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'My Dusty Road' - New Woody Guthrie Box Set


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Just in case you didn't have enough to spend your hard earned dollars on between the Beatles remasters, the Wilco vinyl reissues, 7 Worlds Collide and so on and so forth, along comes this: 54 of Woody's songs remastered from the original master tapes on 4 CDs, 6 never before released songs, 68-page booklet, postcards and doohickeys for $58.99. :blink

 

Guthrie%20new%20product%20shot.jpg

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Rolling Stone gives it 5 stars:

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/29203523/review/29716114/my_dusty_road

 

There are umpteen collections of the music of legendary folkie storyteller, agitator and Dylan role model Woody Guthrie, and almost all of them sound like they were recorded in a refrigerator box. But this one qualifies as genuine news. The back story is a crate-digger's wet dream: cardboard drums filled with pristine 78-rpm metal masters, given up for lost long ago, were found in the basement storage bin of a Brooklyn apartment belonging to an Italian lady who inherited them from the daughter-in-law of a business partner of Folkways Records guru Moses Asch.

 

The 54 songs on My Dusty Road, most of them familiar, are part of roughly 250 tracks — many featuring second guitarist Cisco Houston and harmonica man Sonny Terry — recorded over a six-day marathon in New York in 1944, during the thick of World War II. The sound quality is astonishing. On songs such as "This Land Is Your Land," "Stackolee" and "Pretty Boy Floyd," fingerpicked melodic fills emerge from surface noise, vocals step up to shake your hand. It's the sound of Guthrie as a man, not a ghost. In addition to extravagant packaging (four discs and a couple of archival postcard repros in a hobo-style cardboard valise), there are a half-dozen unreleased tracks. The most impressive are "Tear the Fascists Down," a no-shit bit of wartime cheerleading, and "Bad Repetation" [sic], a nudge-winker about romantic problems — one of the occupational hazards for a trouble-courting troubadour never afraid to sing exactly what was on his mind.

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Can't they space this stuff out a bit better? Beatles boxes, Big Star boxes, REM remasters, I need a second job!

Dear Santa is right....

 

Hey, how is the music biz supposed to survive if they don't keep getting our money?? If people like us don't buy this stuff, who will??

 

LouieB

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disc 4, track 2 of this set is a song called Do You Ever Think of Me (aka At My Window.) from the 30 seconds of it i've heard so far, the lyrics appear to be different than the Mermaid Avenue version but the chorus seems to be slightly similar. maybe someone who has heard this entire track can comment on it.

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does it sound any better than this?: http://www.amazon.co...1743310&sr=8-10

 

i've got that box set, and i'm not sure if i need another one, unless it's a massive improvement.

 

i had once had another woody guthrie cd that was so badly mastered that it sounded like he was playing a casio keyboard - which actually made it interesting, "so this is what woody would have sounded like in the 1980s!"

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i have vol. 1 of the Asch Recordings. i really like that live version of This Land Is Your Land done with Cisco Houston. of course that "sschhh-sschhh-sschhh" sound is annoying but its a real cool historical document. wonder if any other live recordings like this exist?

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In 2001, The Woody Guthrie Archives received 2 spools of wire recordings from a live Woody Guthrie performance held in Newark, New Jersey in 1949. With the help of many talented recording engineers, the Woody Guthrie Foundation transferred this rare live performance from a delicate wire recording to digital audio, and, with state-of-the-art technology, restored it to near-perfection. This is one of the most significant recent finds in folk music history.

 

Track Listing:

 

 

 

1. How much? How long?

2. Black Diamond

3. I was there and the dust was there

4. The Great Dust Storm

5. Folk singers and dancers

6. Talking Dust Bowl Blues

7. Tom Joad

8. Columbia River

9. Pastures of Plenty

10. Grand Coulee Dam

11. Told by Mother Bloor

12. 1913 Massacre

13. Quit sending your inspectors

14. Goodbye Centralia

15. A cowboy of some kind

16. Dead or Alive

17. Jesus Christ has come!

18. Jesus Christ

 

2008 GRAMMY AWARD WINNER for Best Historical Album!

:yes

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