If you’re looking for a soundtrack while you read the various articles and blog posts about Lawrence Small‘s resignation from his post as head of the Smithsonian Institution, try If You Ain’t Got the Do-Re-Mi: Songs of Rags and Riches. It’s a compilation of folk songs about money troubles that came out two weeks ago—-on Smithsonian Folkways.

The disc is worth a listen if only for Speckled Red’s 1961 track “If I Had a Million Dollars,” which sounds like the ur-text for every raspy-voiced 3 a.m. rumination that Tom Waits ever sang. (The excerpt on the Folkways site only has the piano intro; this page links to a handful of RealAudio files.)