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Remembering Woody Guthrie on His Birthday

July 14, 2020

The Writerโ€™s Almanac

Today is the birthday of Woodrow Wilson, aka โ€œWoodyโ€ Guthrie, born in Okemah, Oklahoma (1912). Woody 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. During the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s, Guthrie followed workers who were moving to California. They taught him traditional folk and blues songs, and Guthrie went on to write thousands of his own, including โ€œThis Train Is Bound for Glory.โ€ In 1940, he wrote the folk classic โ€œThis Land Is Your Landโ€ because he was growing sick of Irving Berlinโ€™s โ€œGod Bless America.โ€

Woody Guthrie once said: โ€œI hate a song that makes you think that youโ€™re not any good. [โ€ฆ] 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.โ€

Thanks to The Writerโ€™s Almanac for reminding us of Woodyโ€™s 108th birthday.