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Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie with guitar labeled "This machine kills fascists"
Background information
Birth name	Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
Born	July 14, 1912(1912-07-14) Okemah, Oklahoma, U.S.
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Died	October 3, 1967 (aged 55) New York City, New York, U.S.
Genre(s)	Folk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Guitar, Vocal
Years active	1930s – 1956
Influences	Joe Hill, Will Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Lead Belly
Notable instrument(s)
Guitar, Mandolin, Harmonica, Fiddle

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967) was a prolific American songwriter and folk musician. Guthrie's musical legacy consists of hundreds of songs, ballads and improvised works covering topics from political themes to traditional songs to children's songs. Guthrie performed continually throughout his life with his guitar frequently displaying the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists". Guthrie is perhaps best known for his song "This Land Is Your Land" which is regularly sung in American schools. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.^[1]

Woody Guthrie traveled across the United States and spent time learning traditional folk and blues songs. Following migrant workers from Oklahoma to California, the experience inspired him to write his own original folk songs of the working people. He was a first-hand observer and survivor of the economic and environmental hardships of the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression and became known as the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".^[2] Guthrie was associated with, but never a member of, Communist groups in the United States throughout his life.^[3]

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie eventually died from complications of the degenerative neurologic affliction known as Huntington's Disease. In spite of his illness during his later years Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan.^[4]

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life: 1912-1930 1.2 1930s: Traveling era 1.2.1 California 1.3 1940s: Building a legacy 1.3.1 New York City 1.3.2 Pacific Northwest 1.3.3 Almanac Singers 1.3.4 Bound for Glory 1.3.5 The Asch recordings 1.3.6 World War II years 1.3.7 Mermaid Avenue 1.4 1950s & 1960s 1.4.1 Deteriorating health 1.4.2 Folk revival and Guthrie's death 2 Musical legacy 2.1 Foundation and Archives 2.2 Folk Festival 2.3 Tributes 3 Posthumous honors 4 Selected Discography 5 See also 6 Further information 7 References 7.1 Citations 7.2 Printed Sources 8 External links

Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma to Nora Belle Sherman and Charles Edward Guthrie.^[4] His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was elected president the year Guthrie was born. Charles Guthrie, known as Charley, was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee county. Charley was also actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the county. The young Guthrie would often accompany his father Charley when he made stump speeches in the area.^[5]

Guthrie's early family life included several tragic fires which caused the loss of their home in Okemah and death of Guthrie's sister Clara. Clara died in an accidental coal oil fire when Guthrie was seven, and Guthrie's father was severely burned in a later coal oil fire.^[6] The circumstances of these fires, especially Charley's accident, remain unclear. It is not known whether they were in fact accidents or the result of actions by Guthrie's mother who, unknown to the Guthries at the time, was suffering from a degenerative neurological disease. Nora Guthrie was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, where she died in 1930. It is believed she was a victim of Huntington's Disease, the disease that would result in her son's death years later. It is also suspected that Guthrie's maternal grandfather, George Sherman, suffered from the disease due to circumstances surrounding his drowning death.^[7]

With Nora Guthrie institutionalized and Charley Guthrie living in Pampa, Texas working to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals, Woody Guthrie and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma and relying on eldest brother, Roy Guthrie, for support. The fourteen year old Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah bumming meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine booth. Before long Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along.^[8] He seemed to have a natural affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins.^[9] Guthrie was able to easily learn old Irish ballads and traditional songs from the parents of friends. Guthrie did not excel as a student; he dropped out of highschool in his fourth year and did not graduate, but his teachers described him as bright. He was also an avid reader visiting the local library reading books on a wide range of topics. Friends remember him reading constantly.

Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas where nothing much changed for the now-aspiring musician. Guthrie, 18 years old and still a teenager, was reluctant to attend highschool classes in Pampa and spent a lot of time learning songs by busking on the streets and reading at the library. He was growing as a musician gaining practice by regularly playing at dances for his cousin Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. In addition, Guthrie spent much time at the library in Pampa's city hall and wrote a manuscript summarizing everything he had read on the basics of psychology. A librarian in Pampa shelved this manuscript under Guthrie's name, but it was later lost in a library reorganization.^[10]

At age 19 Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children.^[11] Their relationship was strained by Woody's constant traveling which often—literally and figuratively—caused family upheaval. With the advent of the Dust Bowl era, Guthrie left Texas, leaving Mary behind, and became one of thousands of Okies who migrated to California looking for work. The poverty he saw on these early trips affected him greatly, and many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by the working class.

