“Guthrie, he had a particular sound. You could listen to his songs, and actually learn how to live,” Bob Dylan.1
On February 23, 1940, folk singer Woody Guthrie jotted down the lyrics to a new song he titled “God Blessed America”. He was in his room at the Hanover House in New York City, and on this particular day, Guthrie was an annoyed, determined songwriter. He channeled these feelings into lyrics. Though he was not the first to write “protest” songs, Guthrie’s songs reached new levels of fame in American music. And it was this newest song that would cement Woody Guthrie’s legacy in American culture.
Woody Guthrie, in 1943, with a guitar sporting his famous sticker/slogan “This Machine Kills Fascists”
By 1940, he was already a budding star in the folk music scene and an experienced traveller. Originally from Oklahoma, Guthrie joined thousands of “Okies” (migrants of the southern plains during the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s) that had settled in California. Inspired by his love of English and Scottish ballads, and for the blues, he began writing about his experiences, which lead to his album Dust Bowl Ballads. These experiences also helped ignite a folk music movement that was slowly developing in towns and cities all across the United States.
The Songwriter and His Dreams
Guthrie’s childhood was diverse. Born July 14, 1912, Guthrie’s family -- his father a southerner and mother a northerner -- lived in Okemah, Oklahoma. Historically the land was part of the Quapaw and Osage Nations. Once the United States put their policy of “manifest destiny” into overdrive, the Creeks were assigned this stretch of Oklahoma — in accordance with the United States’ “Indian” removal policies of eastern Nations. (I use quotes because “Indian” is how the United States described Native populations). When Guthrie was born, the Creek Nation leased the land for settlers to use and build their homes. Also prominent was the town’s African-American population, who had moved to Oklahoma predominately after the Civil War. This blending of cultures helped shape Guthrie into someone who wanted to represent those the federal government often failed to represent: “the people”.
Guthrie’s birthplace sometime after 1933
From an early age, Guthrie and his siblings were on their own. His father, Charles, was a businessman, owning a handful of tracts of land. Though, success did not allows follow. He sometimes left his family and worked in Texas, repaying debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. When Guthrie was 14, his mother, Nora, was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease and committed to the Oklahoma Hospital of the Insane. At the time, the disease was virtually unknown, and the family thought her affliction was simply “dementia”. (Huntington’s, a hereditary disease, would come to afflict more than one of the Guthrie family.) Guthrie’s siblings relied on him to earn money, which he did busking money with a local friend, George, who taught Guthrie the harmonica.2
When Guthrie was 14, his mother Nora died. With an absent father, the Guthrie children were more alone than ever. Guthrie — stuck between helping his father work in Texas, school and enjoying performing music — was at a crossroads with his future. A year after his mother’s death, Guthrie’s future also included his new wife: Mary Jennings. (The couple would have three kids, but ultimately their marriage would end in divorce. Guthrie would marry twice more.) With the Dust Bowl raging on in Oklahoma, prospects for work or musical success were slim. Woody Guthrie tried his luck further west.
Upon moving to California, Guthrie subscribed to the ideas of communism. Though he later claimed that the “best thing I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party”, there is some dispute on whether the folksinger actually joined the party. What is known is that he sometimes performed at benefit shows within the communist social circles in California. His music began gaining attention, and he began writing his own songs. He also wrote a column — Woody Sez — for a communist newspaper called People’s World. Whether or not he was a fully committed member, Guthrie saw how the power behind a political party or ideology fighting for “the people” could affect the change he wanted to see in society.
His hope was for the United States to become a country where peace and equality existed and flourished. Guthrie would follow whichever political ideology lifted the United States to his promised land. More importantly, these beliefs (no doubt with a level of communism mixed in) became the driving force of his music. These ideals seeped into his lyrics. Guthrie’s truth, while living and experiencing daily poverty, was that the capitalist nature of the United States was not working for everyone. “I ain’t communist necessarily,” Guthrie once said, “but I’ve been in the red all my life.”3
The Birth of an Anthem
By 1940, with the onset of World War II and a more crucial crackdown of communism and its ties to the Soviet Union, the shows dwindled and the publications folded. Woody Guthrie was out of a job.
Accepting an offer from a friend to come to New York City and try his luck there, he began hearing Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on the radio. Kate Smith, known as the “First Lady of Radio”, performed the song and received wide-ranging acclaim. But, the song drove Guthrie mad. He found the song “out of touch with the reality facing many of his fellow citizens”. To combat his annoyance, Guthrie penned a new song — a retort to the Kate Smith song dominating the airwaves. This is the song he first penned in February 1940.
