This Labor Day, listen to Woody Guthrie
When you’re a music nerd like me, Woody Guthrie’s name gets tossed around a lot, but you don’t see his music on top 100 lists or in broad discussions. After giving a listen to his legendary album Dust Bowl Ballads, I can’t imagine why. People idolize his image, and idolize those directly inspired by him (namely Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen), and yet his actual songs are widely ignored. I only knew about Dust Bowl Ballads because it’s arguably the first modern album. It is so much more than that trivia fact.
If you have reservations about following this article’s demand let me assuage them now. Despite this album’s deep ties to a long past history, its themes and topics are as relevant as ever. The entire album is about Dust Bowl refugees, and even ignoring the obvious connection to the ongoing climate crisis the human connection Guthrie makes in these stories is striking. Despite the album’s title referring to its contents as “ballads” nearly the entire album sits at a mid-tempo speed or higher, and despite the death and destruction ever-present in the lyrics there’s also humor in the lyrics and delivery. Like it always does, the humor makes a terrible situation bearable.
Why I suggest Woody Guthrie and Dust Bowl Ballads in particular on Labor Day is simple: Woody Guthrie’s songs are eternal histories of working people. Pretty Boy Floyd is a classic Robin Hood story, I Ain’t Got No Home in this World Anymore deals with homelessness, Vigilante Man is a song decrying police violence, and there are themes of workers being suppressed throughout the album. Dust Bowl Ballads is an album about life, death, home, migration, the environment, and the humans within it. It doesn’t have the same all-consuming ambitions of Songs in the Key of Life, but it achieves a similar feat. When listening to this album I feel a connection to my past that humbles me deeply. On Labor Day, we should all remember our history. The history of strife that brought us here, and what we can do today to make sure history looks on us fondly.
