RSSArlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger [extended]
- Alice's Restaurant [Reprise, 1967] B-
- Running Down the Road [Reprise, 1969] A
- Washington County [Warner Bros., 1970] B-
- Hobo's Lullaby [Reprise, 1972] B+
- Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys [Reprise, 1973] B
- Arlo Guthrie [Reprise, 1974] B+
- Amigo [Reprise, 1976] A-
- The Best of Arlo Guthrie [Warner Bros., 1977] B
- One Night [Warner Bros., 1978] C+
- Outlasting the Blues [Warner Bros., 1979] B
- More Together Again [Rising Sun, 1994]
- The Essential Pete Seeger [Columbia/Legacy, 2005]
- The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960 [Smithsonian/Folkways, 2012] A-
See Also:
Consumer Guide Reviews:
Arlo Guthrie: Alice's Restaurant [Reprise, 1967]
The only sin of the title tale is kindness, but even in that, Arlo presents a fetching argument for hippie unsentimentality--for he's also funny, sly, intensely moral, and quite unmoralistic. The six tunes on the other side aren't bad as tunes, but they were recorded before Arlo learned how to sing. One-sided masterpiece. B-
Arlo Guthrie: Running Down the Road [Reprise, 1969]
Easily his best and most musical album, thanks to production-of-the-year by Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks. Contains two absolutely superb cuts: "Running Down the Road," which features a guitar freak-out by some studio musicians who ought to send 20 white blues bands scampering back to the tars of India, and "Coming into Los Angeles," which embodies almost perfectly what it means to be young, hip, and temporarily on top of it in 1970 Amerika. A
Arlo Guthrie: Washington County [Warner Bros., 1970]
Basically, Running Down the Road was about what it said it was about. As such, it was a little scary, which I liked but Arlo apparently didn't, because now he's busy finding "a place to dwell" and learning about Jesus. Or, to turn his only joke on this record around, putting his foot in his mouth and telling it where he wants to go. The Woody cover exposes the dark underside of cattle drives, but mostly it's roots and fenceposts--in short, the good earth. Which may be why he sounds sodden. B-
Arlo Guthrie: Hobo's Lullaby [Reprise, 1972]
If somebody's gotta make exploring-the-folkie-mind-set records, oh Lord let it be somebody with a strong sense of history as well as a weakness for nostalgia. "Ukelele Lady" sounds positively intelligent backing one of Woody's heaviest antiscab ballads, and if the new ones about trains and booze seem slightly outmoded, well, that's part of the point, right? B+
Arlo Guthrie: Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys [Reprise, 1973]
That the folkie mind set dwells in the recording studio these days is a truth only new folk-rock songs as original as "City of New Orleans" can make me like. Instead, the best new tune here, Arlo's celebration of the Guthries' fiddling tradition, sounds suspiciously like a traditional fiddle tune. And I never had much use for "Gates of Eden" in its, er, authentic version. B
Arlo Guthrie: Arlo Guthrie [Reprise, 1974]
This odd little record comes on like Arlo VII, which might rightfully excite semi-coma among the unconverted, but it's not. For once, Lenny Waronker's expertise produces music--playing and especially singing, not aural quality--that flirts (a little coyly) with amateurishness. Plus the record is political in a consciously oblique and sometimes fuzzy smart-hippie way. Arlo's Watergate song does justice to Tom T. Hall. And the two spirituals that make you wonder why he's fooling around with the Southern California Community Choir turn out to be about Israel. B+
Arlo Guthrie: Amigo [Reprise, 1976]
When you wrap one good-but-not-great album a year around a voice so frail and a sensibility so quirky, you're liable to find yourself pigeonholed--as a miniaturist, an odd duck if not a small fry. On the other hand, if just a few of those LPs are a little better than anyone has a right to expect, people might start thinking you're an auteur or something. I don't go for that frog talk myself, but this release has me pulling out my old Arlo albums and discovering how ideally the limitations of his voice have always suited his wry and complex understanding of things. Especially recommended: "Guabi Guabi," an absurdly cheerful African ditty that ought to be a novelty hit, and "Victor Jara," the most painful protest song in recent memory (including "Hurricane"). A-
Arlo Guthrie: The Best of Arlo Guthrie [Warner Bros., 1977]
A best-of with a theme: The Rehabilitation of a Smart-Ass. Side one leads with "Alice's Restaurant Massacre," retrieved from Arlo's otherwise amateurish debut, and then reprises two tuneful if soggy religious numbers. Side two leads with "Motorcycle (Significance of the Pickle) Song," rescued from Arlo's unnecessary live collaboration with Uncle Pete, follows with the hippie-desperado anthem "Coming Into Los Angeles," and then "progresses" into the reconciliation and nostalgia of Arlo's mature period. I have nothing against his mature period, but it's represented more cogently and unpredictably on Arlo Guthrie and Amigo. This would be more listenable, albeit less educational, if all the folk-punk stuff were on the same side. B
Arlo Guthrie: One Night [Warner Bros., 1978]
Sick of going into debt to make exquisitely conceived studio albums that don't sell, Arlo here delivers a mostly live LP--with undistinguished folkie-rockie added by his road band, Shenandoah--that strings together pointless Elvis and Beatles covers, one-dimensional folk songs, and a tall tale that would have trouble making first string guard on a high school basketball team. C+
Arlo Guthrie: Outlasting the Blues [Warner Bros., 1979]
These reflections on God, love, and death are substantial and obviously earned, but too often they're just not acute. The problem isn't his religious overview, either--think of T-Bone Burnett. Guthrie simply goes soft aesthetically at crucial moments, and although most of the material is creditable enough, only once--on "Epilogue," Guthrie's "Under Ben Bulben"--is the enormous emotional potential of the project realized. B
More Together Again [Rising Sun, 1994]
Pete Seeger: The Essential Pete Seeger [Columbia/Legacy, 2005]
Not to cry sellout, but John Hammond's deal with Seeger at Columbia seems kind of crass, re-recording classics after his voice had lost a portion of kind and tender intensity, often in cheap live versions. Folkways could compile pretty much the same repertoire more effectively. But that would mean recognizing how preachy he could get on songs with too high a sermon quotient. Beyond the cookie-cutter anti-conformism of "Little Boxes," this selection demonstrates why he was adored--the voice is too relaxed, but the songs are still strong. They include the Columbia-only "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," eminently revivable up against a war where the quicksand is dry until mixed with blood. [Recyclable]
Pete Seeger: The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960 [Smithsonian/Folkways, 2012]
Aesthetically and politically, Seeger has his soft and sometimes dishonest sides. But he's a titan nonetheless, and as rock criticism's longest-running anti-folkie I'm qualified to swear that such standards as "Good Night Irene," "Wimoweh," "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," and the magnificent "Bells of Rhymney" are as much a part of the American songbook as "White Christmas" and "Summertime"--which latter, as it happens, Seeger anointed at Bowdoin in 1960, one of the thousands of solo shows he played during his 17-year blacklist. There are Harry Smith picks, "Old Dan Tucker," "Big Rock Candy Mountain," a just-germinating "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," a cutting soldiers-as-workers song called "D-Day Dodgers," and not much dreck at all--luckily, Malvina Reynolds hasn't written "Little Boxes" yet. Impeccable yet conversational, as avuncular singing as talking, Seeger evokes the folk far more cannily than most patricians, and his beloved banjo provides exactly as much unassuming musicality as he needs. He recorded hundreds more songs. But these two discs serve his legend well. A-