The concept album is unlike most collections of music which showcase the newest offerings from a band or singer/songwriter, or the greatest hits from a long career. A concept album has a unified theme. Although the songs could stand alone, they tell a story or evoke a meaningful experience when listened to as a whole.

Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads Is An Early Example

Released in 1940, in America's slow recovery from the Great Depression, Guthrie's very first album contains 15 songs evoking the era of giant dust storms, Pretty Boy Floyd, the first wave of American homelessness, Steinbeck's Tom Joad character from The Grapes of Wrath (which would later help to inspire Bruce Springsteen's concept album The Ghost of Tom Joad) and three or four numbers Pete Seeger would carry in his own songbag for a lifetime, including his signature "Do Re Mi."

Students of 20th century American history will be thrilled to hear it told Guthrie-style. The original titles of familiar songs are instructive - suffice to say there is no shortage of dust.