Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti

Rate It! Avg: 4.5 (24 ratings)
Sample Album
Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti album cover
Album Information
EDITOR'S PICK

Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 48:08

Write a Review 3 Member Reviews

Please register before you review a release. Register

user avatar

Root Hog and Die

toryandrew

Best song ever written about trying to get somewhere knowing you have no power to change a horrible occurrence. My kids love it as well.

user avatar

A Great American Work

This is one of the great pieces of American culture that people tend to not know about. The manipulation of the justice system is more shocking than the actuality of the two murders these men were held accountable for. Woody Guthrie cares so much about these men's plight... Not just their incarceration and wrongful conviction, but the children they never get to see grow up and the wives who remain devoted. This is an absolutely harrowing and immersing piece of art that's still alive and relevant today.

user avatar

Woody 4 President

StayHungry

OK, so this isnt Woody Guthrie's seminal album. He's older, and the disease he had had worn down his brain a bit, so his delivery stutters a little noticably. Thats what Dylan copied on his earliest albums (all of which are great, because and despite of this). Sacco and Vanzetti were labour martyrs in the early twentieth century, Woody's singing 'bout em, with feeling, because he had seen it all, too, during the Depression. All solid songs, not his best stuff maybe, but this man wrote so many good songs, judging him against himself is unfair. The original singer songwriter, Woody Guthie travelled hard, and was able to voice what the toughest times told. Sacco and Venzetti were blamed for a crime they did not commit, because they were labor organizers. Maybe not remembered now, they helped lay the foundation for the now-successful US labor movement.

Recommended Albums

eMusic Features

0

Bob Dylan's Folkways Faves

By Yancey Strickler, eMusic Contributor

"I envisioned myself recording for Folkways Records. That was the label that put out all the great records." So writes Bob Dylan in his recent autobiography Chronicles, Vol. 1 (Simon & Schuster, 2004). As folk's mainstream torchbearer (and later, as hyperbolic legend has it, turncoat), Dylan was the face of folk, the smirking troubadour too smart for his own good, a man above it all or mired in the populist muck, depending on your particular… more »

They Say All Music Guide

Recorded between 1946 and 1947, Woody Guthrie crafted a truly fascinating historical document that serves as something of a prototype for a concept album. The trial of Italian-born radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which culminated in their execution in 1927, is one of the most controversial murder trials in the history of the American justice system; it remains to this day clouded with inconclusive findings. It was this trial that inspired Woody Guthrie to devote an entire album of songs in their defense, and in the process create some of the most fiery and impassioned verse in his recorded catalogue. Guthrie is known to have considered these songs among the most important that he’d ever written, and he is said to have thought the project to be one of his most significant. Many of the pieces have a strong sense of immediacy in them, with Guthrie stumbling over lines and missing chord changes, seemingly racing to get the message out. Some might not particularly agree with his clearly one-sided view of the entire trial, though the way in which he eloquently presents the facts of the case to the listener is a powerful statement for their defense. Still, Guthrie paints a picture of Sacco and Vanzetti that almost seems too good to be true, leaving them as martyrs for American freedom and legends of the progressive movement, calling them Boston’s “most noble sons.” This might be Guthrie at his most openly radical, with semi-revolutionary lyrics in “Red Wine” recounting the scene in Boston after the execution: “I thought those crowds would pull the town down./ I was hoping they’d do it and change things around.” The songs themselves are in the classic Guthrie vein, in that they’re all solo acoustic tracks, with the exception of “Sacco’s Letter to His Son,” which is a letter Sacco wrote on the eve of his execution, set to music by Pete Seeger. Though the material seems a little biased, and maybe rightly so, this is Woody Guthrie at his most sincere and inspired, and no matter where you stand on the vagaries of the trial, you can’t argue with the way he honestly presents the humanity of the condemned. While an album completely devoted to a trial that took place over 75 years ago might not be everyone’s ideal Guthrie album, it’s a fascinating historical snapshot in time, when the Red Scare was a real threat — when folk singers saw injustice and tried to do something about it. – Matt Fink

more »