Guthrie’s newest lyrics came from his anti-war perspective. He hated fascism, but also was critical of the United States’ loans to Finland in defense of the Soviet Union and mocking the lend-lease programs that aided the United Kingdom. Guthrie also wanted to call out the federal government for the inequalities that heightened during the Great Depression. The most critical verses from his first draft were:
Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing —
God blessed America for me.One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people —
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me.
He ended each verse with “God blessed America for me”, but would later change it to “This land was made for you and me”. He originally titled the song “This Land”, but it would later (and forever) be known as “This Land Is Your Land”. After writing what would become his most well-known song, Guthrie promptly forgot about the lyrics and moved on to recording others.
“This Land” did not see a recording studio until 1944, when the Allied powers were on the cusp of victory in Europe and the Pacific. Moses Asch, the founder of Folkway Records, wanted to record artists that sang folk tunes. As a teenager, Asch became familiar with folk music from Russia, Holland and Brazil. “I learned the meaning of a folk song as it expresses a HOME feeling of belonging and association,” Asch wrote. When he began his own recording business and was looking for talent, the type of music Asch wanted was clear. Woody Guthrie, with his Dust Bowl and social commentary songs, fit the bill. With the help of Alan Lomax, a song-catcher and folklorist, Guthrie recorded songs for Folkways and the Library of Congress.
Before recording the song, Guthrie reworked the lyrics, which had a more positive outlook toward the United States and being an American. The two verses most critical of the United States (and the two directly dating the song to the Great Depression) were stricken from the 1944 re-write, where the first verse was repeated at the end:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
The song, once released in 1951, became a cornerstone for the folk revival movement simmering all across the United States.
Like most folk song traditions (and something crucial about the American folk movement), “This Land Is Your Land” borrowed from the past. Inspired by the songs “When the World’s On Fire” and “Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine” by the Carter Family (the roots of modern country music), Guthrie believed the melody from those songs was perfect for his new song. (To further prove the point: a Baptist gospel hymn called “Oh, My Loving Brother” inspired the Carter’s to use the melody for their songs). The re-styling of melodies — though Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” does not use the same rhyming structure as the Carter’s songs — is a folk tradition that is vital to the movement’s popularity. These songs are supposed to feel familiar and rooted in our collective past. When new artists come along, melodies are re-worked so the artist can offer a fresh opinion that feels as current as the melody is old. “Woody once said, 'When I'm writing a song and I get the words, I look around for some tune that has proved its popularity with the people,'" Pete Seeger, a friend of Guthrie’s and fellow folk-singer once recalled.
Though the lyrics of the first draft were published, a recoding of Guthrie singing those lyrics did not automatically see the light of day. Despite being written during a period of frustration for his country and his personal frustration for a particular song, the original verses remain hopeful for the United States. Thanks to his political beliefs, Guthrie believed the United States — always vast and open with endless possibilities — was a place anyone could rise up and succeed. The third verse — mentioning roaming the country and hearing a voice saying “This land is made for you and me” — describes the hopefulness of going anywhere and hearing a promise of solidarity. This promise in the 1940s certainly looks different today. The inclusiveness of who Guthrie is talking about is not strictly said, but the ability for minorities of the time period to achieve that level of success is different than that of someone who looks like Woody Guthrie. However, Guthrie’s open-ended lyrics have made the song age incredibly well — where anyone today can look at this song and take away a positive message.
With a deeper look into the lyrics, the hypocrisy of the United States is in full view: a land with an “endless skyway” also has “private property”. In the original lyrics, Guthrie is not angry; he is confused on how those two ideas can co-exist. In 1944, when the time came to record the song, World War II was ending and optimism flooded the country. Guthrie chucked his confusion for solidarity. The re-worked lyrics became the version that many young artists and Americans clung to as a new anthem. “That’s America,” Rhiannon Giddens, a musician, said about “This Land Is Your Land” and the folk tradition of borrowing melodies, “It came from this Black church and ended up as this folk anthem. That’s the beautiful part of American music: it doesn’t matter who it came from, I love [this melody], and I want to do something with it.”
Years after Guthrie’s death, archivists found an alternate recording of “This Land Is Your Land”, where the “private property” verse was sung.
The re-written version of Guthrie’s song lives on because of its timeless call for a togetherness that deeply resonates with the promised ideals of the American experiment. Guthrie believed the federal government of the United States is supposed to work for “the people”, no matter the person’s background, even though that goal is often never met. “This Land Is Your Land” is an everlasting call for what the United States should strive to accomplish: peace and equality. That message is why the song became crucial to the folk revival movement of the 1950s and 1960s, where anti-war sentiment grew with the escalation of the Vietnam War.
When we hear the song today, our initial reaction might reflect on Guthrie’s writing and how the lyrics sound like blind patriotism for the United States. Digging deeper into the song and Guthrie himself, one can see that is not the case. Guthrie’s lyrics came from a critique of this country (and of a song) and offers a rallying cry to do better.
