Sally Don't You Grieve

05. Sally Don’t You Grieve
(Woody Guthrie/TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc., BMI)

Track 5 – Sally Don’t You Grieve (MASTER MA 34)
This was written sometime after June 22, 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive, three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union. Until that moment, the Almanac Singers, including Guthrie, had hewed to the Communist Party line of nonintervention in the European war. But once Hitler broke the so-called Stalin-Axis pact, the party line abruptly shifted. Now Communists and fellow travelers everywhere were to press for American involvement, Lend-Lease to the USSR, and all aid to the beleaguered Red Army.With that, Guthrie metaphorically, musically enlisted with this song, based on an older gospel song, “Don’t Grieve After Me.”