Shamus Records has announced the new release Woody at Home - Vol 1 + 2, a collection of 22 tracks by the late Woody Guthrie that were previously unreleased. It’s out August 14 via Shamus. Today, the label has shared Guthrie’s only known recording of “Deportee,” the 1948 track written in response to The New York Times’ coverage of a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California, that killed 32 people, including 28 migrant farm workers. Although long covered by artists like Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and Joni Mitchell, this is the only version in existence of Guthrie himself singing it. Give “Deportee” a listen below.
Woody at Home - Vol 1 + 2 was created by restoring analog tapes that Guthrie himself recorded when he was 38 years old, and uncovering unpublished family photographs, lyric sheets, and artwork from his archive. In early 1951 and 1952, Guthrie recorded these songs himself using one microphone on a reel-to-reel tape machine at his family’s two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
