CREDIT: Library of Congress/New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection
ALTHOUGH WOODY GUTHRIE wrote almost 3,000 songs, he is best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” often considered America’s alternative national anthem. Most Americans know the chorus—“This land is your land, this land is my land / From California, to the New York Island / From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters / This land was made for you and me”—and perhaps even some of the verses about the “ribbon of highways,” “sparkling sands,” “diamond deserts,” and “wheat fields waving.” But few people know the two radical verses of the song, which are usually omitted from songbooks and recordings:
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people
By the relief office I seen my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Guthrie penned the song in 1940 as an answer to Irving Berlin’s popular “God Bless America,” which he thought failed to recognize that it was the “people” to whom America belonged. In the song, Guthrie celebrates America’s natural beauty and bounty but criticizes the country for its failure to share its riches. The lyrics reflect Guthrie’s assumption that patriotism and support for the underdog were interconnected.
Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1912 to a middle-class family. His father was a cowboy, land speculator, and local politician who did well during the oil boom, went bankrupt during the economic downturn, and struggled throughout the 1920s; the family often lived in shacks. Both his father and mother (who was eventually institutionalized for mental illness, later revealed to be Huntington’s chorea) taught Woody Western songs, Indian songs, and Scottish folk tunes.
In 1931 Guthrie moved to Pampa, Texas, and formed the Corn Cob Trio and then the Pampa Junior Chamber of Commerce Band, both singing cowboy songs. In 1935 he left for California looking for a way to support his young family. He hitchhiked and rode freight trains, earning money painting signs, playing guitar, and singing in the streets and saloons along the way.
In Los Angeles, he landed a job on a local radio station singing cowboy songs as well as his own compositions. His audience—including many Okies (from Oklahoma) and Texans living in makeshift shelters in migrant camps—grew, and Guthrie began adding political and social commentary to his songs. He talked and sang about corrupt politicians, lawyers, and businessmen and praised the people who were fighting for the rights of migrant workers. Guthrie met Will Geer, an actor and left-wing activist, who introduced him to the local radical scene and traveled with him to support migrant workers’ union-organizing drives.
Guthrie’s songs of that period—including “I Ain’t Got No Home,” “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” “Talking Dust Bowl Blues,” “Hard Travelin’,” and “Tom Joad” (based on the hero of John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about migrant workers)—all reflect his growing anger and his mission to give a voice to the disenfranchised. In “Pretty Boy Floyd,” Guthrie portrayed the outlaw as a Robin Hood character, contrasting him to the bankers and businessmen who exploit workers and foreclose on families’ farms and homes: “Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered / I’ve seen lots of funny men / Some will rob you with a six-gun / And some with a fountain pen.”
In 1939 Guthrie began writing a column, Woody Sez, for People’s World, the Communist Party’s West Coast paper, commenting on the news of the day. The next year, the party’s New York paper, the Daily Worker, picked up the column.
Always restless, Guthrie moved to New York City in 1940 and was quickly embraced by radical organizations, artists, writers, musicians, and progressive intellectuals. He performed occasionally on radio and developed a loyal following. His admirers viewed him as an authentic proletarian, filled with homespun wisdom that energized his songs and columns. Much of Guthrie’s image was the result of his own mythmaking and that of his promoters, particularly folklorist Alan Lomax. In reality, Guthrie came from a middle-class family and was a prodigious reader and self-taught intellectual.
Lomax recorded Guthrie in a series of conversations and songs for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, that contributed to this “folksy” impression. Lomax’s efforts were part of an upsurge of popular left-wing culture—fostered in part by New Deal programs like the federal theater and writers’ projects—that promoted folk and traditional songs as “people’s” music. In addition to Guthrie, Lomax also helped Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, an ex-convict from Louisiana. Lead Belly played the twelve-string guitar and wrote and performed songs like “Midnight Special” and “Bourgeois Blues,” which captivated liberal middle-class audiences in New York and other cities.
