{"id":149011,"date":"2025-11-07T10:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T18:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=149011"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T18:54:12","slug":"review-woody-guthries-home-recordings-reveal-an-intimate-final-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/review-woody-guthries-home-recordings-reveal-an-intimate-final-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Woody Guthrie\u2019s Home Recordings Reveal an Intimate Final Chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When Woody Guthrie began these home recordings in 1951, his health was already failing. By the time he finished them the following year, he was about to enter Brooklyn State Hospital for the first time\u2014a turn that marked the final 16 years of his life with Huntington\u2019s disease. In that brief window at home, he recorded more than 300 performances across 32 tapes. <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4osYoh9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">This collection<\/a> gathers 22 of them\u2014including 13 Guthrie songs heard nowhere else\u2014each one a revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4osYoh9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?resize=1000%2C1000&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-149015\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?resize=500%2C500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/woody-at-home.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the songs are so fresh they\u2019re sung a cappella, offering what Guthrie called \u201ca sort of rough, dim hint, or little sometimes just a vague suggestion of really what I want to get at in a song.\u201d Even the ones we know are dramatically different from anything we\u2019ve heard before: \u201cThis Land Is Your Land\u201d comes with new verses, sweetened with images of Brooklyn mailboxes, doorsteps, and a house built by love. \u201cPastures of Plenty\u201d is recorded at half the speed (and half the energy) of the version we\u2019ve heard on recordings made for release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJesus Christ\u201d is sung in his lowest register, without any accompaniment except a creaky chair and a crinkling lyric sheet. \u201cDeportee\u201d (aka \u201cPlane Wreck at Los Gatos\u201d), the only known recording of Guthrie playing this song, is delivered in first-person singular, emphasizing the lives of these lost migrants rather than just their nameless, faceless deaths in the versions we\u2019ve known ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Deportee (Woody&#039;s Home Tape) - Woody Guthrie\" width=\"1290\" height=\"968\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MPtCU3mgs3I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And the songs we don\u2019t know? \u201cBackdoor Bum and the Big Landlord\u201d imagines a musical conversation outside the Pearly Gates between Guthrie and Fred Trump, father of a future president. \u201cMy Id &amp; My Ego\u201d reports on his conflicted feelings each time his wife takes off her stockings, unzips her dress, and walks through their Coney Island apartment shaking her hips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At its most hard-hitting, in \u201cI\u2019m a Child Ta Fight,\u201d Guthrie rededicates himself to fighting fascists, bragging about his centuries as a soldier, his hundreds of victories, and what\u2019s going to happen the next time he picks up his \u201cole squirrely gun.\u201d At its most profound, in \u201cLifebelt Washed Up,\u201d he wonders whose life was lost at sea, thinking back to his years in the merchant marine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"660\" height=\"440\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Single-mic-reel-to-reel-tape-recorder-1950.-Sabrina-Asch-Photography.jpg?resize=660%2C440&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-149014\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Single-mic-reel-to-reel-tape-recorder-1950.-Sabrina-Asch-Photography.jpg?w=660&amp;ssl=1 660w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Single-mic-reel-to-reel-tape-recorder-1950.-Sabrina-Asch-Photography.jpg?resize=500%2C333&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Single-mic-reel-to-reel-tape-recorder-1950.-Sabrina-Asch-Photography.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Single mic reel-to-reel tape recorder, 1950.&nbsp;<em>Sabrina Asch Photography<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>These are all great songs, strong enough to make us laugh, cry, and head out to the barricades. They show a 40-year-old Guthrie who\u2019s still as playful as a child, following inspiration wherever it takes him, and dividing his attention between fatherhood and nuclear war. Given the condition of the actual recordings, these restorations are astonishingly clear, and though some performances sound more polished than others, they\u2019re all about as naked as can be, with Woody determined to please his publisher, provide for his family, and commit these songs to tape before they\u2019re all forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The two-volume set \u2018Woody at Home, Vol. 1 and 2\u2019 on Shamus Records captures the folk icon in his last burst of creativity\u2014singing, scribbling, and laughing through songs both familiar and newly unearthed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":149012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"The two-volume set \u2018Woody at Home, Vol. 1 and 2\u2019 on Shamus Records captures the folk icon in his last burst of creativity\u2014singing, scribbling, and laughing through songs both familiar and newly unearthed.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[885],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1568],"class_list":["post-149011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Woody-Guthrie-photo-by-Sid-Grossman.-%C2%A9-Howard-Greenberg-Gallery.jpg?fit=660%2C524&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1568,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kenny-berkowitz","display_name":"Kenny Berkowitz","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149011"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149214,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149011\/revisions\/149214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149011"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=149011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}