Remembering Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) | Don’s Tunes

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie is arguably the most influential American folk musician of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his folk ballads, traditional and children’s songs, and improvised works, often incorporating political commentary. Woody Guthrie is closely identified with the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s. His songs from that time period earned him the nickname “Dust Bowl Troubadour.”

Photo: Eric Schaal/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don’s Tunes

This Land Is Your Land - Woody

All You Fascists Bound to Lose - Woody

So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Ya) - Woody

His son and the Farm aid ensemble ( who many can you spot?) 

Arlo leads - This Land Is Your Land

Woody Guthrie - I Ain’t Got No Home | Route

 Woody Guthrie was born as Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma on this day in 1912

First heard this song by Bob Dylan sung at the Guthrie Tribute concert and I think it was the first time I had heard him since coming off the motorbike and we didn’t hear much from him over here . . . . . 

The Band backing him it blew me away and this song always does that!

“This one’s for Woody . . . . . "

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN! - Curzon Cinema Oxford UK

Well I thoroughly enjoyed that! 

We all thought a great film, great fun and the music (which is really the whole point) was superbly done! Ed Norton quite astonishing really as the rather uncomfortable older generation who never seemed to quite ‘get it’ bless ’im! as Pete Seeger and Timothée Chalamet went to extraordinary levels (6 years work!) to learn guitar and to sing (neither of which he knew he could do when given the role) beautifully done. 

The actor who played Joan was a joy [Monica Barbaro?] and a welcome attempt at Joan’s voice without too much warbling (sic) was really very good, the guy who played Johnny Cash (opening song a favourite covered in the wondrous 'Big River' - and electric hence the point!) was superb and I guess my only struggle was a brave Elle Fanning as ’Silvie’ ; read = Suze, who is misrepresented here really and by all accounts the more fictionalised of the lot as she doesn’t come out well and the overlap between sexual partners a fairly moot point but all things considered the mistakes, the ‘errors’ are clearly intentional (“Judas!" at Newport anyone!? very funny!) all were designed I reckon to make us smile and which they did in spades. I spent most of the film smiling, and foot tapping to the music which of course was excellent!

Highly recommended and thanks to my son Matt for treating the old man to lovely seats and Rob for the company!

A Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1-20-1968

 A Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1-20-1968 

Paul says : In October 1967, one of the all-time musical greats, Woody Guthrie, died at the age of 55. His health started declining in the late 1940s, and in 1952 he was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, which causes a gradual decline in motor skills and mental abilities. He was hospitalized continuously from 1956 until his death. From the early 1960s onward, Bob Dylan regularly visited him in the hospital and sang songs for him, but so did Pete Seeger and many other folk singers.

Back in the 1960s, musical tribute concerts weren't really a thing yet, but Guthie was such a towering figure that there actually were three such concerts. I plan on posting all three eventually. This is the natural way to start, since it came first chronologically.

This concert was officially released in full as the album "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 1," in 1972. In 1970, another tribute concert for him happened, and that was eventually released as "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 2." Then, decades later, highlights from the two were combined onto one CD simply called "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie." 

Normally, I wouldn't post something that has been officially released in full. But I think in this case I can made a more listenable album by subtraction. What I mean is, the 1968 concert was a combination of songs that were sung and spoken word/poetry that was read, going back and forth between the two. I think the songs have a lot of relistening value, but I don't want to hear the spoken word parts that often. So I deleted almost twenty tracks of that, keeping just the music. If you want the full version, the official album is for you. 

In removing those tracks, I was careful to manage the applause at the end of each song, since the spoken word part often started while the cheering was still going on. In some cases, I was able to fade the cheering down to bring it to a natural end. But when it was too short for that, I pasted in some cheering from the ends to other songs.

