Today, in honor of the recently completed U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit, I’m posting up a 1955 LP by John Greenway. Greenway was a Folklore/Anthropology/English professor at the University of Colorado back in the 50’s and 60’s and wrote an excellent book called “American Folksongs of Protest,” published in 1953. On this LP Greenway, also a good folksinger records a selection of the protest, topical and labor songs he talks about in the book. Its a cool record and an excellent compilation of material that is hard to find recorded examples of elsewhere. Greenway’s strong suit is the Woody Guthrie material he covers on here, he does a good Guthrie.
CLICK HERE to download.
Below are the notes, click to enlarge:
Links:
Check out this excellent film about Sarah Ogan Gunning, the amazing Kentucky miner’s union activist and songwriter who’s song “Dreadful Memories” Greenway covers on this record.
many thanx! been tryin’ to trace this historical record for quite awhile – especially love Steibeck’s epigraph!
—-and. sorry. could i just remind you of something – quite quite a long time ago you said you were goin’ to digitize (& post) two rare classic Elektra records – String Band Project & Old Time Banjo Project. i waited while months went by but i thought it wasn’t apt to remind you. now that about 2 years are gone, could you PLEASE tell – are you still goin’ to do it anyway or you just dropped the idea completely? these lp’s are elusive as hell, can’t get mp3’s or whatever, while Elektra still seem to shrug off any proposals for re-issues…
very best regards, dustraman
Hey, yeah I finally located the Elektra Banjo Project record and will be posting it up soon. Still don’t have the Stringband Project. Funny how time gets away from you, has it been 2 years already? Well, its comin’ up pretty soon. – Eli
Thanks a lot!
Do you have John Greenway’s “Talking Blues”?
I have heard some of them and they are great. Very funny!
And this LP is really good, too.
Hi Ejler (Copenhagen, Denmark)