J-45 song of the day for Sun 07-03-2016

[Rmz76]

Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Song: The Ghost of Tom Joad
Guitar: 1951 Gibson J-45

With the E-Street band Springsteen is best known as a Telecaster man. When he plays acoustic with full band his choice is the Takamine EF341SC but what you may not know is that when it comes time for recording sessions, Springsteen's guitar of choice is his 1951 J-45.






This guitar has an interesting backstory

Toby Scott, engineer for many of Bruce Springsteen’s records, purchased the circa 1951 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar from a Santa Monica, California, pawn shop in 1972, when he was a working musician in the Los Angeles area. He began working as an engineer at Clover Studios in L.A. and kept the guitar there to be used as a house instrument. It was used on sessions by some of the finest guitarists in the world, including Ron Wood, Steve Cropper, Danny Kortchmar, Fred Tackett and Waddy Wachtel. Scott gave the guitar to Springsteen as a Christmas present in 1988. It has been played on every album since Tunnel of Love and was featured prominently on The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust.

Full article can be found here:
http://rockhall.com/blog/post/bruce-...records-tapes/

I love the dialog at the beginning of this video where Springsteen talks about the inspiration of the song being what he saw of migrate workers in California in the 90s. If you have not read The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad is the protagonist of the story. It's a story about reaction to oppression during those dark years leading up to World War II.

I will share my Grapes of Wrath story. I never really understood literature. When it came to writing book reports I was usually a Cliff Notes kind of student. But when John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath came up on my reading list in college I had gotten to a point where I was interested in the craft of writing.It was a book I couldn't put down. My grandmother had died a few months earlier and I had spent a lot of time thinking about what her world must have been like as a teenager during The Great Depression. The Grape's of Wrath connected the dots for me. Written in 1939 it captures the hope, despair, dreams and inner thoughts of the culture. I good work of literature accomplishes these things. it's an archive for future generations to review; a time machine of sorts.

I think any genre of music can document the culture of an era, but Folk music is different because it holds the narratives. Like a good work of literature some of the best folk songs captures the struggles, dreams and inner dialog. In a simple vocal-acoustic mix the focus is on the narrative. Left with few distractions in the arrangement and no production to stamp it to a specific era, the song stays a timeless piece.