Now, let's get to the music, which consists entirely of songs written by Woody Guthrie, or cover songs he was closely associated with. This concert is most famous due to the appearance of Bob Dylan and the Band. It was important for several reasons. This was Dylan's first public performance since his motorcycle accident a year and a half earlier. It seems he wasn't actually that seriously injured in that accident, and it certainly didn't take him years to recover. But he'd been living a fast and crazy life of stardom and wanted to step away from all that for a while, and the accident gave him an excuse to go into seclusion. After this concert, Dylan basically went back into seclusion for another year or so. But he considered Woody Guthrie so important to his life that he made this rare public appearance during that time anyway.

Also important was the fact that Dylan was backed by the Band. Most members of the Band had backed him on a 1966 tour, and then during his "Basement Tapes" studio sessions in 1967. But at the time of this concert, they still hadn't made a name for themselves... both figuratively and literally! Since they literally didn't have a name to call themselves yet, for this concert, they were billed as "The Crackers," weirdly enough. Later in 1968, the Band would release their first studio album, "Music from Big Pink," to great critical acclaim. They would continue to back Dylan on other projects, including the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival concert and a 1974 tour. This concert was critical to their early career as well as their evolving musical connection with Dylan.

By the way, in addition to playing three songs with the Band, Dylan sang on two others: "This Train Is Bound for Glory" and the finale, "This Land Is Your Land." His voice is just one of many on the finale. As for "This Train Is Bound for Glory," he sang a verse on his own. Unfortunately, the album only included about a 30-second long snippet of that song, and his part wasn't included. I didn't include that snippet since I found it frustrating to only have a bit of the song. I'm guessing there was a flaw with the recording for much of the song.

The other stars of the concert were some of the biggest names in folk music at the time: Arlo Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's son, who had just hit it big with "Alice's Restaurant" in 1967), Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Tom Paxton. (I was asked the other day if I could post something by Pete Seeger. I couldn't think of anything worth posting. But then I remembered this concert.)

If you want to know more about this concert, here's an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about it that came out just a month after it took place:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-turns-up-for-woody-guthrie-memorial-197917/

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
02 So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh [Dusty Old Dust] (Judy Collins)
03 Curly Headed Baby (Pete Seeger)
04 Ramblin' Round (Odetta)
05 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie & Judy Collins)
06 Pretty Boy Floyd (Tom Paxton)
07 I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water (Richie Havens)
08 Plane Wreck at Los Gatos [Deportee] (Judy Collins)
09 Vigilante Man (Richie Havens)
10 Pastures of Plenty (Tom Paxton)
11 Grand Coulee Dam (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 I Ain't Got No Home (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Roll On Columbia [Edit] (Judy Collins)
15 Jackhammer John (Pete Seeger & Richie Havens)
16 Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done [The Great Historical Bum] (Tom Paxton)
17 Union Maid (Judy Collins & Pete Seeger)
18 This Land Is Your Land (Will Geer, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta & Everyone)

Deportees!

 As Facebook’s Alan Bershaw so wisely points out "Woody Guthrie wrote these lyrics 74 years ago and this penetrating performance is from 48 years ago, yet the song couldn't be more relevant today. "You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane. All they will call you will be deportees."

Sounds for Saturday : Dawn Landes and NC Music Love Army ‘THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND’

Dawn Landes’ Newsletter mentioned she had participated in a version of the Woody Guthrie classic ‘This Land is Your Land’  with a group of folk known collectively as The NC Music Love Army

This Land Is Your Land!

Featuring vocals from:  MC Taylor, Dawn Landes, Skylar Gudasz, Django Haskins, Laurelyn Dossett, James Davy, Brett Harris, Jess Klein, Jasme Kelly, Charly Lowry and Caitlin Cary with: Chris Boehner (guitar), Matt Douglas (sax),  Ittai Korman (bass), Austin McCall (drums), Jones Bell (organ), and Creighton Irons (piano).

Audio recorded by Jeremy Haire and Chris Church at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC.  

Mixed by Tim Harper.  Mastered by Jeff Carroll / Bluefield Mastering

Video by Spencer Kelly with Molly Brock and Caleb Childers

Thanks to Jan Berger and Paperhand Puppet Intervention!

