Woody Guthrie

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, a giant figure in American culture, particularly to those of a liberal bent. Born in Okemah, Oklahoma to a staunch Democrat (he was named for the party's nominee that year, Woodrow Wilson), Guthrie would go on to travel the country, work in a variety of jobs, and write over 1,000 songs, many of them taking the side of the downtrodden. Carrying a guitar that bore the phrase, "This Machine Kills Fascists," he would influence an entire generation of singers and songwriters, most prominently Bob Dylan.

Many of Guthrie's songs are more familiar in cover versions by other artists, but I wanted the real thing, so I bought a four-CD box set of recordings done by Moe Asch. They cover a wide range of Guthrie's work, but not all of it (notably absent is the pro-immigrant song, "Deportees"). But there are over 100 songs here, and I've been listening all week, so I've been in a world of unions, hobos, cowboys, migrant workers, antifascists, prisoners, evicted farmers, and misunderstood outlaws. It's a nice place to be.

Guthrie's most famous song is "This Land Is Your Land," which I was taught in grade school. But we only learned the chorus. Guthrie, it is said, was tired of hearing Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," and wrote this as a counterpoint. Most people heard only four of the verses; two were left out of most recordings, but one version on this collection contains one of the controversial verses: "There was a high wall there/That tried to stop me/A sign was painted that said 'Private Property'/But on the other side it didn't say nothin'/That side was made for you and me."

The class warfare of the Great Depression is something that's bubbling up today, and listening to many of his songs, which chide the rich and the union-busters, stings as if they were written yesterday. In "Jesus Christ," Guthrie points out the hypocrisy of rich Christians not helping the poor, pointing out that if Jesus were alive at the writing of the song, advocating that rich people give up their money to help the poor, he'd be crucified all over again.

One of the recurring themes of his work is the evil nature of bankers. It made me think of the scene in The Grapes of Wrath, where a man is kicked off his land, and wonders who he can shoot in retribution. It's a bank that owns the land, not a person. In many songs Guthrie lacerates bankers, which is so ridiculously prescient to today's landscape that it's scary. One of the songs that does this is "Pretty Boy Floyd," a sympathetic ballad to the bank robber of the 1930s. The most telling line is, "Now as through this world I ramble/I've seen lots of funny men/Some will rob with a six-gun/Some with a fountain pen."

Guthrie wrote all sorts of songs, including songs for children, like "Car, Car," and even a Hannukah song (his second wife was Jewish). He wrote songs about fishing, and songs about life on the road. Some of the songs sound amazingly like other songs, but this was a folk tradition: Pete Seeger quotes him as saying, "Plagiarism is central to all cultures." Guthrie never made much money--he considered that it didn't cost anything to write a song, so anybody could have it.

He was no saint--he wasn't much of a husband, as all accounts go. He also had an incredible amount of tragedy in his life. His father was critically burned, by his mother, who was committed to an insane asylum. She was suffering from Huntington's Chorea, which was inherited by Guthrie, who would die of the disease when he was 55. But his family, including his son Arlo, a singer and songwriter of his own renown, have kept his legacy alive. Arlo will be performing a birthday concert in Okemah tonight. I doubt Mitt Romney will be there.