Albums That Deserve Another Listen

Woody Guthrie - Bonneville Dam & Other Columbia River Songs (Verve Folkways FV-9036)

01. Woody Guthrie - Talking Columbia

02. Woody Guthrie - Pastures Of Plenty

03. Woody Guthrie - New Found Land

04. Woody Guthrie - Oregon Trail

05. Woody Guthrie - End Of My Line

06. Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land

07. Woody Guthrie - The Grand Coulee Dam

08. Woody Guthrie - Ramblin' Round

09. Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry - Goin' Down The Road (Feelin' Bad)

In May 1941, Woody Guthrie moved to Portland with his family and began working for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a job that required him to write songs to promote development on the Columbia River. When Guthrie arrived at the Columbia River, he was taken aback by its majestic beauty. He said he “couldn’t believe it, it’s a paradise”. The river inspired him so deeply that he wrote 26 songs in just one month, making it one of the most productive periods of his life. Several of his best-loved songs came from this period, including "Ramblin' Round," "Hard Travlin'," and "Pastures of Plenty." 

With Woody Guthrie's growing popularity during the folk boom in the 1960s, Verve Records, a subsidiary of MGM Records, entered into a manufacturing and distribution deal with Folkways Records, the repository of the bulk of Guthrie's recordings, briefly creating Verve/Folkways Records, for which Folkways owner Moses Asch assembled several albums by Guthrie and others. One of the Guthrie titles, released in 1965, was 'Bonneville Dam and Other Columbia River Songs'. In 1941, Guthrie had famously written a series of songs promoting the Bonneville Power Administration and its harnessing of the Columbia River along the border of Oregon and Washington State to provide electricity for the region, songs like "The Grand Coulee Dam." Asch combined some of his recordings of these songs with other Guthrie titles, notably his best-known song "This Land Is Your Land." 

I bought my copy of this Woody Guthrie classic sometime in the late 1960s and it instantly became a "favorite' LP that saw lots of play in my house. Of course today, as is the case with so many early folk and blues singers, everything Woody ever recorded has been issued, and reissued, and repackaged and issued again. There are multi-disc collections available that cover every aspect of Woody's career in great detail. Nevertheless, when I feel like listening to some Woody Guthrie this is the record I repeatedly go to. A wonderful, concise collection of Woody's best recordings, that most definitely deserves another listen.

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