Woody Guthrie

Writing America's Songs

Ronald D. Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135769352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

Woody Guthrie is the most famous and influential folk music composer and performer in the history of the United States. His most popular song, "This Land is Your Land" has become the country's unofficial national anthem, known to every school child since the 1960s. His influence exceeded the realm of American music, reaching American politics. Guthrie's music became the soundtrack to the Great Depression, and iconic of the Dust Bowl migrants. Guthrie and his music came to represent those disenfranchised people who remained committed to making better lives for themselves through the promise of the American Dream.

Here, in a short, accessible biography, bolstered with primary documents, including letters, autobiographical excerpts, and reflections by Pete Seeger, Cohen introduces Guthrie's life and music influence to students of American history and culture.

PART I
WOODY GUTHRIE

CHAPTER 1
THE EARLY YEARS

“I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born 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 at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.”

—Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie's father, Charley Guthrie, was born in Bell County in South Texas. In 1897 his family moved north to the Indian Territory, which would become Oklahoma, the country's forty-sixth state, a decade later. The federal government was giving 160 acres of formerly Indian land to anyone with Indian blood, and luckily Charley's stepmother was one-eighth Creek. Charley preferred to work in a store rather than farm, and while employed in J. B. Wilson's store in Castle he met the Kansas-born Nora Belle Tanner. They were married in 1904 and shared many interests, including music, with Nora doing the singing and her husband playing the guitar and banjo. Charley soon plunged into local politics, and when elected district court clerk in 1907 the family moved to the nearby town of Okemah, where selling real estate quickly led to a decent income. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, their third child, was born on July 14, 1912, twelve days after the Democratic Party nominated Woodrow Wilson as its candidate for president (he would be elected in November). Charley was a conservative Democrat and no friend of the radical movement gaining steam in Oklahoma the year Eugene V. Debs was the Socialist Party candidate for president.

Woody had a comfortable childhood in Okemah, at least for a few years. He aptly described his hometown, with his usual long descriptive list: “Okemah was one of the singingest, square dancingest, drinkinest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, takingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club, and razor carryingest of our ranch and farm towns.” When the country plunged into World War I in 1917, the state's numerous oil fields and high farm prices brought increasing prosperity until the war ended in 1918, followed by an economic crash two years later, when the government withdrew its farm price supports.¹

The Guthrie family was now devastated and had to struggle through the 1920s, living in a series of shacks as Charley managed various odd jobs. Meanwhile, Nora was becoming increasingly erratic, even violent, in her behavior, the first signs that she had Huntington's disease, although at the time there was no explanation for what was the problem. Woody, small for his age and quite rambunctious, was mostly left to his own devices. Music came to dominate much of his early life, particularly after he obtained a harmonica when hearing George, a local African American, playing “Railroad Blues”; he often grabbed the chance to sing and dance in public. His mother was committed to the Central State Hospital for the Insane in Norman in June 1927 after seriously burning his father, so Woody was left to live with neighbors and pick up odd jobs in the community to survive. Here is Woody's account: “My sister, Clara died in the explosion of a coal oil stove. Later on, worried from this and things that added as they went, my mother's nerves gave away like an overloaded bridge. Papa tried to get back into the trading and the swapping game, but never got a new toehold.”²

In June 1929, just about seventeen, Woody moved to Texas, to live near his father, who had recently relocated, and scratch out a living, which he would describe, although without much of his usual exaggeration: “I hit the road south to Houston, Galveston, the Gulf, and back, doing all kinds of odd jobs hoeing figs orchards picking grapes hauling wood, helping carpenters and cement men, working with water well drillers.” Woody was now a self-taught painter and picked up odd jobs designing signs and sketching portraits. Then he discovered the guitar and before long was learning to play from his uncle, Jefferson Davis Guthrie, a skilled musician. He had little interest in school and dropped out of the local high school in Pampa, but was an avid reader who eagerly devoured the books in the town library. As he later recalled in Bound For Glory, his semi-fictional autobiography: “I wanted to be my own boss. Have my own job of work whatever it was, and be on my own hook. I walked the streets in the drift of the dust and wondered where was I bound for, where was I going what was I going to do? I went to the town library and scratched around in the books. I carried them home by the dozens and by the armloads, on any subject, I didn't care which.” Indeed, he became very well self-educated.³

