Guthrie, Woody

GUTHRIE, WOODY (1912–1967). Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known as Woody, was the best known of the folk singers associated with the American Left during the 1940s. He subsequently emerged as a popular-culture hero whose reputation spread far beyond left-wing circles, serving as a model for politically oriented “singer-songwriters” such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.

In the twentieth century, his extraordinary body of songs has found a home across multiple genres and styles of music. His legacy is now not just that of an American radical but of a much honored, deeply loved American institution—an irony that Woody, were he alive today, would undoubtedly have noted and probably written a song or two about.

Born into an Oklahoma family rich in musical talent but dogged by tragedy (his father squandered all his money in real estate debacles and losing political campaigns, while his mother’s illness—Huntington’s disease—put her in an asylum), Woody spent his youth on the fringes of society, consorting with hoboes and itinerant laborers who added to his already growing repertoire of songs and stories. He began playing “hillbilly” music in local bands as a teenager, then drifted to California with other “dust-bowl refugees,” where he became a popular country performer at a progressive radio station (KFVD) in the late 1930s.

His sympathy for the displaced farmer led him to write protest songs such as “Talking Dust Bowl” and “Do Re Mi” (which were apparently very well received by his Okie audience), and he soon became involved with union functions, strikes, and Communist Party rallies. Woody’s charm and “authenticity” endeared him to left-wing intellectuals; he began writing a regular column, “Woody Sez,” for the newspaper People’s World, and entertaining at Hollywood political fundraisers. After a while, political performances were his primary source of income.

In 1940 Guthrie went to New York City, where he became a dominant member of the developing folk movement; he recorded his Dust Bowl Ballads for RCA Victor, performed at union functions with Pete Seeger and the newly formed Almanac Singers, wrote for the Daily Worker, and at times even appeared on network radio, something that filled him with apprehension and conflict. As the war effort grew, Woody (who was never quite a pacifist) gave himself wholeheartedly to it, inscribing “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar; he eventually entered the merchant marine, and finally, the army (this last with great reluctance though, and only when he was drafted and had no choice). He also authored a popular autobiography, Bound for Glory, during the war years, but the postwar witch-hunts, combined with chronic, degenerative illness (the Huntington’s disease passed down from his mother), made his later career progressively more difficult.

Although Guthrie periodically flirted with conventional success, it seemed to make him sufficiently uncomfortable that he preferred to avoid it. He was handicapped throughout his career by an unwillingness to compromise, a single-mindedness that also (fortunately) helped preserve the purity of his music. He alienated socialists by refusing to denounce the Hitler-Stalin Pact, radio sponsors by refusing to soften his protest lyrics, and his wives and friends by refusing to stay put (although many of his later personal difficulties can be attributed to the onset of Huntington’s disease, which ultimately caused his death).

Generally weak on strategy, Guthrie had a credo that simply said, “Let’s give up our selfishness and differences, and work together”—he left the details to others. Ideologically, he was as much a populist as a communist; in fact, he perceived the communist ideal to be identical with the Christian, often referring to Jesus as a “socialist outlaw.”

Like the hoboes he traveled with, Guthrie was quite willing to blend fact with fancy, and he willfully encouraged sycophants who portrayed him as the archetypal American worker-hero; it was good business to do so. Yet within such hyperbole lay more than a kernel of truth: both his art and his politics were deeply rooted in American tradition.

Woody’s songs were generally based either on standard Anglo-American ballads or blues structures; he often parodied the popular hillbilly song hits of the time, yet he managed inadvertently to write a couple of those himself: “Philadelphia Lawyer” and “Oklahoma Hills.” Although he produced his share of transitory agitprop material, his best lyrics captured the spirit of America in a style so highly poetic and yet so extremely direct that one of them, “This Land Is Your Land,” has often been proposed as a replacement for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He had that talent (possessed by great revolutionary poets) for fusing abstract political concerns with the minutiae of daily experience, plus a marvelous sense of humor, that particularly shines through in his many songs for and about children.

