Musicians - Woody Guthrie

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	Musicians - Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967), known as Woody Guthrie was an influential and prolific American folk musician noted for his identification with the common man, the poor and the downtrodden, and for his abhorrence of fascism and exploitation. He is best known for his song "This Land Is Your Land".

He is also the father of musician Arlo Guthrie.

Life and career

Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on July 14, 1912. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was in the same year elected president in the 1912 election.

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 left Texas and his family with the Dust Bowl, 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. A lifelong socialist and trade unionist, he also contributed a regular column, "Woody Sez," to the Daily Worker and People's World newspapers.

In the mid-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.

In 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's song "God Bless America", which he considered unrealistic and complacent (he was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio). The melody was based on the gospel song "When the World's on Fire," best known as sung by the country/bluegrass 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." :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 met Pete Seeger and joined the legendary 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 eventually he and they, along with the Communist milieu with which they were associated, joined the anti-fascist cause. 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.

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 Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Dolly Parton, and Woody's son Arlo Guthrie. "Pastures of Plenty," written around the same time, also sympathized with the struggle of migrant workers.

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Musicians - Woody Guthrie

Life and career

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