Singer of traditional songs, songwriter, poet, novelist, artist, and a major influence in the
urban folk revival, the folk-rock movement, and social-protest song writing. Born on July
14, 1912, and named after the Democratic presidential nominee Woodrow Wilson,
Guthrie was the third of five children born to Charley and Nora Guthrie in Okemah,
Oklahoma; his parents were a popular, prosperous couple with the prospect of a
successful small business and good middle-class family life. Charley was a Texan who
entered Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) as a cowboy, and Nora was the daughter of a
schoolteacher who had come to the territory from Kansas. As a child, Woody heard his
father sing cowboy songs and his mother play the piano and sing “old” ballads.
When Woody was approximately six years old, unforeseen and misunderstood
problems hit the family with destructive force. His older sister died from burns, and his
mother exhibited symptoms of Huntington’s disease. However, the family, the
community, and Woody’s friends believed her to be losing her mind. The family slowly
disintegrated. Charley lost land holdings, cattle, and other collateral, and Nora’s illness
intensified.
A few months before his fifteenth birthday, Woody had to become self-sufficient, for
his father was severely burned and his mother was committed to the Oklahoma Hospital
for the Insane, where she later died. Charley was taken to Pampa, Texas, where relatives
nursed him back to health, but Woody remained in Okemah and for a few months lived in
a club house that he and friends had built. For the next two years, he stayed with different
families during the school year and hitchhiked or hoboed his way to south Texas to stay
with friends during the summer. He made living money by picking up junk in back
alleys, washing and polishing spittoons to pay rent on a shoe shine stand, selling
newspapers, and working at other odd jobs.
In high school, Woody sang in the choir, was the “joke editor” for the school annual,
and often entertained fellow students with his harmonica, his wit, and his jig-dancing
skills. He was a popular student, but in 1929 at the end of his junior year in Okemah High School, Woody joined his father in Pampa. The following year, the drought and dust
storms started, and they lasted through the entire decade. Even though he later became
known as the “Oklahoma Dust Bowl Balladeer,” it was Pampa, where he experienced his
Dust Bowl years, that provided inspiration for many songs. These and subsequent events
in Woody’s life are described in his autobiographical novel Eound for Glory (1943).
While in Pampa, his uncle, Jeff Guthrie, and other friends taught Woody to play the
guitar, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin; he played in a Junior Chamber of Commerce cowboy
band, worked for a bootlegger, and painted signs, but mostly he played at dances and
entertained with his uncle. In October 1933, he and Mary Jennings married; unfortunately
for Mary, Woody was more interested in making music, writing, and traveling than in
providing for a family. For a few months, Woody, Mary, and his uncle and aunt traveled
with a small medicine show, but when the owner went broke they had to return to Pampa.
There, in 1935, Woody wrote a few poems and parodies of popular songs that still
survive as evidence of his early writing interests.
In November 1935, their first child, a daughter, was born, but Woody still had no
motivation for steady work. When he made money from singing, he often gave it to
someone he thought needed it more than he—his childhood experiences had instilled a
compassion for the poor and downtrodden. A few months before a second daughter was
born in July 1937, Woody’s wanderlust drove him westward to California.
He stayed with relatives in the Los Angeles area and started playing music with his
cousin, Jack Guthrie, who played a variety of stringed instruments and sang in the style
of Jimmie Rodgers. Woody developed a musical style similar to the Carter Family, so he
and Jack did not sing as a duo but played backup music for each other. In August 1937,
Jack arranged a radio show for them over KFVD, Hollywood, and they quickly attracted
a following of fans. Jack had to leave the show for work that would support his family, so
Woody and Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman, a young lady whose family was close to Jack
and had taken Woody as a friend, became a musical team. The “Woody and Lefty Lou
Show” drew thousands of fan letters over a few months’ time and made a little money for
them.
His family joined him in California, and a few months later Woody and Lefty Lou
accepted a lucrative offer to broadcast for XELO in Tijuana, Mexico. Woody’s
propensity for saying what he believed, often with humor, angered Mexican officials, and
in a short time they were banned from Mexico. Woody returned to KFVD, where he
became acquainted with a radical news commentator, Ed Robbins. Through Robbins,
Woody became interested in left-wing political and social activities and attended activist
meetings along with movie stars and other lesser-known individuals seeking solutions for
Depression-era problems. He soon was writing a column “Woody Sez,” in the style of his
hero Will Rogers, for the Communist newspaper People’s World.
During the approximately eighteen months he sang at KFVD, Woody wrote
“Oklahoma Hills,” “Philadelphia Lawyer,” “Do, Re, Mi,” “Ship in the Sky,” and many
other songs and became acquainted with the man who became his traveling and recording
companion, Cisco Houston.
In 1939 with his actor friend Will Geer, Woody traveled to New York City, where he
met Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, and others influential in what became the urban folk
revival. In 1940 Lomax invited him to Washington, DC, where Woody recorded songs
for the Library of Congress, and one month later in New York City, he recorded his Dust Bowl Ballads for RCA Victor, later recording a few songs for smaller companies. In 1941
he and his family traveled to Pordand, Oregon, where he wrote twenty-eight songs in
twenty-eight days for the Bonneville Power Authority, including “Roll on, Columbia”
and “Pastures of Plenty.”
