VA - This Land Is Your Land - Songs Of Freedom

Woody Guthrie composed "This Land Is Your Land" in 1940 as an answer to Kate Smith's version of "God Bless America," which he had heard countless times on car radios and on café jukeboxes during a cross-country hitchhiking trip. This Land Is Your Land: Songs of Freedom is a collection of folk songs drawn from the vaults of Vanguard Records, and includes Cisco Houston's version of "This Land Is Your Land," along with selections by performers like the Weavers, Ian & Sylvia, Judy Collins, and Odetta. Two of the tracks - Joan Baez's live version of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and the Chambers Brothers' somber take on Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" - are released here for the first time.

Although this is a fairly good compilation of songs, mostly well-known, from the 1950s and (mostly) 1960s folk revival, the common threads between the tunes are vaguer than what the title might portend. Indeed, some of these 16 tracks are specific songs of freedom and struggle: Cisco Houston's "This Land Is Your Land," the Weavers' "If I Had a Hammer," and the Chambers Brothers' previously unreleased version of "People Get Ready." Others would probably be more properly described as songs of protest (Buffy Sainte-Marie's "The Universal Soldier," or the duet by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on "With God on Our Side"), or songs of unity (Judy Collins' live version of "Get Together"). Others, though quality compositions, really fall into no fixed boundary: Collins' versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn," the Kingston Trio's "All My Sorrows," Joan Baez's "There But for Fortune," and Ian & Sylvia's cover of Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game." Perhaps this could have been called "songs of freedom, protest, conscience, and the spirit," or something else so blanket as to be almost uselessly all-encompassing. At its root, it's just an above-average anthology of songs from Vanguard's hallowed folk catalog.       


Tracklist:

1 –The Weavers - Rally 'Round The Flag 2:19
2 –Cisco Houston - This Land Is Your Land 2:43
3 –The Weavers - If I Had A Hammer 2:16
4 –The Weavers - Kumbaya 2:51
5 –Odetta - He's Got The Whole World In His Hands 2:01
6 –Joan Baez - There But For Fortune 3:15
7 –Ian & Sylvia - The Circle Game 2:59
8 –Judy Collins - Turn! Turn! Turn! 4:03
9 –The Kingston Trio - All My Sorrows 2:52
10 –The Chambers Brothers - People Get Ready 4:00
11 –Odetta - Battle Hymn Of The Republic 3:54
12 –Judy Collins - Get Together 2:55
13 –Buffy Sainte-Marie - The Universal Soldier 2:17
14 –Judy Collins - Blowin' In The Wind 4:22
15 –Bob Dylan & Joan Baez - With God On Our Side 6:22
16 –Joan Baez  - The Times They Are A-Changin' 2:53

Tracks 10 and 16 were previously unreleased.

VA - This Land Is Your Land - Songs Of Freedom

(320 kbps, cover art included)