Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land: The Original Dust Bowl Ballads And Other Folk Songs (Digipak) (Import) (CD)

This Land Is Your Land: The Original Dust Bowl Ballads and Other Folksongs is a very solid two-disc, 36-cut Woody Guthrie compilation. Everything you would want is here, including the original take of the title cut with the extra verse. Here's a little side story about that: in the late '90s, no less than the United States Congress went to the Guthrie Family and asked if "This Land Is Your Land" could become the new national anthem. The family said yes, if they would retain all the original verses, they could use it. Uh-uh. Never happened, and the American national anthem is still by some drunken Scott who wrote it as a barroom singalong. Other great cuts here are both parts of "Tom Joad," "Jesus Christ," "Dust Bowl Blues," "We Shall Be Free," "Wreck of the Old '97," and dozens of others. Recommended. ~ Thom Jurek