WOODY GUTHRIE
'Pastures of Plenty'
Original Recordings 1940-1947
Writer Robert Shelton once called Woody Guthrie "a
wry-witted word-volcano", an alliterative phrase that would have no doubt
pleased the legendary American folk singer, whose shingle might also bear the
words prophet-singer, fascist-killer, folk-poet, talker, hummer, whistler,
dancer, rambler, fighter, and all-time balladeer hero. Because of his long bout
with Huntington's disease, which eventually killed him in 1967 at the age of
55, Guthrie spent almost as much time out of the folk music scene as he did in
it. But during the 1930s and '40s, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, with his shock of
unruly hair and beat-up guitar with "This machine kills fascists" scrawled on
it, laid out the blueprints for what would become the so-called urban folk
music revival of the 1950s and '60s, a social and musical movement that he
could only observe from the distant vantage point of a hospital bed.
There was probably no performer who better embodied the
spirit of what America was all about during the Great Depression. During this
darkest period in American history, Guthrie exuded optim-ism, humour, and
empathy for the average working American, as songs and poems flowed from his mind
like a raging river. Woody Guthrie not only wrote about America during the
Depression, he lived it. Born in the oil-boom town of Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912,
Guthrie was an incurable rambler with, as Pete Seeger called it, an "itching
heel," never content to stay in one place for long; seeing America and writing
about it. He didn't just write songs; he also wrote poetry, lengthy letters to
family and friends, and essays about his travels in numerous articles and books
such as Bound for Glory.
Guthrie began writing about the same time another American
folk hero, Will Rogers, died. Guthrie picked up where Rogers left off, speaking
up and fighting for the workers and the disenchanted everywhere; his voice
joining those of other political activist/singers including Pete Seeger, Cisco
Houston, Josh White, and Lee Hays.
Much of Woody Guthrie's musical inspiration came from
phonograph records. Although he was not an adept composer, Guthrie based his
songs on traditional ballads and recordings by early country music performers,
most notably the Carter Family. It was one of the unlikeliest songwriting
collaborations ever; the staid, conservative, Appalachian-bound Carters and the
dust-bowl bred Communist-leaning free spirit from Oklahoma.
On 26 April 1940, Guthrie made his first commercial
recordings for RCA Victor in New York City. The album, which would be called
Dust Bowl Ballads, was to include an essay about the songs written by Guthrie,
who received $300 for the session. In the notes, (he described himself as "the
dustiest of the dust bowlers") he wrote in his own speaking style, complete
with Southwestern expressions, slang, and Guthrie's own concocted jargon. He
described his music as "Oakie songs, Dust Bowl songs, Migratious songs, about
my folks and my relatives, about a jillion of 'em, that got hit by the drouth,
the dust, the wind, the banker, and the landlord, and the police, all at the
same time."
Talking Dust Bowl Blues is a humorous commentary on
Guthrie's life as a migrant Okie, in which he leaves his dust blown farm, fills
his Ford with "gas-eye-leen," and heads west to California for better
conditions. Guthrie's "talking blues" was derived from a series of recordings
made in that style beginning in 1926 by hillbilly singer Chris Bouchillon.
Blowin' Down this Road was adapted from "Goin' Down This
Road Feelin' Bad", a traditional song that can be found in country, blues,
folk, and bluegrass traditions. Guthrie wrote Do-Re-Mi in 1937 when, after
arriving in Los Angeles, he found that the Los Angeles Police Department had
set up illegal roadblocks on the major highways at the California border to
turn back those whom they thought were "unemployable vagrants". It was the
racism and class distinction experienced during this period that helped
influence Guthrie's left-leaning political beliefs, which would eventually
result in his joining the Communist Party.
The two-part Tom Joad (written to the tune of "John Hardy")
was Guthrie's outlaw ballad about the fictional hero of John Steinbeck's The
Grapes of Wrath. Guthrie had seen the motion picture adaptation of the book and
wrote the song "because the people back in Oklahoma haven't got two bucks to
buy the book, or even thirty-five cents to see the movie, but the song will get
back to them." Guthrie's version was seventeen stanzas, too long for a single
78 rpm side, so Victor decided to use both sides of the record to get it all
down.
Dusty Old Dust, Guthrie's masterpiece about the dust storms
in the Southwest in the mid-1930s, was one of his first compositions, written
just prior to his leaving Texas for the west coast. The melody for the verses
was borrowed from "Billy the Kid" by Carson Robison, but Guthrie wrote the
chorus himself. It later became better known as "So Long, It's Been Good to
Know Yuh".
