RAMBLIN' WITH WOODY | BLUES IN BLACK AND WHITE | PARKINSONGS | JERRY LIVES | LABEL IT "BRAZIL" | MEET A.G.

Mike Marshall.
See Label it "Brazil."

Ramblin' with Woody

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Nearly 25 years after Joe Klein authored the first thorough biography of the great American Dust Bowl troubadour, and more than 60 years after Guthrie himself wrote the whimsically autobiographical Bound for Glory, folklorist Ed Cray ups the ante with Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (W.W. Norton and Co.). Cray, whose previous books include biographies of Earl Warren and George C. Marshall, doesn't skimp on the social, cultural, and political contexts of Guthrie's work, and he takes a clear-eyed yet empathetic approach to Guthrie's personal and artistic contradictions. Granted first-time access to more than 10,000 pages of the radical, homespun bard's poetry, diaries, and journals, Cray has produced a deftly crafted portrait that reaches straightforward conclusions about Guthrie's relevance today: "Predictions of immortality tend to be fallible, yet Guthrie's songs continue to resonate even in an era of videos and celebrity flash. . . . As long as there remain social inequities against which he protested, his songs will be sung."

Blues in Black and White

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In 1964 Dick Waterman was pivotal in bringing Delta blues singer Son House back from obscurity, a move that led him to form Avalon Productions, a management company that handled affairs for Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Otis Rush, and others. Along the way Waterman took photographs, 120 of which fill the new book Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive (Thunder's Mouth Press, www. thundersmouth.com, and Insight Editions, www.insighteditions.com). Waterman, a close friend to many of the artists photographed, provided intimate, memoir-style text to accompany his shots of John Lee Hooker, Skip James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and scores more. Whether or not its subtitle holds true, Waterman's collection contains striking, one-of-a-kind portraits (posed and candid) that provide rare insight into their subjects as well as performance shots that practically vibrate on the page with the charisma of the artists and the generous spirit of the times.

Parkinsongs

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Bonnie Raitt, Greg Brown, David Crosby and Graham Nash, Dar Williams, and Neko Case are among the singer-songwriters who have contributed tracks to ParkinSong, Vol. One: 38 Songs of Hope (www.parkinsong.com). Proceeds from sales of the double CD, which includes previously unreleased songs by Steve Forbert, Chuck Prophet, Dave Alvin, Last Train Home, and others, will benefit the ParkinSong Foundation, founded to foster awareness of and support research into new therapies for Parkinson's disease. Several of the tracks—Alvin's "The Man in the Bed," Tom Russell's "Muhammad Ali," and Terri Hendrix' "Charlie Brown"—were inspired by specific sufferers of the disease.

Jerry Lives

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Rhino Records has released a six-CD retrospective of solo work by late Grateful Dead lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions includes remastered and expanded versions of Garcia's five solo albums plus a bonus disc of 12 in-studio jams and alternate takes. Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, longtime band publicist and author Dennis McNally, and Dead aficionados Blair Jackson, Steve Silberman, and Gary Lambert provide thorough liner notes, and the anthology boasts more than four hours of previously unreleased material, including alternate takes of Garcia classics like "Loser" and "Sugaree," a studio jam on "Iko Iko," and covers of Hank Williams' "You Win Again," Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate," the Beatles' "Dear Prudence," and Warren Zevon's "Accidentally Like a Martyr."

Label it "Brazil"

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Brazilian music fans can rejoice in the advent of Adventure Music, a new independent record label founded by northern California multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall (David Grisman Quintet, Psychograss, the [Darol] Anger-Marshall Band), Brazilian music collector Richard Zirinsky Jr., and business partner Robert Corroon. "Richard came to me and said he wanted to do this," says Marshall. "I spent about a year trying to talk him out of it, but he just couldn't be stopped. He's coming at it from a very real place—passion for the music." The label plans to release as many as 15 titles each year, initially focusing on Brazilian music, and their first batch of releases includes several of special interest to guitarists: Cris on the Farm by the Marcos Amorim Trio, Noite Clara by Ricardo Silveira, Inverse Universe by singer Claudia Villela and guitarist Ricardo Peixoto, and Serenata, the music of Hermeto Pascoal as played by Marshall and pianist Jovino Santos Neto. "I was into Hermeto very heavily," Marshall says, "and I spent almost a year looking at material, maybe a thousand tunes, with Jovino, who was the librarian for Hermeto's band."

In addition to developing a catalog of new recordings by artists including Marshall’s Choro Famoso band and the improvising duo of Claudia Villela and pianist Kenny Werner, Adventure Music (www.adventure-music.com) will license Brazilian recordings from the São Paulo—based Nucleo Contemporaneo label, exposing US audiences to Benjamim Taubkin, Monica Salmaso, the 25-member Itiberê Orquestra Família, and the Orquestra Popular de Câmara.

—Derk Richardson

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Click here to meet the Acoustic Guitar team at a wide variety upcoming music events and trade shows. Listed below are some things happening in the next few weeks.