Woody Guthrie Songs As Poetry: Fill & Download for Free

Ooh! A musical list question! Not only that, but a structured musical list question! How can I pass up this opportunity?I’ll try not to cheat by giving more than one song per decade (though I will almost certainly mention other songs that I considered while making my choices, especially as we get closer to today along the timeline). But I also want to emphasize that I’m not trying to pick the “best song” or the “most popular song” or even the “most influential song” of the decade. It’s supposed to be a “defining” song, which can be interpreted strictly musically or can be extended to account for what else was happing in the world at that time. And, because I can’t resist, I’ll even double the time length and start at the beginning of the twentieth century.1900’s. In America, this was the decade between the Spanish-American War and World War I. Life was good (but not for everyone , of course…). Marconi invented wireless transmission, paving the way for radio (which once actually played music instead of just news and talk). They played the first baseball World Series early in the decade. in 1904, the Summer Olympics was held in St. Louis. Henry Ford introduced the Model T. Musically, the 1900’s was the era of ragtime, and everyone knows that ragtime means:Scott Joplin — The Entertainer1910’s. If we’re really “defining the decade”, then we should probably pick something that reflects “The Great War”, also known as ‘The War to End All Wars”. But I’m going to avoid that tiny, little issue and instead focus on the music. During this decade, popular music made its transition from ragtime to jazz. And so, we’ll pick a song by a leading figure in that transition:Jelly Roll Morton — Jelly Roll Blues1920’s. The Roaring Twenties. The era of flappers, good times, optimism, prosperity, and the Charleston. Women in America got the right to vote. The Scopes “Monkey” Trial was held. But in music, it was all about jazz. And the man defining the hottest jazz, in his recordings with The Hot Fives and The Hot Sevens was:Louis Armstrong — Potato Head Blues1930’s. The defining event of the decade was, of course, The Great Depression. And so we are going to pick a song that, while it was first recorded in 1940, was certainly written and performed in the 30’s byWoody Guthrie — Do Re Mi1940’s. Okay; I ignored World War I, but I won’t ignore World War II. Musically, jazz had evolved (in one direction) toward swing and big bands. So, we’ll take a song from one of those big bands, whose leader volunteered to join the army in 1942 and died when the airplane he was traveling in disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel in 1944.Glenn Miller — Pennsylvania 6–50001950’s. So, the difficulty with breaking things down by decades is that it’s too long a time period. There is an entire ten-year period (1945–1955) that we are going to ignore. That time period was about more big bands and the reign of “crooners” like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, VIc Damone, and jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. It was also the era of Eisenhauer, suburbia, gray flannel suits, and white, straight, middle-class values. But rock ’n’ roll came along in the second half of the decade of the 50′s and changed everything. So how can I not choose a song from the most transgressive musician of that period?Little Richard — Tutti Frutti1960’s. There are lots of possibilities here, but all the choices have to come from the world of rock. The events that dominated the decade in the USA were Vietnam and the civil rights movement, both of which led to protests in the streets and on college campuses. So, I thought about using The Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” or Neil Young’s “Ohio”. But I eventually settled on a song that helped define and explain the “generation gap”:The Who — My Generation1970’s. We are going to quietly skip over the disco era and jump right to the world of punk rock, formulated partly from a musical return to three-chord, do-it-yourself garage rock and partly from a protest against dire economic conditions. That leads us directly to those one-album-wonders:The Sex Pistols — God Save the Queen1980’s. A decade defined in part by the Gordon Gecko character (played by Michael Douglas) declaring in the movie Wall Street that “Greed is Good”. So, the defining song had to be about money. I briefly considered Cyndi Laup[er’s “Money Changes Everything”, but settled a song that also linked the requisite theme to the introduction of MTV:Dire Straits — Money for Nothing1990’s. I had some difficulty deciding on a song to define the 90’s. Of course, I considered Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”, and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”. But