Woody Guthrie, circa 1946-1948, from the National Portrait Gallery
Despite many taking “This Land Is Your Land” and crowning it as an inclusive achievement, its detractors also have an important voice in this song’s place in American culture. As noted earlier, Guthrie believed in a country built from the ground up, where hard-working people have a chance to enjoy life to the fullest. His lyrics, to some, do not echo those beliefs and argue that Guthrie ignores certain people completely. The writer George Littlechild (a citizen of the Cree Nation) questioned Guthrie’s anthem in his book This Land Is My Land, which explores Native cultures and asks the reader how the United States got its land. The musician and activist Mali Obomsawin (a citizen of the Abenaki First Nation) wrote a piece for Folklife, a digital magazine focusing on the American folk culture, which calls into question Guthrie’s lyrics. Obomsawin writes:
Woody Guthrie’s protest anthem exemplifies the particular blind spot that Americans have in regard to Natives: American patriotism erases us, even if it comes in the form of a leftist protest song. Why? Because this land “was” our land. Through genocide, broken treaties, and a legal system created by and for the colonial interest, this land “became” American land.
It is vital these views are heard and understood. Both ask valid questions and raise true concerns about the meaning behind Guthrie’s song. “This Land Is Your Land” was written when a songwriter heard a popular (and incredibly nationalistic) song that went against his values and ideals. Guthrie’s song is not exempt from similar critiques. Voices such as Littlechild’s and Obomswain’s help us remember that Guthrie, while striving for a more realistic grasp of “the people” and their country in the 1930s and 1940s, left out a major part of the United States’ imperialistic history. “This Land Is Your Land” does not actively belittle Native culture, but the song certainly ignores it. Since Guthrie’s death, the song has taken on a life of its own, with fresh readings of the lyrics. Some continue to view “This Land Is Your Land” as a wildly patriotic song; others view the song as empty and forgetful. Both are accurate.
As folk traditions continue to evolve, grow and add more voices, the DNA of these traditions always stays the same. “This Land Is Your Land” endures, as others take Guthrie’s blueprint and make their own anthems.
Legacy
The 1940s saw more success for Guthrie. He joined The Almanac Singers with fellow musicians Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. The group held shows called “hootenannies” in New York City that became lively and popular folk shows — another precursor to the folk revival explosion of the 1960s. Also, in the early 1940s, the Department of the Interior hired Guthrie to write songs about the Columbia River and the construction of federal dams. The Pacific Northwest inspired Guthrie to write songs, where he saw the natural beauty of the area as a “paradise”.4 He ultimately wrote 26 songs based on his experiences in the Pacific Northwest, such as “Grand Coulee Dam” and “Pastures of Plenty”.
By the 1950s, Guthrie’s behavior became increasingly erratic, and his health declined. Woody Guthrie was officially diagnosed with Huntington’s, the same disease that his mother had, in 1952. Those diagnosed lose control of all body movements, and early symptoms include problems controlling moods and mental abilities. His mood swings, combined with his love for alcohol, pushed away friends like Moe Asch. Guthrie’s illness went virtually untreated, due to the lack of understanding of the disease at the time.
In 1956, Guthrie was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County, New Jersey. His immediate family visited every Sunday, where they would answer fan mail or play songs for the children at the hospital. But the disease’s cruelty ultimately caught up. By 1965, Guthrie could only communicate by rolling his eyes or moving his arms. On October 3, 1967, Woody Guthrie died. He was 55.
By the time of his death, the American folk revival was in full swing. Artists such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan (who often visited Guthrie at Greystone’s) and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot often performed Guthrie’s songs and embedded his memory to this movement. To the younger generation who may have never heard of Woody Guthrie, they certainly became aware of his songs. On January 20, 1968, Carnegie Hall in New York City was host to the Tribute to Woody Guthrie Concert, where Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, Odetta and Arlo Guthrie (Woody’s son) were among the performers.
Though his songs are still performed today, it is “This Land Is Your Land” that is the most recognized. Translated to multiple languages, covered in many different genres and making appearances in modern day sitcoms and television movies, the song transcends time. Its message evolves with each new performance and era, but we must not forget how and why the song originated. Guthrie’s is just one voice of many in the Americas, and that is just a-ok with Woody Guthrie.
Pete Seeger, in an interview with NPR in 1996, recalled a story where Guthrie was passing out lyrics in the 1930s. On the lyrics he wrote a message:
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
From No Direction Home (2005)
From Woody Guthrie: A Life (1980) by Joe Klein
From “Woody Guthrie” by Steve Earle in The Nation (July 21, 2003)
From Ramblin Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray (2004)