Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti is a set of ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

 songs, written and performed by Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

, related to the trial, conviction and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti

Sacco and Vanzetti

Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...

. The series was commissioned by Moe Asch in 1945 and recorded in 1946 and 1947. Guthrie never completed the project and was unsatisfied by the result. The project was released later in its abandoned form by Asch.

Track listing

1. "The Flood and the Storm"
2. "I Just Want to Sing Your Name"
3. "Old Judge Thayer"
4. "Red Wine"
5. "Root Hog and Die
   Root hog, or die
   "Root hog, or die" is a common American catch-phrase dating from well before 1834. Coming from the early colonial practice of turning pigs loose in the woods to fend for themselves, the term is an idiomatic expression for self-reliance....
   
   "
6. "Suassos Lane"
7. "Two Good Men"
8. "Vanzetti's Letter"
9. "Vanzetti's Rock"
10. "We Welcome to Heaven"
11. "You Souls of Boston"

An unreleased track, "Sacco's Letters to His Son" was recorded by Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

for the project.