"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 ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." Written by Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook distributed to listeners of his L.A. radio show "Woody and Lefty Lou" who wanted the words to his recordings.[12]

In the late 1930s, Guthrie achieved fame in Los Angeles, California, with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music.^[13] Guthrie was making enough money to send for his family still living in Texas. While appearing on radio station KFVD, a commercial radio station owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat Frank Burke, Guthrie began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually end up on Dust Bowl Ballads. It was at KFVD that Guthrie met newscaster Ed Robbin. Robbin was impressed with a song Guthrie wrote about Thomas Mooney, a wrongly convicted man who was, at the time, a leftist cause célèbre.^[14] Robbin introduced Guthrie to Socalists and Communists in Southern California, including Will Geer—who would remain Guthrie's lifelong friend—and helped Guthrie book benefit performances in the Communist circles in Southern California. Robbin became Guthrie's political mentor. Although Guthrie was never too interested in the party dogma, he shared Robbin's leanings. Despite Guthrie's later claim that, "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party"^[15] Woody was never a member of the Party—he was too unpredictable from the party's dogmatic point of view. He was, however, noted as a fellow traveler, or an outsider who agrees with the platform of the party without being subject to party discipline.^[16] Though not a party member, Guthrie requested to write a column for the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker. The column, titled Woody Sez, appeared a total of 174 times from May 1939 to January 1940. The columns were not explicitly political, but rather were about current events that Guthrie observed and experienced. The columns were written in an exagerated hillbilly dialect and usually included a small comic.^[17] The columns were later published as a collection after Guthrie's death.^[3] Steve Earle said of Woody, "I don't think of Woody Guthrie as a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political times".^[18]

With the outbreak of war and the nonaggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939 KFVD radio owners did not want its staff "spinning apologia" for the Soviet Union; both Robbin and Guthrie left the station.^[19] Without the daily radio show, prospects for employment diminished and Guthrie and his family returned to Pampa, Texas. Although Mary Guthrie was happy to return to Texas, the wanderlusting Guthrie was frustrated. Soon after, when Will Geer invited him to come to New York, Guthrie headed east.

Arriving in New York, the Oklahoma cowboy was embraced by its leftist folk music community and slept on a couch in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie also made what were his first real recordings—several hours of conversation and songs that were recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress—as well as an album, Dust Bowl Ballads, for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey.^[20]

In February 1940, Guthrie penned his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land". Originally titled "God Blessed America" it was inspired in part by his experiences during a cross-country trip and in part by his distaste for Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America". Guthrie thought the Berlin song was unrealistic and complacent, and he was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio.^[21] The melody is based on the gospel song "Oh My Loving Brother", best known as "Little Darling, Pal of Mine", sung by the country group The Carter Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment "All you can write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.".^[22] He protested class inequality in the final verses:

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?

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,

And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing." [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"]

But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!

That side was made for you and me.

These verses were often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie himself. Though the song was written in 1940, it would be four years before it was recorded by Moses Asch in April, 1944,^[23] and even longer until sheet music was produced and given to schools by Howie Richmond.^[24]

In March of 1940, Guthrie was invited to play at a benefit hosted by The Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers to raise money for Migrant Workers. John Steinbeck's book The Grapes of Wrath was quite popular at the time. It was at this concert Guthrie first met Pete Seeger and the two men became good friends.^[25] Later Seeger accompanied Guthrie back to Texas to meet other members of the Guthrie family and remembers an awkward conversation with Mary Guthrie's mother in which she asked Seeger's help in persuading Guthrie to treat her daughter better.

Guthrie had some success in New York at this time as a guest on CBS's radio program Back Where I Come From and used his influence to get a spot on the show for his friend Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter. Leadbelly's Tenth Street apartment was a gathering spot for the left wing musician circle in New York at the time and Woody and Leadbelly were good friends after having busked together at bars in Harlem.^[26]

In September of 1940 Guthrie was invited by the Model Tobacco company to host their radio program "Pipe Smoking Time". Guthrie was paid $180 a week, an impressive salary in 1940.^[27] He was finally making enough money to send regular payments back to Mary and eventually brought Mary and the children to New York, where the family lived in an apartment on Central Park West. The reunion represented Woody's desire to be a better father and husband. He said "I have to set[sic] real hard to think of being a dad".^[28]. Guthrie began to feel that the show was too restricting when he was told what to sing, and quit after the seventh broadcast. Disgruntled with New York, Guthrie packed up Mary and his children in a new car and headed west to California.

