Favorite Woody Guthrie Folk Songs

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, OK. He died March 10, 1967 in Queens, NY.

[played 2009]
Woody Guthrie\ I Ain't Got No Home in this World Anymore\ Hard Travelin'\ Smithsonian/Folkways
Arlo Guthrie\ Deportees\ Arlo Guthrie\ Warner Bros.
Pete Seeger\ This Land Is Your Land\ American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1\ Smithsonian/Folkways
(this version, alas, lacks the "private property" verse)

[played 2006]
Bob Dylan\ Song to Woody\ Bob Dylan\ Columbia (also on No Direction Home)
Woody Guthrie\ Dusty Old Dust (So Long It's Been Good To Know You)\ Dust Bowl Ballads\ Buddha
Utah Phillips\ I've Got To Know\ I've Got To Know\ Daemon

From: Bill Murlin

I am Bill Murlin, folk DJ on KBOO -fm in Portland. I am also the editor of the Woody Guthrie
"Columbia River Collection" songbook and album so I announce my bias immediately. 

I think that the "Columbia River Collection" (Rounder) should be added to any list of Woody Guthrie
favorites that can be chosen for Woody Guthrie-based programs or themes.  This collection should be
pretty well known to folk DJs in the Northwest, especially because it represents a unique chapter
in Woody's life, creating an entire song cycle based on Northwest events, places and scenes.

This year 2007 would have been Woody's 95th birthday.  Let the celebrations continue.  


From: Paul Stamler

Today, July 14th, 2002, Bastille Day, would have been Woody Guthrie's 90th
birthday. (How appropriate for him to have been born on a day celebrating
the storming of a prison.) In his honor, I played his music throughout the
show.

To do that, however, was a bit of a challenge. Thanks to the good old CARP
agreement under the DMCA, we're forbidden to play more than three cuts by a
given artist in a 3-hour period. We're also forbidden to play more than
three cuts from a single anthology. So how to honor Woody? Luckily, an awful
lot of folks have recorded his songs. I still had to juggle -- can't play
more than three Pete Seeger cuts, for example. I managed -- but this
agreement, you should excuse me, stinks for reasons other than the royalty
rates. You knew that, of course. On to Woody.

Phil Cooper & Margaret Nelson: "No Time to Tarry Here" (private) [theme]

Pete Seeger: "This Land Is Your Land" ("I Can See A New Day", Columbia)
 [thought i'd begin with his most popular song. when one of my 8-year-old
students found out one was allowed to go out and change or add to folk
songs, she wrote 2 more verses to this one. good going, camille]

[before getting to woody himself, i thought i'd take a quick glance at his
major influences. he was, basically, what we would call old-time today -- a
fiddler, mandolin player, and solid boom-chucker on the guitar. his prime
musical background, aside from family and church music, came from musicians
like the carter family, who were just beginning to make a living singing
old-time country and mountain songs in the dawning commercial country music
industry. so i played a bit of that:]

Carter Family: "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" ("Anchored in Love", Rounder)
 [the song that gave its tune to 'this land is your land']

Henry Whitter: "Lonesome Road Blues" (OKeh 78, 1924)
 [as i do more reasearch on 78s in connection with this show and the
traditional ballad index, i realize just how important henry whitter was to
old-time music recording. over and over again, the first recording of a song
that became an old-time standard was whitter's. often, in fact, it was the
first reference *period* of a song that would enter tradition in a few short
years. this is a version of the song more usually called 'going down this
road feelin' bad', one of the first known -- it was also recorded by
samantha bumgarner around the same time. it's often attributed to woody, but
clearly it was in existence when he was only 12. it shows up in
african-american tradition too]

Carter Family: "Wildwood Flower" ("Anchored in Love", Rounder)
 [the tune would later surface in woody's 'sinking of the reuben james']

[i decided at this point that there was no point in trying to be
chronological, so i hopped and skipped around woody's work, starting with
some historical context -- spoken words from the man himself:]

Woody Guthrie: "Near-riot" ("Library of Congress Recordings", Rounder)
 [talk about a mob of hungry, cold men who come close to rioting and tearing
a small town apart for food]

