[A-List] Ballad for Americans

[Charles Brown]

> Michael Hudson wrote:
>> 
>> Those certainly are NOT the lyrics that I learned growing up.
>>     Our lyrics were:
> 
> Very nice. But this take-off does obscure Guthrie's original impetus
for
> the song. Though that might not matter because it's pretty well
hidden
> by the ways in which the song has been used. But what triggered the
song
> was that he had just heard Irving Belin's "God Bless America,"
became
> very angry, and went into the recording studio (I forget the man's
name
> who ran it though he's well known) the next morning and reco4rded
This
> Land . . .as a 'reply' to berlin. He thought the song would be very
> unpopular, as it would have been in its full version.
> 
> Carrol
> 
^^^
CB: Here's a wikipedia excerpt 
on what Carrol said:

 Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's "God Bless
America." He thought the song was unrealistic and complacent.[22] Partly
inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste
for God Bless America, he penned his most famous song, "This Land Is
Your Land" in February 1940. It was titled "God Blessed America." The
melody is based on the gospel song "Oh My Loving Brother", best known as
"Little Darling, Pal of Mine", sung by the country group The Carter
Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment "All you can
write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.".[23] He protested
class inequality in the final verses:

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 often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by
Guthrie. Though the song was written in 1940, it would be four years
before he recorded it for Moses Asch in April 1944,[24] and even longer
until sheet music was produced and given to schools by Howie
Richmond.[25]


Charles:
Yea, I believe Woodie Gutherie
was class conscious 
enough to know
that Wall Street et al 
were a ruling class,
so it seems likely the 
Guthrie sense 
and Pete Seeger's, 
was something like
"We built this land, 
so it is ours, and
lets take it from the
 bosses. ", especially
in the midst of the 30's
 and 40's struggles.
Not likely to be meant to 
be complacent
and satisfied.

^^^^^
Woody Guthrie
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Woody Guthrie 


Woody Guthrie with guitar labeled
"This machine kills fascists" 
Background information 
Birth name Woodrow Wilson Guthrie 
Born July 14, 1912(1912-07-14)
Okemah, Oklahoma, U.S. 
Died October 3, 1967 (aged 55)
New York City, New York, U.S. 
Genre(s) Folk, protest song 
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter 
Instrument(s) Guitar, Vocal, Harmonica, Mandolin, Fiddle 
Years active 1930–1956 
Notable instrument(s) 
Martin 000-18, Gibson Southern Jumbo, Gibson J-45 


Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is
best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose
musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and
children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed
with the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists" displayed on his guitar.
His best known song is probably "This Land Is Your Land", which is
regularly sung in American schools. Many of his recorded songs are
archived in the Library of Congress.[1]

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and
learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about
his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression earning
him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".[2] Throughout his life
Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups, though he
was never an actual member of any.( How do they know ?)[3]

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including
American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician
Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's
disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later
years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the
folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk
musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and
to a lesser extent Bob Dylan.[4]

Contents [hide]
1 Biography 
1.1 Early life: 1912–1930 
1.2 1930s: Traveling era 
1.2.1 California 
1.3 1940s: Building a legacy 
1.3.1 New York City 
1.3.2 Pacific Northwest 
1.3.3 Almanac Singers 
1.3.4 Bound for Glory 
1.3.5 The Asch recordings 
1.3.6 World War II years 
1.3.7 Mermaid Avenue 
1.4 1950s and 1960s 
1.4.1 Deteriorating health 
1.4.2 Folk revival and Guthrie's death 
2 Musical legacy 
2.1 Foundation and Archives 
2.2 Folk Festival 
2.3 Jewish songs 
2.4 Tributes 
3 Posthumous honors 
4 Selected discography 
5 See also 
6 References 
6.1 Citations 
6.2 Printed sources 
7 Further reading/listening 
8 External links 
 


[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life: 1912–1930
 
Woody Guthrie's Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, birthplace as it appeared in
1979Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County,
Oklahoma, to Nora Belle Sherman and Charles Edward Guthrie.[4] His
parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, the
Democratic candidate soon to be elected President of the United States.

