Woody Guthrie

Born: July 14, 1912
Okemah, Oklahoma
Died: October 3, 1967
New York, New York
American musician, songwriter, and singer

Writer and performer of folk songs, Woody Guthrie composed "This Land Is Your Land," a song many call an unofficial national anthem. His music, which celebrates the good in people, includes messages of unity and brotherly love and remains the anthem of the poor and broken.

Early life

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, the third of Charles and Nora Guthrie's five children. Guthrie's grandmother was one of the first schoolteachers in the county. His father was a professional guitarist and prizefighter who regularly encouraged physical fitness and wrestling. Guthrie's mother taught social awareness and folk music. His father's message was to never be bullied, while his mother's message was to try to see the world from the other person's perspective. Despite a shortened high school education and no formal musical training, Guthrie's eager reading and focus on music supported him throughout his life. All of the Guthrie children were brought up on blues and Native American songs, favored by their father, and folk songs, favored by their mother.

Guthrie led one of the most tragic lives of any famous American. A series of family tragedies overlapped with the nation's slide into the Great Depression (a time of severe economic hardship in the 1930s). Two homes burned to the ground and another was destroyed. Guthrie's mother became ill with Huntington's chorea (a gradual, fatal disease of the nervous system), which she passed on to Guthrie. His father lost all of his businesses as the country struggled with the Stock Market Crash (October 29, 1929; a day when investors sold over sixteen million shares of stocks because they feared the possible effects of a recently signed tax bill—many people lost everything, suicides were common, banks failed, and stores closed). Virtually orphaned at the age of fourteen, with his family falling apart, Guthrie developed a roaming way of life that he never entirely abandoned.

Traveling man

In the course of Guthrie's travels he learned to perform folk songs, first those of others but later his own. He survived with odd jobs in settings as varied as hobo camps and barbershops. With a harmonica and the music of his parents he traveled the southwest, witnessing the devastation of both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (a time during the 1930s when thousands of people left their farms in a region of the Great Plains after overuse of land and a long period without rain caused massive dust storms and made farming in the area impossible).

In Texas Woody was given his first and only guitar. With a few chords under his belt he began writing songs, some to old tunes and some to new ones. In 1937 he got a hold of, through a cousin, the first of many radio jobs, singing and playing on a Los Angeles station. He also acquired permanent ties to the Communist Party (a political party that promotes a society in which all goods and services are divided equally between the people). In 1940 he arrived in New York City and was discovered by Alan Lomax, assistant director of the Archive of Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. Lomax recorded many of Guthrie's songs for the library. He also promoted Guthrie's career in other ways, such as by getting Victor Records to produce a two album, twelve record set of Guthrie's "Dust Bowl Ballads." (A ballad is a song that tells a story.) Though they did not sell, the ballads were to have a lasting influence.

Political connections

A witness to Hoovervilles (clusters of homeless people living in cardboard box villages named after President Herbert Hoover [1874–1964] who had promised better times) and migrant camps (temporary housing for families who get paid to harvest crops and move frequently to follow the harvest), Woody was drawn to people with a social conscience (an awareness of less fortunate members of society). Actor Will Geer teamed up with him and toured both labor camps and farm worker strikes.

At the brink of America's entry into World War II (1939–45; a war in which the Allies—Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States [from 1941], and others—fought against the German-led Axis forces), Guthrie joined the Almanac Singers, a left-wing folk music group that included Pete Seeger (1919–), who eventually became a well-known member along with Guthrie. On February 14, 1942, the Almanacs gained their greatest exposure when they performed on a program called "This Is War," which was aired by four major networks. Except, newspaper stories about the group's Communist affiliations prevented the Almanacs from achieving commercial success. They dissolved within a year. Most of the members of the Almanacs were very anti-Nazi (German political party in rule during World War II that believed in the superiority of the white Aryan [German] race), and they enrolled in the U.S. military.

Guthrie supported the war too. "This Machine Kills Fascists" (people who support a centralized government ruled by a dictator with absolute power) was inscribed on his guitar. But he hoped to accomplish his goal at a distance. He tried in vain to avoid the draft (government selection for military service). To stay out of the U.S. military he served in the merchant marine, but it was a dangerous strategy—two of the three ships he served on were lost. In addition, he was drafted into service anyway. Upon his discharge from the army in 1946 he joined People's Songs, another radical (extreme) musical association. It also failed because of the Communist connection, which was even more offensive during the Cold War (1945–89; a struggle for world power between the United States and the Soviet Union).