In New York, Guthrie joined a growing interracial circle of radical musicians, actors, poets, writers, composers, dancers, and political activists. Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell formed the Almanac Singers to perform songs about current events for unions, left-wing groups, and other causes. Guthrie sang on several Almanac singles and two albums, Deep Sea Chanties and Sod Buster Ballads, and often performed with the Almanacs, including in Detroit before 100,000 members of the United Auto Workers union. Guthrie wrote some of the Almanac Singers’ most popular songs, including “Union Maid.” He had a gift for writing songs that told stories about current events and real people but were also timeless in terms of exploring issues of justice and fairness. He was also a brilliant satirist, writing songs that made fun of business leaders, politicians, Adolf Hitler, and such right-wing figures as aviator Charles Lindbergh and Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest.”
In early 1941 the Almanacs performed songs opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plans to enter World War II—a view that Communists applauded but that alienated many of their admirers, including Eleanor Roosevelt. After Germany broke its truce with Russia and invaded the country in June of that year, the Almanacs changed their tune, writing patriotic songs that embraced the war effort and the US alliance with Russia to defeat Hitler. They were back in Mrs. Roosevelt’s good graces. When their songs were in sync with the New Deal, the Almanacs were courted by commercial promoters. They sang on national network radio, made records, and performed at night clubs, including the upscale Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. Guthrie had several regular radio gigs of his own. But the Almanac Singers’ political views—including Guthrie’s—were too controversial to sustain mainstream success. After Seeger joined the army and Guthrie signed up for the merchant marine (he was later drafted into the army, serving until 1945), the Almanacs broke up.
For a month in 1941 Guthrie was on the New Deal payroll, earning $266 to write songs for a documentary film about the Grand Coulee Dam, which brought electricity and jobs to Oregon and Washington. He moved to Portland, Oregon, and quickly wrote some of his most memorable songs, including “Roll on Columbia” (about the Columbia River), “Grand Coulee Dam,” and “The Biggest Thing That Man Has Done.”
While in the merchant marine and the army, Guthrie composed hundreds of anti-Hitler, prowar, and other songs to inspire the troops, including “All You Fascists Bound to Lose,” “Talking Merchant Marine,” and “The Sinking of the Reuben James.” In 1943 he published his first novel, Bound for Glory, a semiautobiographical account of his Dust Bowl years that contributed to his reputation as a rambling troubadour. By 1946 the Red Scare had made it harder for Guthrie to find work. Many of the Congress of Industrial Organizations unions had purged their radicals and no longer welcomed Guthrie.
After the war, Guthrie returned to New York and settled in Coney Island, Brooklyn, with his second wife, Marjorie. Their son Arlo, born in 1947, became a popular folksinger following his debut antiwar hit album, Alice’s Restaurant, in 1967. Their daughter Nora, born in 1950, later became the head of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and the founder of the Guthrie Archives.
While living in Coney Island, Guthrie composed and recorded several albums for children, including, Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child and Work Songs to Grow On. Several generations of parents have raised their kids with Guthrie’s songs, many of which provided valuable lessons for living, including on such topics as friendship (“Don’t You Push Me Down”), family (“Ship in the Sky”), neighborhoods (“Howdi Doo”), chores (“Pick It Up”), personal responsibility (“Cleano”), and family vacations (“Riding in My Car”). Guthrie was also connected with Brooklyn’s Jewish community through his mother-in-law, the Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, and wrote several songs with Jewish themes, including “Hanuka Dance,” “The Many and The Few” and “Mermaid’s Avenue.”
In the late 1940s Guthrie’s behavior became increasingly erratic, even violent. These were symptoms of Huntington’s chorea, a rare hereditary degenerative disease that gradually robbed him of his health and ability to function physically. Doctors at first mistakenly treated him for everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia. In 1954 he was admitted into the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, where he was finally properly diagnosed. For the last decade of his life, he was confined to hospitals, barely able to communicate. Many family, friends, and young fans—including Bob Dylan—came to visit him to pay their respects. Although Guthrie helped inspire the folk music revival of the late 1950s and 1960s, he was unable to enjoy it or benefit from it financially.
Since his death, Guthrie has become a cultural icon. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger have been his most effective promoters, ensuring that younger generations know Guthrie’s music. Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco, the Klezmatics, and many others have recorded and reinterpreted Guthrie’s songs for new audiences. At Nora Guthrie’s initiative, British singer Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco explored the many unpublished Guthrie songs in his archives and set them to music, producing two albums. Guthrie was posthumously inducted into the National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.