VARIOUS ARTISTS
Woody Guthrie: The Tribute
Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970
Bear Family Records
Woody Guthrie, one of the most important, iconic and influential of
20th century folksingers, songwriters, authors, activists, and social
commentators died 50 years ago this month on October 3, 1967. Woody was 55 when
he died after spending 13 years in hospitals due to Huntington’s disease, a hereditary
neurological disease.
Woody left an
extraordinary body of work created in a remarkably brief career. It used to be
said that he wrote about 1,000 songs. Now thanks to the archival work of Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, we know that he wrote about 3,000 songs – some of which have come to life over the
past couple of decades as Nora has passed lyrics on to contemporary artists to
set to music, and many of more of which we can still look forward to hearing in
years to come.
I was barely into my teens
when Woody died and it was right around that time that I was developing a
serious interest in folk music. I bought my first Woody Guthrie LP within a week or two of hearing
that he’d died. Pretty soon I also read Bound
for Glory, his autobiography published in 1943. I was hooked on Woody’s
songs and writings. Within a couple of years I was meeting some of Woody’s real
life friends – Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee,
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Logan English, Pete Seeger and others – who were all open to sitting and chatting
with a kid who wanted to hear stories about their travels and adventures with
Woody. Later on, I got to know Arlo
Guthrie and Nora Guthrie and hear some of their stories about growing up as
Woody’s kids.
After Woody died,
multi-artist tribute concerts in his honor were held at Carnegie Hall in New
York City on January 20, 1968 and at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on
September 12, 1970, both produced by Harold Leventhal.
The concerts were recorded and a couple of LPs with excerpts from those
concerts, including scripted narration, were released in 1972 on Columbia and
Warner Bros. Records. I eagerly bought those LPs when they first came out and returned
to them frequently over the years.
But those LPs only gave us
highlights of those wonderful concerts. A half-century later we have Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts –
Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970, an amazing boxed set of three CDs and two
hardcover books.
 |
| Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Garth Hudson, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Rick
Danko, Jack Elliott, Levon Helm, Odetta, Robbie Robertson, and Richie
Havens at Carnegie Hall, January 1968. Photo by Dave Gahr. |
The first CD includes most of the Carnegie
Hall concert (apparently one reel of the original tapes was lost) including
singing performances by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Odetta,
Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, and Bob Dylan, and narration by
actors Will Geer and Robert Ryan. There is also a recording of
Woody himself singing his great kids’ song, “Riding in My Car,” that must have
been played for the audience at the concert. The backup musicians included
bassists Raphael Grinage and Bill Lee and a group that would soon
come to be known as The Band: Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth
Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. I would note
that there were actually two Carnegie Hall concerts that day that followed the
same script – an afternoon show and an evening show.
The second CD and part of the third includes
the entire Hollywood Bowl concert including singing performances by Arlo
Guthrie, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Country Joe McDonald, Jack
Elliott, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Earl Robinson, and narration by
actors Will Geer and Peter Fonda. The backup musicians were John
Beland (Dobro), Ry Cooder (guitar, mandolin), Chris Ethridge
(bass), Gib Guilbeau (fiddle), Thad Maxwell (guitar), John
Pilla (guitar) and Stan Pratt (drums).
There are a good 20 performances on these CDs
that were not on the original LPs. As well, the concerts have been restored to
their original set orders rather than the artificial sequencing of tracks from
the two shows on the LPs.
I can’t list highlights
from these concerts because if I mention Tom Paxton singing “Biggest Thing That
Man Has Ever Done,” how can I not mention his versions of “Pretty Boy Floyd” or
“Pastures of Plenty”? And If mention Tom Paxton, how can I not mention the
great performances by Odetta, Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Joan
Baez, Richie Havens, Richie Havens, and Earl Robinson? I
loved almost all of them – particularly the many collaborations on songs
featuring two or three or more of the artists. Of course, the moving finales to
the two concerts were full cast performances of “This Land is Your Land.”
I will say something about
Bob Dylan’s Carnegie Hall performances of “Grand Coulee Dam,” “Dear Mrs.