Charley Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up
to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was also actively involved in
Oklahoma politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the
county. The young Guthrie would often accompany his father when Charley
made stump speeches in the area.[5]

Guthrie's early family life was affected by several tragic fires,
including one which caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah. His
sister Clara later died in a coal oil fire when Guthrie was seven, and
Guthrie's father was thereafter severely burned also in a coal oil
fire.[6] The circumstances of these fires, especially the one in which
Charley was injured, remain unclear. It is not known whether they were
simple accidents or the result of actions by Guthrie's mother who,
unknown to the Guthries at the time, was suffering from the progressive
neurodegenerative disorder, Huntington's disease.[7]

Nora Guthrie was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the
Insane, where she died in 1930 from Huntington's disease. It is also
suspected that her father, George Sherman, judging from the
circumstances surrounding his death by drowning, suffered from the same
hereditary disease.[8]

With Nora Guthrie institutionalized and Charley Guthrie living in
Pampa, Texas, working to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate
deals, Woody Guthrie and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma and
relied on their eldest brother, Roy Guthrie, for support. The
14-year-old Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, bumming meals, and
sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one
story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica
player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine
booth. Before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing
along. But in another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed that he
learned how to play harmonica from a boyhood friend, John Woods, and
that his earlier story was false.[9] He seemed to have a natural
affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use
his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or
coins.[10] Guthrie easily learned old Irish ballads and traditional
songs from the parents of friends. Although he did not excel as a
student (he dropped out of high school in his fourth year and did not
graduate), his teachers described him as bright. He was also an avid
reader and read books on a wide range of topics. Friends remember him
reading constantly.[11]

Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas where
little would change for the now-aspiring musician. Guthrie, now 18, was
reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa and spent a lot of time
learning songs by busking on the streets and reading at the library. He
was growing as a musician, gaining practice by regularly playing at
dances for his cousin Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. In addition, he
spent much time at the library in Pampa's city hall and wrote a
manuscript summarizing everything he had read on the basics of
psychology. A librarian in Pampa shelved this manuscript under Guthrie's
name, but it was later lost in a library reorganization.[11]


[edit] 1930s: Traveling era
At age 19 Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with
whom he had three children.[12] With the advent of the Dust Bowl era,
Guthrie left Texas, leaving Mary behind, and joined the thousands of
Okies who were migrating to California looking for work. Many of his
songs are concerned with the conditions faced by these working class
people.

"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 of his L.A. radio show "Woody and Lefty Lou" who wanted the
words to his recordings.[13] 

[edit] California
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.[14] Guthrie
was making enough money to send for his family still living in Texas.
While appearing on radio station KFVD, a commercial radio station owned
by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat Frank Burke, Guthrie began to
write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually appear
on Dust Bowl Ballads. It was at KFVD that Guthrie met newscaster Ed
Robbin. Robbin was impressed with a song Guthrie wrote about Thomas
Mooney, a wrongly convicted man who was, at the time, a leftist cause
célèbre.[15] Robbin, who became Guthrie's political mentor,
introduced Guthrie to Socialists and Communists in Southern California,
including Will Geer, who would remain Guthrie's lifelong friend, and
helped Guthrie book benefit performances in the Communist circles in
Southern California. Notwithstanding Guthrie's later claim that "the
best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist
Party",[16] he was never actually a member of the Party. He was,
however, noted as a fellow traveler, or an outsider who agreed with the
platform of the party without being subject to party discipline.[17]
Despite not being a party member, Guthrie requested to write a column
for the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker. The column, titled "Woody
Sez", appeared a total of 174 times from May 1939 to January 1940. Woody
Sez was not explicitly political, but rather was about current events
that Guthrie observed and experienced. The column was written in an
exaggerated hillbilly dialect and usually included a small comic.[18]
The columns were later published as a collection after Guthrie's
death.[3] Steve Earle said of Woody, "I don't think of Woody Guthrie as
a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political
times".[19]

With the outbreak of World War II and the nonaggression pact the Soviet
Union had signed with Germany in 1939 KFVD radio owners did not want its
staff "spinning apologia" for the Soviet Union; both Robbin and Guthrie
left the station.[20] Without the daily radio show, prospects for
employment diminished and Guthrie and his family returned to Pampa,
Texas. Although Mary Guthrie was happy to return to Texas, the
wanderlusting Guthrie soon after accepted Will Geer's invitation to come
to New York City and headed east.


