This Month in Music (1940): Woody Guthrie released Dust Bowl Ballads

Dust Bowl Ballads Woody Guthrie

Released: July 1940 Recorded: April 26 – May 3, 1940 Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Genre: folk

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster) Talking Dust Bowl Blues Pretty Boy Floyd * Dusty Old Dusty (So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh) Dust Bowl Blues * Blowin’ Down the Road (I Ain’t Going to Be Treated This Way) Tom Joad, Pt. 1 Tom Joad, Pt. 2 Do Re Mi Dust Bowl Refugee Vigilante Man Dust Cain’t Kill Me Dust Pneumonia Blues Talking Dust Bowl Blues [alternate version] ** * 1964 reissue ** 2000 reissue Total Running Time: 36:36

Rating: 4.460 out of 5.00 (average of 17 ratings) Quotable: “It helped define all the folk music that followed it” – William Ruhlmann, AllMusic.com Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Grapes of Wrath “When 27-year-old Woody Guthrie appeared in New York City in the winter of 1940, he struck observers as a living, breathing embodiment of the characters John Steinbeck had written about in his best-selling novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which had just been turned into a motion picture. Hailing from Oklahoma, Guthrie had a detailed knowledge of the Dust Bowl conditions that had led to an exodus of Okies west to California, where they became migrant workers in often onerous conditions, and he used that knowledge to create songs with the tunefulness of Jimmie Rodgers and the wry wit of Will Rogers. Victor Records, looking for an answer to rival Columbia’s folk singer Burl Ives, signed Guthrie and put him in a recording studio, resulting in two simultaneously released three-disc albums of 78s” AM1 known at the time as Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 1 and Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 2. Collectively they constitute a consistent concept album that roughly follows the outlines of…The Grapes of Wrath.” AM2 The Album’s Impact “Guthrie played acoustic guitar rhythmically and efficiently, occasionally also blowing on a harmonica to accompany his singing, which was full of rural diction and country twang, but still got his points across clearly. Victor got more than it bargained for in signing Guthrie. He was far more serious, and far more accomplished, than a light entertainer like Ives. The whole panoply of a national disaster was set out in his music, expressed with both humor and conviction.” AM1 “Sixty years later, listeners may hear these songs through the music Guthrie influenced, particularly the folk tunes of Bob Dylan. Either way, this is powerful music, rendered simply and directly. It was devastatingly effective when first released, and it helped define all the folk music that followed it.” AM2 The Original Release and Reissues “RCA Victor Records, the only major label for which Guthrie ever recorded, issued two three-disc 78 rpm albums, Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 1 and Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 2, in July 1940, containing a total of 11 songs.” AM2 The collection was revamped in 1964 as a single 12” LP with two songs added. When it was reissued again in 2000, another song was added and the running order was shuffled again. The Songs Here are insights into individual tracks. “The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)” “The story begins, as The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster) has it, ‘On the fourteenth day of April of 1935,’ when a giant dust storm hits the Great Plains, transforming the landscape. Shortly after, the farmers pack up their families and head west, where they have been promised there is work aplenty picking fruit in the lush valleys of California.” AM1 “Talkin’ Dust Bowl Ballad Blues” “The trip is eventful, as Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues humorously shows” AM2 “though his comic observations did nothing to hide the circumstances as he spoke in the first person of an Okie taking his family to California.” AM1 An alternate version of the song was added to the 2000 reissue. “Pretty Boy Floyd” “In Pretty Boy Floyd, he treats an ancillary subject, as the famous outlaw is valorized as a misunderstood Robin Hood. Guthrie treats his subject alternately with dry wit and defiance.” AM2 The song was not part of the original Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940 but was added in 1964 when the collection was reissued as a single 12” LP. “Dust Bowl Ballads” was also added add this point. “Blowin’ Down This Road” “Blowin’ Down This Road was more direct, with its defiant tag line, ‘I ain’t a-gonna be treated this-a-way.’” AM1 “Tom Joad” “In case the connection to The Grapes of Wrath was not clear enough, Guthrie concluded the [original] album with the two parts of Tom Joad, which was nothing less than a musical retelling of…the novel.” AM1 Because of the limitations of the 78 record format, the song was split into two parts. “Do Re Mi” Meanwhile, Do Re Mi warned “that the promises about California were false and that, as dispossessed and desperate as they might be, the Okies were better advised to stay home unless they were ready to establish themselves immediately in the West, unless they had ‘the do re mi,’ (i.e., money).” AM1 “Dust Cain’t Kill Me” “Guthrie’s songs go back and forth across this tale of woe,” AM2 sometimes focusing “on human villains, with deputy sheriffs and vigilantes providing particular trouble” AM2 and sometimes “on the horrors of the dust storm” AM2 such as on Dust Cain’t Kill Me, which finds “the singer admitting it could kill his family, for instance, but nevertheless asserting that it wouldn’t kill him.” AM1 “Dust Pneumonia Blues” He was “conscious of the deliberate contrast with Jimmie Rodgers, whose music is evoked even as he is being mocked in Dust Pneumonia Blues.” AM2

Reviews: AM1 AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann of original 1940 releases AM2 AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann of 2000 reissue TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/7/2008; last updated 9/5/2025.