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Woody Guthrie

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Woody Guthrie with Guitar

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, - October 3, 1967 in Queens, New York) was an influential and prolific American folk musician noted for his identification with the common man, and for his abhorrence of fascism, politicians, hypocrisy and economic exploitation. He is best known for his song "This Land Is Your Land". He is the father of musician Arlo Guthrie.

Life and career

His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was elected president in the same year.

At age 19, he left home for Texas, where he met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children. He used his musical talents to earn money as a street musician and by doing small gigs. He left Texas and his family with the coming of the Dust Bowl era, following the Okies to California. The poverty he saw on these early trips affected him greatly, and many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by the working class. He frequently donated money made from his music gigs and busking to help various peoples and causes. A lifelong socialist and trade unionist, he also contributed a regular column, "Woody Sez," to the Daily Worker and People's World newspapers. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) for some years.

In the late 1930s, Guthrie achieved fame in Los Angeles, California, with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music. While appearing on radio station KFVD, a commercial radio station owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat, Guthrie also began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually end up on Dust Bowl Ballads. In 1939, Guthrie moved to New York City and was embraced by its leftist and folk music community. He also made perhaps his first real recordings: several hours of conversation and songs, recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, as well as an album, Dust Bowl Ballads, for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey. He began writing his autobiography, Bound for Glory, which was completed and published in 1943. It later became a motion picture film in 1976 (see See Also).

In February 1940, Guthrie wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land," which was inspired in part by his experiences during a cross-country trip and in part by his distaste for the Irving Berlin song "God Bless America", which he considered unrealistic and complacent (he was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio). The melody may have been based on the gospel song "When the World's on Fire," best known as sung by the country group The Carter Family around 1930. Guthrie protested class inequality in the final verse:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing." [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"]
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.

These verses were sometimes omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie himself.

In May 1941, Guthrie was commissioned by the Department of the Interior and its Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of the federal dams; the best known of these are "Roll On Columbia" and "Grand Coulee Dam." Around the same time, he joined Pete Seeger in the legendary folk-protest group Almanac Singers, with whom he toured the country and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Guthrie originally wrote and sang anti-war songs with the Almanac Singers, but after America's entry into World War II began writing anti-fascist tunes. Guthrie famously wrote the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists" on his guitar. He joined the U.S. Merchant Marine, where he served with fellow folk singer Cisco Houston, and then the U.S. Army.

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land," along with hundreds of others over the next few years.

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Written by Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook distributed to listeners who wanted the words to his recordings

He began courting Marjorie Mazia in 1942 and married her in 1945 while on furlough from the army. They moved into a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, and together had four children—including Cathy, his daughter who died at age four in a fire, sending him into a serious depression. Guthrie's son Arlo became a famous singer-songwriter in his own right. During this period, Guthrie wrote and recorded Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child, a collection of children's music, which includes the song "Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin')," written when Arlo was about nine years old.

At the same time Guthrie was still writing topical songs. The 1948 plane crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland, California to be deported back to Mexico inspired the poem "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)." The poem was set to music a decade later by Martin Hoffman, and the song has since been covered by performers such as Cisco Houston, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Dolly Parton, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Woody's son Arlo Guthrie.

By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was worsening and his behavior becoming extremely erratic, showing signs of chorea. He left his family, travelling with Ramblin' Jack Elliott to California, where he married for a third time and had another child before eventually returning to New York. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and [citation needed]schizophrenia), before he was finally discovered to be suffering from the Huntington's disease, the genetic disorder that had caused the death of his mother.

Guthrie was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961, then at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966, and then Creedmoor Mental Institution. Due to his failing health during the final years of his life, he was unable to enjoy the renewed interest in his work such as the 1960s folk revival.

Legacy

By the time of Guthrie's death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, who visited Guthrie in the last years of his life and described him as "my last hero." Dylan later went on to write Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, a five-page tribute, and included "Song to Woody" on his first, eponymous album (1962).

In 1964, Phil Ochs's debut album, All the News That's Fit to Sing, included the song "Bound for Glory," a tribute to Guthrie and a criticism of revisionism and ignorance among modern audiences who preferred to forget some of Guthrie's more controversial (especially socialist) lyrics.

In 1967 his wife, Marjorie Guthrie, helped found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America.

During the early 1970's, before adopting the name of Joe Strummer and founding The Clash, a young John Mellor began calling himself "Woody Mellor," derived obviously from Woody Guthrie.[1]

In 1995, Woody's daughter Nora approached the British singer Billy Bragg about recording lyrics her father had composed in the later years of his life. After researching the lyrics at the Woody Guthrie Archive in New York City, Bragg worked with the band Wilco to record 40 tracks, a number of which were released on the albums Mermaid Avenue in 1998, and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000. These albums derived their names from the street on Coney Island where Woody lived with Marjorie and their family. She also approached Janis Ian about writing a song using the lyrics of one of Guthrie's unfinished songs, "I Hear You Sing Again." Ian wrote music in his style for the song, changing some of his lyrics and incorporated some of her own. The song was released on her 2004 album Billie's Bones. Nora Guthrie also invited the punk band Anti-Flag to visit the Archive. Subsequently, they covered "Post-War Breakout" and wrote a song called "This Machine Kills Fascists." These efforts have brought Guthrie's music to a new audience of fans. The Dropkick Murphys recorded an unreleased song of his, titled 'Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight' on their 2003 album Blackout. They later covered "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" on their 2005 CD, The Warrior's Code.

Although initially the subject of much controversy, a statue honoring Guthrie stands in Memorial Park on Main Street in his hometown of Okemah. Also in Okemah, the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival celebrates his legacy each summer. It is produced by the Woody Guthrie Coalition, founded by his sister, Mary Jo Edgmon. The 2006 festival, July 12-16 in Okemah, featured Joe Ely, Jimmy LaFave, Ellis Paul, the David Amram Family Band and more. Arlo Guthrie kicked off the festival.

Navajo Native American punk-rock band Blackfire released their "Woody Guthrie Singles" in 2003. The Colorado-based band, Leftover Salmon, honored Guthrie on their 2004 self-titled release with the song "Woody Guthrie".

In 2001, Frankie Fuchs produced "Daddy-O Daddy", rare family songs from lyrics written by Woody, set to music from musicans varied from Joe Ely to Taj Mahal.

Woody Guthrie is also a featured part of the band Son Volt's 2005 album "Okemah and the Melody of Riot" and is mentioned by name in the first track on that album, "Bandages & Scars".

Selected songs and albums by Woody Guthrie

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Woody Guthrie.
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Woody Guthrie
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