[edit] 1940s: Building a legacy

[edit] New York City
Arriving in New York, Guthrie, known as the Oklahoma cowboy, was
embraced by its leftist folk music community and slept on a couch in
Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie also made what were his first real
recordings—several hours of conversation and songs that were 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.[21]




 "This Land is Your Land" 
File:Woody Guthrie — This Land.ogg
 
Sample of Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is Your Land" 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
  
Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's "God Bless
America." He thought the song was unrealistic and complacent.[22] Partly
inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste
for God Bless America, he penned his most famous song, "This Land Is
Your Land" in February 1940. It was titled "God Blessed America." The
melody is based on the gospel song "Oh My Loving Brother", best known as
"Little Darling, Pal of Mine", sung by the country group The Carter
Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment "All you can
write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.".[23] He protested
class inequality in the final verses:

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 often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by
Guthrie. Though the song was written in 1940, it would be four years
before he recorded it for Moses Asch in April 1944,[24] and even longer
until sheet music was produced and given to schools by Howie
Richmond.[25]

In March 1940, Guthrie was invited to play at a benefit hosted by The
Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers to raise money for Migrant
Workers. John Steinbeck's book The Grapes of Wrath was quite popular. It
was at this concert Guthrie met Pete Seeger and the two men became good
friends.[26] Later Seeger accompanied Guthrie back to Texas to meet
other members of the Guthrie family and has recalled an awkward
conversation with Mary Guthrie's mother in which she asked Seeger's help
in persuading Guthrie to treat her daughter better.[27]

Guthrie had some success in New York at this time as a guest on CBS's
radio program Back Where I Come From and used his influence to get a
spot on the show for his friend Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter.
Ledbetter's Tenth Street apartment was a gathering spot for the left
wing musician circle in New York at the time and Guthrie and Ledbetter
were good friends after having busked together at bars in Harlem.[28]

In September 1940 Guthrie was invited by the Model Tobacco Company to
host their radio program "Pipe Smoking Time". Guthrie was paid $180 a
week, an impressive salary in 1940.[29] He was finally making enough
money to send regular payments back to Mary and eventually brought Mary
and the children to New York, where the family lived in an apartment on
Central Park West. The reunion represented Woody's desire to be a better
father and husband. He said "I have to set [sic] real hard to think of
being a dad".[29] Unfortunately for the newly relocated family, Guthrie
quit after the seventh broadcast, claiming he had begun to feel the show
was too restricting when he was told what to sing.[30] Disgruntled with
New York, Guthrie packed up Mary and his children in a new car and
headed west to California.[31]


[edit] Pacific Northwest
In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the
family to Washington in the Pacific Northwest on the promise of a job. A
documentary, directed by Gunther von Fritsch, was being created in
support of the Bonneville Power Administration's building of the Grand
Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and needed a narrator. Supported by a
recommendation from Alan Lomax, the original idea was to have Guthrie
narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was
projected to take one year to complete but when filmmakers became
worried about the implications of casting such a political figure,
Guthrie's role was minimized. He was hired instead for one month only by
the Department of the Interior to write songs about the Columbia River
and the building of the federal dams for the documentary's soundtrack.
While there Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest.
Guthrie said he "couldn't believe it, it's a paradise",[32] and was
creatively inspired. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including
three of his most famous: "Roll On Columbia", "Pastures of Plenty", and
"Grand Coulee Dam".[33] The surviving songs were eventually released as
Columbia River Songs. The film was not completed and was only released
in a limited form.

