Woody GUTHRIE - America's Folk Ballad Hero

Woody GUTHRIE (1912-1967) was an unusual character, but he was a remarkable folk-hero for many emerging folk singers in the 1960's. Famous folk singer Pete SEEGER and Bob DLYAN among them. DYLAN made a special effort to immortalize his works and was clearly drawn to GUTHRIE's evocative ballads and perhaps bohemian, if not erratic, personality. Woody (named after soon to-be Democrat President, Woodrow WILSON) was eventually diagnosed with Huntington's Corea, but others felt he exhibited some serious symptoms of schizophrenia and alcoholism.

His enduring legacy has to be his many folk songs about America in the 1930's and 1940's - especially the traumatic era that involved the Dust-bowl and late Depression era, 1934-40. Woody was also a keen social observer and itinerant entertainer through the 1950's and developed what would be known as "Hillbilly" style. His association with many Communist elements in LA and California caused him a certain amount of official notoriety. Yet, among his most revered songs must be "This Land is Your Land" written as a counterpoint to Irving BERLIN's "God Bless America" that Woody believed was jingoistic and unreal.

"This Land is Your Land" - by Woody Guthrie

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.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

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.

[There were at 2 other stanza's dropped from the traditional arrangement, likely as they were too controversial at the time. Woody wrote "This Land" in 1940 but it was not published until 1951 - which would have overlapped the period of political hysteria raised by Senator McCarthy's "Committee on Un-American Activities" and Woody was suspected of Communist sympathy. Here are copies of FBI records on Woody.]

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back 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?

Or this variant:

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

For Canada, this was our change

This land is your land, This land is my land,

From Bonavista, to Vancouver Island

From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters,

This land was made for you and me.