50,000 Strong! The Con Library is proud to announce our 50,000th compact disc!

The Oberlin Conservatory Library is proud to announce the acquisition of our 50,000th compact disc!  Chosen for this honor is the title Woody Guthrie, American radical patriot a set including the complete Library of Congress (LC) interviews and musical performances recorded by Alan Lomax and Elizabeth Lomax for the Archive of American Folk Song, songs written while employed by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a set of home demonstration records of songs made for a late 1940s public health service VD education program, radio skits and other performances in support of the World War II effort.  The set also includes: DVD, Roll on, Columbia: Woody Guthrie & the BPA (produced and directed by Michael Majdic and Denise Matthews in 1999); 78 rpm record; and a PDF document containing transcriptions of all songs and spoken material as well as Bill Nowlin's notes (258 pages).  To put Oberlin's collection development accomplishment in perspective, CD-1, containing Schubert's Die Winterreise sung by Hermann Prey, was added in June 1985.


This collection presents for the first time the full range of material Woody Guthrie recorded for the United States government, both in song and the spoken word including songs and stories Woody recorded for the LC and material he created when hired to write songs for the Bonneville Power Administration. LC has released some of this content in the past, but this collection features the complete and unedited LC sessions.  In addition to the LC and BPA recordings is material Woody recorded for governmental or quasi-governmental efforts: some songs and two 15-minute radio dramas for the Office of War Information during the Second World War and another drama offered to public health agencies to fight the spread of venereal disease.