Woodrow Wilson Guthrie would have turned 100 today. Woody is one of my heroes. He pretty much invented 20th century folk music and was a true radical.
He had an extraordinary influence on so many artists. Bob Dylan more or less became Woody in the early years of his career. In recent years a small industry has developed, celebrating Woody’s music. Have a look at this classic Bruce Springsteen version of This Land from 1985. Springsteen performed it again, with Woody’s contemporary Pete Seeger at President Obama’s inauguration. Billy Bragg and Wilco have brought a swag of Guthrie’s songs to life, putting music to lyric sheets from the archive. Steve Earle, who appears in this Democracy Now studio discussion on Guthrie’s life, wrote a great account of Guthrie’s legacy in the Nation back in 2003, and has just published a novel and an album inspired by the same.
Here’s an excerpt from a tribute in the Guardian:
Guthrie was born 100 years ago today, on 14 July 1912. His family broke up amid arson, death, poverty and madness, and he left his Oklahoma home at 18 to begin a lifelong habit of taking to the open road. His overriding inspiration was always the plight of the disenfranchised, and he lent his voice to the dustbowl refugees of the 1930s depression. His politics also extended into the wider world and he joined the marines in the second world war to fight the rising tide of fascism. With the famous logo written on his guitar, “This machine kills fascists”, he wrote hundreds of anti-Hitler, pro-war and historic ballads to rally the troops. But he never lost sight of the practical, human dimension and also wrote songs about the dangers of venereal disease. No subject was taboo.
Forty-five years after his death Guthrie’s voice remains clear and sure, not least because his strong moral values were infused by a wry sense of humour. He wrote great songs that could be understood and enjoyed by everyone, he knew the value of a good one-liner, a storyline and a catchy melody, and he never wavered from his mission to mean every word. Here are his thoughts on the effectiveness of song in spreading ideas: “There’s several ways of saying what’s on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain’t too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing … No matter who makes it up, no matter who sings it and who don’t, if it talks the lingo of the people it’s a cinch to catch on, and will be sung here and yonder for a long time after you’ve cashed in your chips.”
This weekend there is a three day Woodyfest in New York, and another one in his birthplace of Omekeh, Oklahoma. And the Smithsonian have put out this amazing looking book and CD set.
I am sure if Woody were alive today he’d have been playing at one of the Aotearoa Is Not For Sale marches around the country.
Why, Oh Why
Why can’t a dish break a hammer?
Why oh why oh why?!
‘Cause a hammer’s a hard head.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.
Thanks for this post, Phil. Woody Guthrie wrote hundreds of songs but one that resonates with me is “Vigilante Man” especially the Ry Cooder version. Guthrie’s ability to speak for the times predated Bob Dylan and he still speaks for us today.
When I listened to Woody Guthrie singing “This Land is Your Land” I did wonder whether his delivery was slightly sardonic.
Guthrie also wrote some great children’s songs, a hard audience to please, and I want to conclude my homage to Guthrie with a verse from a modern-day folksinging wanderer, Irishman Andy Irvine, with his take on Guthrie’s life and philosophy.
“Don’t let them ever fool you
Or take you by surprise
That dirty smell of a politician
And the man with the greed in his eyes
One big union, that’s our plan
And the IWW”s your only man
The flames of discontent we’ll fan
For the cause that never dies”
Woody is the man! Springsteen’s cover of “I Ain’t Got No Home” off the Folkways compilation is pretty awesome too.Chillingly prescient for today for a song written so long ago.
without Woody Guthrie there would be no Bob Dylan, and without Dylan, modern poular music would be totally different – a huge shadow to cast!
Yee haa!
!!!!!
Labour in opposition must be fertile ground for some magnificent imagery and music to expose the ‘right’.The really great memorable protest songs come from injustice
As Phil Twyford says Woody would be protesting asset sales if he were here….and the not so subtle promotion of a privileged elite.
So bring on the talent to ‘raise’ the masses with respect to the creation of a truely; “New Zealand ‘Fair’”.
Terrific post, Phil. I disagree with Mac1 above when he says “When I listened to Woody Guthrie singing “This Land is Your Land” I did wonder whether his delivery was slightly sardonic.”
The fact is that Woody’s lyrics for that song are routinely politically sanitised. I don’t recall singing the following verse, when we learned “This Land Is Your land” at primary school:
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?
Mark Derby, thanks for that comment. I googled the song and found these two verses, but I am not sure whether the time I heard Guthrie sing his song it contained them.
“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?”
What I heard in Guthrie’s version was the sardonic tone of voice which these words would have indicated. He did not believe that the America he knew was made for the likes of him or the people thrown out into the rain by the Vigilante man or the migrants working in pastures of plenty. He believed it should be for the likes of him “but the banks are made of marble with a guard at every door”, as another song goes.
That is ‘sardonic’ meaning ‘grimly mocking or critical.”
“This land is your land.”??? Not a hope of young couples getting an affordable section under Labour. Bring Back Brash!
Bring back Brash? If we followed Dr Brash’ prescription young couples might get an affordable section – 50 km from place of work, with commuting costing them huge amounts in money and time. Removing the metropolitan urban limits and letting sprawl rip is not an urban development strategy.
Woody guthrie is as important to the folk “revival” that changed the face of popular music, as Robert Johnson was to the blues being introduced to a worldwide audience….
The term “colossus” would not be an overstatement, considering the wholesale incorporation of the musical, and philosophical ideas presented in their music….
one question…. what is it about people who choose the name george that makes them unable to say anything that doesn’t pander to their own shortcomings?
