July 14 marks the 100th birthday of Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, one of the best-known American folk musicians. In his lifetime, Guthrie wrote nearly 3,000 songs, published two novels and authored numerous manuscripts, poems and plays. Such songwriters as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer and Billy Bragg have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence.
He was an artist who expressed the hopes and fears of the American working class, and was a communist sympathizer. This has been obscured, because the right wing has appropriated many of Guthrie’s works.
His best-known song, “This Land Is Your Land,” is a good example. This song, often misunderstood as jingoistic, is actually a protest song written in reaction to the Great Depression when workers were unable to find work and were going hungry. Guthrie starts off by painting a pleasant picture about the United States as the “land of opportunity,” but then he writes,
“In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.”
He seems to be asking whether the government really cares about its citizens. He is also addressing the issue of ownership by noting that common folks are dealing with hunger while the land is so rich.
Early life
Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. He was the third child of Charles and Nora Belle Guthrie. His musically inclined parents had a profound effect on Guthrie, teaching him Western songs, Indian songs and Scottish folk tunes.
During his early years in Oklahoma, Guthrie experienced the first of a series of tragic personal losses. One family home burned to the ground along with his mother’s organ. Another house was lost to a cyclone. Then Clara, his beloved older sister, died in another fire accident. Clara’s death and the family’s financial ruin had a devastating impact on the mental health of Nora Bell. After she set her husband Charles on fire, she was institutionalized and later died in an insane asylum.
In 1920, oil was discovered near Okemah, and overnight the city was transformed into an “oil boom” town, bringing thousands of workers to the once sleepy agricultural community.
Within a few years, the oil flow suddenly stopped and Okemah suffered a severe economic contraction, leaving the town broke.In 1931, the year the boom turned to a bust, Guthrie left for Texas, where his father had gone to live and start another family. Over the course of his life, Guthrie was married three times and had eight children. His son Arlo, from his second marriage, is a well-known musician in his own right.
It was in Texas that Guthrie’s musical career was born. It was also in Texas that Guthrie first discovered his talent for drawing and painting, an interest he would pursue throughout his life.
Impact of Dust Bowl
If the Great Depression made it hard for Guthrie to support his family, the onslaught of the Great Dust Storm period, which hit the Great Plains in 1935, made it impossible. Drought and dust forced thousands of desperate farmers and unemployed workers from Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee, and Georgia to head west in search of work. Guthrie, like hundreds of “dustbowl refugees,” hit Route 66, looking for a way to support his family, who remained back in Texas.
Moneyless and hungry, Guthrie hitchhiked, rode freight trains and even walked his way to California, taking whatever small jobs he could. In exchange for bed and board, Guthrie painted signs, played guitar and sang in saloons along the way, developing a love for traveling the open road—a lifelong habit he would often repeat.
By the time he arrived in Los Angeles in 1937, Guthrie had experienced hatred and physical abuse from resident Californians, who opposed the massive migration of the so-called “Okie” outsiders. Californians, afraid of the thousands of penniless Okies pouring into the state, set up illegal roadblocks along the state border, turning back people who had no money. Men called “railroad bulls,” employed by private railroad companies, patrolled the train yards with brass knuckles hidden in their fists and billy clubs swinging from their belts, kicking out drifters who tried to ride the rails.
Guthrie found that the handbills promising work for everybody were outrageous lies. For every job that was available in the fields, five or six people showed up and were turned away. With so many workers available, bosses dropped wages to unbelievable lows. Entire families were forced to pick crops just to get enough money to buy food.
In nearby orchards, growers hired armed guards to protect the ripe fruit while the migrant children’s bellies swelled with hunger. When the migrants tried to scavenge left-over crops from piles on the ground, some growers poured kerosene over them, tossed a match on it and burned it making it inedible. Guthrie observed this contradiction of capitalism—California could grow more than enough food to feed everybody. Yet the people who were working in the fields were living by the side of the road, hungry, sick and unwelcome.
It was this experience that inspired the song “Do-Re-Mi.” In the song, Guthrie warns his listeners,
“Oh, if you ain’t got the do re mi folks, you ain’t got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do re mi.”
