Bob Dylan was one of many folksingers in the early 1960’s who were following in Woody Guthrie’s shoes. From Wikipedia: “Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: ‘The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.’ After learning of Guthrie’s whereabouts, Dylan regularly visited him.” Later on, a number of other performers were heralded as the “new Dylan” – so many that the phrase started to sound like an epithet.
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?
Wikipedia states: “Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, and Tom Paxton have acknowledged [Woody] Guthrie as a major influence.”
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Woody Guthrie’s first recordings were made by Alan Lomax, the famous folklorist that I wrote about in my last post; they had several hours of recordings and conversations between them. His first album, Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) followed. It is regarded as one of the very first concept albums and was Woody’s most successful record.
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I just saw the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar; despite some shortcomings, I liked it quite a bit more than Inception (2010). Many people might not realize that those horrendous dust storms heralding the eclipse of Earth as a habitable planet occurred in real life in the U. S. Midwest during the 1930’s. As if the Great Depression weren’t enough misery, a combination of severe drought and ignorant agricultural methods ruined the rich farmland in the Heartland for years at a time. As a native of Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie naturally identified with the thousands of “Okies” set adrift during the “Dust Bowl” period. Also, as reported in Wikipedia: “Guthrie himself had lived in the town of Pampa, Texas, and had witnessed the devastating Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935.” This “black blizzard” was one of the worst dust storms of them all; an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil were displaced during this storm.
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The best known song on the Woody Guthrie album Dust Bowl Ballads is “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” (called “Dusty Old Dust” on the album). The Weavers had a hit with “So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Yuh)” in 1951, taking it to #4 on the pop music charts and becoming one of their “staple” songs. From Wikipedia: “The repetitive chorus has been described as ‘a witty, black retort, utterly negative and apocalyptic’”:
We talked of the end of the world, and then
We’d sing a song an’ then sing it again
We’d sit for an hour an’ not say a word
And then these words would be heard:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh
* * *
Another song on Dust Bowl Ballads, “Pretty Boy Floyd” has one of Woody Guthrie’s most famous lines. Like the outlaw couple depicted in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd was a bank robber during the Depression era. While he was elevated to “Public Enemy No. 1” by the FBI following the shooting of John Dillinger, many see Floyd as a tragic figure who was a victim of his times.
“Pretty Boy Floyd” also highlighted the outlaw’s generosity, which was attributed to Bonnie and Clyde as well in the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway movie. In part, the lyrics of this song are:
Yes, he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But a many a starvin’ farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Others tell you ’bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand-dollar bill.
Sure, anyone could say that Woody Guthrie was romanticizing a criminal. But there is no denying the power of the closing verses as Woody Guthrie points his finger at a greater enemy:
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
* * *
I have written previously of another song on Dust Bowl Ballads, “I Ain’t Got No Home”. Although Bob Dylan idolized him, it is one of the very few Woody Guthrie songs that Dylan recorded. Also, “I Ain’t Got No Home” virtually shares a title and many of the lyrics with one of the songs by past UARA Ron Franklin, “We Ain’t Got No Home”. It is hard not to simply list the total lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s songs, they are so organically written; here are two choice verses from “I Ain’t Got No Home”:
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
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Bob Dylan once wrote a poem as a tribute to this folk music giant. Titled “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”, Dylan recited it once at a concert – specifically, at the Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963 according to Wikipedia. I have it on one of my Dylan bootleg albums, and it is also included in what is probably the biggest bootleg product of all time, the 10-LP box set Ten of Swords (1986). The first legitimate release is on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991).
Introducing the poem at the end of his concert, Bob Dylan said that he had been asked to provide something for a book about Woody Guthrie: “. . . what does Woody Guthrie mean to you in 25 words? I couldn’t do it. I wrote five pages. And, I have it here, have it here by accident, actually.”
Many people only think of Bob Dylan as a lyricist for his songs or maybe as a free-verse poet; but if there were ever any doubts about the man’s power as a true poet of the first order, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” dispels them forever. The lines have a free-verse feel to them, though mostly they rhyme, and there is the same conversational tone that Woody Guthrie used in his own work. There is a breathless, exhilarating rush to the poem – it is nothing less than the search for the meaning of life amid the dross of the modern world. While nothing can top hearing Dylan speak the words himself, the entire poem can be found here on bobdylan.com, Dylan’s official website – www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/last-thoughts-woody-guthrie. It pains me to have to cut it short, but there are more than 200 lines in all, so here are some excerpts:
When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life’s busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin’ up
If the wine don’t come to the top of yer cup
If the wind’s got you sideways with one hand holdin’ on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood’s easy findin’ but yer lazy to fetch it . . .
And to yourself you sometimes say
“I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn’t they tell me the day I was born”
And you start gettin’ chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you’re lookin’ for somethin’ you ain’t quite found yet . . .
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it’s you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you’re sitting
That the world ain’t got you beat
That it ain’t got you licked
It can’t get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope’s just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner ’round a wide-angled curve . . .
No you’ll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper maché
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain’t in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who’d turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend . . .
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin’, “Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain’t there no one here that knows where I’m at
Ain’t there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN’T REAL”
No but that ain’t yer game, it ain’t even yer race
You can’t hear yer name, you can’t see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’
Where do you look for this lamp that’s a-burnin’
Where do you look for this oil well gushin’
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowin’
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You’ll find God in the church of your choice
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it’s only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You’ll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown
* * *
In the same time period that he released Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody Guthrie was one of the co-founders of the Almanac Singers, which were active between 1940 and 1943. The other founders were Millard Lampell, later a television and film screenwriter, plus Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, who were in the folk group the Weavers that formed later in the decade. As described in Wikipedia: “[The Almanac Singers] specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. They were part of the Popular Front, an alliance of liberals and leftists, including the Communist Party USA . . . who had vowed to put aside their differences in order to fight fascism and promote racial and religious inclusiveness and workers’ rights.” Woody Guthrie hung around a lot of Communists during his career, but as far as anyone can tell, he never joined up.
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.
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In 1943, Woody Guthrie moved to a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, New York. Despite the fact that his recording career basically ended in 1947, this was his most productive period according to Wikipedia. He wrote hundreds of songs over this period and worked as long as he was able to hold a pencil.
Woody Guthrie became an active mentor for folksinger Ramblin’ Jack Elliott; because of his deteriorating health from the ravages of Huntington’s Disease, Bob Dylan and his own son Arlo Guthrie said that they actually learned about Guthrie’s music mostly through Elliott. Wikipedia says of this: “When asked about Arlo’s claim, Elliott said, ‘I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn’t teach me. He just said, “If you want to learn something, just steal it — that’s the way I learned from Lead Belly.”’”
* * *
I have already written about the wonderful Mermaid Avenue Series albums. Leftist English folksinger Billy Bragg and the American rock band Wilco put together music to accompany some of the complete lyric sheets that Woody Guthrie left behind that had no accompanying music – more than a thousand songs in all. In part, Billy Bragg’s liner notes on Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II state: “Woody Guthrie was the first alternative musician. While Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were busy peddling escapism for the masses, Woody was out there writing songs from a different point of view with a lyrical poetry that captured the awesome majesty of America’s scenery and the dry-as-dust humor of its working folks.”
As terrific as they are, the dozens of songs on these albums only scratch the surface; Billy Bragg said in the liner notes that until these other songs can also be unearthed, “Woody Guthrie has so much more to say to us”.
(March 2015)