A scroll through my collection of both woodies, and roberts catalogue should bring up several songs that would fit the mood of todays downtrodden masses….
I’ll get on to it…. any suggestions would be useful…
BB, here are some of the best IMO Guthrie political songs. “Vigilante Man”, “Deportee,” “Pastures of Plenty.” Dick Gaughan, the Scottish folk-singer, valued Guthrie because he included analysis as well as depiction of what is wrong and also a way to go forward.
Robert Johnson would have celebrated his hundredth birthday last year. I’m not sure what songs he wrote for the downtrodden masses but I’m sure that people have known about the “Hell Hound on my Trail.” He had many great songs and I agree totally with what you say about the contribution to folk and blues that both men made.
Could I suggest “How Can a Poor Boy Stand Such Times and Live” as a song worthy of consideration, and “Hard Times” as well.
How far would Johnson have taken the Blues if he had survived young manhood?
@Phil Twyford
“… – 50 km from place of work, with commuting costing them huge amounts in money and time.”
Don’t you really mean an extra 5km of commuting at negligible extra cost in time and money?
Good suggestions mac1…Pastures of plenty gives me goosebumps…
Robert johnson was a bluesman in the tradition that he wrote of his own life’s trials, and hardships…
As such, these men, and women wrote the words that resonated with the folk, and the times they lived in…In that way, they spoke for the downtrodden masses as much as the more cerebral, analytic folk singers….who enunciated,brilliantly at times, the inequities rife within the capitalist reality…
that ability to speak for the many whilst singing of their personal feelings, and experiences is what drew me to the blues in the first place…This method has been extensively utilised within pop/rock music for as long as i have been aware that there was music other than chopin..
robert would have gone the “Lonny Johnston” route…According to contemporaries, he dreamed of having his own backup orchestra….
Parallels with hendrix at that point….both men being on the point of metamorphosis into their true paths… both cut off at the last hurdle…
The next, obvious question is, what would make a good theme song for the labour party out of that lot…? It seems that a rallying call is the one thing we aren’t getting right now…
Maybe a contest, or poll, would be useful….then we could have a contest to see who gets to sing it…Or at the very least, who’s arrangements would be the most suitable..and relevant to todays world…
@george… you really don’t have a clue do you….. maybe you should spend a bit of time looking at a map of auckland, or better yet, google earth it…. see just how far the sprawl already has gone…
Comments based on ignorance, or motivated purely by party political imperatives tend to be no more than expositions of self serving stupidity…and if you live in auckland, then you are just being contrary for the sake of it….
either way, your comments are simply freudian slips of the most obvious type…
BB, “Robert johnson was a bluesman in the tradition that he wrote of his own life’s trials, and hardships…
As such, these men, and women wrote the words that resonated with the folk, and the times they lived in…”
Another bluesman who did this for me, (and I agree that I was drawn to the blues by its poetry, its emotion and its universality) was Skip James with the likes of “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” and “Cypress Grove.” The first however to do it for me, as a 16 year old, was Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins and his magnificent simple imagery of the effects of floods and fire and other human tragedy on folk.
BB, in accepting your challenge, a humble quick first draft reply. A theme song for the Labour Party might be “Which Side are you On”?
Two or three pithy new verses might do it.
“They say that in New Zealand
There are rich and there are poor.
But when it comes to voting
It’s no case of “Either/Or””
Which side are you on? x4
“Some say we are equal
But never act that way.
The racists and the greedy
Try to have it all, their way.
Which side are you on? x4
Labour is the Party
Speaks for ev’ry woman, ev’ry man.
The one that seeks for fairness
For all in our fair land.”
Which side are you on?” x4
Dotcom anyone?
Mac1… I can see an epic coming from that start…. The reason i say that is that you’ve managed to tip your hat to dylan with the meter you’ve used, that has a “blowing in the wind” feel to it….i’ll try to add some relevant verses….
Skip James has to be considered the king of the “dark” lyric…I tried, unsuccessfully, to add his songs to my bands repertoire…(we wanna make en dance, not cry, they bleat). They were from Melbourne, so they can be excused for that…
Son house is, to me the voice that conveys primal emotion better than even John Lee Hooker could…Not surprising that he influenced Robert Johnson heavily…
@Paul B..dot com’s got the anger, and the publicity, but not the voice for singing folk anthems…
Stan walker would make a better job of capturing the feel…
Or the Al1en
From the soon to be recorded album ‘Take me to your leader’, a song for my own, and all other solo mums.
http://www.f3music.com/TheAl1en
Alpha 1
I hear what they say and I know that it’s rough. It beats you down.
Every night on the news when the going gets tough. They put you down.
You know solo mum, down my road, it’s alright. You aint so bad.
You’re not on your own Alpha one, 3 of 5. You’re Alpha tribe.
Lift your head up little sister. Lift your face up to the son.
Don’t let anyone say you’re sh*t, love. Make them always prove you’re wrong.
Take that flower by the hand, love. And then you’ve got to make him understand.
He’s got to stand up for all the sisters if he wants to be an Alpha man.
I know what they say and I know that it’s wrong. They wheel you out.
Every night on the news when they’ve done something wrong. Appease the crowd.
You know solo mum, on our road, we’re alright. We aint so bad.
You’re not on your own Alpha one, 3 of 5. Show your Alpha pride.
Keep your head up pretty sister. Hold your face up to the sun.
We don’t let anyone say we’re sh*t, love. We don’t let anyone say we’re wrong.
Take the flower by his hand, love. Teach him how to grow up strong.
‘Cos you only need a dick to wreck the country. You only need a mother to raise a man.