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Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known almost universally as "Woody", was a [folk singer]? and raconteur who wrote some of America's best loved songs. He is best known for This Land is Your Land, a protest song written in response to [Irving Berlin]?'s God Bless America. Born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912, the year his namesake was elected President. At a young age he left home to adopt an itinerant lifestyle, travelling across the United States as the Jazz Age turned into the Great Depression. The poverty he saw on these early trips affected him greatly, and a large proportion of his songs are concerned with the inequities faced by America's working men and women. A lifelong socialist and [trade union]?ist, he also contributed articles to the Daily Worker. |
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Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known almost universally as "Woody", was a [folk singer]? and raconteur who wrote some of America's best loved songs. He is best known for This Land is Your Land, a protest song written in response to [Irving Berlin]?'s God Bless America. Born in Okemah, Oklahoma July 14 1912, the year his namesake was elected President. At a young age he left home to adopt an itinerant lifestyle, travelling across the United States as the Jazz Age turned into the Great Depression. The poverty he saw on these early trips affected him greatly, and a large proportion of his songs are concerned with the inequities faced by America's working men and women. A lifelong socialist and [trade union]?ist, he also contributed articles to the Daily Worker. |
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With the outbreak of World War II Guthrie, a devout anti-fascist? -- he often played with the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists" written on his guitar -- joined the Merchant Marine, where he served with fellow folk singer Cisco Houston. He also wrote the first volume of his autobiography "Bound for Glory". |
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With the outbreak of World War II Guthrie, a devout anti-fascist -- he often played with the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists" written on his guitar -- joined the Merchant Marine, where he served with fellow folk singer Cisco Houston. He also wrote the first volume of his autobiography "Bound for Glory". |
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By the 1950s his output had fallen off, and he was diagnosed as suffering from the degenerative nervous disorder Huntingtons disease, and hospitalised, where he remained until his death in 1967, by which time his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to him through Bob Dylan who described Guthrie as "my last hero". |
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By the 1950s his output had fallen off, and he was diagnosed as suffering from the degenerative nervous disorder Huntingtons disease, and hospitalised, where he remained until his death on October 3, 1967, by which time his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to him through Bob Dylan who described Guthrie as "my last hero". |
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In 1998, the British singer [Billy Bragg]? released a number of previously unrecorded songs on the album "Mermaid Avenue", with the band Wilco?. |
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