Woody Guthrie Lost Bonneville Power Recordings Preservation

Thanks for sharing this with us Nate! Best of luck.

 

I'm enjoying following this thread.

 

let us know how you get on with the rest of the journey. great stuff!

 

This is great!

 

Exciting! Thanks to the OP for sharing his discovery on this forum.

 

Please keep us in the loop. I need to know how this plays out.

 

Yes! Absolutely.

 

THIS is exciting!

 

This is the indeed an exciting find and an enjoyable thread. Can anyone give a little more background on exactly what these discs are?

I am imagining they were cut at the same time as a live radio performance. It would be interesting if one of you knowledgeable people could post a link that might catch some of us up on a bit of the backstory here.

 

Woody Guthrie's Fertile Month on the Columbia River
In May 1941, folk singer Woody Guthrie spent one month working for the federal government. His job was to travel to the Pacific Northwest and write songs promoting huge hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River.

The government faced powerful opposition from private utilities and hoped that folk songs would prompt more public support. Out of this month of work came some of Guthrie's best-known songs.

Elmer Buehler, now 96 years old, was appointed Guthrie's driver and guide for the month. Buehler remembers the day Guthrie, not yet a folk-music legend, auditioned for Paul Raver at the Bonneville Power Administration.

"He sat there on the administrator's desk," Buehler recalls, "and strummed on his 'gee-tar,' as he always said. I don't think he was there over half an hour and Dr. Raver said, 'Well, you're hired.'"

Raver paid Guthrie $266.66. When the month was over, the folk singer had written 26 songs, among them "Roll on Columbia," "Grand Coulee Dam" and "Pastures of Plenty." Guthrie recorded a few of the tunes in the basement of the agency's headquarters.

"Roll On Columbia" was written after Guthrie had seen the Bonneville Dam, 40 miles east of Portland. Sixty-six years later, white water still rushes through the hydroelectric generators in the dam, creating enough power for entire towns.

Buehler says he drove Guthrie there in a brand new 1941 Hudson Hornet. It was just one of many stops they made that month.

"He got to see that Eastern Washington country," Buehler says, "thousands of acres of land with nothing but sage brush and jack rabbits and stuff like that. And now it's the greatest farmland you think of because they've got water. They put in reservoirs."

Guthrie's songs echoed this optimistic period in the West. Few were thinking of the salmon the dams would sacrifice. Instead, it was all about harnessing nature's power to help people.

Bill Murlin is a folk singer and former Bonneville employee who took a special interest in Guthrie's time with the agency.

He says if Guthrie's tune to "Grand Coulee Dam" sounds familiar, think "Wabash Cannonball." Murlin says Guthrie's gift was lyrics — the folk singer often "borrowed" melodies from other musicians.

Murlin says it's clear Guthrie was struck by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

"Just majestic lyrics, describing what he saw, 'In the misty, crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray,'" says Murlin, quoting a line from Guthrie's "Grand Coulee Dam."

Murlin says the lyrics also show Guthrie's political leanings. There's much talk about how irrigation, shipping and electricity would help the common man.

Buehler says he saw evidence of that same concern for the average person when the head of a local chamber of commerce asked Guthrie to perform at a function.

"They wanted him to play background music, and he gave them the answer. He said, 'I wouldn't play any background music, let alone foreground music, for any chamber of commerce,'" Buehler says, quoting Guthrie from memory.

But Buehler says Guthrie was willing to play for less-fortunate folks. He remembers a hotel lobby in the small, blue-collar port town of Arlington, Ore. Buehler says much of the town turned out for an impromptu concert; Guthrie played for them until nearly midnight.

Guthrie died 26 years after his Columbia River experience. He was only 55 years old and suffered from Huntington's Disease. Every year in his hometown of Okemah, Okla., residents hold a folk festival that bears his name.

 

Great thread! The records do indeed look like period instantaneous copy discs. Just like watching a great who dunnit!

 

Sorry to go off topic, but it's time you started listening.

 

This thread should be "stickied." This could be a momentous find.

 

^this

 

This is one exciting thread.


Songs of the Common People. Los Angeles, late 1930s




Woody Guthrie with Marjorie Mazia, New York 1942

 

You have never in your life heard This Land Is Your Land? Where you been living, in Receda?

 

This is the stuff of dreams! Looking forward to following it

 

This is a momentous find, but you would never know it by the meager response to this thread. It's impossible to gauge the influence of Woody Guthrie, who deeply influenced Bob Dylan who, in turn, deeply influenced the rest of the rock world in the mid sixties.

A bit sad, really.

 

I think the thread has slowed down because the materials in question haven't been identified as rare or valuable yet. Guthrie's work is the Mt. Everest of modern songwriting, but we don't know if these are rare cuttings or home 78rpm cuttings.

 

Here's a doco for the uninitiated. Very interesting with so much tragedy in his life:

 

Guthrie's influence continues on. Son Volt's album title "Okemah and the Melody of Riot" and the lyric, from "Bandages & Scars" from the same album: "the words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head".

And then the various projects using Guthrie's lyrics and attaching to original music: Billy Bragg and Wilco "Mermaid Avenue" (and the sequel) and New Multitudes (Jay Farrar from Son Volt again, along with Anders Parker, Yim Yames (Jim James of My Morning Jacket) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic etc)...all fantastic stuff.

 

And don´t forget Janis Ian, who was asked to and did add a tune to Woody´s "I Hear You Sing Again".

 

I'd say this needs to be "stickied" as well. Fascinating that things like this are still just floating around out there just waiting to be found. I'm excited to hopefully someday hear the results.

 

I didn't know that. I'll check it out.

 

I like it a lot. But then I´m partial to that talented lady. It´s on her "BILLIE´S BONES" album from 2004. If you get hold of the "JANIS IAN LIVE AT CLUB CAFE", she tells the story of how the writing of that song came about.