Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac” reports that today is Woody Guthrie’s birthday. He may be America’s most beloved and most often sung folk singer. Everyone sings “This Land is My Land,” but not usually with all the lyrics. Guthrie was radical in his politics, having experienced the hard times of the Depression. At one point, he lived in an apartment in Queens owned by Fred Trump, and he wrote a song about how Trump didn’t rent to black people.
Today is the birthday of Woodrow Wilson — aka “Woody” Guthrie, born in Okemah, Oklahoma (1912). Woody Guthrie never finished high school, but he spent his spare time reading books at the local public library. He took occasional jobs as a sign painter and started playing music on a guitar he found in the street. During the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s, Guthrie followed workers who were moving to California. They taught him traditional folk and blues songs, and Guthrie went on to write thousands of his own, including “This Train Is Bound for Glory.” In 1940, he wrote the folk classic “This Land Is Your Land” because he was growing sick of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”
Woody Guthrie once said: “I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. […] Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can’t understate how much joy his music has brought into my life across the fifty years I’ve been listening to him. The relatively recent recordings of songs from his archive by Billy Bragg and Wilco are bracing and still relevant as topical songs.
Guthrie is an American legend. He was able to write good songs on a variety of topics including several about social justice.
His catalogue includes a lesser known song called “Old Man Trump.” It is about the tenant-landlord dispute with Don the Con’s slumlord father. Here’s the song from Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jANuVKeYezs
This Land is Your Land ought to be our national anthem rather than the un-singable abomination we’re saddled with. When he wrote the song about Fred Trump, he was dying slowly of Huntingdon’s Disease, which was misdiagnosed and rather than having health care, he was confined to mental institutions. Should anyone want to learn more about Woody, Ed Cray wrote a wonderful biography of him. Cray also wrote brilliant biographies of George Marshall and Earl Warren, which speaks highly in and of itself how important Woody is to American history and identity. He spoke for labor, honest, hard work and all Americans who struggle.
Magnificent.
Joe Klein also produced a good bio as well on a truly unique American. The only problem with trying to make the piece a national anthem is that the distant right would learn that it was meant by Guthrie himself to be an anthem of communism. Far from a Stalinist, Guthrie considered himself a communist. When he wrote the lyrics, he was writing them to go with another tune. I do not recall which one.
The “abomination” you refer to above, Anacreon in Heaven, and its lyrics by Francis Scott Key were not chosen to be a national anthem until 1931 as Hoover struggled to find something that would unite the nation other than addressing the root causes of the Great Depression. Throughout the previous 140 years, many songs were sung, few as popular as Chester, by William Billings. His lyrics spoke of the way the colonials had whipped Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne at Saratoga, and were set against a beautiful tune composed by the old Billings himself, an odd fellow who was self-taught. It is still sung in the places where FASOLA singing is held and can be founding the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp (with religious words). Problem is, you are going to have to wait to sing it, because the singings have mostly been canceled for this year due to the Covid.
Great stuff, Roy. I think Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More would be the appropriate anthem today.
I have a playlist with 17 versions of Hard Times, a version for everybody.
My favorite version of Hard Times is from the Red Clay Ramblers.
Thank you for this wonderful history, Roy!
That one is on my playlist! The version with James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma is probably the most accessible. Obviously Hampton’s version hits me hard, saw him perform it live once and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I like making playlists of songs I love like St James Infirmary, If I Needed You, and Sweet Jane, to list a few.
Let’s replace all the Confederate statues with statues of Woody Guthrie, César Chávez, Emma Goldman, Nelson Cruikshank, Eugene Debs, Sidney Hillman, Joe Hill, and other great American workers’ heroes.
And revive trade unionism in the United States.
Disappointed Bob , You left the “most dangerous woman in America ” off the list .
OMG!!!
Mother Jones!
Forgive me.
Here’s a version of “This Land is My Land”recorded as a tribute to Bernie Sanders after the 2016 election.
I can’t help but wonder we we might be as a nation if the DNC had not been so focused on electing Clinton. We might have faced a pandemic with health care for all.
Here are two readings and comprehension worksheets on Bob Dylan, one of Woody Guthrie’s many epigones: https://markstextterminal.com/2020/05/05/two-reading-and-comprehension-worksheet-on-bob-dylan/
Here also is an Cultural Literacy worksheet on Woody himself: https://markstextterminal.com/2019/06/21/cultural-literacy-woody-guthrie/
Great stuff, Mark! Re: Dylan going electric, one of my favorite moments on recordings is a bootleg where he gets booed in England and then tells The Band to “play f’in loud!”
I used music in my government class a lot, Dylan, the Impressions, Public Enemy, even Bruce Hornsby. Tried to find songs they were listening to anyway and added to it. On the last day of class for my seniors, I would close with the punk classic Do Anything You Wanna Do.
Thanks, Greg–very kind of you. The incident to which you refer is on the Royal Albert Hall bootleg–an audience member calls out to Dylan that he is “Judas.” Dylan calls the man a liar, and then gives the imperative you mention. Then Dylan and The Band break into a raucous performance or “Like a Rolling Stone” replete with scorching Robbie Robertson guitar solos.
Using music as a way to reach kids is de rigueur as far as I am concerned. Do you know about Little Steven Van Zandt’s (incidentally, somewhere on this blog there is a picture of he and Diane together at a rally in Los Angeles) “TeachRock”? I haven’t used anything from it, but it is a phenomenon to be sure.
I remember this album! It has been awhile….