Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Last year we were a bit “off calendar” in honoring one of our favorite American Masters, this year less so. The good news is that his music and his relentless work on behalf of less fortunate people and the communities they were part of is so vast that, luckily for us, it will take some time to exhaust the full measure of his recordings.

For decades, we’ve had the Smithsonian recordings (with the help of Alan Lomax and Moe Asch) to thank for preserving both the musical and oral history of the nation. In honor of this less symmetrical birthday Rounder Records has released additional works from the archives, this time focusing on the part of Guthrie’s canon that was written for the American government.

In the Library of Congress recordings, the young musicologist and historian Alan Lomax made recordings of songs and stories in the 1940s of many of the country’s most colorful and important musicians, including Guthrie.

Along with John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” it is one of the single greatest resources for understanding Depression-era Oklahoma: how the pioneer spirit reacted when confronted with crushing poverty. Continue reading →