Here’s an interesting article about the same musician: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-21/why-woody-guthries-guitar-was-a-fascist-killer.html
Relevant paragraph:
Woody Guthrie’s guitar didn’t kill fascists because it fired bullets. It killed by neutralizing the fascists. Music, like culture, has the power to defeat right-wing extremists and their antidemocratic ideas rooted in xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism. Guthrie fought using ideas, language, music and the shared desire to build a better future together.
People should listen to the entirety of Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land rather than the part that’s excerpted that makes it sound super patriotic rah rah America.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?People say it’s against all private property but it only explicitly criticizes private ownership of land. That does not imply Communism, see Georgism.
…is what I would say if I didn’t always twist the lyrics to praise the compact disc 💿
How I sing the song. Warning: Cringe
💿 My pit and your land,
💿 your pit and my land,
💿 from err’r correction
💿 to the sampling theorem
💿 From the Red Book’s premise
💿 to the bitstream coders
💿 CD was made by Sony and Philips.💿 My laser’s gliding
💿 on the spiral pathway,
💿 my cradle keeps it
💿 pointed the right way.
💿 Plastic is never
💿 made ideally
💿 but wobbles are no problem for CD.💿 There may be dust bits
💿 that try to fool me,
💿 disks can be tainted,
💿 varying light intensity
💿 But the extra data
💿 carry everything
💿 I need to get the music error-free💿 Audiophiles
💿 are total dickheads,
💿 claiming they can hear
💿 the “discrete DAC steps”
💿 But Shannon proved that
💿 a low-pass filter
💿 Makes samples match the input perfectly💿 My pit and your land,
💿 your pit and my land,
💿 from err’r correction
💿 to the sampling theorem
💿 From the Red Book’s promise
💿 to the bitstream coders
💿 This was made by Sony and Philips.Scotland and Norway have the right to roam, where there are land owners but they do not have the right to keep you off their land. As far as I’m concerned that’s the bare minimum for a decency, even though it’s a long shot from communism.
But Guthrie was a communist. This was before Stalinism and a lot of the bad connotations given to communism since - I doubt he would have embraced much of what have happened in the name of communism. But he was a union man.
This was before Stalinism and a lot of the bad connotations given to communism since - I doubt he would have embraced much of what have happened in the name of communism.
Well, Guthrie was actually alive at the same time as Stalin so we don’t actually have to speculate on that. In reality, Guthrie praised Stalin, even going so far as praising the Soviet invasion of Poland, and criticizing the US for providing supplies to Finland during the Winter War. It actually wasn’t that uncommon for left-wing people in the West to support Stalin at the time, though some, for example, Pete Seeger, later changed their views. Guthrie never did, even during the height of the Cold War, when McCarthyism meant he got blacklisted, he was still saying stuff like, he hoped the communists won in the Korean War, and he never apologized for or recanted his views on Stalin.
At the height of McCarthyism, I think anyone would be a fool to believe anything told by the American government or official narratives.
Unlike Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, Guthrie died in 1967 with Huntington’s disease so severe he hadn’t been able to talk for a good while when he died. It’s also a fact that Huntington’s disease affects your mental state, and Guthrie did to some degree go crazy before he died. He got the disease from his mother, and her reaction to the illness is the origin of the family tragedies that made it so natural for Guthrie to write about his hard travelling.
There’s also accounts Guthrie was a real jerk in the final years, which again can be attributed to Huntington’s disease.
As for Korea, America had no fucking business there.
The comments I mentioned were long before Huntington affected him in his later years. Like, I’m talking about his comments on events as they were happening, when he was fully cognizant, and singing and writing smack dab in the middle of his career. You can’t just put your own positions into his mouth and write off everything he ever said to the contrary to Huntington’s. It’s both demonstrably false and also not really cool for you to do, like, he’s entitled to having his own views regardless of losing his mind to illness later on.
Woody Guthrie was ditched by his deadbeat, KKK member dad at 14, and grew up into the Great Depression. Those circumstances don’t tend to produce moderate politics. Everything I’ve seen about him suggests he saw things in very black and white terms, with the communists (including the USSR and Stalin) being the only real alternative to the racism and poverty he saw under capitalism and fascism. You can say that wasn’t the right perspective but that was his perspective.
You are, of course, right about Korea, but I brought it up because at the time it was a pretty controversial and fringe view, that he was willing to standby even under threat of persecution.
For sure, the American left were blue eyed in regards to what was happening in the Soviet Union during McCarthyism. I just find it hard to judge them too harshly for that, considering their experience of being prosecuted at home for no good reason, and their first hand experience of how American capitalists wage a full-on war against organized labour.
My way into Guthrie’s thinking is through the songs he wrote, and what emerges through that is a man who absolutely has his heart and brain in the right place. I have no doubt he had his shortcomings as a human, as we all do.
That’s fair. I only wanted to set the record straight.
Not to forget the verse about property rights:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, saying “private property”
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and meSo… he climbed the wall, checked the other side, and decided that the inside area was “for you and me” because the inside of the wall didn’t say otherwise?
Yup.
He did not believe in expensive private property rights.
This land is your land.
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Interesting story. Dropkick Murphys (Boston-Irish punk band) got their first national hit by doing a punk version of “Shipping Out to Boston,” which was a Woody Guthrie taperoom-floor forgotten song. They also just lost one of their lead singer/songwriters last year.
