On October 3rd, 1967, great American songwriter Woody Guthrie passed away. Guthrie wrote some of the most recognizable songs in the history of popular American music, including “This Land Is Your Land”.
Guthrie travelled from Oklahoma to California with displaced farmers of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, and learned the folk and blues music that would later shape his own songwriting. In the latter part of the 1930s Guthrie achieved a measure of fame on the radio in California playing folk and “hillbilly” music live over the air on KFVD. It was there that he was encouraged to write the protest songs that would later become the backbone of his first album “Dust Bowl ballads” recorded in New York in 1940. Guthrie often played with a sign on his guitar that read “This machine kills fascists”, which you can see in the photo above.
“This Land is Your Land” was written in February 1940, a song that was partly written to express distaste for the Irving Berlin hit “God Bless America”, which he felt was “unrealistic and complacent”. In fact, “This Land…” was sub-titled “God Blessed America For Me”.
The 4th and 6th verses were omitted in later recordings and in most modern incarnations of the song, and contained some of the strongest criticisms of class inequality that Guthrie had written.
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said “no trespassing.”
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?
Guthrie served in the Merchant marines during World War II, making several crossings during the Battle of the Atlantic. He was aboard the Sea Porpoise when it was torpedoed by German U-Boats off Utah beach after ferrying troops for the D-Day invasion.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people was inspired by folk singers such as Guthrie. These “folk revivalists” became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement.
Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie’s visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: “The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.”[74] After learning of Guthrie’s whereabouts, Dylan regularly visited him.
Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them through Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.