In May of 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family to the Pacific northwest when he was offered a job there. A documentary, directed by Gunther von Fritsch, was being created in support of the Bonneville Power Administration's building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and needed a narrator. Supported by a recommendation from Alan Lomax, the original idea was to have Guthrie narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was projected to take one year to complete but when filmmakers became worried about the implications of casting such a political figure, Guthrie's role was minimized. He was hired instead for one month only by the Department of the Interior to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of the federal dams for the documentary's soundtrack. Although the film was never released in anything but a limited form, some good did come of the project. When Guthrie and a driver toured the Columbia River, Guthrie was so moved by the lush woodland and mountains of the Pacific northwest he said that he "couldn't believe it, it's a paradise,"^[29] and was creatively inspired. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs including three of his most famous: "Roll On Columbia", "Pastures of Plenty" and "Grand Coulee Dam".^[30] These songs were eventually recorded and released as Columbia River Songs. While Guthrie may have been inspired musically, his marriage did not fare as well. At the conclusion of the month in Washington, Guthrie wanted to return to New York. Tired of the continual uprooting, Mary Guthrie told Woody to go without her and the children.^[31] Although Guthrie would see Mary again, once on a tour through Los Angeles with the Almanac Singers, it was essentially the end of their marriage. Divorce was difficult with Mary being a member of the Catholic Church, but she reluctantly agreed to a divorce in December 1943.^[32]

Main article: Almanac Singers

Following the conclusion of his work in Washington State, Guthrie corresponded with Pete Seeger about Seeger's newly formed folk-protest group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to tour the country as a member of the group.^[33] The singers originally worked out of a loft in New York City hosting regular concerts called hootenannys, a word Pete and Woody had picked up in their cross-country travels. The singers eventually outgrew the space and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs. After America's entry into World War II the topics of their songs became more specifically anti-fascist. The members of the Almanac Singers and residents of the Almanac House were a loosley defined group of musicians, though the 'core' members included Guthire, Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell and Lee Hays. In keeping with common socialist ideals, meals, chores and rent at the Almanac House were shared. The Sunday hootenannys were good opportunities to collect donation money for rent. Songs written in the Almanac House had shared songwriting credits between all the members, although in the case of "Union Maid", members would later state that Guthrie wrote the song, ensuring that his children would receive residuals.^[34]

In the Almanac House Guthrie added an air of authenticity their work. Members of the group were mostly New York upper-middle class left-wingers, so they gravitated to Guthrie as a "real" working class Oklahoman. "There was the heart of America personified in Woody....And for a New York Left that was primarily Jewish, first or second generation American, and was desperately trying to get Americanized, I think a figure like Woody was of great, great importance", a friend of the group, Irwin Silber, would say.^[35] This hero worship went to Guthrie's head. He would routinely emphasize his working class image, reject songs he felt were not in the country blues vein he was farmiliar with, and would rarely contribute to household chores. House member Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, another Okie, would later recall that Woody, "pretended to be something else, he loved people to think of him as a real working class person and not an intellectual."^[36]

Woody Guthrie was a prolific writer throughout his life and wrote thousands of pages of unpublished poems and prose, but living in New York City was an exceptionally fertile time for Guthrie. After one of the recording sessions with Alan Lomax, Lomax suggested Guthrie write an autobiography, concluding that Guthrie's descriptions of growing up were some of the best accounts of American childhood that he had read.^[37] It was during this time that Guthrie met a dancer in New York who would become his second wife — Marjorie Mazia. Mazia was an instructor at the prestigious Martha Graham Dance School where she was assisting Sophie Maslow with her piece entitled Folksay. Based on the folklore and poetry collected by Carl Sandburg, it included the adaptation of some of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads for the dance studio.^[38] He continued writing songs and, as Lomax had suggested, began work on his autobiography. The end product, Bound For Glory was completed in no small part due to the patient editing assistance of Mazia and was first published by E.P. Dutton in 1943.^[39]A film adaptation of was released in 1976. ^[40]

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land", and over the next few years recorded "Worried Man Blues", along with hundreds of other songs. These recordings would later be released by Folkways and Stinson Records who had joint distribution rights to the recordings.^[41] The Folkways recordings are still available today with the most complete series of these sessions, culled from dates with Asch, simply titled The Asch Recordings.

