I had been listening to the tribute album put together from a couple of concerts after Woody Guthrie died, where his songs were song by the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie. Of course, once I heard that great album, where Will Geer and Robert Ryan narrate passages from Guthrie's writing, I had to track down the original versions of those songs and I found a lot of them on this 2-disc collection. But as much as I enjoyed Guthrie singing "Ramblin' Round," "Grand Coulee Damn," "I Ain't Got No Home," and the other songs with which I had become familiar, it was the new pieces that struck me the most. Listening to the two parts of "Tom Joad," where Guthrie retells John Steinbeck's classic novel "The Grapes of Wrath" is just more proof that Guthrie was American's troubadour. Once you call this man a folk singer, how can you use that term to describe any other artist? Guthrie wrote hundreds of songs, rarely singing any one of them the same way twice. If you have never really sat down and listened to Woody Guthrie, then this is a nice place to start. If you have been feeding your soul with these songs for many a year, then look over the play list above and see how many "new" songs you can find. Either way, it is hard to believe you will ever run out of Woody Guthrie songs to listen to. When its comes to folk music in this country, Guthrie is the American Colossus.
