I fear that Woody Guthrie is beginning to fade from public renown; just about everyone knows “This Land is Your Land” – his best known song among many hundreds of them – but they probably have no idea who wrote it. Like most of Woody’s songs, “This Land is Your Land” has homespun lyrics that go straight to the heart.
As quoted in Wikipedia: “[Woody] Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’. He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for ‘God Bless America’, he wrote his most famous song, ‘This Land is Your Land’, in February 1940; it was subtitled: ‘God Blessed America for Me’.” And the original song isn’t nearly so tame as the best known portion; the fourth and sixth verses (which Woody Guthrie himself sometimes omitted in his performances) are much more strident:
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said “no trespassing”.
[In another version, the sign reads “Private Property”]
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
In 1944, Woody Guthrie met with Moe Asch of Folkways Records, where he first recorded “This Land is Your Land”, plus “Worried Man Blues” and hundreds of other songs.
(March 2015)