In Los Angeles, Guthrie landed a job on KFVD radio, singing traditional songs and some original ones. Guthrie began to attract widespread public attention, particularly from the thousands of relocated Okies gathered in migrant camps. Guthrie’s program provided entertainment and a nostalgic sense of the “home” life they had left behind. Guthrie also visited the camps frequently to perform.
Social commentary
The radio airwaves also provided Guthrie a forum to develop his talent for controversial social commentary and criticism. On topics ranging from corrupt politicians, lawyers and businessmen to praising the union organizers who were fighting for the rights of migrant workers in California’s agricultural communities, Guthrie proved himself a hard-hitting advocate for justice.
During this period in Los Angeles, he performed at rallies organized by the Communist Party, and wrote a column in the Communist newspaper “People’s World.” The column was entitled “Woody Sez.” Guthrie wrote in a low-key style about class, politics, war and music.
“Billionaires cause hoboes, and hoboes make billionaires. Yet both cuss the other and say they are wrong … but personal I ruther trust the hoboes. Most of what I know I learned from the kids, the hoboes. Kids first. Hoboes second. Rich folks last—and I don’t give a dam if you like it or not.”
And:
“I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain’t a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.”
Guthrie was eventually fired from the radio show for defending the Soviet Union during World War II.
Never at ease with success or material comfort, or being in one place for too long, Guthrie headed east in 1940. While visiting Oklahoma City that year, Guthrie was approached by a local Communist Party organizer and ardent feminist by the name of Ina Wood, who lectured Guthrie for never writing a song about the hard work and courage of women in the labor movement. Before going to bed, Guthrie borrowed her typewriter and turned out “Union Maid,” one of his best-known songs. The opening lines of the song declare,
“There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the legion boys come ’round
She always stood her ground.”
Arriving in New York City later that year, Guthrie recorded a series of conversations and songs for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Guthrie also recorded “Dust Bowl Ballads” for RCA Victor, his first album of original songs, and throughout the 1940s he continued to record for Folkways Records. The recordings from this early period continue to be touchstones for folk musicians everywhere.
In New York, he formed a folk group with Pete Seeger, among others, called the Almanac Singers. They took up social causes such as union organizing, anti-fascism and strengthening the Communist Party. They performed at picket lines, rallies and meetings around the country. The Almanacs helped to establish folk music as a viable commercial genre. Unknown to the Almanacs, they were being followed by the FBI. They were red-baited in the press in 1942 and lost access to many audiences as a result. The Almanacs commercial success went dead overnight. A decade later, many of those in the Almanacs formed the popular folk music group, the Weavers, and sang Guthrie’s songs.
Despite his personal and financial success, Guthrie became increasingly restless and disillusioned with New York’s radio and entertainment industry. He was not particularly interested in getting rich and he would not compromise the political message of his music. He moved frequently, and everywhere he lived he wrote songs about what he saw.
McCarthy era ‘blacklisting’
The late 1940s and early 1950s saw a rise in anti-Communist sentiments. Progressive-minded Americans were subjected to red-scare tactics such as “blacklisting.” Many people, particularly in the arts and entertainment fields, either lost their jobs or were prevented from working in their chosen careers. Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others from their circle were targeted for their activist stances on such issues as the right to unionize, equal rights and free speech.
It was also in the 1950s that symptoms of Huntington’s disease starting taking over Guthrie’s life. Mistakenly diagnosed and treated for everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia, his symptoms kept worsening and his physical condition deteriorated. In 1952, he was finally diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, the incurable degenerative nerve disorder. Guthrie died from complications of the disease on October 3, 1967.
Guthrie lived through some of the most significant historic movements and events of the 20th century: the Great Depression, the Great Dust Storm, World War II, the social and the political upheavals resulting from unionism, the Communist Party and the Cold War. Guthrie absorbed it all to become a prolific writer whose songs, ballads, prose and poetry captured the plight of millions of workers.
Guthrie’s “people’s songs” are, perhaps, his most recognized contribution to American culture, and in addition to stinging honesty and humor, Guthrie’s fervent belief in social, political and spiritual justice can be heard in them. For this, we honor his legacy.