The NC Music Love Army (NCMLA) is a volunteer-based community of independent, creative, musicians, promoters, venue owners, and supporters working to achieve a more equitable, just and sustainable North Carolina.  We are a 501c-4 non-profit organization.

Up Around the Bend . . . . . . . .[but it’s a long time coming Woody!]

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

"The sounds of the singing human voice has outlasted almost every chain, bilbo*, and shackle that our capitalistic few could latch onto us. The people that sing their real Peoples' songs will be the people that will win our new world just around this next bend." ~Woody Guthrie (1945)

*a long iron bar or bolt with sliding shackles and a lock, formerly attached to the ankles of prisoners.

"This one's for Woody . . . . . . "

 

This week in 1956, Woody Guthrie, homeless and suffering from Huntington's disease, was arrested for vagrancy in Morristown, New Jersey. He was sent to nearby Greystone Park Psychiatric hospital and spent the rest of his life in care facilities, passing away in 1967 at age 55.

Guthrie: "I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what colour, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."

Many folk singers saw the light through Guthrie, but his most notable acolyte was Bob Dylan, who tracked down Guthrie less than a week after moving to New York in 1961. Dylan's tribute tune, "Song To Woody," was included on his first album in 1962. When Dylan's career erupted a few years later, many fans dug into his back catalog and learned about Guthrie.

As Woody's behaviour became erratic, he was incorrectly diagnosed with everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia, until he finally received the correct but devastating diagnosis, Huntington's chorea, a genetic disease that forced his mother's institutionalisation 30 years earlier.

Today’s Thought For The Day : Woody Guthrie

 

Woody Guthrie | photo of the day ‘My Name is New York'

Photo: Eric Schaal via the NY Times

NEWYORKtheGolfden Age.tumblr.com

A photo from “My Name Is New York,” showing Woody Guthrie playing while he gets his shoes shined.

My name is New York, I’m a brick on a brick

I’m a hundred folks running, and ten dying sick

I’m a saint, I’m a sinner, a whore and her pimp

Your ocean’s the mirror I look in to primp.

—“My Name Is New York,” Woody Guthrie

"This Land Is Your Land" was written at a small rooming house on 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue on February 23, 1940, within a few days of his arrival.

Pete Seeger and the House of Un-American Activities Committee 1955

Now I guess I should say from the outset I’m not Pete Seeger’s biggest fan. The folkie schtick is remarkably po faced and has a kind of ego that is laughable. It took me a long time to get it. Woody Guthrie I get, his son Arlo I get, the jumper wearing sandal wearing Van Ronk style folk club scene is a schtick a routine and nothing more. It is faux!

Bob Dylan left them standing in his post electric dust soon enough axe wielding Seeger or no.

I could go on but what I will say is Pete’s politics are stand up and be counted stuff and this story re-enforces the highest regard I have for his attitude to the House of Un-American Activities Committee fascist approach to “communism” so called, the pinko under the bed has taken a WHOLE other turn since Drumpf!

This is however worth reading . . . . . . . .

On 18 August 1955 Pete Seeger testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Seeger refused to take the Fifth Amendment, but also refused to acknowledge the right of the Committee to ask him questions about his political affiliations, or the names of other people.

“I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my  philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I  voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these  are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially  under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it,” Seeger said.

“I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any  conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the  implication of being called before this Committee that in some way  because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis [D-LA],  or yours, Mr. Scherer [R-OH], that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir.”

CHAIRMAN FRANCIS E. WALTER [D-PA]: Why don’t you make a little contribution toward preserving its institutions?

MR. SEEGER: I feel that my whole life is a contribution. That is why I would like to tell you about it.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: I don’t want to hear about it.

The committee then tried to question Seeger about where he performed, and if he ever performed, citing Elia Kazan’s testimony regarding the Communist Party’s wish to have American entertainers perform for them. Seeger replied, “I feel these questions are improper, sir, and I feel they are immoral to ask any American this kind of question… .  I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or colour of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody. That is the only answer I can give along  that line.”

