"The Bourgeois Blues" in December 1938 in New York City, for donation to the Library of Congress. He re-recorded the song in April 1939 for Musicraft Records, for release the same year as a 78 rpm record. The version that was commercially released features Lead Belly singing and playing the twelve-string guitar without any other accompaniment. The song has been covered and reinterpreted by a variety of artists including Pete Seeger, Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, and Hans Theessink. Seeger recorded and released both live and studio versions of the song on several of his albums. In Australia, the song was reworked as "Canberra Blues" by The Bitter Lemons, an R&B band. The lyrics speak of the problems faced by young Australians in the Australian Capital Territory in the 1960s. Theessink adapted the song to his style of European blues for the album Journey On in 1997. The Fall covered the song on their 2001 album Are You Are Missing Winner. In 2006 Billy Bragg reworked the song as "Bush War Blues", a topical protest song about the Iraq War. In one verse, he claims that the Iraq War was not for democracy but instead was to "make the world safe for Halliburton". In another, he takes on the Christian right, asking where the moderates are. Finally, Bragg chides the United States government for not dealing with poverty at home before going to war. Legacy "The Bourgeois Blues" is one of Lead Belly's most famous songs and is remembered as his most "heartfelt protest song". There is disagreement among music scholars as to its importance. Robert Springer claims that the song is "peripheral" to the wider study of the blues, while Lawson points to it as a watershed in the way African Americans see themselves in the fabric of the United States. There is debate over the relationship between the song and radical politics. After its release, it became popular with left-wing political groups. Lead Belly was invited to perform at Camp Unity, the Communist Party USA's summer retreat, and the FBI subsequently opened a file on him in the 1940s. This led to the accusations that the Communists were taking advantage of him and using him as a platform. The party claims, to the contrary, that they were some of the few people who respected him and gave him a chance to perform. Jeff Todd Titon and several other writers