That's Why We're Marching: WWII and the American Folk Song Movement

Performer: Various Artists
Distributor: Ryko Distribution

Notes: THAT'S WHY WE'RE MARCHING: WORLD WAR II & THE AMERICAN FOLK SONG MOVEMENT includes 15 previously unreleased tracks. Compilation producers: Jeff Place, Dr. Guy Logsdon. Engineers: Moses Asch. Principally recorded between 1941 and 1949. Includes liner notes by Dr. Guy Logsdon and Jeff Place. Personnel: Woody Guthrie (vocals, guitar, mandolin); Tom Glazer (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Brownie McGhee (vocals, guitar, background vocals); Cisco Houston, Butch Hawes, Josh White, Burl Ives (vocals, guitar); Leadbelly (vocals, 12-string guitar); Pete Seeger (vocals, banjo); Bess Lomax Hawes (vocals, mandolin); Doc Reese, Millard Lampell, Hally Wood, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays (vocals); Sonny Terry, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (harmonica); Sis Cunningham (accordion); Willie "The Lion" Smith (piano); Pops Foster (bass guitar); Arthur Stern (background vocals). Liner Note Authors: Guy Logsdon; Jeff Place. Unknown Contributor Roles: Dupree ; Almanac Singers. Fifteen of the 25 tracks on this 71-minute disc are previously unreleased and the rest are not easily available. That's no reflection on their quality, but it is a clue to their limited typicality: these are songs written and recorded in the first half of the 1940s in response to world events before and during World War II; after the war, they dated fast. In fact, some of them became obsolete even before the U.S. entered the war. The earliest songs are three tracks by the Almanac Singers (who included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and others) from the spring of 1941 decrying the actions of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration that inclined the country toward the war. When the songs were recorded, they expressed a commonly held sentiment. But only a couple of months later, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the singers themselves repudiated their sentiments, and another six months later, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they seemed positively treasonous. The rest of the album's songs are patriotic, pro-war expressions of the need to overcome Hitler and win the war. But even amid such mainstream sentiments, the left-wing folksingers slip in lyrics in support of unions and civil rights, more long-standing views for them. They also find space to praise U.S. ally the Soviet Union in songs that became politically unacceptable after the war. Fifty years later, of course, all of this makes for a musical, historical curiosity, and a listener's primary interest is likely to be the opportunity to hear previously unissued music by Guthrie, Seeger, Leadbelly, Josh White, Burl Ives, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and a host of other excellent folksingers. ~ William Ruhlmann

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