Heading West, Heading West My Boys-With The Music of Woody Guthrie In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James    

The Asch Recordings, four CD set, Woody Guthrie, Smithstonian/Folkway,  1999  

You never know when some song is going to come up and bite you. At least that is what the old-time folk music critic Seth Garth (and critic in other genre too but since we are dealing with Woody Guthrie here let’s run the folk part of his expertise) was telling his old time high school hang around guy and fellow aficionado, some of that aficionado force marched by Seth, Jack Callahan. Seth had just read an article in Folk News magazine, the last remnant still standing publishing tidbits about any recent discoveries in the folk world, upcoming performances by the dwindling number of folk artists still standing, and ads looking for old time ballads and albums, stuff like that. The article had been about the roundabout discovery of a cache of Woody Guthrie songs recorded during World War II by Moses Asch and how the Smithstonian Institute’s folk section which had inherited most of the materials had been bringing them out in a strung out multi-volume set.     

But that hard and beautiful to Seth’s eyes fact was not what had Seth all in a lather. Not at least until he would later hear the recordings, a couple of the CDs, in the set and marvel at both the skill used in reproducing such arcane materials and surprise at the spring in Woody’s voice. Seth had long ago when he was with The Eye, when he did folk music reviews for a living, mentioned that like his protégé Bob Dylan it was not the so-so quality of his voice (or guitar playing) that marked Woody as an exceptional folksinger but the unforgettable lyrics he wrote. Now he would have to revise that estimation somewhat. What was agitating Seth enough to call up Jack and invite him over to the Erie Grille on the other side of Riverdale from where they both lived now was his recollection of how he knew about Woody in the first place. He flat out couldn’t remember so Seth merely wanted to pick Jack’s brain about when they first heard a song by Woody that they would have recognized as such.  

Jack, who really wasn’t one for heavy memory trails, when he sat down at the bar next to Seth and ordered a double scotch with a water chaser, an old habit, immediately said to Seth-“Don’t you remember in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh music class we sang This Land Is Your Land  and how we hated to have to sing the thing along with a dozen other stupid songs when all we cared about was rock and roll music, cared about perfecting our voices to sound like I don’t know Rickey Nelson or some guy like that. The whole idea by Mr. Lawrence who really hated rock and roll and was probably the biggest pain in the ass about us playing it on our transistor radios during lunchtime was to somehow ween us off rock and get us hopped up on folk, or worse classical music. I found out later that he was in cahoots with Mr. Walsh, the principal, and some parents to break up our listening habits. Fat chance. Don’t you remember how we would screw up the verses of purpose and when we sang the chorus we would switch up the places mentioned (California and New York) and half the other kids would follow our lead and the other half wouldn’t and Mr. Lawrence would flip out and stop the class and we had to begin over again.   

Seth admitted he had not remembered those incidents and even if he had he would have certainly left them in the memory vault earlier in his life when Woody was so revered in the folk scene he was supposed to cover. Such a story would have put a black mark beside his name in some quarters especially with guys like Irving Silver and his silly Rise Folk Rise magazine fortunately now long gone, along with him. Still Seth was glad that he had overcome whatever that youthful aversion was since he truly did believe that Woody had been central to the preservation of many early folk songs, and the sheer number of song that Moses Asch recorded in those dark World War II days is testament to his desire to preserve all that could be recovered. Funny Seth had though the same thing. Thought even more so when he heard that four CD set.