Woody's mother died in the hospital in 1930, and he was at loose ends for a few years, spending much time with his friend Matt Jennings and listening to the latest hillbilly records, particularly the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, the classically trained popularizer Vernon Dalhart, and the many other popular southern musicians. Although Rodgers had died in 1933, since the late 1920s he had become the country's most popular country music performer through his recordings and public appearances. Woody might even have met him in South Texas, and later would base a few of his songs on Rodgers's blue yodels. While Woody became steeped in the old ballads as well as new country tunes, he was particularly influenced by the Carter Family—A.P., his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle—with their more traditional vocals and church-inflected tunes. Woody began writing his own songs when he joined a local band, the Corncob Trio, with his friend Matt, as well as a family trio with his uncle Jeff. The latter appeared briefly on station WDAG in Amarillo, while the Corncob Trio had a regular morning show on KPDN in Pampa. Music had come to dominate his life, and he quickly began playing not only the guitar and harmonica, but also the mandolin, violin, drums, even the washboard: “We played for rodeos, centennials, carnivals, parades, fairs, just bust-down parties, and played several nights and days a week just to hear our own boards rattle and our strings roar around in the wind. It was along in these days I commenced singing. I guess it was singing.”⁴

The economic depression, with 25 percent unemployment, had now ravaged the country, and Woody barely managed to survive while dating Matt's younger sister, Mary. They married on October 28, 1933, not long after President Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House and launched the New Deal. But the Guthries were little affected by the Democratic takeover of the federal government. As Woody would explain: “I married a fine Irish girl by the name of Mary Jennings and we lived in the ricketiest of the oil town shacks long enough to have no clothes, no money, no groceries and two children, both girls.”⁵

Woody and Mary's first child, Gwendolyn, known as “Teeny,” arrived in November 1935, not long after the great dust storm roared through Texas in April, which inspired Woody's song “The Texas Dust Storms.” There would soon be two others, another daughter, Sue, born in 1937, and their son, Bill, born in 1939. He now published his first songbook, Alonzo M. Zilch's Own Collection of Original Songs and Ballads. Busy with his music, painting, and family responsibilities, he yet felt the urge to travel and in 1936 began to roam around, joining thousands of other rootless boys, men, and some women, while picking up odd jobs: “I hit the highway to look around for a place for us to go. I carried my pockets full of paint brushes and my guitar slung across my back.” In early 1937, while still in Pampa, he crafted a thoughtful letter for his newborn niece Mary Ann Guthrie, the daughter of Woody's brother Roy. “Love principles,” he wrote in his best grammar. “Not people. Love equal and impartial. Love for love's sake. For God is love. Hate nobody. Harm no living thing. Live to help and to serve always. Think. Do your own of this.”⁶

Parts of Oklahoma, Texas, and the surrounding states in the middle of the country began experiencing a severe drought in 1930, which lasted through much of the decade. This was coupled with the extensive cultivation of the land beginning in World War I that stripped the top soil and uprooted the grasses, leading to extensive erosion and the creation of what become known as the Dust Bowl. Circumstances were ripe for the great dust storms that began in South Dakota in 1933, followed by a monster two-day storm in May 1934—the dust carried as far as Chicago, Boston, and New York City—and culminating on April 14, 1935, “Black Sunday,” that Guthrie would document in his songs and stories. The sun was blocked and visibility reduced to almost zero throughout the day, with dust covering everything. The drought—combined with the economic disaster of the Depression throughout the decade, with millions left jobless and homeless—dislocated over 2.5 million, with around 200,000 moving to California.

Generally known as Okies, although they came from Texas, Arkansas, and other central states as well as Oklahoma, these uprooted migrants faced numerous problems when they arrived in California, with many heading for Los Angeles. The hard times created a fear among the settled white population and much of the business community of competition for the scarce jobs, particularly from those who many considered inferiors. Prejudice and the segregation of African Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, as well as the Chinese had long been widespread in California, but the new white arrivals sparked added hostilities. Rural white southerners (hillbillies) had often been typed in the North as mental and social inferiors, along with immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe (Catholic, Jewish, and Orthodox), and now they were lumped with the destitute from the Midwest, considered dull and shiftless. Such attitudes were reinforced by the dubious “scientific” findings of the eugenics movement of the time, which differentiated between ethnic and racial groups, with the Okies often considered as something less than traditional whites. Popular magazines, comics, and Hollywood films often reinforced such crude, rural stereotypes, for example the Li'l Abner cartoon character.