Roosevelt” and “I Ain’t Got No Home” with The Band. It was Dylan’s first public
concert since his 1966 motorcycle accident and came after he’d spent much time
in 1967 holed up with The Band recording what would later emerge as
The Basement Tapes and more recently and
much more intriguingly as
The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete. Dylan’s folk
rock arrangements of these three Woody Guthrie songs, I think, can be seen as
an outgrowth of the basement tapes process. The arrangements, I would add, don’t
sound at all like Dylan’s
John Wesley
Harding album which was recorded after
The
Basement Tapes but before the Woody Guthrie tribute concert at Carnegie Hall.
It’s also interesting to note
that Dylan – wisely, I think – left out the verses to “
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt” pertaining
to the Second World War-era summits in Tehran and Yalta, particularly the one
that seemed to praise
Joseph Stalin.
It’s a verse that might have made sense in the 1940s – but certainly not after
what the world started to learn in 1956 about the former Soviet dictator.
 |
| Earl Robinson, Odetta, Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and
Peter Fonda at Hollywood Bowl, September 1970. © Woody Guthrie
Publications, Inc. |
Linking the songs in both
concerts is the narration from a script based on Woody Guthrie’s writings that
was first put together by
Millard
Lampell – a member of the
Almanac
Singers with Woody, Pete Seeger,
Lee
Hays,
Sis Cunningham and others
in the early-1940s – for a benefit concert in 1956 after Woody had been
hospitalized. Most of the narration was read by actors Robert Ryan, Will Geer and
Peter Fonda but we also hear a poignant passage read by Judy Collins
(Carnegie Hall) and Joan Baez (Hollywood Bowl) in which Woody recalled the
childhood death of his sister Clara. My favorite passage in the narration comes
when Will Geer recites Woody’s “
I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good…” quote.
The bonus tracks that
complete the third CD are mostly interviews about the concert – most of them newly
recorded with performers who were part of the events like Arlo Guthrie, Tom
Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Judy Collins. It’s interesting to hear about
Arlo’s discomfort at the time about the how the concerts followed a script –
particularly given Woody’s spontaneous nature.
While most of the artists and
other interviewees look back with awe at their experiences, the set also includes
a four-minute passage from a 1968 interview with Phil Ochs conducted by Gordon
Friesen of Broadside Magazine (and released after Ochs’ death in 1976 on an
LP, Broadside Vol.11: Interviews with
Phil Ochs) in which Ochs speaks very resentfully about the Carnegie Hall
concert and about his not having been invited to be part of it. It’s not pretty
hearing him attack the concert itself and speak bitterly about certain artists he
felt were less worthy than himself.
The final bonus track is
Bob Dylan’s stunning spoken word piece, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” that
he recited at a Town Hall concert in New York on April 12, 1963 and that was
previously released on the boxed set, The
Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3: Rare and Unreleased, 1961-1991. A perfect
ending.
The two coffee-table-sized
hardcover books included in the set are stunning. The main book includes substantial
essays about Woody Guthrie, the concerts and the artists – with many amazing
photographs – and much more Woody-related information. There are also
reproductions of some of Woody’s drawings and original hand- and typewritten
lyrics. The second book is a hardbound version of the songbook released in
conjunction with the 1972 LPs that includes more great photos of Woody and the
concert performers as well as the script and songs (music and lyrics) as they
were sequenced on the LPs. Both books are something to behold.
Producers Nora Guthrie,
Michael Kleff and
Steve Rosenthal have done a magnificent job in restoring the
Carnegie Hall and Hollywood Bowl concerts on the CDs and in putting together
the magnificent books.
Woody
Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970 is a beautiful
collectors’ item.
I will be featuring excerpts from Woody
Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts – Carnegie Hall 1968, Hollywood Bowl 1970 when I host the Saturday Morning program on CKCU on November 11 (7-10 am Eastern time).
 |
| Michael Kleff, Nora Guthrie & Mike Regenstreif at the Kansas City Folk Festival (2017) |
--Mike Regenstreif