At the conclusion of the month in Oregon and Washington, Guthrie wanted
to return to New York. Tired of the continual uprooting, Mary Guthrie
told him to go without her and the children.[34] Although Guthrie would
see Mary again, once on a tour through Los Angeles with the Almanac
Singers, it was essentially the end of their marriage. Divorce was
difficult with Mary being a member of the Catholic Church, but she
reluctantly agreed in December 1943.[35]

 
Woody Guthrie, 1943
[edit] Almanac Singers
Main article: Almanac Singers
Following the conclusion of his work in Washington State, Guthrie
corresponded with Pete Seeger about Seeger's newly formed folk-protest
group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to
tour the country as a member of the group.[36] The singers originally
worked out of a loft in New York City hosting regular concerts called
hootenannys, a word Pete and Woody had picked up in their cross-country
travels. The singers eventually outgrew the space and moved into the
cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers
termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until
Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was
that World War II was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the
Soviet Union the topics of their songs became anti-fascist. The members
of the Almanac Singers and residents of the Almanac House were a loosely
defined group of musicians, though the 'core' members included Guthrie,
Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell and Lee Hays. In keeping with common
socialist ideals, meals, chores and rent at the Almanac House were
shared. The Sunday hootenannys were good opportunities to collect
donation money for rent. Songs written in the Almanac House had shared
songwriting credits among all the members, although in the case of
"Union Maid", members would later state that Guthrie wrote the song,
ensuring that his children would receive residuals.[37]

In the Almanac House Guthrie added an air of authenticity to their work
since Guthrie was a "real" working class Oklahoman. "There was the heart
of America personified in Woody....And for a New York Left that was
primarily Jewish, first or second generation American, and was
desperately trying to get Americanized, I think a figure like Woody was
of great, great importance", a friend of the group, Irwin Silber, would
say.[38] Woody would routinely emphasize his working class image, reject
songs he felt were not in the country blues vein he was familiar with,
and would rarely contribute to household chores. House member Agnes
"Sis" Cunningham, another Okie, would later recall that Woody, "loved
people to think of him as a real working class person and not an
intellectual".[39] Guthrie contributed songwriting and authenticity in
much the same capacity for Pete Seeger's post-Almanac Singers project
People's Songs, a newsletter and booking organization for labor singers,
founded in 1945.[40]


[edit] Bound for Glory
Guthrie was a prolific writer, penning thousands of pages of
unpublished poems and prose, many written while living in New York City.
After a recording session with Alan Lomax, Lomax suggested Guthrie write
an autobiography; in Lomax's opinion, Guthrie's descriptions of growing
up were some of the best accounts of American childhood that he had
read.[41] It was during this time that Guthrie met a dancer in New York
who would become his second wife, Marjorie Mazia. Mazia was an
instructor at the prestigious Martha Graham Dance School where she was
assisting Sophie Maslow with her piece Folksay. Based on the folklore
and poetry collected by Carl Sandburg, it included the adaptation of
some of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads for the dance studio.[42] He
continued writing songs and, as Lomax had suggested, began work on his
autobiography. The end product, Bound For Glory was completed in no
small part due to the patient editing assistance of Mazia and was first
published by E.P. Dutton in 1943.[43] It is a vivid tale told in the
artist's own down-home dialect, with the flair and imagery of a true
storyteller. Library Journal complained about the "Too careful
reproduction of illiterate speech."[44] But Clifton Fadiman, reviewing
the book in the New York Times, paid the author a fine tribute: "Some
day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the
ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box
are a national possession like Yellowstone and Yosemite, and part of the
best stuff this country has to show the world."[44] A film adaptation of
Bound for Glory was released in 1976.[45]


[edit] The Asch recordings
In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he
first recorded "This Land Is Your Land", and over the next few years
recorded "Worried Man Blues", along with hundreds of other songs. These
recordings would later be released by Folkways and Stinson Records who
had joint distribution rights to the recordings.[46] The Folkways
recordings are still available today with the most complete series of
these sessions, culled from dates with Asch, simply titled The Asch
Recordings.