all of those seemed too bleak for much of the rest of what was going on that decade. So I eventually settled on something that reflected a much more idiosyncratic, left-field approach to culture:R.E.M. — Man on the Moon2000’s. I had much more difficulty deciding on a song for this decade. In the USA, it starts with the 9/11 attacks in 2001, so nothing before that can possibly define the decade. And then it proceeds through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a major economic collapse (“The Great Recession”) in 2008. Not the most uplifting of decades by any means. I considered The Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize” (the time has come to push the button), John Prine’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human” (some cowboy from Texas starts his own war in Iraq), John Fogerty’s “Gunslinger”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Last to Die”, Manu Chao’s “Politik Kills”, and even Chumbawamba’s “Everything You Know Is Wrong”. Then I thought about some songs that might get at the mood indirectly, including Drive-By Truckers’ “Danko/Manuel”, Green Day’s “American Idiot”, The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, The Bellrays’ “Tell the Lie”, or The Ark’s “This Piece of Poetry Is Meant To Do Harm”. I finally decided to follow the indirect route to its logical conclusion and picked:Wilco — I Am Trying To Break Your Heart2010’s. Another tough decade to find a defining song. I’m going to arbitrarily declare that 2020 is the start of a different decade (in part because it’s effect on music can’t be assessed at the moment). I briefly considered picking John Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven”, which comes from his final album before he died from complications of Covid-19. And that may eventually still turn out to be the best choice. I then thought about following a more-or-less political course. I considered Guy Clark’s “El Coyote”, Drive-By Truckers’ “Ramon Casiano”, John Hiatt’s “Nobody Knew His Name”, Rhiannon Giddens’ “Tomorrow Is My Turn”, Durand Jones’ “Morning in America”, Paul Simon’s “Wristband”, Margo Price’s “Heart of America”, or Elton John and Leon Russell’s “Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes”. Then I considered a few songs that tell more personal stories: Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires”, Rodney Crowell’s “What You Gonna Do Now”, Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow”, Buddy Guy’s “The Blues Is Alive And Well”, Brandy Clark’s “Girl Next Door, and even OK Go’s “The Writing’s On The Wall”. But I finally came around to this song:Bonnie Raitt — Used To Rule The World

Listen to Rabindra Sangeet. Beautiful, even if you’re not Bengali - or Indian, for that matter. I’m a Tamil and I’m hooked.Western Classical is also something that can leave you with multiple eargasms. Vivaldi, Beethoven and Mozart are great, but my personal favorite piece is “The Trout” by Franz Schubert. Artists created music that brought across a concept *without* words! Schubert only narrowly wins over Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” or Vivaldi’s “Spring”. An offshoot is opera, in which characters don’t narrate or convers; they sing instead. Great operas include “La Boheme”, “Turandot”, “Madame Butterfly” and many others by Puccini, “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky or “Pagliacci” by Leoncavallo.Early Blues and Jazz are said to be great.Try Psychedelic music such as Pink Floyd, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. Jimi Hendrix is also good.Folk, which bridges poetry and music, is also incredible stuff. It brought to us the music of Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Brothers Four, Peter, Paul & Mary, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Neil Young and many more. If you include country, you also have Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Jim Reeves and the like. Also Folk-Rock, which Dylan pioneered in. The Eagles are considered the best folk-rock band of all time (I prefer S&G, Dylan and Neil Young).Some Hard Rock acts are really nice to hear, such as The Who, Deep Purple, Joan Jett, Queen and Led Zep.Grunge and punk are excellent outlets of angst, as is Metal. The Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Black Sabbath and Metallica are just amazing.Brit pop (Oasis, The Verve, Blur) and post-millennium alternative acts such as Green Day, Linkin Park and the White Stripes are also good.Last but not least, rap. Gangsta rap is original and an outlet of fury that makes great listening. Try N.W.A., Geto Boys, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr.Dre, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Wu-Tang Clan and Eminem.