Poor Boy in Bloomington, MN

In casual sessions beginning in the spring of 1944 and lasting for the rest of the decade,
Woody Guthrie
, sometimes joined by such friends as singer
Cisco Houston
and harmonica player
Sonny Terry
, recorded hundreds of tracks for record company owner
Moses Asch
, far more than
Asch
had the capacity to issue at the time. Over the years, many of those tracks did appear on
's
Folkways Records
label, and by the mid-'60s, when
Guthrie
was perceived as the godfather of the folk revival, they had more of a commercial cachet.
made a deal with the
Verve
subsidiary of
MGM Records
resulting in recordings released on
Verve Folkways
, including the August 1965
LP
Bed on the Floor
, a "new" album in the sense that it contained previously unreleased recordings. After the
deal ended,
reissued the album on
Folkways
proper under the title
Poor Boy
in 1968. Unfortunately,
had long since combed through his holdings for the more impressive
tracks, and the informally performed folk songs left to be gathered on this album were substandard in comparison. There were interesting curiosities for
fans, such as
"Mean Talking Blues,"
and it often sounded as though
,
Houston
, and
Terry
were having fun. But without the usual wit and poetry of his best work,
, singing old folk songs, was often just mediocre. ~ William Ruhlmann