Pete Seeger organized a folk-singing group called The Weavers in 1948, and for several years it produced one hit record after another. Though Guthrie was not a Weaver, their success helped his music. His "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" became one of their most popular numbers. But The Weavers were soon blacklisted (labeled as Communists and therefore not given any financial or professional support), and the fashion for popularized folk music disappeared with them.

By this time Guthrie's health was visibly failing. In 1952 he was diagnosed with Huntington's chorea. He died of the disease on October 3, 1967, in New York City.

Legendary status

Though a poor musician and an inconsistent performer, Guthrie wrote an estimated one thousand songs, which have earned him a secure place in musical history. When he was discovered, folk music had few fans except radicals (extremists) and a handful of admirers and musicologists (music researchers). Guthrie and The Weavers were responsible for folk music's brief popularity in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they influenced the greater following it developed ten years later. Though folk music became less popular, it continued to exist, and Guthrie's legacy was very much a part of it. The year 2001 brought a revival of folk music mania after the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a movie set in the 1930s that was rich with folk and hill music.

Guthrie's legendary influence on folk music is hard to assess. He was famous among leftists (those wishing for change and reform) in the 1940s, and by the 1960s, though hospitalized and unable to speak, he had become a heroic figure. Bob Dylan (1941–), before he himself became famous as the leading composer of political songs, made a pilgrimage (a journey to show respect) to Guthrie's bedside. Guthrie's reputation was based on his authentic folk origins and hobo inclinations, his remarkable talents as a writer and composer, and a romantic appreciation of his politics.

For More Information

Christenson, Bonnie. Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People. New York: Knopf, 2001.

Klein, Joe. Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1980.

Santelli, Robert, and Emily Davidson, eds. Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.

Yates, Janelle. Woody Guthrie: American Balladeer. New York: Ward Hill Press, 1995.

GUTHRIE, WOODY 1912-1967

Folk singer

The Voice of the Forgotten American

Described by folksinger Pete Seeger as "a national folk poet," Woody Guthrie crisscrossed America throughout the Depression years—walking, hitchhiking, and riding the rails along with the hoboes and migrant laborers during the 1930s. Between 1936 and 1954, when he was hospitalized for Huntington's chorea, of which he would die, he wrote more than one thousand songs chronicling the experience of the common American. Among his best-known songs are "Roll On, Columbia," "This Train Is Bound For Glory," "Hard Traveling," "Union Maid," and "Dust Bowl Refugee."

Early Years

Like so many of the westward migrants during the Depression, Guthrie was an "Okie"—an Oklahoman who found himself forced out of the life he knew by the coming of the Dust Bowl. The soil erosion and resulting dust storms that drove so many Okla'homans from their farms were, however, not the first tragedy to scar Guthrie. When she was fourteen, his sister burned to death; the depressions that plagued his mother—diagnosed, in retrospect, as Huntington's chorea—eventuated in her death in a mental institution when Guthrie was a teenager. His father, unable to compete with the sharp operators who followed the oil boom into the state, experienced a series of devastating business declines. By 1936 his father had closed his real estate office and was living on skid row in Oklahoma City, where he was to die. When Guthrie sang that "I've been doing some hard travelling," he meant it.

An American Repertoire

His first band, the Corncob Trio, which he founded in Pampa, Texas, in the early 1930s, played traditional songs for local barn dances—for audiences whose appetite for country music was being whetted by the recent recording success of the first country music stars, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. By 1935 Guthrie had already produced his first slim, typewritten volume of original songs; soon he would be documenting the Depression experience in songs such as "Talking Dust Bowl," "I Ain't Got No Home," and his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land." He shared these ballads with the dispirited men he met in boxcars and flophouses on his endless travels throughout Depression America. By 1937 he had begun his first regularly scheduled Los Angeles radio show, which he did in collaboration with partner Lefty Lou (Maxine Crissman). The fan mail soon began pouring in. His collaborators were amazed by how quickly he could develop songs; it often took just minutes for a sketchy idea to be transformed into an enduring song.

