WOODY GUTHRIE & CISCO HOUSTON
In the spring of 1944, fresh off a torpedoed merchant marine ship, Woody Guthrie began showing up at the offices of Moses Asch's Asch Records, where the record company owner let him make recordings informally; Guthrie would show up either alone or with a friend, usually his merchant marine partner Cisco Houston, but also Sonny Terry, Bess Lomax Hawes, and/or... more Leadbelly, and they would cut dozens of old folk songs, some with newly written lyrics by Guthrie, plus some of Guthrie's outright originals. The masters quickly piled up into the hundreds, far more than even a major label could release, and Asch had only issued a fraction of them by 1947, when he went bankrupt. That had ominous implications for Guthrie's discography, since some of the masters were retained by Asch's creditors, including his former partner, Herbert Harris of Stinson Records. The two disputed ownership of the material, but neither seems to have had the money for a legal battle. Asch, returning to solvency, put his Guthrie tracks out on his newly formed Folkways Records, while Harris released his on Stinson. (Other recordings were acquired by Pickwick Records and later appeared on such labels as Everest.)
A1 - Gypsy Davy
A2 - More Pretty Girls Than One
A3 - Pretty Boy Floyd
A4 - Poor Boy
A5 - Hey Lolly Lolly
A6 - Lonesome Day
B1 - John Henry
B2 - Rangers Command
B3 - Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way
B4 - Buffalo Skinners
B5 - Hard, Ain't It Hard
B6 - Worried Man Blues
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A1 - Take A Whiff On Me
A2 - Bad Lee Brown
A3 - The Golden Vanity
A4 - Cumberland Gap
A5 - Sourwood Mountain
A6 - Old Time Religion
B1 - Columbus Stockade
B2 - Johnny Hard
B3 - Foggy Mountain Top
B4 - Bury Me Beneath The Willow
B5 - Skip To My Lou
B6 - Ezekill Saw The Wheel
Vinyl rips. Covers, labels.