8 months ago
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
For decades, the original metal masters of Woody Guthrie's songs lay forgotten and stacked in cardboard barrels in a Brooklyn basement. Producer Michael Creamer learned of the trove through his cousin and took some discs to engineer Doug Pomeroy, who rejuvenated the folk hero's early-'40s recordings to create My Dusty Road, a 54-track, four-CD set due Aug. 25 on Rounder Records.
The first installment of the Woody Guthrie Legacy Series contains unreleased tracks and such signatures as This Land Is Your Land, Pretty Boy Floyd and Hard Travelin, plus photos, lyric sheets and facsimiles of Guthrie's business card, a postcard to his wife and a 1940s booking card, all in a replica vintage suitcase.
Enthralled by the remastered cache's brilliant clarity, Guthrie's daughter Nora gushes in the liner notes: "It's achingly human, simple and direct yet full of spirited words and ideas. It's very, very strange. The more time goes by, the clearer Woody's voice gets."
