named for the man who later that year, 1912, would be elected President. Born in Oklahoma.
A man who would be a fellow-traveler of the Communist Party. Proudly so.
A man who experienced the dislocations of the Dustbowl and the Great Depression.
The balladeer of ordinary Americans.
The author of a terrific autobiography, Bound for Glory
Here he is performing with Sonny Terry and Brownie MGhee:
Some of the older people here - and at 64 I am among them - were very much the recipients of his genius and his generosity, even if we never heard him live, because by our adolescence he was very much limited by his Huntington's Chorea. Yet key figures of the "folk revival" owed much to him, with Rambling Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan being among those who sought him out, who were mentored by him.
Guthrie was one of the core members of as important a "folk" group (although political singers might be a better description) as ever existed: The Almanac Singers, whose other core members included Millard Lampell, Lee Hays of the Weavers, and one of his most important and longtime friends Pete Seeger. Here is a pro-union song, which at this point I think includes Bess Lomax Hawes, sister of the famous Alan Lomax:
Others who participated in the Singers at different points after group's initial founding, when some of the member met one another at a "Grapes of Wrath" event to benefit migrant farm workers, held at the home of Will Geer, included Cisco Houston, the brothers John Peter Hawes and Baldwin "Butch" Hawes, and Josh White.
Here, as you listen to the really biting lyrics, you can hear the dialog between Woody and Pete:
One more from this period, and listen to the lyrics, which would be very appropriate today:
I could write a lot ABOUT Woody. I think it more important for us to listen to what he wrote, such as Talking Dustbowl Blues, from 1937:
Here is some film with Studs Terkel and others providing context, and Woody in one of his best known songs, Roll on Columbia:
Other than the clip with Sonny and Brownie, this is the only surviving film of Woody:
Youtube has a lot of Guthrie's stuff, which you can explore on your own.
I want to give only two more. First, his most famous song, This Land is Your Land, about which a little context. It was written in 1940, as a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." The version that most people knew read like this:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
The earliest known recording of the song was by Moses Asch in 1944, and it contains the famous "private property" verse:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.
If you read the wikipedia articl on the song you can see a variant of this verse:
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
There are two more verses that appeared in a 1945 pamphlet that some questioned whether they were added later but which subsequent research showed to be in the original manuscript:
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
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?
Guthrie himself varied on the verses and words he included when he sang the song. Here is Guthrie singing his best known song, including two verses not part of what those of us who learned it in the 1960s experienced.
Like many, I was delighted with the expanded version done by Seeger and Springsteen at the Inaugural Concert for Obama.
I really wonder what Guthrie might have to say/sing about the economic hardships so many are now encountering?
For me, there is only one Woody song with which we can end:
I think Woody would appreciate my usual final ending, but only if we think of the word in its most full sense, and not merely as the absence of war.
So, as the final part of this, my offering in honor of his 98th birthday, I say as I so often do:
Peace.