Ry Cooder: "Vigilante Man" ("Into the Purple Valley", Reprise)
 [written after vigilantes were used to break up labor meetings and protests
by poor and starving people]

Pete Seeger: "Pretty Boy Floyd" ("John Henry and Other Folk Favorites",
Harmony)
 [originally 'story songs' on columbia. contains a favorite line of many
people: some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.
still applies]

Cisco Houston: "I Ain't Got No Home" ("The Folkways Years",
Smithsonian/Folkways)
 ['i was farming on the shares and always i was poor/my crops i laid into
the banker's store/my wife took down and died upon the cabin floor/and i
ain't got no home in the world any more'. adapted from the traditional hymn,
'i can't feel at home in this world any more']

[woody was a serious man, but he could also be a bit lighter than the last
three songs would indicate:]

Maddox Bros. & Rose: "Philadelphia Lawyer" ("Vol. 1: America's Most Colorful
Hillbilly Band", Arhoolie)
 [the maddoxes ham it up royally, complete with gunshot]

Ramblin' Jack Elliott: "Talking Fisherman" ("Young Brigham", Reprise)
 [one of woody's most deadpan-hilarious talking blues. '...last night i had
a dream/that i was fishin' in a whiskey stream/i'd bait the hook with
applejack/throw in a drink, get a gallon back...i done pretty good/'til the
stream ran dry/so i threw the fish back to the finance company']

Arlo Guthrie: "Oklahoma Hills" ("Tribute To Woody Guthrie, Vol. 1",
Columbia)
 [i believe woody co-wrote this with his brother, jack guthrie, a
moderately-popular western swing bandleader]

Almanac Singers: "Hard, Ain't It Hard" ("The Complete General Recordings",
MCA)
 [woody was in the almanac singers, which he called 'the only band i know
that rehearses on the stage'. they did political and union songs, but they
also recorded traditional songs and some of woody's compositions]

Woody Guthrie: "Tom Joad" ("Dust Bowl Ballads", RCA Victor)
 [woody never seems to have read 'the grapes of wrath'. instead, he went to
a theatre where the movie was playing and watched it three times, then came
over to pete seeger's new york with a bottle of scotch and asked to use his
typewriter. when pete assented, woody sat down with the bottle close at hand
and started writing. eventually pete fell asleep; when he woke up woody was
curled up under the table, the bottle was empty and the manuscript of 'tom
joad' was on top of the typewriter. not long after he recorded it for
victor. if you think about it, compressing a long novel into 6 minutes --
and staying serious -- isn't easy]

[woody sez; some commentary on current events:]

Texas Instruments: "Do-Re-Mi" ("The Texas Instruments", Rabid Cat)
 [in the 1930s, displaced okies and arkies, among others, flocked to
california in the hope of finding work. they were met at the state line by
border police, who turned back any without a certain amount of money. it
seems a bit surprising, seeing as how there's nothing in the constitution
giving state governments the right to exclude citizens of other states, but
they did it. california did, at any rate. oh, the texas instruments were a
punk band. woody had lots of fans]

Norman Blake: "Grand Coulee Dam" ("Blind Dog", Rounder)
 [the department of the interior commissioned woody to travel through the
pacific northwest and write about the hydroelectric projects going on. this
is probably the best-known song from that assignment and trip]
 [[Bill Murlin writes: The Department of Interior did not commission Woody;
he was hired by the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Or.  BPA
was, at the time, a part of the Department of Interior, but the Department
in Washington, D.C., knew nothing of Woody's engagement for the song-
writing project until after the fact.  
I would agree that "Grand Coulee Dam" is certainly one of the better known
songs from the 26 that Woody wrote in May 1941 and it has been recorded by
many artists.  However I would argue that "Pastures of Plenty" certainly
ranks as one of the best-known songs from the Columbia River Collection.
"Pastures" was the only song recognized with Woody at the time he was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The song continues to be
recorded by popular artists today with all of their various spins and
interpretations.  Another highly popular song from the collection is
"Roll On, Columbia."  Though Guthrie did not record that song on a
commercial album, it has been recorded by many others.  Guthrie's recording
of that song appeared in the Columbia River Collection in 1987.]]

