Almanac Singers

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The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who achieved brief popularity in the early 1940s. Members Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie began playing together informally after Seeger and Hays had been playing at leftist political functions for a time. Mainstream national success began after the American Youth Congress meeting in Washington D.C. in February of 1941. Others who sang with the group at various times included Sis Cunningham, (John) Peter Hawes and his brother (Baldwin) Butch Hawes, Bess Lomax Hawes (wife of Butch), Cisco Houston, Arthur Stern, Josh White, Jackie (Gibson) Alper, and Sam Gary.

Politics and music remained closely intertwined with the members' leftist political beliefs, which occasionally led to controversial associations with the Communist Party USA. Their first release, an album called Songs For John Doe, urged non-intervention in World War II, and was made with the help of Eric Bernay (of Keynote), Joe Thompson (of NBC), Nicholas Ray (future film director) and Alan Lomax (musicologist). The second album was Talking Union, a collection of labor songs, many of which were intensely anti-Roosevelt.

More recordings followed, but blacklisting and internal friction soon drove the group apart. Seeger and Hays founded communal homes called Almanac Houses, but the group fell apart soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Contents 1 Discography 1.1 Original Studio Albums 1.2 Singles 1.3 Compilations 2 Further Reading 3 External links

[edit] Discography

[edit] Original Studio Albums

1. Songs For John Doe (Almanac Records, 1941).
2. Talking Union & Other Union Songs (Keynote, 1941).
3. Deep Sea Chanteys And Whaling Ballads (General, 1941).
4. Sod Buster Ballads (General, 1941).
5. Songs Of The Lincoln Battalion (Asch, 1942).
6. Dear Mr. President (Keynote, 1942).

[edit] Singles

• Song For Bridges / Babe of Mine (Keynote, 1941).
• Boomtown Bill / Keep That Oil A-Rollin (Keynote, 1942).

[edit] Compilations

• Talking Union & Other Union Songs (Smithsonian Folkways, 1973)
• Their Complete General Recordings (MCA, 1996)
• Songs of Protest (Prism, 2001)
• Talking Union, Vol. 1 (Naxos, 2001)
• The Sea, The Soil & The Struggle (Naxos, 2004)

[edit] Further Reading

R. Serge Denisoff, "'Take It Easy, but Take It': The Almanac Singers," Journal of American Folklore, vol. 83, no. 327 (1970), pp. 21-32.

[edit] External links

• The Songs of the Almanac Singers
• Almanac Singers Biography

v • d • e Woody Guthrie Discography Library of Congress Recordings · Dust Bowl Ballads · The Columbia River Collection · The Asch Recordings · Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti · Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child · Nursery Days · The Live Wire Almanac Singers Talking Union & Other Union Songs · Deep Sea Chanteys And Whaling Ballads · Sod Buster Ballads · Dear Mr. President Legacy People's Songs · Woody Guthrie Foundation · Woody Guthrie Folk Festival See Also Bound For Glory · List of albums by Woody Guthrie · List of songs by Woody Guthrie