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February 9, 2008

Woody Guthrie live -- in 1949 -- is up for a Grammy

Woody Guthrie in a 1944 publicity photo.

A newly discovered and restored live 1949 wire recording of Woody Guthrie has been nominated for a Grammy award for Best Historical Album.

For the first time hear Woody Guthrie perform live!

In 2001, The Woody Guthrie Archives received 2 spools of wire recordings from a live Woody Guthrie performance held in Newark, New Jersey in 1949. With the help of many talented recording engineers, the Woody Guthrie Foundation transferred this rare live performance from a delicate wire recording to digital audio, and, with state-of-the-art technology, restored it to near-perfection. This is one of the most significant recent finds in folk music history.

Hear clips here from The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949.

Background: The Grammy in Mathematics: Mathematician nominated for award for restoring the only known recording of a live Woody Guthrie performance at Science News' MathTrek blog..

There are samples of the recording before and after processing, at this link.

Guthrie's daughter Nora eventually figured out that the suspicious package wasn't a bomb, but rather a recording of her father on a device that predated magnetic tape. After a year of searching, she managed to track down someone with the equipment to play it.

What she finally heard was a bootleg recording of her father singing a live performance in 1949. It was the first time she had ever heard him perform in front of a live audience. He had developed Huntington's chorea and stopped performing when she was a child, and she thought he had never been recorded live.

The technolology:

-- The Wire Recorder at The Sound Recording Technology History Site.

-- Wire recording at Wikipedia.

Woody's competition in that category includes People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938 and Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings From The 1890s.

The Grammy Awards air Sunday night at 8 on CBS.

Thanks to MeFi for the first clue.

Footnote: Where the recordings came from

In 2001, Paul Braverman sent a small package containing 2 spools of wire recordings to the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City. He had discovered them while cleaning out his closet. He had made the recordings himself while a student at Rutgers University, using a small wire recorder which was briefly used in the late 1940's. He was a recording hobbyist and often recorded events and programs held by the Y in the late 40's and early 50's.

Braverman, a retired pharmacist who died in 2003, made the recording at a free concert that drew about 25 people to the Newark, N.J. YW-YMHA, where Woody's second wife, Marjorie, taught dance. He told the Newark Star-Ledger in 2001 that he kept the metal wires wrapped around spools because "I knew that somehow or other, they would be of value in the folk music field."

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:29 AM | Permalink