Pete Seeger was found guilty of contempt of Congress (and faced 10 years in prison) but  successfully appealed his case, which was overturned in 1962. Seeger was also blacklisted – his songs not played on the radio and he could not appear on TV – for 17 years.

TO HEAR YOUR BANJO PLAY - Woody Guthrie's Birthday | 'John Henry' with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

 WOODY GUTHRIE

Woody Guthrie was born as Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma on this day in 1912.

Woody Guthrie with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - Ballad Of John Henry (1947) 

To Hear Your Banjo Play - Released in 1946, an engaging 16-minute introduction to American folk music, written and narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring rare performances by Woody Guthrie, Baldwin Hawes, Sonny Terry, Brownee McGhee, Texas Gladden and Margot Mayo’s American Square Dance Group.

John Steinbeck about Woody Guthrie - 

"Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people.”

A Tribute Concert To Woody Guthrie, Vol. 1 & Vol. II (1968): Carnegie Hall - Zerosounds

 My brother loved his early Bob Dylan and also his Woody Guthrie and owned these two volumes when they came out. I loved the Bob Dylan tracks being so early after his motorbike accident and its echoes of the Great White Wonder. These are really worth downloading and have been out of print for many years now and I have been searching for them for a while.

Tribute to Woody Guthrie Vol I 1968 - Zero G Sounds

This is a various-artists set recorded at a charity fund raising concert at Carnegie Hall, January 20, 1968, held in memory of Woody Guthrie's then-recent death after years of illness.  The Band performed with Bob Dylan on riveting versions of "I Ain't Got No Home," "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt," and "The Grand Coulee Dam." This was Bob Dylan's first public performance after the motorcycle accident. The Band were announced under some weird name (The Crackers?) because they still did not have an official name. 

Tribute To Woody Guthrie Vol II 1970 - Zero G Sounds

The passing of folk-music pillar Woody Guthrie was fresh on the minds of the participants in the first of the two concerts that make up this live tribute recording. 

Guthrie had died of Huntington's disease in the fall of 1967. The following January, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, and several other Woody apostles gathered to perform the folk legend's songs at Carnegie Hall. In September of 1970, a second gathering convened in the Hollywood Bowl, this one headlined by Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, and others. 

Recordings from these concerts were originally released separately on two records in 1972, here´s the second one of this set.

from the wonderful Zerosounds who has a plethora of Woody Guthrie stuff on his site

Bob Dylan : Dear Mrs Roosevelt 

Arlo Guthrie - Oklahoma Hills 

I especially loved the Arlo Guthrie stuff here as well . . . . . . . I bought his album "Running Down the Road" when it came out in 1969 

Zerosounds - Woody Guthrie albums

Woody Guthrie's New Year's Resolutions

worth a read . . . . 

Big O posted a fascinating book review recently and it is worth a view here and passed on from Counter Punch who we like . . . . . . 

DYLAN AND WOODY: GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD FEELIN’ BAD

Daniel Wolff’s lastest book, Grown-Up Anger, is the crossroad where the sound of anger, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie meet. It’s also about using that anger to make the world a better place. By Ron Jacobs.

Anger, when directed at injustice, is useful and important. When it is placed in the hands of a writer as capable as Daniel Wolff, it becomes a thing of beauty. Wolff’s most recent book, Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 is that thing of beauty.

It is simultaneously a history of capitalism and labor organizing in the United States, a biography of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, and a critical discussion of a number of songs composed and sung by these two American icons. Like the road Guthrie and Dylan romanticized and wrote about, the author Wolff takes the reader through a winding landscape of labor unrest, capitalist greed, personal hardship and popular success. It is a story familiar to many but told in a unique fashion that brings alive Dylan and Guthrie’s songs and the social and political context they are both informed by and inform.

