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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:34 pm
  

BlunderVirgin

Joined: Oct 03, 2009
Posts: 1
Location: Houston Texas
"All you can write is what you see" Woodrow Wilson Guthrie by Larry Dry
Current mood: accomplished
My College thesis from South Plains College in Levelland TX class of 1984
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in 1912 in the little town of Okemah, Oklahoma. Woody called Okemah one of the most "singinest, square dancingest, laughingest, cryingest of our ranch towns." He soaked up all the music around him. From his mother he learned the sad old country ballads. From his father, a successful land dealer, he learned square dance music and negro blues. A black shoe shine boy taught Woody how to play the harmonica and Woody taught himself to play the guitar he borrowed from a boot legger.
Then almost over night his carefree childhood turned into a nightmare. One of the families homes burned down and the other was blown away in a tornado. A sister was burned to death. His mother died of Huntington disease, a mysterious degeneration of the nerves, and his father lost every cent when the depression hit.
As a teenager, Woody was taken in by a family of thirteen. He quit school and sold papers, picked cotton, drilled wells, painted signs and told fortunes. When he was seventeen he left Oklahoma along with thousands of other folk fleeing the dust bowl. Thus began his life of wandering. He roamed the country with his guitar slung over his back, riding freighters, working when he could find work, putting to music what he saw, heard and felt. Everywhere he went he would throw his hat down and sing for tips. He sang in the migrant camps and shanty towns of almost every state in the Union.
In New York, Woody met Alan Lomax, who was collecting folk songs for the Library of Congress. Lomax remembers him with “his guitar slung over his right shoulder as he sang his Okie ballads, we seemed filled with the presence of all Woody's southwest kin." Woody went on Alan Lomax's CBS radio show and the broadcast won a national award for the best music performance of the year.
Woody might be called the originator of the protest song. While Cole Porter and Noel Coward were writing sophisticated lyrics about high society, Woody was writing simple, rough-hewn songs about the homeless, migrant workers looking for a better life. In a 1967 "Life" article, Pete Seeger says of Woody, “His songs are deceptively simple. Only after they have become a part of your life do you realize how great they are. Any damn fool can get complicated, it takes genius to attain simplicity." His music always stayed rooted in the blues, ballads and breakdowns he'd been raised on in Oklahoma.
The period at the beginning of World War ll was the most productive of Woody's life. After his first wife, Mary, divorced him, Woody settled in an old, unheated house in Greenwich Village, where he composed dozens of songs, wrote a newspaper column and sang with a group called the Almanac Singers. Pete Seeger remembered the night when Woody went to see the movie “Grapes of Wrath" based on the John Steinbeck book about the dustbowl refugees. Woody came home and started typing furiously. In the morning he was asleep on the floor with the completed version of “Tom Joad" scattered around the typewriter. Steinbeck later said that Woody's 26 verses of Tom Joad said as much about the plight of the Okies as his Pulitzer Prize winning book. It was at this time Woody also wrote his auto biography “Bound for Glory."
In 1943, Woody joined the Merchant Marine. In on their invasions, he was twice on ships torpedoed by German submarines. Both times he emerged without so much as getting his guitar wet. After the war he married Marjorie Mazia and settled down on Coney Island where they had four children. This was one of the few tranquil times in Woody's life. They were always broke but his life was filled with children and music.
Woody would have become a major singing star if he would only compromise his talents. Once he and his singing group auditioned at the big Rainbow Room in New York. The manager agreed to hire them if they would dress up their act by having the men wear overalls, and the women, sun bonnets. By way of reply Woody began making up sarcastic verses, " The Rainbow room is sixty story's high they say, it's a long way back to the U.S.A.", then walked out.
Their social life consisted of everybody piling into their car and driving around while Woody made up songs about everything he saw. His wife Marjorie recalled her son, Arlo, now a popular folk singer himself, running home when he was in the sixth grade and blurting out, “Mom! Did you know they sing Woody's songs at school, even know the words."
Yet there was more tragedy in store for Woody. One day coming home from singing he found a note saying come to the hospital. When he got there he found his four year old daughter dying from burns from a flash fire at their house. With her death and the loss of a son from his first marriage, his children’s songs dried up. Also he began getting dizzy spells and started acting irrationally, he even attempted suicide. He was hospitalized and found to have the same disease that killed his Mother. For fifteen years he was hospitalized as the disease slowly took its course. Towards the end he could not speak, focus his eyes or feed himself. Finally, as he lay near death, he began receiving the recognition his talent and unquenchable spirit deserved.
The folk singing boom, which Woody's songs kindled, burst into a multi million dollar world wide industry. Famous singers such as Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, and Pete Seeger recorded his songs in best selling albums. “This Land is Your Land" was sung in schools around the country. Woody passed October 3rd in 1967 at the age of 55 but his words still ring, “This land was made for you and me."
“All you can write is what you see" Woody Guthrie
“All you can see is what you feel, all you can sing is what you hear in your head, and this life that you lead's the one you led." Larry Dry from my song, "Tribute to Woody G."
My song Tribute to Woody G can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/larrydry or at http://www.myspace.com/larrydry in my blog section.


Last edited by LarryDry on Sat Oct 10, 2009 4:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:08 pm
  

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Joined: Sep 12, 2000
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Location: New Jersey
Woody passed on Oct.3, 1967


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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:47 am
  

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Joined: Sep 13, 2000
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Location: Pixley-- Actually An Hr South of Richmond, VA
Yep, 67. That was good. I bet you got an A on it...


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