Wednesday, February 23, 2005
If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.
Ah... Woody Guthrie there is a man I would have liked to hang out with, he probably wouldn't have thought much of me, but he's always been a hero of mine. Listening to him speaking on the The Library of Congress Recording as I write this I somehow hear my grandfather. I don't know if it is the cadence or the vocabulary, but it brings me back and lets me see my gramps in a whole other light. Gotta love when that happens.
This guy LIVED. He survived the Great Depression, the Great Dust Storm, World War II. He served as a merchant marine (was torpedoed twice during the war) and in the Army. He didn't duck or hide he wrote honestly about it all, including the massive unrest that accompanied the early labor movement. He wrote two novels and seemly endless songs.
He was even blacklisted for his political beliefs, to which he replied:
"I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life."
Hot damn... Wasn't much a fan of being told what to do either. While in leaving NYC city he wrote:
I got disgusted with the whole sissified and nervous rules of censorship on all my songs and ballads, and drove off down the road across the southern states again.
Woody got down in the blood and guts of the American Dream and fought hard. He wrote songs during some of the hardest times this country has ever seen. He did it cuz he loved his country.
"I hit the road again and crossed the continent twice by way of highway and freights. Folks heard me on the nationwide radio programs CBS and NBC, and thought I was rich and famous, and I didn't have a nickel to my name, when I was hitting the hard way again."
Born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma.
Woodie described his home town as:
Okemah was one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Town
Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967 at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York, from Huntington's Disease
On the way to New York hitching and freight riding from California Woody wrote:
This Land is Your Land
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
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?
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.
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Woody was what some might call a Populist.
"I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that...Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun of you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight these kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. 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 how hard it's run you down nor rolled over you, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work. And the songs I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."
I think today I might go on down to Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives at 250 West 57th Street (right around the corner) and just hang out with Woody's words for a bit, maybe I'll even get to see the original "This Land is Your Land" lyrics signed "Woody G., Feb. 23, 1940."
Source Material:
- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwgessay.html
- http://www.woodyguthrie.org/
- Library of Congress
- posted by Anonymous @ Wednesday, February 23, 2005