[edit] World War II years
Guthrie believed performing his anti-fascist songs and poems at home
were the best use of his talents; Guthrie lobbied the United States Army
to accept him as a USO performer instead of conscripting him as a
soldier in the draft. When Guthrie's attempts failed, his friends Cisco
Houston and Jim Longhi pressured Guthrie to join the U.S. Merchant
Marine.[47] Guthrie followed their advice. He served as a mess man and
dish washer, and frequently sang for the crew and troops to buoy the
spirits on transatlantic voyages. Guthrie made attempts to write about
his experience in the Merchant Marine but was never satisfied with the
results. Longhi later wrote about these experiences in his book Woody,
Cisco and Me.[48] The book offers a rare first-hand account of Guthrie
during his Merchant Marine service. In 1945, Guthrie's association with
Communism made him ineligible for further service in the Merchant Marine
and he was drafted into the U.S. Army.[49]

While he was on furlough from the Army Guthrie and Marjorie were
married.[50] After his discharge, they moved into a house on Mermaid
Avenue in Coney Island and over time had four children. One of their
children, Cathy, died as a result of a fire at age four, sending Guthrie
into a serious depression.[51] Their other children were named Joady,
Nora and Arlo. Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a
singer-songwriter. 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.

A 1948 crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland,
California, on their way to be deported back to Mexico inspired Woody to
write "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)".[52]


[edit] Mermaid Avenue
The years living on Mermaid Avenue were among Guthrie's most productive
periods as a writer. His extensive writings from this time were archived
and maintained by Marjorie and later his estate, mostly handled by
Guthrie's daughter Nora. Several of the manuscripts contain scribblings
by a young Arlo and the other Guthrie offspring.[53]

During this time Ramblin' Jack Elliott studied extensively under
Guthrie, visiting his home and observing how he wrote and performed.
Elliott, like Bob Dylan later, idolized Guthrie and was inspired by his
idiomatic performance style and repertoire. Due to Guthrie's illness,
Dylan and Guthrie's son Arlo would later claim that they learned much of
Guthrie's performance style from Elliott. When asked about Arlo's claim,
Elliott said, "I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I
learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, If you want to
learn something, just steal it—that's the way I learned from Lead
Belly."[54]


[edit] 1950s and 1960s

[edit] Deteriorating health
By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was declining and his behavior
becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including
alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952 was finally diagnosed with
Huntington's disease, the genetic disorder inherited from his mother.
Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie suggested he
return to California without her and they eventually divorced.[55]

Upon his return to California, Guthrie lived in a compound owned by
Will Geer with blacklisted singers and actors waiting out the political
climate. As his health worsened he met and married his third wife,
Anneke Van Kirk, and they had a child, Lorina Lynn. The couple moved to
Florida briefly, living in a bus on land owned by a friend. Guthrie's
arm was hurt in a campfire accident when gasoline used to start the
campfire exploded. Although in time he regained movement in the arm, he
was never able to play the guitar again. In 1954 the couple returned to
New York.[56] Shortly after that, Anneke filed for divorce, a result of
the strain of caring for Guthrie. Anneke left New York, allowing friends
to adopt Lorina Lynn. After the divorce, Guthrie's second wife Marjorie
reentered his life. Marjorie cared for him and assisted him until his
death.

Guthrie, increasingly unable to control his muscle movements, was
hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961,
at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966,[57] and finally at Creedmoor
Psychiatric Center until his death.[58] Marjorie and the children
visited Guthrie at Greystone every Sunday. They answered fan mail and
played on the hospital grounds. Eventually a longtime fan of Guthrie
invited the family to his nearby home for these Sunday visits lasting
until Guthrie was moved to the Brooklyn State Hospital, which was closer
to where Marjorie lived. Guthrie's illness was essentially untreated due
to a lack of information about the disease at the time. However, his
death helped raise awareness of the disease and led Marjorie to help
found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, which became the
Huntington's Disease Society of America.[59] None of Guthrie's three
remaining children with Marjorie have developed symptoms of
Huntington's, but two of Mary Guthrie's children (Gwendolyn and Sue)
were diagnosed with the disease. Both died at 41 years of age.[60]


[edit] Folk revival and Guthrie's death
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people
were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These "folk
revivalists" became more politically aware in their music. The American
Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the
day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets
of folk singers were forming around the country in places like
Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New
York City. One of Guthrie's visitors at Greystone Park was 19 year old
Bob Dylan [61] who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie's
repertoire: "The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had
the infinite sweep of humanity in them."[62] After learning of Guthrie's
whereabouts, young folk singers regularly visited him during the final
years of his life, playing his own songs for him as well as their
originals.[63] Guthrie died of complications of Huntington's disease in
1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new
audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger,
Ramblin' Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the
folk revival, and his son Arlo.


