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| Dust Bowl Ballads | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio album by | |
| Released | July 1940 |
| Recorded | April 26 and May 3, 1940 |
| Venue | Victor Records, New York[1] |
| Genre | |
| Length | 36:36 |
| Label | Victor Records |
| Producer | Robert P. Weatherald[1] |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic (vol. 1) |  [2] |
| AllMusic (vol. 2) | [3] |
Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. It was released by Victor Records, in 1940.[4] All the songs on the album deal with the Dust Bowl and its effects on the country and its people. It is considered to be one of the first concept albums.[5] It was Guthrie's first commercial recording and the most successful album of his career.
Dust Bowl Ballads was originally released as eleven songs on two simultaneously released three-disc set albums of 78 rpm records entitled Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 1 and Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 2. The twelve sides in total had one song each except for the double-sided "Tom Joad" which was too long to be pressed on a single side of a 78. However, two of the thirteen songs recorded on the sessions, "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Dust Bowl Blues" were left out due to length. All of the tracks were recorded at Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey on April 26, 1940, except "Dust Cain't Kill Me" and "Dust Pneumonia Blues" which were recorded on May 3. In 1950, and in 1964 during the American folk music revival, reissues were released in LP format by Folkways Records after RCA refused Guthrie's request to re-issue the album.[6] RCA Victor also re-released the album in 1964 but with the two previously unreleased tracks included, and in 2000 this was reissued by Buddha Records with an additional previously unreleased alternate version of one song. The complete Dust Bowl Ballads remains available on compact disc through Smithsonian Folkways.[7]
Like many of Guthrie's later recordings, these songs contain an element of social activism, and would be an important influence on later musicians, including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs and Joe Strummer.
- ^ a b Guthrie, Woody. "Dust Bowl Ballads". Discography of American Historical Recordings. UC Santa Barbara Library. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
- ^ Ruhlmann, William. "Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads". AllMusic. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
- ^ Ruhlmann, William. "Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads". AllMusic. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
- ^ "Timeline of Woody Guthrie | Articles and Essays | Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress". Loc.gov.
- ^ "The return of concept album". The Independent. 2 October 2009. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
- ^ Smithsonian Folkways: Sounds to Grow On Episode 20. Broadcast February 21, 2010. Folkways.si.edu
- ^ Dust Bowl Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways Records. Folkways.si.edu
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