Dust Bowl Ballads

Recorded in 1940, and later reissued by Folkways Recordings in 1950, Guthrie’s first album chronicles the American Dust Bowl through his prosaic style of talking blues. Using only guitar and vocals, the album follows the exodus of Midwesterners headed for California and mirrors both Guthrie’s own life and John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Along the way, characters are forced into theft, murder, and unbearable hardship against a biblical backdrop of the American West. Hugely influential, Dust Bowl Ballads has been revered by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. In Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, Steinbeck wrote of Guthrie: "Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit."

Track Listing

101	Talking Dust Bowl	Woody Guthrie	02:45
102	I'm Blowing Down	Woody Guthrie	03:06
103	Do Re Mi	Woody Guthrie	02:40
104	Dust Cain't Kill Me	Woody Guthrie	02:58
105	Tom Joad	Woody Guthrie	06:34
201	The Great Dust Storm	Woody Guthrie	03:24
202	Dusty Old Dust	Woody Guthrie	03:09
203	Dust Bowl Refugee	Woody Guthrie	03:14
204	Dust Pneumonia Blues	Woody Guthrie	02:46
205	I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore	Woody Guthrie	02:50
206	Vigilante Man	Woody Guthrie	03:31