[edit] Musical legacy
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a
song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose.
No good to nobody. No good for nothing. 
Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or
too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on
account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last
drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this
is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for
a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are
built.

I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in
your work."[64]
—Guthrie on songwriting
 

[edit] Foundation and Archives
Main article: Woody Guthrie Foundation
The Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves
as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. The
archive houses the largest collection of Guthrie material in the
world.[65] Guthrie's unrecorded written lyrics housed at the Archives
have been the starting point of several albums including the Wilco and
Billy Bragg albums Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, created in
1998 sessions at the invitation of Guthrie's daughter Nora.[66]


[edit] Folk Festival
Main article: Woody Guthrie Folk Festival
The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to
commemorate Guthrie's life and music. The festival is held on the
weekend closest to Guthrie's birth date (July 14) in Guthrie's hometown
of Okemah, Oklahoma. Planned and implemented annually by the Woody
Guthrie Coalition, a non-profit corporation, the goal is simply to
ensure Guthrie's musical legacy.[67][68] The Woody Guthrie Coalition
commissioned a local Creek Indian sculptor to cast a full-body bronze
statue of Guthrie and his guitar, complete with the guitar's well-known
inscription: "This machine kills fascists".[69] The statue, sculpted by
artist Dan Brook, stands along Okemah's main street in the heart of
downtown and was unveiled the inaugural year of the festival.[70]


[edit] Jewish songs
Marjorie Mazia was born Marjorie Greenblatt and her mother, Aliza
Greenblatt, was a well known Yiddish poet. With her, Guthrie wrote
numerous Jewish lyrics. Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the
unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, who
lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s.
Guthrie–the Oklahoma troubadour–and Greenblatt–the Jewish
wordsmith–often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each
other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture
and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their
collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was
interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor,
classical Socialist activism. Guthrie was inspired to write songs that
came directly out of this unlikely relationship, both personal and
political; he identified the problems of Jews with those of his fellow
Okies and other oppressed peoples.

These lyrics were rediscovered by Nora Guthrie and were set to music by
the Jewish Klezmer group The Klezmatics with the release of Happy Joyous
Hanukkah on JMG Records in 2007. The Klezmatics also released Wonder
Wheel — Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, an album of spiritual lyrics put to
music composed by the band.[71] The album, produced by Danny Blume, was
awarded a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.[72]


[edit] Tributes
Since his death, artists have paid tribute to Guthrie by covering his
songs or by dedicating songs to him. One of the first artists to do so
was Scottish folk artist Donovan, who covered Guthrie's "Car, Car
(Riding in My Car)" on his 1965 debut album What's Bin Did and What's
Bin Hid.[73] On January 20, 1968, three months following Guthrie's
death, Harold Leventhal produced A Tribute to Woody Guthrie at New York
City's Carnegie Hall.[74] Performers included Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger,
Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Richie
Havens, Odetta, and others. Leventhal repeated the tribute on September
12, 1970 at the Hollywood Bowl. Recordings of the two concerts were
eventually compiled as an album.[75] The legendary Irish folk singer,
Christy Moore, was also strongly influenced by Woody in his seminal 1970
album Prosperous, giving renditions of "The Ludlow Massacre" and Bob
Dylan's "Song to Woody." Bruce Springsteen also performed a cover of
Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" on his live album Live 1975-1985. In
the introduction to the song, Springsteen referred to it as "just about
one of the most beautiful songs ever written."[76]