Radical Visions

Guthrie's first real brush with radicalism came from his discussions in hobo jungles with old Wobblies, or members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the militant union which had had its greatest strength before the First World War. The social injustice he saw in California—including the ill treatment of migrant laborers by growers that was to spur John Steinbeck to write The Grapes of Wrath—proved a galvanizing force for Guthrie. By 1939 he had become, at his request, a columnist for the Communist Party newspaper, the People's World, publishing a weekly humor column called "Woody Sez." His songs reflected a radical version of American identity: in "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" he glorified the life of the outlaw; in "Pastures of Plenty" he deplored the injustice suffered by farmworkers; in "Do-Re-Mi" he decried the brutality of the Los Angeles police force.

New York Days

In 1940 actor Will Geer invited Guthrie to move to New York, where he befriended such folk-singing luminaries as Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, and Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Impressed by Guthrie's performance at a New York benefit, Library of Congress folk-music archivist Alan Lomax began promoting Guthrie's career, interviewing him for a three-record Library of Congress set and arranging for the recording of a Victor Records twelve-record series of his "Dust Bowl Ballads." However, Guthrie's career as a CBS radio star—the next step on a possible road to fame and mainstream acceptance—was short-lived: Guthrie soon headed west again, embarrassed by what he saw as his own sellout.

Lasting Influence

Guthrie's publications, in addition to his many recordings, include his 1943 autobiography, Bound For Glory, American Folksong (1947), and a 1965 collection of his prose and poetry, Born to Win. Most of all, though, it was his music that inspired later artists such as Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Odetta; Peter, Paul and Mary; Tom Paxton; and Judy Collins—and, of course, his son, singer Arlo Guthrie. Even as Huntington's chorea, a disease with debilitating physical and mental symptoms, ate away at Guthrie, he remained active into the 1950s, playing with the Almanac Singers (a group that included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and others). His son, Arlo, has become a renowned folksinger in his own right.

Sources:

Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (New York: Dutton, 1943);

Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1980);

Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

Woody Guthrie (Woodrow Wilson Guthrie), 1912–67, American folk singer, guitarist, and composer, b. Okemah, Okla. Having learned harmonica as a boy and guitar as an adolescent, Guthrie was an itinerant musician and laborer from the age of 13. He was always deeply involved in union and left-wing politics, and he wrote many of his over 1,000 published songs on themes of social injustice, poverty, and politics. A friend of Leadbelly , Pete Seeger , and Ramblin Jack Elliott, Guthrie exerted a strong influence on younger performers, notably Bob Dylan . His most famous song is probably "This Land Is Your Land."

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Bound for Glory (1943, rev. ed. 1968); biographies by J. Klein (1980), E. Cray (2004), and W. Kaufman (2011); R. Shelton, ed., Born to Win (1965); H. Yurchenco and M. Guthrie, A Mighty Hard Road (1970).

Guthrie's son, Arlo Guthrie, 1947–, b. New York City, is also a folk singer and composer. He is best known for "Alice's Restaurant," a rambling, witty song that was the basis of a motion picture in which he starred (1969).

Guthrie, Woody [Woodrow Wilson] (1912–67), song writer and folksinger. As a young man during the Great Depression, Guthrie, born in Oklahoma, rode freight trains with other hard‐up itinerant crop workers; using guitar and harmonica, he composed songs about the unraveling of the American dream (Pastures of Plenty) as well as songs of celebration and of mourning (The Good Reuben James, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), union songs (Union Maid), songs of adversity (So Long, It's Been Good to Know Ya, Hard Travelin), even religion (This Train Is Bound for Glory), and his best‐known, This Land Is Your Land, which has from time to time been proposed as a new national anthem. Guthrie was paralyzed and speechless from the effects of Huntington's chorea when his songs peaked commercially in the 1960s. His autobiography is Bound for Glory (1943, revised edition, 1968). A collection of his poetry and prose pieces, Born to Win, was published in 1965.

Guthrie, ‘Woody’ ( Woodrow Wilson) (1912–67) US folk singer, guitarist and songwriter. His social-protest poetry captured the spirit of the Great Depression and championed workers' rights. His most famous tunes include “This Land Is Your Land” and “So Long, It's Been Good to Know You”.