Songs of Labor & New Woody Guthrie Masters

10 p.m. to Midnight Host: Steve Winters

It’s the Labor Day weekend and the program starts off with classic songs of working people.

However, the piece de resistance for this show is our first airing of a stunning multi-CD set from Rounder Records of the newly-found nickel-plated copper masters of a host of Woody Guthrie recordings done in 1944 by Herbert Harris and Moses Asch. The masters had languished for decades in the basement of a Brooklyn home owned by Harris, the former owners of long-defunct Stinson Record Company. The masters were gently restored and, as Rounder notes, the “clarity and presence of the sound was revelatory.” The first batch of recordings from the masters was recently issued by Rounder as a four-disc, 54-track boxed set, “My Dusty Road.” Hands down they are best recordings of Woody Guthrie, America’s quintessential balladeer, storyteller and songwriter who died in 1967 from a disease that disabled him starting in the 1950s.

The second hour included set from new albums by the Connecticut-based band CornBread and Joel Mabus.

  • Artist, "Title", Album, Label

  • Rolf Cahn & Eric von Schmidt, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out”, Rolf Cahn & Eric von Schmidt, Folkways

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  • Paul Robeson, “Joe Hill”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

  • Pete Seeger & The Almanac Singers, “Casey Jones (Union Scab)”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

  • Mike Seeger, “Cotton Mill Colic”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

  • Peggy Seeger, “Aragon Mill”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

  • Utah Phillips, “The Preacher And The Slave”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

  • Florence Reese/The Almanac Singers, “Which Side Are You On?”, Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways

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  • Woody Guthrie, “I’m Gonna Join That One Big Union”, “Gonna Roll The Union On”, “The Ludlow Massacre”, “Union Burying Ground”, My Dusty Road, Rounder

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  • Woody Guthrie, “Buffalo Skinners”, “Chisholm Trail”, “John Henry”, My Dusty Road, Rounder

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  • Woody Guthrie, “Bad Repetation”, “This Land Is Your Land”, My Dusty Road, Rounder

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  • CornBread, “Country Boy”, “Muddy Waters”, “Stealin’”, Clearing The Tracks, Independent

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  • CornBread, “Little Martha”, “Windin’ Boy”, Clearing The Tracks, Independent

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  • Joel Mabus, “Two Cents Plain”, “Little Mister Dippy”, “Halfway Home”, “The Lost Shall Be Redeemed”, No Worries Now, Fossil

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  • Resophonics, “Joy Comes Back”, “Little Hazel Jane”, Diamonds In the Ground, Independent