Woody Guthrie, Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti - 48m 14s

Tracks & Durations

1. The Flood and The Storm	3:38
2. Two Good Men	3:47
3. I Just Want To Sing Your Name	2:39
4. Red Wine	3:57
5. Suassos Lane	3:29
6. You Souls of Boston	4:14
7. Old Judge Thayer	4:16
8. Vanzetti's Rock	3:30
9. Vanzetti's Letter	7:50
10. Root Hog And Die	3:39
11. We Welcome to Heaven	3:48
12. Sacco's Letter to His Son	3:20

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Review

In 1945, Folkways Records founder Moses Asch commissioned Woody Guthrie to document in song the tale of Sacco and Vanzetti. The United States had wrongly convicted the two Italian immigrants, both anarchist labor organizers, of murder and executed them in Boston in the 1920s. Compare their case to the O.J. Simpson trial with its publicity circus, questionable witnesses, tainted evidence (even a hat that didn't fit), and the deep social divisions it brought to light. Compare the music Guthrie made for the recently released Dead Man Walking soundtrack, with its themes of dignity, justice, and capital punishment. Better yet, compare these songs to The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen's Guthriesque look at the still-hot issues of immigration and worker exploitation. Whatever you compare it to, the newly reissued Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti--with its 50-year-old songs and 70-year-old story--is as relevant today as ever.

With only his rambling guitar and raw voice, Guthrie offers eleven takes on what was the first "trial of the century." Using stock folk melodies and techniques, the songwriter first paints a backdrop of postwar prosperity and growing worker unrest, then introduces characters, narrates details of the trial, explains political motivations, reports the city's mood, relays the men's last plea of innocence, then ends by musing on a world full of misunderstanding. Guthrie--a people's poet if ever there were one--never meshed his humanism and his politics better than he did here, and few album reissues have been more worth hearing.

--Roni Sarig Woody Guthrie was one of the twentieth century's greatest poets and songwriters, and his songs about Sacco and Vanzetti include some of his best songs. The murder trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was one of this century's most controversial. Sacco and Vanzetti's story was dramatic; their front-page trial was filled with dubious procedures; and the years of appeals and their eventual execution led to protests around the world. These songs, written and recorded nearly twenty years later, have been carefully remastered from the original acetate discs and are presented with a previously unpublished letter by Guthrie to the judge in the case. Produced by Moses Asch. Reissue compiled by Anthony Seeger and Jeff Place.

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