"Come back Woody Guthrie, come back to us now," Steve Earle implored in his stirring 1997 ballad "Christmastime in Washington." "Tear your eyes from paradise--and rise again somehow."

It's a socialist's pipedream that's gained urgency at a time when President Obama is branded as a communist and even PBS-TV filmmaker Ken Burns has come under fire from the right for supposedly promoting a socialist agenda through his recent worshipful documentary series showcasing the national parks.

The recession shows few signs of abating, and Earle is getting his wish, sonically speaking. The newly released four-CD box set Woody Guthrie: My Dusty Road (Rounder) delivers stunningly remastered versions of the late folksinger's 1940s civil rights anthems, dust bowl ballads, blues and union songs. The anthology captures the many sides of the folk legend, including Woody the agitator, who recorded such politically defiant songs as "I'm Gonna Join That One Big Union," "The Ludlow Massacre" and "Tear the Fascists Down."

The recordings are the result of the recent discovery of a milk crate filled with well-preserved metal recording masters that have been restored and used to create these tracks featuring remarkable clarity.

The Guthrie box set is one of three new recordings custom-made for these hard times.

On his new solo album Get Lucky (Reprise), Dire Straits singer, songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler delivers one of his best recordings--a tuneful allegory of the trials and tribulations of the recession.

Most of these 11 songs ring with the reflection and resignation that may fall upon a middle-aged man like Knopfler--he broke a collarbone and several ribs a couple of years ago in a scary motorcycle accident--who begins to take the measure of his life. But the songs aren't autobiographical. Rather, Knopfler has created a series of well-crafted vignettes describing down-on-their-luck characters wrestling with scarcity.

Sometimes the album's down-tempo mood turns defiant and edgy, as with the paranoid gun-toting vet in "Cleaning My Gun." Musically, one of the few exceptions to his hand-wringing is "You Can't Beat the House," an infectious shuffling blues in the style of Knopfler's idol J.J. Cale that recounts the tale of a hard-luck gambler.

It makes you realize that Knopfler could churn out a strong straight-ahead blues album. But as his past work has shown, this is an artist who has a subtler spin on life, a quieter vision of the blues.

That same reflective mood permeates soul great Marvin Gaye's 1971 masterwork What's Going On (Motown/Mobile Fidelity), newly reissued both as an audiophile quality Super Audio CD and 180 gram vinyl album.

This landmark concept album--a clarion call with powerfully stated themes of social justice, opposition to war, environmental degradation and recession-era woes--is as fresh today as it was when Motown grudgingly released it in the midst of the Vietnam War.

Gaye was inspired by the situations his brother, a Nam vet, encountered upon his return to the States. Lyrically, at the dawn of the environmental and social justice movements, he perfectly captured the mood of America, especially the sense of powerlessness and dire poverty of the nation's inner cities.

He managed to weave these complex themes into a musically sprawling soul opera that tapped the unfettered talents of Motown's ace studio band, the Funk Brothers.

During the past four decades, What's Going On has fared well in critics' polls--the title track garnered the No. 4 spot in Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs poll; in the UK, the album snared the top spot in the NME writers' poll of All-Time Top Albums.

You may wish it weren't so relevant, or that Gaye hadn't been so damned prescient, but What's Going On was a bellwether that remains the mother of all recession-era albums.

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