Woody Guthrie was a folk singer, songwriter, socialist, and chronicler of American working-class life. Born in Oklahoma, he spent a short time in Texas before escaping the Dust Bowl Depression for California, eventually settling in New York City. Guthrie became a radio star and went on to become a pivotal figure in the early American folk revival. His music, style, and politics had a profound influence on a range of musical icons, from Bob Dylan and Jonny Cash to Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer. Woody Guthrie is one of the most influential American folk musicians of the 20th century.
Escaping The Dust Bowl
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in 1912 into a conservative family in Okemah, Oklahoma. Named after the Democratic presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson, Guthrie’s father Charles was a local Demcract politician, businessman, and enthusiastic supporter of the Klu Klux Klan. From a young age music was Woody’s thing. He learned English and Scottish folk ballads and began playing the harmonica as a child. As a teenager, he took up the guitar.
After his mother was institutionalized with Huntington’s Disease, Woody lived with his father in Pampa, Texas. He married at 19 but left Texas for California during the Dust Bowl period of the Great Depression. Guthrie earned himself the nickname “Dust Bowl Troubadour” through his performances in saloons and workcamps en route to California. In 1937, he came to the attention of the wider public as a broadcast performer of hillbilly and folk songs on KFVD radio in Los Angeles.
Music
Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox
Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterWhile Woody Guthrie was a deeply political man, he was primarily known for his music. During his Great Depression-era travels, he hitchhiked and rode freight trains from town to town, writing songs about the people he met and the social conditions he found. He often improvised his tunes to the surroundings that he was in. In 1940, Guthrie recorded several hours of songs and stories with Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Music. Songs like “Tear the Fascists Down” and “Hard Travlin’” exemplify his straight-talking, down-to-earth style.
His most famous song, “This Land is Your Land” was written as a response to Irving Berlin’s jingoistic “God Bless America.” For Guthrie, the idea that land belonged to anyone was absurd. He viewed folk music as a means of protest, believing that America belonged to all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
Politics
From the start of his career, Woody Guthrie was a socially conscious artist. On KFVD radio, he spoke as a fellow traveler with the Communist Party of the USA; discussed the corruption of big business and politics; and advocated for union rights for American workers. He sought to represent the “down-and-outs,” the hobos, migrant workers, and the poor. In New York, he founded The Almanac Singers, alongside fellow leftists Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, and Pete Seeger. A Popular Front folk group, they sang about socialist issues, anti-fascist principles, and union philosophy.
Between 1939 and 1940, Guthrie wrote a regular column for the communist newspaper People’s World. Titled “Woody Sez,” the column aired his socialist views, and exemplified his famous politics:
“My big Gibson guitar has got a sign I painted on it, says, “This machine kills fascists” and it means just what it says too.”
Legacy and Death
The American Folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s was heavily inspired by the music of Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan, in particular, idolized Guthrie, visited him in hospital in 1960, and developed a style that was heavily reminiscent of his music. Guthrie served as both a leader of the folk movement in life and an inspiration and icon in death.
By the late 1940s, Guthrie’s rapidly deteriorating health was attributed to Huntington’s Disease, the same genetic that killed his mother. He lived in poor health in California and briefly in Florida, before moving back to New York in 1954. There, in an apartment owned by Fred Trump, he wrote “Old Man Trump”, a withering critique of his landlord’s racist rental policies. Guthrie moved through various hospitals between 1956 and 1967 until he ultimately died from the complications of Huntington’s Disease. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
