Without Woody Guthrie there would have been no Bob Dylan. There would have been no Bruce Springsteen, no Clash and certainly no Billy Bragg. Hey, quit nodding wistfully at the back there; no Woody Guthrie would have been a bad bad thing okay, despite what you might think of the modern day Keats (sic) that is Mr Zimmerman.
Indeed follow the bendy road that is protest song through to its logical conclusion and as unlikely as it might sound, you'd probably end up trading rhetoric with the fiery like of Marilyn Manson and the Manics.
A child of the Great Depression Guthrie's politics were forged in the Oklahoma dustbowl where he witnessed his father travel from town to town looking for paid work to keep from starving.
Born of an America that also fostered the reforming likes of Steinbeck and FDR, these songs are demands for reform and a return to compassion, outsider laments from a man who felt disenfranchised and betrayed by his own country. With a quirky blend of the two big C's - Christianity and Communism - colouring his worldview, this 4CD collection is probably as good an introduction to Guthrie's work as any other out there.
Featuring a comprehensive round-up of his best known songs and 2 CD's given over to a spoken word biography of the man, if Billy Bragg with Wilco's treatment of Woody's work on the 'Mermaid Avenue' albums of the last few years captured your imagination then you could do worse than steal this - don't worry, Woody wouldn't mind... he hated capitalism.
That the idea or notion of Woody Guthrie is very often far more agreeable than the actual musical truth shouldn't blind you to his importance. Like his fellow brothers in mono Robert Johnson and Hank Williams Jr you might not want this on in the background too often when you kick back with a beer but if nothing else you do get a real feeling of this definitely doing you some physical good. Go on, detox with Woody: get all that Sportz Metal cr*p flushed out of your system once and for all.
