This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie - Couverture rigide

"I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. I am out to fightthose kind of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood."

Woody Guthrie could never cure himself of wandering off. One minute he’d be there, the next he’d be gone, vanishing without a word to anyone, abandoning those he loved best. He’d throw on a few extra shirts, one on top of the other, sling his guitar over his shoulder, and hit the road. He’d stick out his thumb and hitchhike, swing onto moving freight trains, and hunker down with other traveling men in flophouses, hobo jungles, and Hoovervilles across Depression America.

He moved restlessly from state to state, soaking up songs: work songs, mountain and cowboy songs, sea chanteys, songs from the Southern chain gangs. He added them to the dozens he already knew from his childhood until he was bursting with American folk songs. Playing the guitar and singing, he started making up new ones: hard-bitten, rough-edged songs that told it like it was, full of anger and hardship and hope and love.Woody said the best songs came to him when he was walking down a road. He always had fifteen or twenty songs running around in his mind, just waiting to be put together. Sometimes he knew the words, but not the melody. Usually he’d borrow a tune that was already well known—the simpler the better. As he walked along, he tried to catch a good, easy song that people could sing the first time they heard it, remember, and sing it again later.

Woody sang his songs the old-fashioned way, his voice droning and nasal, the words sharp and clear. Promoters and club owners wanted him to follow their tightly written scripts and sing the melodious, popular songs that were on the radio. Whenever they came at him with their hands full of cash, Woody ran the other way. "I had rather sound like the cab drivers cursing at one another, like the longshoremen yelling, like the cowhands whooping and like the lone wolf barking, than to sound like a slick, smooth tongued, oily lipped, show person."

Just after New Year’s Day in 1940, Woody set off on one of his unannounced road trips. He left his wife and three kids in a shack in Texas and headed for New York City. It was a long, cold trip in the dead of winter, and every time he stopped in a diner, he heard Irving Berlin’s lush, sentimental song, "God Bless America," on the jukebox. It was exactly the kind of song Woody couldn’t stand, romanticizing America, telling people not to worry, that God would take care of everything.

Woody thought there was plenty to worry about. The Great Depression, which had begun in 1929, was grinding on. For years, desperate, hungry people had been tramping the roads and riding the rails, looking for work or handouts. In Europe another world war was raging, threatening to pull America into the bloody conflict.

Bits of tunes and snatches of words swirled in Woody’s mind, and a few weeks later in a cheap, fleabag hotel in New York City, his own song about America came together. Using an old Baptist tune for the melody, Woody wrote "This Land is Your Land." His song caught the bittersweet contrasts of America: the beauty of our country, and the desperate strength of people making do in impossibly difficult times. Across the bottom of the sheet Woody wrote in his neat script, "All you can write is what you see," and put the song away.

Writing about what he saw—and felt, and heard about, and read about—gave Woody plenty of material. During his lifetime he wrote down more than three thousand songs, taking stories from everywhere: the front page of the newspaper; union meetings and busted-up strikes; and the sights and sounds of America as he walked "that ribbon of highway."

In April 1944 Woody recorded "This Land is Your Land." When his good friend Pete Seeger heard the recording, he thought the song was one of Woody’s weaker attempts. Too simple, thought Pete, an accomplished folk singer himself. Later he would say, "That shows how wrong you can be." Over the years he watched as "This Land is Your Land" went from "one guitar picker to another," gathering momentum as it made its way across America and out into the world. Even after Woody’s death in 1967, the song kept spreading like wildfire.

Today, "This Land is Your Land" is sung all over the United States by just about everybody: school children, Scout troops, new immigrants, gospel choirs, and rest-home residents. More than half a century after Woody first recorded his song, Pete Seeger figures it has reached "hundreds of millions of people, maybe billions of people." Many Americans consider it our unofficial national anthem. Woody would be proud. Years before, he had written, "I am out to sing songs that’ll prove to you that this is your world, no matter how hard it has run you down and rolled over you. I am out to sing the songs that will make you take pride in yourself."Over and over again, he did just that.

Chapter Six: 1940–1941
Hitting the Big Time

With all these poor folks wandering around the country as homeless as little doggies, what I should do is strap on a couple of six-shooters and blow open the doors of the bank and feed people and give them houses. The only reason I don’t do that is because I ain’t got the guts.