The early 1940s were important creative years during which Woody wrote “So Long,
It’s Been Good to Know You,” “Tom Joad,” “This Land Is Your Land,” and Bound for
Glory and started his second family with Marjorie Mazia. He sang and recorded with the
Almanac Singers and appeared on numerous radio shows, such as Pipe Smoking Time,
Pursuit of Happiness, We the People, Cavalcade of America, and Back Where I Come
From. During this time, he and Cisco Houston joined the Merchant Marine and were on
three torpedoed ships, and as World War II neared its end he was drafted into the Army,
where he spent less than one year.
In 1944 Woody met Moses Asch, the founder of Asch Records and Disc Records, and
started a recording friendship that lasted until 1950. During those six years, Woody
recorded approximately 200 sides, possibly more, for Asch. The master recordings that
survive are in the Asch/Folkways Collection now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.
Not only did he record his own songs, but he also recorded numerous traditional and
country songs, most of which he knew before becoming a participant in the folksong
scene. He used and/ or adapted melodies from this vast storehouse of songs for many of
his tunes.
By 1950 Woody was showing symptoms of Huntington’s disease, the genetic illness
that killed his mother, and, as had happened with his parents, his personal and family life
slowly disintegrated. His wandering increased as his creativity decreased, and he and
Marjorie divorced. A short-lived third marriage also ended in divorce after Woody was
finally hospitalized in 1955.
In his productive years, writing was an obsession with Woody, words flowed onto
paper as easily as speech from his mouth—almost in a stream-of-consciousness style. His
prose, poems, and song lyrics were laced with humor and vivid description. When he was
inspired, or occasionally was paid, to write about a topic, an event, or a person, he would
sit at the typewriter for hours, writing until all thoughts and inspiration were on paper,
and usually a body of songs or poems would be written. His inspiration might come from
a newspaper article, a movie, a conversation, or just from observing people.
Equal to his obsession with writing, Woody was a voracious reader who wrote his
interpretations, reactions, and beliefs in the margins of the books he read. From the
Okemah Public Library to the New York City Public Library, wherever he went, he
obtained books to read. He knew world and U.S. history; he knew the theories of political
and economic science; and he knew the Bible extremely well. He was capable of
adjusting his grammar and speech to please the individual or crowd to whom he was
speaking, but he always preferred to play the role of the “Grapes of Wrath Okie.”
He wrote well over 1,000 songs—songs that document the Dust Bowl decade and
problems confronted by migrant agriculture workers, children’s songs, peace and war
songs, cowboy and hobo songs, union and work songs, and love songs; and during his
short creative period of approximately fifteen years, he also wrote three novels, short
stories, newspaper columns, magazine articles, and hundreds of letters and drew hundreds
of illustrations for his songs and books. After approximately thirteen years of
hospitalization, Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967.
During his hospitalization and following his death, fame and recognition grew through
numerous musical tributes to him and through the efforts of Pete Seeger, who usually
included a Guthrie song in his concerts. Marjorie Guthrie, his second wife (although
divorced from him) lectured about and lobbied for Huntington’s disease research, making
Woody an international symbol of the effects of the disease. Arlo Guthrie, the older son
born to Woody and Marjorie, also gained fame as a folk and topical singer/songwriter
with his satirical “Alice s Restaurant” and his rendition of Steve Goodman’s “The City of
New Orleans”; he also includes songs by his father in his concerts and recordings, and he
and Pete Seeger have given numerous concerts and recorded together and have appeared
at many Woody Guthrie tributes. Woody Guthrie’s reputation as a multitalented, creative
man continues to grow long after his death.
Guy Logsdon
References
Guthrie, Woody. 1976. Seeds of Man: An Experience Lived and Dreamed. New York: Dutton.
——. 1988. “Roll on, Columbia:” The Columbia River Songs, ed. Bill Murlin. Portland, OR:
Bonneville Power Administration.
——. 1990. Pastures of Plenty: A Self-Portrait, ed. David Marsh and Harold Leventhal. New York:
Harper Collins.
——. 1992. Woody Guthrie Songs, ed. Judy Bell and Nora Guthrie. New York: TRO Ludlow
Music.
Klein, Joe. 1980. Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York: Alfred Knopf.
WOODY GUTHRIE RECORDINGS
Guthrie, Woody. 1940. Library of Congress Recordings. Issued in 1964 by Elektra Records EKL-
271/272, with Notes by Alan Lomax, Robert Shelton, and Woody Guthrie. Sound Recordings.
Reissued in 1988 by Rounder Records 1041/2/3. Compact Discs/Cassette Tapes.
——. 1940. Dust Bowl Ballads. Victor Records P–27 and P–28. Sound Recordings. Reissued in
1964 by RCA Victor LPV-502. Reissued in 1988 by Rounder Records 1040. Compact
Disc/Cassette Tape.
——. 1994. Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944–1949, comp. Jeff Place
and Guy Logsdon, annotated by Guy Logsdon. Smithsonian/ Folkways Recordings SF 40046.
Compact Disc/Cassette Tape.