Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #133 (December 2007/January 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Shaking Out the Sheets

Dirty Linen Classics

by Michael Parrish

Woody Guthrie
The Live Wire (In Performance 1949)
Woody Guthrie Productions (2007)

Despite the pioneering field recording efforts of early ethnomusicologists like John and Alan Lomax, the nascent years of "mainstream" folk music are almost unchronicled in live recordings. In particular, the performing career of Woody Guthrie -- undeniably the lightning rod of the movement and inspiration for multitudes of folks with guitars in subsequent decades -- has been accessible only through remembrances of his peers and a couple of nearly unlistenable archival recordings. Until now. In the winter of 1949, Paul Braverman, then a student at Rutgers University, brought a portable wire recorder to YM-YWHA's Fuld Hall in Newark, New Jersey, to record one of Guthrie's concerts. Obviously an archivist at heart, Braverman held onto the wire recordings for over half a century before donating them to the Woody Guthrie Archives in 2001. The delicate and aged recording media were meticulously restored in three state-of-the-art audio facilities to produce the best representation we are likely to hear of Guthrie performing an entire show before an audience.

[cover #133]