Woody Guthrie: This land was his land

When Woodrow Wilson was elected president of the United States in 1912, it is unlikely that he would have been possessed of enough free time to note that later that year in the frontier town of Okemah, Oklahoma, a newborn child would be named for him who would grow up to become one of the most influential and prolific folk musicians of all time.  Or that Woodrow Wilson Guthrie would become most well-known for his identification with the common man and his abhorrence of fascism, hypocrisy, economic exploitation -- and politicians.

Guthrie later wrote: "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 Towns."

Woody was the second-born son to Charles and Nora Belle Guthrie.  His father was a cowboy, land speculator, and local politician.  His mother profoundly influenced him in ways which would become apparent as he grew older.  Slightly built, with an extremely full and curly head of hair, Woody was both a precocious and unconventional boy from the start and a keen observer of the world around him.  But a series of personal tragedies would mar his early life.  First his older sister, Clara, died in a fire.  Then his family was hit by financial ruin and his mother was institutionalized.

In 1931, when Okemah's boomtown period went bust, Woody left for Texas. In the panhandle town of Pampa, he fell in love with and married Mary Jennings, the younger sister of friend and fellow musician Matt Jennings. Together, Woody and Mary had three children, Gwen, Sue and Bill.  It was with Matt Jennings and Cluster Baker that Woody made his first attempt at a singing career, forming The Corn Cob Trio.

However, if the Great Depression made it hard to support his family, the Great Dust Storm, which hit the Plains in 1935, made it impossible.  Due to the lack of work, and driven by a search for a better life, Woody headed west to California along with the mass migration of "dust bowl refugees" known as "Okies."  These farmers and unemployed workers from Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee, and Georgia had also lost their homes and land, and so set out with their families in search of opportunities elsewhere.  Moneyless and hungry, Woody hitchhiked, rode freight trains, and walked, developing a love for traveling on the open road --a practice which he would repeat often.

By the time he arrived at the west coast in 1937, Woody had experienced the intense scorn, hatred, and antagonism of those resident Californians opposed to the mass influx of outsiders.  His identification with outsider status would become part and parcel of his political and social positioning, one which gradually worked its way into his songwriting, as evident in his Dust Bowl Ballads: “I Ain't Got No Home,” “Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad,” “Talking Dust Bowl Blues,” “Tom Joad” and “Hard Travelin.'”

His 1937 radio broadcasts on Los Angeles’ KFVD and Mexico’s XELO brought Woody and his new singing partner, Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman, wide public attention, while providing him with a forum in which he could develop his talent for controversial social commentary and criticism on topics ranging from corrupt politicians, lawyers, and businessmen to praising the humanist principles of Jesus Christ, Pretty Boy Floyd, and union organizers.

Never one to become comfortable with success, or with being in one place for too long, in 1939 Woody headed east for New York City, where he was embraced for his Steinbeckian homespun wisdom and musical "authenticity" by leftist organizations, artists, writers, musicians, and other intellectuals. He wrote: "I sang at a hundred IWO [International Workers' Order] lodges and met every color and kind of human being you can imagine."

Folksingers like Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger, as well as actors like Will Geer, became Woody's friends and collaborators, taking up such social causes as union organizing, anti-Fascism, strengthening the Communist Party, and generally fighting for the things they believed in the only way they knew how: through political songs of protest.

In 1940, folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Woody in a series of conversations and songs for the Library of Congress.  Also during the 1940s, he recorded extensively for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records.

Woody continued to write songs and perform with the Almanac Singers, a politically radical singing group of the late 1940s, some of whose members would later reform as the Weavers, the most commercially successful and influential folk music group of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

But Woody became increasingly restless and disillusioned with New York's radio and entertainment industry, writing: "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."

Leaving New York and traveling in his large new-bought Plymouth, Woody received an invitation to go to Oregon, where a documentary film project about the building of the Grand Coulee Dam sought to use his songwriting talent.  The Bonneville Power Authority placed Woody on the federal payroll for a month and he composed yet another remarkable collection of songs: “The Columbia River Songs,” which include “Roll on Columbia” and “Grand Coulee Dam.”

Despite Woody's constant traveling and performing during the 1940s, and with the dissolution of his first marriage, he strenuously courted an already married young dancer named Marjorie Mazia.  Woody and Marjorie were married in 1945.

This relationship provided Woody with a level of domestic stability and encouragement that he had never known before, enabling him to complete and publish his first novel, Bound for Glory, in 1943.  A semi-autobiographical account of his Dust Bowl years, the book generally received critical acclaim.  Together, Woody and Marjorie had four children: Cathy, who died at age four in a tragic home accident; Arlo, who also would become a successful folksinger; Joady; and Nora Lee.

Moved by his passion against Fascism, Woody served in both the Merchant Marine and the U.S. Army during World War II, shipping out on several occasions with his buddies Cisco Houston and Jimmy Longhi.  In one of many anti-Fascist songs written during the war, Woody wrote:

We were seamen three, / Cisco, Jimmy and me
Shipped out to beat the fascists / Across the land and sea.

In 1946, Woody returned to settle in Coney Island, New York, with his wife and children.  It was during this time that he composed “Songs to Grow On,” a collection of children's songs which gained him a great deal of success.  However, soon thereafter, his health began to deteriorate and his behavior became increasingly erratic, creating tensions in his personal and professional life.  He left his family once again, this time for California with his traveling protégé, Ramblin' Jack Elliott.  In California, Woody remarried a third time, to a young woman named Anneke Van Kirk, and had a daughter, Lorina Lynn.

He became more and more unpredictable during a final series of road trips and eventually returned to New York, where he was mistakenly diagnosed several times as suffering everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia.  In fact, Woody had Huntington's Chorea, a hereditary degenerative disease which would gradually and eventually rob him of all his health, talents and abilities.  This was the same disease which had forced his mother's institutionalization 30 years earlier.

In 1954, Woody admitted himself into Greystone Hospital in New Jersey, one of several that he would go in and out of over the next 13 years. While at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York, Woody died on October 3, 1967.

Having lived through some of the most significant historic movements and events of the 20^th Century, Woody absorbed it all to become a prolific writer whose songs, ballads, prose, and poetry captured the plight of the everyman.  While traveling throughout the American landscape during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, his observations have left for us a lasting and sometimes haunting legacy of images, sounds, and voices of the marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed.  Although the corpus of original Woody Guthrie songs -- or as he preferred to call them, "people's songs" -- are perhaps his most recognized contribution to American culture, the stinging honesty, humor, and wit found even in his most vernacular prose writings exhibit his fervent belief in social, political, and spiritual justice.

And the recognition of Woody’s work lives on:

A 1976 film adaptation of his autobiographical novel Bound for Glory starred David Carradine and earned Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Score (Original or Adapted) and nominations for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing.

Woody was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1971 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

This biographical article was adapted from material provided by the Woody Guthrie Archives.