Guthrie unsuccessfully lobbied the United States Army in an attempt to avoid the draft. He believed performing his anti-fascist songs and poems at home were the best use of his talents. When Guthrie's attempts failed, his friend Cisco Houston, pressured Guthrie along with Jim Longhi to join the U.S. Merchant Marine.^[42] Woody served as a mess man and dish washer, but would frequently entertain the crew and troops to buoy the spirits on transatlantic voyages. Guthrie made attempts to write about his experience in the Merchant Marine but was never satisfied with the results. Jim Longhi would later write about these experiences in his book Woody, Cisco and Me.^[43] The book offers a rare first-hand account of Guthrie during his military service. In 1945, Guthrie's association with Communism made him ineligible for further service in the Merchant Marine and he was drafted into the U.S. Army.^[44]

Guthrie and Marjorie were married while he was on furlough from the Army.^[45] After his discharge, they moved into a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island and over time had four children. One of their children, Cathy, died at age four as a result of a fire, sending Guthrie into a serious depression.^[46] Woody and Marjorie's other children were named Joady, Nora and Arlo. Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a singer-songwriter. During this period, Guthrie wrote and recorded one of his most popular albums, Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child, a collection of children's music, which includes the song "Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin')", written when Arlo was about nine years old.

The 1948 crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland, California, on their way to be deported back to Mexico inspired the song "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)."^[47] In 1971, Joan Baez first began publicly performing Guthrie's song "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)." She continues performing it, most recently releasing it on her 2005 live album Bowery Songs. Baez and Bob Dylan both played the song as a duet on his ill fated 1976 TV special Hard Rain.

The years living on Mermaid Avenue were one of Woody's most productive periods as a writer. Woody's extensive writings from this time were archived and maintained by Marjorie and later his estate—mostly handled by Guthrie's daughter Nora. Several of the manuscripts contain scribblings by a young Arlo and the other Guthrie offspring; Woody would give them his scraps to draw on.^[48]

During this time Ramblin' Jack Elliott studied extensively under Guthrie, visiting his Mermaid Avenue home and observing how he wrote and performed. Elliott, like Bob Dylan later, idolized Guthrie and was inspired by his idiomatic performance style and repertoire. Due to Guthrie's illness, Dylan and Guthrie's son Arlo would later claim that they learned much of Guthrie's performance style from Elliott. When asked about Arlo's claim, Elliott said, "I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, If you want to learn something, just steal it — that's the way I learned from Lead Belly."^[49]

By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was worsening and his behavior becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952 was finally diagnosed to be suffering from Huntington's Disease, the genetic disorder believed to have caused the death of his mother. Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie Mazia suggested he return to California without her and they eventually divorced.^[50]

Upon his return to California, Woody lived in a compound owned by Will Geer with blacklisted singers and actors waiting out the political climate. As his health worsened he met and married his third wife, Anneke Van Kirk, and they had a child, Lorina Lynn. The couple moved to Florida briefly, living in a bus on land owned by a friend. Guthrie's arm was hurt in a campfire accident when gasoline used to start the campfire exploded. Although in time he regained movement in the arm he was not able to play the guitar again. In 1954 the couple returned to New York.^[51] Shortly after that, Anneke filed for divorce, a result of the strain of caring for Guthrie. Anneke left New York, allowing friends to adopt Lorina Lynn. After the divorce from Anneke, Guthrie's second-wife Marjorie reentered his life. Marjorie cared for him and assisted him until his death.