Woody arrived in California in 1937 in the midst of such hostile feelings by the state's white establishment. Joining with his cousin, Jack Guthrie, a polished cowboy singer, the two wound up in Los Angeles, and soon landed a job on the local radio station KFVD. The Oklahoma and Woody Show began on the morning of July 19 and was an immediate hit with the Okie transplants. Woody loved the place. “The radio station was full of all kinds of sound effects. There were thunder machines, lightning machines, inner sanctum squeaky doors and electric organs, coconut shell devices,” his friend Lee Hays would relate. “Woody would wander around the studio rattling and banging and shaking on these things, just having a hell of a good time” when not on the air.⁷

California's recent immigrants had become a prime audience for country music. Many others, however, had been stopped at the state's border, unable to enter because they were too poor, an official policy enforced by the Los Angeles police until it was abandoned not long before Woody arrived; the cruel practice was the target of Woody's song “Do-Re-Mi,” which warned the migrants that if they didn't have enough money they would be refused entry. Various radio stations featured local country and western performers, such as the Stuart Hamblen Gang, the Beverly Hillbillies, the Bronco Busters, and the Sons of the Pioneers, who also gave numerous concerts and increasingly appeared on records. Moreover, Gene Autry, a popular recording star, beginning in 1934 had become the most famous of the growing number of movie singing cowboys. Woody had now found a musical home. His young friend Maxine Crissman joined the duo on KFVD in August, and became Woody's permanent partner in mid-September 1937 when Jack left.

Born in Missouri, Maxine and her family had moved to Los Angeles in 1932; she graduated from high school the next year and began working in the local garment industry until connecting with Woody. Very popular in their morning spot, the first Woody and Lefty Lou show—Woody had renamed Maxine “Lefty Lou from Old Mizzou”—opened with the duo singing two songs, including Woody's “Curly-Headed Baby.” They quickly developed into a creative act of music and humor, featuring many of his new songs, such as “Do-Re-Mi” and “Philadelphia Lawyer,” about a city slicker who is shot by a cowboy for making love to his wife. They appeared at various local public events, as well as twice a day, six days a week on KFVD. They also distributed the mimeographed booklet “Woody and Lefty Lou's Favorite Collection [of] Old Time Hillbilly Songs,” a common practice of country and cowboy performers. “Lefty Lou and me took quite a hand in politics and sung some of our first political and religious songs of our own making right then and there,” Woody would recall. Not all of their songs were political, however, but some referred to the dignity of the rural poor. Now with a slight income, he arranged for Mary, Gwendolyn, and their four- month-old daughter Sue to move to Los Angeles in November, although they would soon return to Texas.⁸

Woody's vaguely liberal politics were still quite unformed in early 1938 when KFVD station owner J. Frank Burke's father, Burke Senior, launched Light, a weekly paper that promoted the campaign of Culbert Olson for governor. Frank Merriam, the current conservative governor, had won in a very nasty contest in 1934 against the socialist and popular writer Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle. Woody began a “Cornbread Philosophy” column for the paper, supporting the liberal Olson, who won for governor in 1938. He also backed the Ham and Eggs state legislative initiative, which proposed issuing the elderly thirty dollars in script to improve their consumer spending by increasing their incomes—Social Security did not yet exist and many had no private pension plan—performing such songs as “Give Us That Old Age Pension” and “Ham and Eggs Is Moving On,” based on the tune for the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” When the plan lost in 1938 he published the pamphlet $30 Dollars Wood Help!, but it was again defeated in November 1939.

Maxine left the “Woody and Lefty Lou” program in June 1938, and for a while Woody had his own show. But he soon took off as the Light's “hobo correspondent,” roaming through the Hoovervilles (homeless camps named after former president Herbert Hoover) and migrant worker camps of Northern California, singing along the way and sharpening his anger as he witnessed the terrible plight of the dust bowl refugees: “I sung songs for the cotton pickers and cotton strikers, and for migratory workers, packers, canning house workers, fruit pickers, and all sorts of other country and city workers.” Upon returning his show was named Woody, The Lone Wolf. Drawing upon his hardscrabble life, he had now developed a rustic persona for his radio shows and public appearances. Still, he was highly self-educated and could turn on and off this folksy style when appropriate throughout his life. He proved a gifted actor. He also demonstrated that there was definitely an audience for his developing left-wing political views.⁹

In the early 1930s labor unrest and the obvious plight of the newly arriving migrants had begun to attract much attention, not only from the state's increasingly worried elites, but also from academics. Paul Taylor, a labor economist at the University of California-Berkeley, had begun to study the situation, and was soon joined by Dorothea Lange, a photographer in San Francisco. They began traveling around the state documenting the increasing poverty, and by July 1935 Lange's vivid photographs accompanying Taylor's detailed descriptions were circulated in an article for the Survey Graphic magazine. They documented the story soon brought to a wider audience in John Steinbeck's popular novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, released as a feature film the following year. In 1936 Taylor and Lange spread their research into the South and West, resulting in the book An American Exodus, also published in 1939. During this time Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration's photography unit when she produced her most famous photograph, “Migrant Mother.” Moreover, the attorney and journalist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• ROUTLEDGE HISTORICAL AMERICANS
• Full Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Woody Guthrie
• PART II Documents
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index