Woody found a room at the Han- over House, a ch- eap, fleabag hotel near Times Square. At a critical juncture in his life, Woody was full of impassioned ideas about what was wrong with the country and how to fix it. He knew how to write and sing songs he was sure would help, but he wasn’t connected yet with people who could get his message out.

Alone and frustrated, he fought his way out the only way he knew: by writing another of his hard-bitten songs about how life really was. This time he took on Irving Berlin’s "God Bless America."

Sitting in his run-down hotel room, Woody pulled out a piece of lined paper and wrote across the top of the page, "God Blessed America." One by one he wrote down the verses that had been forming in his mind, until he had six in all. He wrote about what he saw as he rambled: rolling dust clouds, hungry people waiting in relief lines, private property signs. And with a tender simplicity, he wrote of the splendor and joy of being out on the road, walking across America’s golden valleys and diamond deserts.

In his even, clear writing, he added at the bottom, "All you can write is what you see," and signed it "Woody G., February 23, 1940."

As he sat staring out the window of his room, Woody’s mercurial mind jumped to the streets of New York City:

I saw how the poor folks lived, and then I saw how the rich folks lived, and the poor folks down and out and cold and hungry, and the rich ones out drinking good whiskey and celebrating and wasting handfuls of money at gambling and women, and I got to thinking about what Jesus said, and what if He was to walk into New York City and preach like He used to. They’d lock Him back in jail as sure as you’re reading this.

In those bleak, cold winter months he wrote several versions of his song "Jesus Christ," then a second song, "A Hard Working Man is Jesus." Though angered by the "meek shall inherit the earth" aspect of Christianity, Woody embraced Jesus as a man working outside the system, dedicated to the needs of the poor. For a few weeks, his mind returned again and again to Jesus. "It ain’t just once in awhile that I think about this man, its mighty scarce that I think of anything else," he wrote.

While Woody was rambling the streets, writing songs and staving off the loneliness he felt at night, Will Geer had been busy putting together a "Grapes of Wrath" benefit concert. Based on Steinbeck’s novel, the movie had just opened at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. Appalled by life in the California fields, people wanted to help. Will asked a group of leading folk singers to appear in the show and made sure Woody, an authentic Oakie, would be there.

On March 3, 1940, Aunt Molly Jackson led off the evening at the Forrest Theater. The wife of a leading coal striker, she’d been organizing the miners and writing songs about the abysmal conditions of the Kentucky mines until death threats forced her to relocate to New York City.

Woody milled around in the wings as she sang, the heat from the lights bringing out the musty smell of the theater. When Aunt Molly finished, he ambled out, wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and blue jeans. After scratching his head with his guitar pick, he greeted the crowd with a simple "Howdy" and stood looking into the darkened theater. Finally he launched into a song, then he was going—singing his dust-bowl songs in a flat Oklahoma twang and spinning out stories.

Standing in the wings, Alan Lomax was galvanized by Woody. Only twenty-three years old, he was already the Acting Director for the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress in Washington. He and his father, John Lomax, had been crossing and recrossing the United States, recording folk music they thought would soon be lost forever.

Alan Lomax was afraid that folk music, the real music of America, was a dying tradition with popular songs constantly blaring from radio stations across America. When he heard Woody singing, he knew instantly he was listening to someone who understood the power and strength of folk songs, yet knew how to adapt them into political songs. The songs Woody wrote were brilliant, easy to learn and remember. Lomax was sure he was listening to a genius. He could barely wait for the concert to end so he could talk with Woody.

The last performer was a tall, gawky young man named Pete Seeger, who came onto the stage with a five-string banjo and launched into the "Ballad of John Hardy." It was late, the audience was tired, and this was Pete’s very first appearance. He rushed his playing until his fingers jumbled and froze up, his mind went blank, and he couldn’t remember the words. The audience clapped politely at his attempt, and Pete fled the stage.

Later many people, including Alan Lomax, felt the Grapes of Wrath concert was the spark that popularized folk music in America. The songs were haunting, joyful, tragic, and revealing; the singers passionate, determined to create social change. The lineup that night seemed to cover just about everything, from ballads about the bloody miners’ struggle in Kentucky to the powerful prison work songs of the Deep South.