In 1944, Alan Lomax introduced Guthrie to Moses Asch, whose
tiny Asch Records label on West 46th Street in New York was recording American
folk music. Asch immediately recognized Guthrie's genius and, over the next few
weeks, made hundreds of recordings of Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, Lead
Belly, and others on the New York folk music scene. Another talking blues
number, Talking Sailor, extolled the National Maritime Union (NMU) and was
recorded on 19 April 1944, with Cisco Houston, Guthrie's buddy in the merchant
marines, accompanying him on guitar.
Guthrie's first album for Asch also included Gypsy Davy, a
westernized version of "The Gypsy Laddie" (Child No. 200), "Jesus Christ" (set
to the tune of "Jesse James"), whom Guthrie depicts as simply a union
organizer, and New York Town, Guthrie's wry observations on first arriving in
the Big Apple, with music inspired by blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson.
In May 1941, Guthrie was hired by the Bonneville Power
Administration (BPA) to write songs for a film to promote public power and
development of the Columbia River in Oregon. Within a month, Guthrie had
written 26 songs, of which three were used in the film, which didn't get
released until 1949. Grand Coulee Dam (first spelled "Coolee" on the original Asch
78) was written to the tune of "Wabash Cannonball" and included a litany of
place names, deliberately included by Guthrie to attract workers to the song.
The song contains some of Guthrie's most vivid word pictures, including the
line "in the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray."
The BPA project also resulted in Pastures of Plenty (sung
modally to the tune of "Pretty Polly"), in which Guthrie dreamed of government
sponsored irrigation providing water and electricity for migrant workers.
Talking Columbia Blues is another wry commentary in the talking blues style in
which he predicts everything would be made of plastic someday and that the
country would be better off if it were run not by pol-i-tish-uns but by
ee-leck-trissity. Rambling Blues, one of Guthrie's most autobiographical songs,
borrows part of its melody from Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene."
Three songs come from an Asch 78 album called American
Folksay featuring traditional ballads and songs brought to New York by Guthrie
and other members of the Almanac Singers. Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little
Feet is of Scottish origin, based on "The Lass of Roch Royal" (Child No. 76).
Jimmie Rodgers' Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8) was described by Guthrie
as a migra-tory work song, appropriate for his union-leaning interests. The
Biggest Thing is a nonsense song also known as "I Was Born About 10,000 Years
Ago" that was heard by Oscar Brand as a vaudeville song in Manitoba, Canada
when he was growing up. Although its origins are unknown, Brand believed it to
be too sophisticated to be traditional. The lyrics were updated to include
union references and target Adolf Hitler and the axis powers.
The Ludlow Massacre took place on 20 April 1914 and
described the horrifying event that occurred when Colorado coal miners, in
their attempt to unionize, were brutally attacked by the state militia, who
deliberately shot and burned twenty of their group, a dozen of whom were women
and small children. Guthrie would
later use the same melody for his children's song, "Clean-O."
The 1913 Massacre refers to a Christmas Eve party in
Calumet, Michigan for another group of organizing miners. In the crowded
Italian Hall, someone yelled "fire!" causing a mass panic that resulted in the
death of 74 people (59 of them children). Mother Ella Reeve Bloor, a political
organizer and founder of the American Communist Party, was an eyewitness to the
tragedy and wrote about it in her autobiography. Both Ludlow Massacre and 1913
Massacre were issued on an Asch 78 set entitled Struggle.
This Land Is Your Land was originally titled "God Blessed
America". Guthrie's original intent was not to celebrate the beauty of
America's natural landscape but to protest against privatization of land by the
American government and reclaim it for the American worker. After its
publication, the offending verses were removed and the sanitized version has
since become a patriotic standard. The melody was adapted from the Carter
Family's "When the World's on Fire", which in itself came from a Baptist hymn
called "Oh My Lovin' Brother".
After he entered Greystone Hospital in New Jersey in 1956,
Woody Guthrie became the touchstone of the urban folk revival. His disciples
have included Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, besides
countless other would-be folk poets who were inspired by Guthrie's
self-described work as America's "word singer."
- Cary Ginell (folklorist, radio broadcaster, and
award-winning author of four books on American music. He lives in Thousand Oaks,
California)