as "This Land Is Your Land" and "Tear the Fascists Down", with themes of American socialism and anti-fascism.
• Wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children's songs; the 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads earned him the nickname "Dust Bowl Troubadour".
• Wrote the column "Woody Sez" for the communist newspaper People's World (1939–1940); was never a formal Communist Party member.
• Served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II before being drafted into the Army in 1945.
• Diagnosed with Huntington's disease in 1952; hospitalized from 1956 until his death in 1967.
• Influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and many others; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Reception

At release

• Released by Victor Records in 1940
• Guthrie's first commercial recording
• The most successful album of his career

Reappraisal

• Considered to be one of the first concept albums
• Described as having an element of social activism, with an important influence on later musicians, including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs and Joe Strummer

Records

• Reissued in LP format by Folkways Records in 1950 as Talking Dust Bowl with eight tracks
• Folkways reissued the full contents as a 12" LP in 1964
• RCA Victor reissued the album in 1964 with the two previously unreleased tracks included
• Buddha Records reissued it in 2000 with an additional previously unreleased alternate version of one song
• In 2021 Home in This World, a track-by-track remake, was released on Elektra Records

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Guthrie was 27 when Victor signed him, and this was the only major label he ever recorded for.
• Victor eventually let the original sets go out of print, and Guthrie asked the label for an LP reissue and got a negative response.
• Folkways then copied the discs with Guthrie's authorization and released its own 10" LP in October 1950.
• Pretty Boy Floyd, written in March 1939, was added to the album only in the 1964 RCA Victor and 2000 Buddha releases.
• The 2021 tribute Home in This World featured covers by Lee Ann Womack, Mark Lanegan and Parker Millsap, among others.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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