Almanac Singers: "The Sinking of the Reuben James" ("Sing Out", Magnum)
 [as the other almanacs remembered this, woody wrote the verses, pete wrote
the chorus. pete, however, says the chorus was a group effort. the reuben
james was the first american vessel sunk in world war ii, even before we
were declared belligerants; on oct. 31, 1941, the ship was sunk by a german
u-boat. 100 sailors were lost. 'what were their names, tell me what were
their names/did you have a friend on the good reuben james']

[at this point a listener called in and told me that woody had celebrated
the end of world war ii here in st. louis; he was stationed at what is now
scott air force base, and when peace was declared he took his guitar and
wandered over to the st. louis side, playing for the celebrating crowds. i
always thought woody was a merchant marine, but somehow he was stationed at
an airfield]

[woody had a powerful sense of tragedy and struggle, as evidenced by this
set:]

Arlo Guthrie: "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" ("Together", Rising Son)
 [from arlo's first in-concert recording with pete seeger, originally on
warner bros. woody saw a tiny story in the paper about a plane that had
crashed in los gatos, california; all aboard were killed, but a spokesman
was quoted to the effect that it wasn't an important event, as the
passengers were all illegal immigrants in the process of deportation. that
caught woody's attention, and he wrote the poem; martin hoffman added the
tune a decade or so later]

Art Thieme: "East Texas Red" ("That's the Ticket", Folk-Legacy)
 [a hard ballad about a cruel railroad bull and his sadistic practices
toward two hobos, and their revenge]

Ramblin' Jack Elliott: "1913 Massacre" ("Kerouac's Last Dream", Appleseed)
 [tune: 'to hear the nightingale sing'. with the explosion in electrical
technology during the first decades of the 20th century, there was a great
need for copper. in 1913 copper miners in the upper peninsula of michigan
were on strike; they gathered for a christmas ball at an italian social hall
in calumet; company gun thugs barred the doors, then raised a false fire
alarm, and in the ensuing panic 73 children were suffocated. italian hall
was still standing when i visited calumet in 1983, but has since been torn
down]

John Greenway: "Union Burying Ground" ("American Industrial Songs",
Riverside)
 [from a long-out-of-print and scratchy lp; adapted from an african-american
spiritual]

[lighter stuff for the last full set. woody wrote tremendous kids' songs,
but unfortunately i don't have access to many of them, the recordings having
vanished from the station library. i played a couple, though:]

Cisco Houston: "Ship in the Sky" ("The Folkways Years",
Smithsonian/Folkways)
 [a song for kids whose parents are war workers -- the mother builds planes,
the father flies them. working class pride and a good kids' song besides]

Arlo Guthrie & Judy Collins: "Riding in the Car" ("Soundtrack Recording:
Woody Guthrie -- Hard Travelin'", Rising Son)
 [very loose and laughing duet. woody used the traditional fiddle tune 'bile
'em cabbage down' for this song]

Pete Seeger: "Pittsburgh Town" ("American Industrial Ballads", Folkways)
 [contains the immortal line 'what did jones and laughlin steal?
pittsburgh!'. to the tune of 'crawdad song']

John McCutcheon & Tom Chapin: "Pastures of Plenty" ("Doing Our Job",
Rounder)
 [woody's classic love song to the land and the people who farm it. tune:
'pretty polly']

[and how else could i end?]

Woody Guthrie: "Dusty Old Dust (So Long, It's Been Good to Know You)" ("Dust
Bowl Ballads", RCA Victor)


So that was the show. I got an unusual number of phone calls, including one
from a man who said I'd touched his family's history twice; one of them had
worked on the Grand Coulee Dam; another had been at one of the Pittsburgh
steel mills before they closed down in the 1980s, leaving a desolated
landscape and unemployed steelworkers.

Before playing the last song, I quoted from Phil Ochs's song "Bound for
Glory": "Why sing the songs and forget about the aims?/He wrote them for a
reason, let us sing them for the same." There are still lots of people who
are poor and hungry, who have terrible working conditions and no safety
net -- see, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable book, "Nickel and
Dimed". Those were the folks Woody was writing for, and there's a lot of
struggle left to do. Happy birthday, Woody Guthrie.