As soon as he was able to talk with Woody after the concert, Lomax wasted no time telling him what he wanted: When could Woody get down to Washington, D.C., to be recorded? How many songs did he know, anyway?

Nothing was holding Woody in New York, and in about a week he was in Washington, staying with Lomax and his wife. He turned down their offer of a bed, and fell asleep sprawled on the couch, or threw his lumber jacket over his shoulders and slept on the floor. Rather than eat at the table, he insisted on standing over the sink, saying, "I don’t want to get softened up. I’m a road man." Pete Seeger, working at the archive with Lomax for fifteen dollars a week, turned up frequently, eager to learn anything he could from this singing "road man."

Lomax was amazed when he brought Woody to the recording studio on March 21, 1940. Woody knew hundreds of folk songs—traditional, gospel, cowboy, country, and mountain songs he had picked up in Oklahoma, Texas, and California. Then there were dozens more songs he had adapted to his politics, modifying tunes and putting new words to folk songs he knew. Between singing his songs, he talked about his life and philosophies with Lomax.

Woody explained how he saw the blues.

I’ve always called it being lonesome. You can get lonesome for a lot of things. You can get lonesome for a job, lonesome for some spending money, lonesome for some drinking whiskey, lonesome for a good time, pretty gals, wine, women, and song. Thinking that you are down and out and disgusted and busted and can’t be trusted, why, it gives you a lonesome feeling. Somehow the world has sorta turned against you.

Woody was also painfully honest when Lomax asked him if he’d gone through any hard times in Oklahoma. "I never did talk about it much," Woody said, but then he went on, almost as if he couldn’t stop himself, to describe his sister Clara’s fiery death. He claimed Clara either set herself on fire, or caught fire accidentally. "There’s two different stories got out about it," Woody said. "She had to stay home and do some work and she caught afire while she was doing some ironing that afternoon on the old kerosene stove. She run around the house about twice before anybody could catch her, and the next day she died." Woody cleared his throat, the microphone amplifying the sound.

"And my mother . . . that was a little bit too much for her nerves or something . . . I don’t know exactly how it was, but anyway, my mother died in the insane asylum at Norman, Oklahoma."

Woody was silent for a long moment, then spoke again. "My father, mysteriously for some reason, caught fire. All us kids had to scatter out."

Suddenly Woody veered off, leaving the vulnerable, painful parts of his childhood behind. He launched into a funny story and never revealed anything so personal again.

His recording done, Woody returned to New York. He hadn’t been back long when a record producer approached him about writing a song based on The Grapes of Wrath. Woody asked Pete Seeger, in town visiting a friend, if he had a typewriter so he could work on the song.

"Have you read the book?" Pete asked him.

"Nope," Woody responded, "but it’s all in the movie—good movie."

There was a typewriter where Pete was staying, so he invited Woody over, who brought a half-gallon jug of cheap wine. For the next few hours, Pete watched Woody type a line or two, stand up, and pluck out something on his guitar, then sit back down to work out a few more lines. Around ten Pete finally fell asleep. When he woke up in the morning, the jug was empty, Woody was asleep under the table, and the finished song was in the typewriter. Written to the tune of "John Hardy," Woody’s seventeen-verse song "Tom Joad" summarized the entire story.

Woody considered his song the best he’d ever done. Early in May 1940, at Lomax’s urging, Victor Records recorded an album of Woody singing "Tom Joad," "Dust Bowl Refugee," "I Ain’t got No Home," "Do Re Mi," "So Long It’s Been Good to Know You," and eight of his other dust-bowl songs. Woody was ecstatic—and shocked—when he was paid three hundred dollars for his day’s work.

For the first time in his life, Woody put a down payment on a new car. He talked Pete Seeger into coming with him, and headed out to visit Mary and the kids in Texas.

They made a odd pair. Pete was tall, lanky, and extremely naive, from an upper-class New England family. Woody couldn’t understand Pete. "I can’t make him out," he told a friend. "He doesn’t look at girls, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, the fellow’s weird."

Always glad to be back on the road, Woody was thrilled to be driving a brand-new car. Finally, he didn’t have to worry about engine trouble—nothing t...