Guthrie, increasingly unable to control his muscle movements, was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961, at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966,^[52] and finally at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center until his death.^[53] Marjorie and the children visted Guthrie at Greystone every Sunday. They answered fan mail and played on the hospital grounds. Eventually a longtime fan of Guthrie invited the family to his nearby home for these Sunday visits lasting until Woody was moved to the Brooklyn State Hospital, which was closer to where Marjorie lived. Guthrie's illness was essentially untreated due to a lack of information about the disease at the time. However, his death helped raise awareness of the disease and led his Marjorie to help found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America. Eventually, researchers would isolate the gene for Huntington's and develop a bloodtest for determining risk. Although drugs are helpful in alleviating the symptoms, there is still no cure. None of Guthrie's three remaining children with Marjorie have developed symptoms of Huntington's. Two of Mary Guthrie's children were diagnosed with the disease. Gwendolyn, the oldest, was diagnosed in 1968 and Sue in 1978. Both died at 41 years of age.^[54]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by Woody, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Jack Elliott and other folk singers. These "folk revivalists" become more politically aware in their music. 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 folksingers were forming around the country in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Many of these musicians had heard of Guthrie, but one of the first people to visit Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital was Bob Dylan. Dylan idolized Guthrie, calling him his hero. Soon after learning of Guthrie's whereabouts, these new, young folksingers regularly visited him during the final years of his life, playing his own songs for him as well as their originals.^[55] Guthrie enjoyed these sessions. His longtime friends would join in occasionally, but seeing their friend's uncontrolled movements and hearing his slurred speech made it difficult to maintain their composure. Guthrie died of complications of the disease in 1967. By the time of Guthrie's death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Marjorie Guthrie, other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo. Since his death, artists have paid tribute to Guthrie by covering his songs or by dedicating songs to him. One of the first artists to record a Woody Guthrie song was English folk artist Donovan, who covered Guthrie's "Car, Car (Riding in My Car)" on his 1965 debut album What's Bin Did And What's Bin Hid.^[56]

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built. I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."[57] Woody on Songwriting

Main article: Woody Guthrie Foundation

The Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. The archive houses the largest collection of Woody Guthrie material in the world.^[58] Guthrie's unrecorded written lyrics housed at the Archives have been the starting point of several albums including the Jeff Tweedy and Billy Bragg albums Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II.

Main article: Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to commemorate the life and music of Woody Guthrie. The festival is held on the weekend closest to July 14 - the date of Guthrie's birth - in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. The festival is planned and implemented annually by the Woody Guthrie Coalition, a non-profit corporation, whose goal is simply to ensure Guthrie's musical legacy.^[59][60] For the festival's founding, the Woody Guthrie Coalition commissioned a local Creek Indian sculptor to cast a full-body bronze statue of Guthrie and his guitar, complete with the guitar's well-known inscription: "This machine kills fascists".^[61] The statue, sculpted by artist Dan Brooks, stands along Okemah's main street - named Broadway - in the heart of downtown.^[62]

On January 20, 1968, three months following Guthrie's death, Harold Leventhal produced "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie" at New York City's Carnegie Hall.^[63] Performers included Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Odetta and others. Leventhal repeated the tribute on September 12, 1970 at the Hollywood Bowl. Recordings of the two concerts were eventually released as 2 LPs then later as one CD.^[64]

A Woody Guthrie tribute show took place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio in September 1996. The 10-day celebration, included notable musicians such as Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, The Indigo Girls, Ellis Paul and Ani DiFranco.^[65] DiFranco's record label, Righteous Babe, released a compilation of the event, 'Til We Outnumber 'Em, in 2000.^[66]

From 1999-2002 the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service presented the traveling exhibit, "This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie". In collaboration with Nora Guthrie, the Smithsonian exhibition draws from rarely seen objects, illustrations, film footage, and recorded performances to reveal a complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist, itinerant hobo, and folk legend.^[67]

In 2003 Jimmy LaFave produced a Woody Guthrie tribute show called Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway. The ensemble show toured around the country and included a rotating cast of singer-songwriters individually performing Guthrie's songs. Interspersed between songs were Guthrie's philosophical writings read by a narrator. In addition to LaFave, members of the rotating cast included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Joel Rafael, husband-wife duo Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's granddaughter) and Johnny Irion, Michael Fracasso, and The Burns Sisters. Oklahoma songwriter Bob Childers, sometimes called "the Dylan of the Dust," served as narrator.^[68][69] When word spread about the tour, performers began contacting LaFave whose only prerequisite was to have an inspirational connection to Guthrie. Each artist chose the Guthrie songs that he or she would perform as part of the tribute. LaFave said, "It works because all the performers are Guthrie enthusiasts in some form".^[70] The Ribbon of Highway tour kicked-off on February 5, 2003 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The abbreviated show was a featured segment of "Nashville Sings Woody," yet another tribute concert to commemorate the music of Woody Guthrie held during the Folk Alliance Conference. The cast of "Nashville Sings Woody," a benefit for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, also included Arlo Guthrie, Marty Stuart, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Janis Ian, and others.^[71]