Wolff begins the text with a recollection of his first hearing of Bob Dylan s masterful tune “Like a Rolling Stone,” but quickly shifts to Woody Guthrie’s poignant telling of a massacre of miners’ children in Calumet, Michigan in December 1913. Guthrie’s song, titled “1913 Massacre,” is the foundation on which the text is composed.

As Wolff points out, the tune to “1913 Massacre” was appropriated by Bob Dylan for his song “Song to Woody.” That tune is the one of two original tunes (at least in terms of its lyrics) on Dylan’s first album. (The other is “Talkin’ New York.”) The rest of the album is made up of Dylan’s interpretations of various folk and country blues traditional songs.

Although Dylan was considered a folksinger at least until 1965 when he released the albums Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, his first disc is arguably his only truly folk album.

As Wolff’s narrative unfolds, the reader finds himself deep in a history rich in struggle. The struggle is between the rich and the poor; the working class and the ruling class; the street and the entertainment business. The protagonists include benevolent robber barons who paid reasonable wages and provided health care and education to the workers and their families; greedy owners who acted as if their riches were the result of their blessedness and hard work when in all honesty the hard work was that of their employees and the blessedness was nonexistent.

No matter what their approach, though, when the profits were down or the workers rose up, every capitalist called in the strikebreakers and men with weapons. In short, it is the story of industrial capitalism in the USA. It is a story often told, but rarely taught. Never has it been relayed in the manner the reader discovers in Grown-Up Anger.

What about the anger? Why does the author include it in his title? Let me go back to the beginning of the text, where Wolff introduces his book and Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone.” After discussing his own anger as a 13-year-old in 1965 United States - a United States that was escalating an imperial war in Vietnam while trying to temper a just and justifiable rebellion of its dark-skinned citizens with guns and money - Wolff makes a simple one-line statement about Dylan’s tune. “For all the singer’s humor and apparent ease,” he writes, “It was the sound of anger.”

When one is 13 in modern civilization, one should be angry. After all, the growing awareness that the world you’ve been living in is much crueler and meaner than you had previously believed either makes one depressed or angry. If it doesn’t, you might be a psychopath.

Teenage anger is often misdirected. All too often, that misdirection is inward, where one blames oneself for the realization that the world is troubled. Wolff’s narrative provides an alternative. Take that anger, he suggests, and turn it into grown-up anger, like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and use it to make the world a better place.

Grown-Up Anger takes the reader from Calumet, Michigan to Woodstock; from Carnegie Hall to Los Angeles; from Oklahoma to New York City; and from Mississippi back to Calumet. Its captivating tale is matched by a narrative style as easy as the road that stretches out ahead and as tight as the bonds the slavecatcher tightened around the runaway’s wrists.

Individual biographies intermingle with broad strokes of history and critical examinations of music and lyrics to create a book about song and hope, song and despair; capitalism and capitalists, working people and labor. In writing this musical and political biography of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and capitalist America, Daniel Wolff has composed a text for the ages.

Note: Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem. He lives in Vermont.The above article was posted at Counterpunch.

DEPORTEES . . . . . . . .

Seemed apt somehow to revisit this Woody Guthrie song . . . . . . I have it by Arlo, and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, The Highwaymen, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris and Christy More so I guess I must like the song . . . . . it has resonance and read up on it if you haven't or don't know from whence it came. Here is a lovely version by the wonderful K.T.Tunstall . . . . . .



More on borders and Freedom of movement . . . . . . . another Woody Guthrie observation

On this day in music history: January 30, 1969 - The Beatles perform live for the last time on the roof of the Apple building at 3 Savile Row in London. Filmed as the climax of the documentary film “Let It Be”, the band perform a forty-two minute long impromptu set (only half appears in the finished film) consisting of the songs “Get Back” (performed twice), “Don’t Let Me Down”, “Dig A Pony”, “One After 909” and “I’ve Got A Feeling”. The performance quickly attracts attention from the street below, drawing a huge crowd, stopping traffic in central London, and leading the police to bring the concert to a halt. The roof top concert captures a rare glimpse of The Beatles during their last days as a functioning unit, and becomes an iconic moment in their history.