In September 1996 Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and
Case Western Reserve University cohosted Hard Travelin': The Life and
Legacy of Woody Guthrie, a 10-day conference of panel sessions,
lectures, and concerts. The conference became the first in what would
become the museum's annual American Music Masters Series conference.[77]
Highlights included Arlo Guthrie's keynote address, a Saturday night
musical jamboree at Cleveland's Odeon Theater, and a Sunday night
concert at Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra.[78]
Musicians performing over the course of the conference included Arlo
Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack
Elliott, the Indigo Girls, Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave, Ani DiFranco, and
others.[79] In 1999, Wesleyan University Press published a collection of
essays from the conference[80] and DiFranco's record label, Righteous
Babe, released a compilation of the Severance Hall concert, 'Til We
Outnumber 'Em, in 2000.[81]

>From 1999 to 2002 the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition
Service presented the traveling exhibit, This Land Is Your Land: The
Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. In collaboration with Nora Guthrie,
the Smithsonian exhibition draws from rarely seen objects,
illustrations, film footage, and recorded performances to reveal a
complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist,
itinerant hobo, and folk legend.[82]

In 2003, Jimmy LaFave produced a Woody Guthrie tribute show called
Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway. The ensemble show toured around the
country and included a rotating cast of singer-songwriters individually
performing Guthrie's songs. Interspersed between songs were Guthrie's
philosophical writings read by a narrator. In addition to LaFave,
members of the rotating cast included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza
Gilkyson, Joel Rafael, husband-wife duo Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody
Guthrie's granddaughter) and Johnny Irion, Michael Fracasso, and The
Burns Sisters. Oklahoma songwriter Bob Childers, sometimes called "the
Dylan of the Dust", served as narrator.[83][84] When word spread about
the tour, performers began contacting LaFave, whose only prerequisite
was to have an inspirational connection to Guthrie. Each artist chose
the Guthrie songs that he or she would perform as part of the tribute.
LaFave said, "It works because all the performers are Guthrie
enthusiasts in some form".[85] The inaugural performance of the Ribbon
of Highway tour took place on February 5, 2003 at the Ryman Auditorium
in Nashville. The abbreviated show was a featured segment of Nashville
Sings Woody, yet another tribute concert to commemorate the music of
Woody Guthrie held during the Folk Alliance Conference. The cast of
Nashville Sings Woody, a benefit for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and
Archives, also included Arlo Guthrie, Marty Stuart, Nanci Griffith, Guy
Clark, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Janis Ian, and others.[86]

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie were honored at a musical celebration
featuring Billy Bragg and the band Brad on October 17, 2007 at Webster
Hall in New York City. Steve Earle also performed. The event was hosted
by actor/activist Tim Robbins to benefit the Huntington¹s Disease
Society of America to commemorate the organization's 40th
Anniversary.[87]


[edit] Posthumous honors
Pete Seeger had the sloop Woody Guthrie built for the Beacon Sloop
Club.[88] It was launched in 1978 and serves to educate people about
sailing and the history and environs of the Hudson River.

Although Guthrie's catalogue never brought him many awards while he was
alive, in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the
same year his protégé Bob Dylan was inducted),[89] and in 2000 he was
honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[90]

In 1987 "Roll On Columbia" was chosen as the official Washington State
Folk Song,[91] and in 2001 Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" was chosen to be
the official state folk song of Oklahoma.[13]

On September 26, 1992, The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center
located in Sherborn, Massachusetts, awarded Guthrie their Courage of
Conscience Award for his social activism and artistry in song which
conveyed the plight of the common person.[92]

On June 26, 1998, as part of its Legends of American Music series, the
United States Postal Service issued 45 million 32-cent stamps honoring
folk musicians Huddie Ledbetter, Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Josh White.
The four musicians were represented on sheets of 20 stamps.[93]

In 2006, The Klezmatics set Jewish lyrics written by Guthrie to music.
The resulting album, Wonder Wheel, won the Grammy award for best
contemporary world music album.[94]

On April 27, 2007, Guthrie was one of four Okemah natives inducted into
Okemah's Hall of Fame during the town's Pioneer Day weekend of
festivities.[95]

On February 10, 2008, The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949,
a rare live recording released in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie
Foundation, was the recipient of a Grammy Award in the category Best
Historical Album.[96][97]





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