Since his much too early death in 1967, Woody’s reputation has grown steadily. Pete Seeger, who traveled the country with Woody in 1940-41, helped keep Woody’s flame and fame alive, performing and recording his songs. Bob Dylan, who regularly visited Woody in the hospital, covered several of his songs, and wrote his own “Song for Woody.”

Since then, Woody’s songs have been covered by artists across the broad spectrum of English language music: Ry Cooder, Lady Gaga, The Byrds, Solas, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Dropkick Murphys, Odetta, Jonatha Brook, the Klezmatics, Slaid Cleaves, Flatt and Scruggs, Jimmy LaFave, Country Joe McDonald, Old Crow Medicine Show, Johnny Rodriguez and U2, among others.

Part of the growth in Woody’s reputation is due to the steadfast creative stewardship of his daughter Nora Guthrie. Woody left behind a staggering number of lyrics, often with no notation as to whether there was an existing tune to which he wanted those words sung –or, for that matter, whether they were just lyrics he wrote down without any tune in mind.

In 1990s, Nora began asking other artists to set some of those lyrics to music. One of the key turning points in this process came in 1998, when British folk rocker Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco, led by Jeff Tweedy, released the album Mermaid Avenue, setting 13 of Woody’s previously unrecorded songs to music. Woody’s own recordings of his songs had tended towards the spare and sparse, a style which has its passionate supporters, but is not necessarily widely appreciated. On Mermaid Avenue, the musical tapestry is rich and varied, as Bragg, Tweedy and Wilco bring Woody forward to the point where he becomes a truly contemporary twenty-first century artist.

In addition to the Bragg/Wilco crew, Joel Rafael, Jonatha Brook and the Del McCoury Band released albums entirely created from Woody’s archived lyrics. Other artists who were asked to set Woody’s lyrics to music included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Johnny Irion, double Grammy winners Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer and six-time Grammy finalist John McCutcheon. McCutcheon contributed to the increasing popularity of Woody’s songs in his own 2011 album This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America, in which he covered 13 songs that Woody himself had recorded, plus two lyrics Woody left behind for which McCutcheon wrote the music: “Old Cap Moore” about a delivery man who gave out free bread to hungry children much to the chagrin of his employer, and the sweet love song, “Harness Up The Day.”

Another key point in this process came in 2012 with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Woody’s birth. Major concerts organized by the Woody Guthrie Foundation featured such prominent artists as John Mellencamp, Arlo Guthrie, Rosanne Cash, the Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien and The Flaming Lips. Centennial academic conferences at various institutions in the USA and abroad included presentations by over two dozen scholars on various aspects of Woody’s life and work.

It’s hard to think of another American folk artist who has such a broad sweep of events and institutions dedicated to them. There are several plays featuring Woody’s songs that tour internationally and are presented for extended runs in theatres. There’s a Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma that houses the Woody Guthrie Archive and features a permanent exhibit on Woody’s life and legacy. There’s an annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, Woody’s birthplace, and a continuing flow of books about him, including Will Kaufman’s superb three-part series.

Amazingly enough, fifty-three years after his death, Woody continues to send us new songs that touch on current events. It was Kaufman who, searching through the Woody Guthrie Archives, discovered that for two years Woody had rented a home in a racially restricted development named Beach Haven from none other than Fred Trump, father of the U.S. President. Now on YouTube you can hear yet another timely Woody Guthrie song:

Beach Haven ain't my home!
I just cain't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

Whether Woody is roaming in the Oklahoma hills where he was born, following his footsteps through the diamond deserts or the pastures of plenty, you know the old radical must be smiling.

Cray, Ed. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Guthrie, Nora. My Name Is New York: Ramblin' Around Woody Guthrie's Town. New York:
powerhouse Books, 2012.

Guthrie, Woody. Bound for Glory. New York: New American Library, 1943.

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

Kaufman, Will. Woody Guthrie, American Radical. University of Illinois Press, 2011.

Kaufman, Will. Woody Guthrie's Modern World Blues. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.

Kaufman, Will. Mapping Woody Guthrie. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.