Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson (“Woody”)

(1912-1967)

   Born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1927 Woody Guthrie moved to Pampa, Texas, where he learned to play the guitar and developed his skill as a singer/songwriter. He moved to California in 1937 and had his own radio show on KFVD in Los Angeles. Two years later, Guthrie was in New York, where he recorded songs and comments for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song and also made his first commercial collection, Dust Bowl Ballads. It was in these songs, including “Hard Travellin’” and “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore,” that he captured the experiences of the “Okies”—the migrant families displaced from the Midwest states and the Dust Bowl.

   In 1941, Guthrie worked for the Department of the Interior, but he left to become a merchant seaman. He was drafted near the end of the war and spent a year in the army. After the war, he briefly joined Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers, who popularized songs of his, like “Good Night, Irene.” After spending time traveling across the United States, Guthrie returned to New York, where he was hospitalized with Huntington’s disease. During his career, he wrote more than 1,000 songs, including “This Land Is Our Land,” and he was an inspiration to his own son, Arlo Guthrie, as well as for many other singers in the 1960s, including Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.

   See also Music.