They were trying to figure out what direction to go in, when Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter called them up to say she had found a bunch of other scraps and notes, wondering if they had any interest in putting together an album.
They said “fuck it, sure” and made an album called “This Machine Still Kills Fascists.” It’s not quite my cup of tea, but it resonated with a lot of people. If you’re interested in Guthrie’s music it’s definitely worth a listen. Modernized medium-talent version of his b-sides, basically.
medium-talent
You take that back
I fucking love Murphys, but they even admit that they’re not super talented. Ken Casey once said he didn’t even learn to play bass until their second album.
I play bass. You mean to tell me there are folk who actually know how to play?
Pretty much just Matt Freeman.
Shipping out to Boston is not even forgotten in the taperoom - in all likelihood Guthrie never recorded it.
There’s a bunch of songs Guthrie wrote but never recorded. His estate keeps track of all of them, recorded or not, on woodyguthrie.org.
Wilco teamed up with singer Billy Bragg to release three volumes of previously unreleased Guthrie songs under the title Mermaid Avenue. They’re amazing albums.
One of the most interesting songs, and related to this post, is titled “All You Fascists”. After the release of the Wilco version in 2000, they discovered a wartime Guthrie recording from the BBC, so we now have access to the original as well. But the cover version was released first.
The whole Mermaid Avenue series is worth a spin. Lots of fun upbeat stuff as well, not only about defeating fascism.
That is a really interesting story! I’m sure if he were still alive he’d be very happy to hear some of his works completed.
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.
— Woody Guthrie on copyright
Is that real? I looked around the website and couldn’t find this text.
Yes.
It’s also quoted by Cory Doctorow at the end of his (Creative Commons licensed) podcasts…and Cory always checks his sources.
Do you have a source to cite?
Before anyone thinks Woody was some kind of pacifist, they should check out his songs “Miss Pavlichenko” or “Jarama Valley”.
Never heard of this guy, but I have a desire now to check out his music. He’d be sickened by life in 2025.
No more than he was by life in the 1930s and 40s. He watched the uncovering of the first Republican/oligarch coup plot. Then watched the man they plotted to assassinate wheel and deal with them to get legislation passed. Instead of trying and hanging them all.
Woody, a socialist, supported the Leninist revolutions. Only to watch their natural evolution. Stalin helping Hitler invade Poland. As well as exterminating ethnic polish in their own borders. Exterminating their own people etc. And all the atrocities of other individual vanguard parties.
He would be disappointed, but not surprised.
Woody, a socialist, supported the Leninist revolutions. Only to watch their natural evolution. Stalin helping Hitler invade Poland. As well as exterminating ethnic polish in their own borders. Exterminating their own people etc. And all the atrocities of other individual vanguard parties.
I mean, he WAS a Stalinist and supported the joint Soviet-Nazi invasion of Poland.
Probably, but definitely not shocked. Woody and the Cheeto’s old man go way back.
I see Donald takes after his father.
here’s pete seger singing guthrie’s this land is your land, which was written as a smackdown response to the absurdly nationalistic god bless america
I’d recommend all Americans to check out the verses they don’t teach you in school.
There’s several versions, but they go something like this:
One Sunday morning in the shadow of a steeple By the relief office I saw my people As they stood hungry, I stood there asking Was this land made for you and me? There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me Sign was painted, saying "private property" But on the back side it didn't say nothing That side was made for you and me
Check out Utah Phillips while you’re at it.
It’s hard to be nice about this. But I’ll try. Assuming you’re from the US, start with indigenous music, I’m particular to rock and rap from the northwest. Move on to spirituals or work songs from the deep south, then jazz, particularly in Chicago during the Great Migration, then move on to folk music like Guthrie, then maybe skip another few decades and you’ve got rage against the machine and others.
How is it hard to be nice about this? What a weird take. Sharing music is so great it’s hard not to be nice about it.
Wow u r very smart
Music then. Internet today.
If you are interested in watching one of the most awkward movies ever, you should check out Alice’s Restaurant, based on a song by Woody Guthrie’s son, Arthur Guthrie.
*Arlo
But yeah, the movie was pretty bad. It’s based somewhat on real events but with a lot of made up shit thrown in that Arlo himself didn’t like. The real-life Alice actually just died a few weeks ago.
Woody Guthrie’s son,
ArthurArlo Guthrie…FTFY
Thanks. I use voice to text and really need to proofread more often.
I swear, voice to text was better on Android 12 than after it got the big upgrade on Android 13 (if I’m recalling the versions correctly). Though it was still an issue then.
Edit calling: Correcting voice to text grammar
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick, and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it—in harmony—they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of ‘em. And three people do it—three, can you imagine?—three people walking in, singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out?—they may think it’s an organization. And can you—can you imagine fifty people a day—I said fifty people a day!—walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it’s a movement! And that’s what it is, the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar. With feeling
So we’ll wait til it comes around on the guitar here, and sing it when it does. Here it comes.
I miss my friends on the group W bench
So good. The blind justice punch line always got me
Same as the “I wanna keeel!”
It has so many great gags and one liners, this song never fails to cheer me up just a bit any time I hear it.
It was shocking how sexist we were in the 60s.
Similar to how I feel about listening to Guthrie celebrate smoke rising from industrial chimneys.
But that’s not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song
And the movie.
Arlo is also notourious for his recording of The City of New Orleans. He didn’t write it, but he made it famous, and it has since been recorded by just about everyone.
