I haven't listened to the CDs and, apart from Cathy Fink, I haven't heard, or even heard of, most of the performers so I cannot comment on the music. However, Berlatsky's general comments on Seeger, Guthrie and the pre-war American Left seem valid to me. The flip-flop by the Almanacs, and Guthrie in particular, from John Doe songs to jingoism was mind-boggling to say the least. According to Bess Lomax Hawes, much of the agiprop was down to Millard Lampbell who was 'a good sloganeer'. In any case, the impact upon the workers was limited. In Pete Seeger's own words:

I wouldn't say we [Almanacs] hit bottom with an icy thud. We were struggling, like always. We just didn't get any place, we hoped that we'd be singing for unions; instead, just a few left-wing unions would have us and masses of right-wing unions thought we were dirty communists and a whole batch of middle-of-the-road unions didn't know anything about us. And a whole lot of Social Democrat unions didn't like us either. So it wasn't we hit bottom. We never went up - we were still struggling at the bottom.

[Pete Seeger - quote at page 67 of 'Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Revivals' by David King Dunaway & Molly Beer].

--Stewie