Woody Guthrie Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti...

May 09, 1996|By Lynn Van Matre.

Woody Guthrie

Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti (Smithsonian/Folkways) (star) (star) (star) (star)

The trial involved new forensic technologies, accusations of evidence tampering and a piece of clothing that didn't fit. It also highlighted deep divisions within American society--but it took place nearly 75 years before the O.J. Simpson circus. In 1921, America's attention was riveted on the case of shoemaker Nicola Sacco and fishmonger Bartolomeo Vanzetti, recent Italian immigrants and acknowledged anarchists charged with killing two pay clerks during a robbery in South Braintree, Mass. Despite what many believed was inconclusive evidence, the two men were convicted and later executed, victims in part, some claimed, of America's anti-immigrant mood. (The pair received a posthumous pardon in 1977.) Commissioned by Folkways Records founder Moses Asch and originally recorded in 1947, this long out-of-print collection of songs about the trial and its aftermath contains some of Guthrie's most urgent and powerful work.