Happy Birthday Woody Guthrie

From The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It's the birthday of the singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, born in Okemah, Oklahoma (1913). He was one of the only American artists whose reputation never really suffered, though he was openly affiliated with the Communist Party.

Guthrie never finished high school, but he spent his spare time reading books at the local public library. He took occasional jobs as a sign painter and started playing music on a guitar he found in the street.

Texas was hit by the same drought that created the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s, and Guthrie followed workers who were moving to California, where he began to write songs about the people who'd lost their farms and their homes.

Go to the Woody Guthrie Website and be greeted with lots of good stuff.  Meanwhile look below the break and I'll tell you a story.

I bought my first guitar at the Frett Shop which was an old ramshackle music store near the University of Chicago campus.  I used to go there to listen to an old "Wobbly" sing the union songs and I just wanted to be able to do that myself.  I never did get real good, but I had a fairly big repertoire.  I did protest and union and kids songs for my kids.  I was never happier than when I was singing and playing.  It was a great way to unwind during graduate school.  I took the thing with me to my postdoc in Israel and learned some Israeli songs there .  We'd have parties where everyone who played brought their guitar and we had some great times.  To learn more about Woodie go to the Wikipidea site where they give a lot of history.

Here's more from The Writer's Almanac today:

One of Guthrie's first famous songs was "So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh," in which he wrote, "A dust storm hit, an' it hit like thunder;
It dusted us over, an' it covered us under;
Blocked out the traffic an' blocked out the sun,
Straight for home all the people did run,
Singin':
So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home,
And I got to be driftin' along."

His songs grew increasingly political and became more and more sympathetic to the plight of people facing hard times during the Great Depression. Like many people at the time, he thought the Depression was a sign that capitalism had collapsed. He wrote a column for the Communist Party newspaper the People's World. But he never officially joined the Communist Party. He said, "I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life."

Guthrie went on to write thousands of songs, including "Hobo's Lullaby," "Hard, Ain't it Hard," "Pastures of Plenty," "This Train is Bound for Glory," "I Got No Home in the World Anymore," "Billy the Kid," "Jackhammer John," "Sharecropper Song," and "Someday."

Woody Guthrie once said, "I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. ... Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.

I want to talk about songs of protest and songs that speak to political reality in a way that newspapers and radio never will match.  The words of these songs were an integral part of the protest movement during the Vietnam war.  Pete Seger was singing and Joan Baez and the Weavers songs all came back and so much more.  By the time they did Woodstock it was a part of the culture in a way that seemed like it could never end.  But it did end.  I don't hear them anymore unless I play my recordings.  

What happened?  One event was a real hoot.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting in Boston while I was there teaching at Harvard Medical School.  The establishment scientists were mostly quietly anti-war so they were sympathetic with the younger scientists who wanted the AAAS to take a stand.  They never did as an organization (with all those government grants?).  To try to contain the young Turks they gave them a room at the meeting and told them they could do what ever they pleased with it.  So they did.  The songs were the key.  They put together a continuously running tape-slide show that was beautiful.  What a statement against the war!  That freed them up to go to sessions where they could confront the establishment scientists with tough questions.  I wish I could find a copy of that slide show.  It was precious!  That AAAS meeting was the brthplace of an activist organization called Science for the People.  Here's some info about it from Wiki(it is a quote from Herb Fox who I knew pretty well back then):

I was a founder in 1969-70 of Science for the People. It originated in the coming together of the then one-year old Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA) and a group of Harvard and MIT students who had been invited to participate in a session of the AAAS annual meeting. SESPA itself was formed in the aftermath of a struggle in the American Physical Society lead by Charlie Schwartz and Martin Perl and others to get the APS to take a stand against the Vietnam war. SftP's disruptive tactics at the AAAS meeting and at many scientific meetings thereafter increased its exposure and the participation of the younger and more militant anong scientists and science students. The first issue of Science for the People (1970) was produced and edited by me with a comrade who is now my wife. Subsequent issues were produced by ever changing editorial collectives. Over its first few years differing views arose on what SftP should be. One group wanted Science for the People to assume a supportive role in the class struggle with special attention to the issues of science. Another group wanted to work towards 'A Science for the People.' Most wanted to be the voice of critical consciousness from within the scientific community exposing science against the people and the dangers of the misuse of science. The struggle was painful and disruptive and not carried on with great clarity. Eventually those who were more interested in third world and workers struggles etc. than in science itself left the organization. Over the ensuing years the organization became primarily identified with its magazine which became an outlet for critical discussion of the misuse of science. In the process it became identified with well known critical academic scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin

That brings me back to how I feel today on Woody's birthday.  He would be 96, just 24 years older than I.  Where are the songs gang?  Is it my age that keeps me from experiencing them?  I just don't see that what we are doing to show our opposition to this war is believable without the songs.  Well, there.  I got that off my chest!  Happy birthday Woody