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie were honored at a musical celebration featuring Billy Bragg and the band Brad on October 17, 2007 at Webster Hall in New York City. Steve Earle also performed. The event was hosted by actor/activist Tim Robbins to benefit the Huntington¹s Disease Society of America to commemorate the organization's 40th Anniversary.^[72]

Although Guthrie's catalogue never brought him many awards while he was alive, in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the same year his protege Bob Dylan was inducted)^[73] and in 2000 he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award - both posthumously.^[74]

In 1987 "Roll On Columbia" was chosen as the official Washington State Folk Song,^[75] and in 2001 Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" was chosen to be the official state song of Oklahoma.^[12]

On September 6, 2007, Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie Foundation released The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949, accompanied by a 72-page book describing the performance and the project. Paul Braverman, a student at Rutgers University in 1949, made the recordings himself using a small wire recorder at a Guthrie concert in Newark, New Jersey.^[76] In December 2007, the release was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award.^[77]

Main article: Woody Guthrie discography

Many Guthrie tracks have been repeatedly repackaged and reorded. Items here are listed in order first publish date, not original recording date.^[78]

Year	Title	Record Label
1940	Dust Bowl Ballads[79]	Smithsonian Folkways
1972	Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie[80]	Vanguard
1987	Columbia River Collection[81]	Rounder Records
1988	Folkways: The Original Vision (Woody and Leadbelly)[82]	Smithsonian Folkways
1988	Library of Congress Recordings[83]	Rounder Records
1989	Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs[84]	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	Struggle[85]	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	Cowboy Songs on Folkways[86]	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child[87]	Smithsonian Folkways
1992	Nursery Days[88]	Smithsonian Folkways
1994	Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944-1949[89]	Smithsonian Folkways
1996	Almanac Singers	UNI/MCA
1996	Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti[90]	Smithsonian Folkways
1997	This Land Is Your Land, The Asch Recordings, Vol.1[91]	Smithsonian Folkways
1997	Muleskinner Blues, The Asch Recordings, Vol.2[92]	Smithsonian Folkways
1998	Hard Travelin', The Asch Recordings, Vol.3[93]	Smithsonian Folkways
1999	Buffalo Skinners, The Asch Recordings, Vol.4[94]	Smithsonian Folkways
2007	The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie In Performance 1949[95]	Woody Guthrie Publications

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• List of songs by Woody Guthrie
• List of albums by Woody Guthrie

• du Lac, J. Freedom. Folk Music's Living History: Pete Seeger Is Main Draw At Tribute to Woody Guthrie. The Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2006.
• Marroquin, Danny. Walking the Long Road. PopMatters.com. Aug. 4, 2006.
• PBS.org. Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home. Documentary from PBS' American Masters series, July 2006.
• University of Oregon. Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration. Video documentary.
• La Chapelle, Peter. Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. University of California Press, 2007.
• Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950.
• Library of Congress. Timeline of Woody Guthrie (1912-1967).
• Jackson, Mark Allen.Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie. University Press of Mississippi, January, 2007.
• Earle, Steve. Woody Guthrie. The Nation, July 21, 2003.
• 1913massacre.com. 1913 Massacre. A documentary film about the story that inspired Guthrie's song.
• University of Virginia. Guthrie singing "This Land Is Your Land". MP3 recording.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation. Scanned images of some of Woody Guthrie's original works.
• History News Network. Editorial arguing Woody Guthrie should be admitted to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• Down Home Radio Show.LeadBelly & Woody Guthrie live on WNYC Radio, Dec. 1940. Re-broadcast of a 1940 radio show.
• WoodyGuthrie.de. Woody Guthrie Related Audio. Miscellaneous Real Audio files featuring Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others.

• Cray, Ed (2004). Ramblin Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393327361. 
• Longhi, Jim (1997). "Woody, Cisco and Me". Random House. ISBN 0252022769. 
• Klein, Joe (1980). "Woody Guthrie: A Life". Random House. ISBN 0-385-33385-4. 

• The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives
• The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

Persondata
NAME	Guthrie, Woody
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Singer-songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH	July 14, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Okemah, Oklahoma, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH	October 3, 1967
PLACE OF DEATH	New York City, New York, U.S.