Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie

Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. It was released by Victor Records, in 1940. 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 the first or one of the very first concept albums. 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 1964, during the American folk music revival, a reissue was released in LP format by Folkways Records after RCA refused Guthrie's request to re-issue the album. In 2000, it was reissued by Buddha Records including the two previously unreleased tracks. The complete Dust Bowl Ballads remains available on compact disc through Smithsonian Folkways.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.