Artist	Song
Woody Guthrie	This Land Is Your Land
from Folkways: The Original Vision (2003)
Elizabeth Cotten	Freight Train
from Classic Folk Music from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (2004)
Bill Broonzy	This Train
from Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs (1989)
Reverend Gary Davis	If I Had My Way
from If I Had My Way: Early Home Recordings (2003)
Leadbelly	Goodnight Irene
from Folkways: A Vision Revisited (2006)
Phil Ochs	Spanish Civil War Song
from Broadside Tapes 1 (1995)
Pete Seeger	We Shall Overcome
from Classic Folk Music from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (2004)
Josh White	Freedom Road
from That's Why We're Marching: World War II and the American Folk Song Movement (1996)
Cisco Houston	Born 100,000 Years Ago
from Classic Folk Music from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (2004)
Dave Van Ronk	Green, Green Rocky Road
from And the Tin Pan Bended and the Story Ended... (2004)
Doc Watson	When I Die
from The Doc Watson Family (1990)
Dock Boggs	Sugar Baby
from His Folkways Years, 1963-1968 (1998)
Son House	County Farm Blues
from Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003)
Malvina Reynolds	Little Boxes
from Ear to the Ground (2003)
Hobart Smith	Railroad Bill
from Classic Folk Music from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (2004)
Lucinda Williams	Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet)
from Happy Woman Blues (1990)
Bill Monroe & Doc Watson	Watson's Blues
from Classic Bluegrass, Vol. 2 from Smithsonian Folkways (2005)
Mahalia Jackson	He's Got the Whole World In His Hands
from I Sing Because I'm Happy (2003)
Clarence Ashley & Doc Watson	The Coo-Coo Bird
from The Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley, 1960-1962 (1994)
Shawn Colvin	I Don't Know Why
from Fast Folk: A Community of Singers and Songwriters (2003)
Roscoe Holcomb	Omie Wise
from The High Lonesome Sound (1998)
Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry	Heart In Sorrow
from Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing (1990)
Pink Anderson	That's No Way to Do
from Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, Vol. 2 (2003)
Inmates of Ramsey or Retrieve	Chopping In the New Ground
from Every Tone a Testimony (2001)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.	Birmingham 1963 - Keep Moving
from Every Tone a Testimony (2001)

Comment:

Framed by the Depression and the Civil Rights movement, the golden age of American folk music was marked by idealist dreams and harsh realities. From Woody Guthrie to Martin Luther King Jr., whose speeches are nothing if not folk treasures, the message was the same: this land is our land. That was the essence when Pete Seeger sang "We Shall Overcome" as much as when Rev. Gary Davis referenced Samson and Delilah in "If I Had My Way." And even the old hill tunes from Clarence Ashley helped fuel the emerging concept of a diverse America.

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