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RICHARD

A. REUSS

WoodyGuthrieandHis FolkTradition'

IT IS IRONICTHATthe man who perhapswas the most creativeand dynamicfolk artistof the past generationis so little knownto folklorists.The nameand works of Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) are familiarto manyof us, at leastin a general way, and occasionallycommentsare made aboutGuthriein recordreviewsor in articlescontainingbrief illustrationsof small points. But Guthrieas yet has received no seriousattentionfrom scholars,folkloricor otherwise,with the exception of some essaysby John Greenwayand my recentlypublishedbibliographyof printedmaterialsrelatingto his life.2 Manyrewardingand fascinatingstudiesof Guthrieas a representativeof the folk and as a gifted re-creatorof folk materials still awaitexplorationin detail,even thoughthe bulk of his writingsand recordings werecompletedsometwentyor moreyearsago. That folkloriststhus far have failed to come to grips with one of the most uniquepersonalitiesever to straywithin theirrangeis regrettablebutby no means surprising.Guthrie'sown talentsas a writerand songmakerhavebeen so strongly emphasizedthat his repertoryof traditionalsongs, stories,and sayingshas been overshadowed.Friendsand associatessuch as Pete Seeger,who did most to publicize Woody Guthrie'snameover the years,with few exceptionsknew him after 1 This article is a revised version of a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in Boston, November 20, 1966. I am grateful to Archie Green, John Greenway, Ellen Stekert, Neil Rosenberg, Lisa Feldman, and Alan Lomax for their helpful comments and suggestions, and to Richard Hulan, Roger Abrahams, and Marjorie Guthrie and the Guthrie Children's Trust Fund for permission to reprint materials quoted. 2 Except for the discussion in his chapter "The Song-Makers" in American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia, 1953), 275-302, and "Woodrow Wilson Guthrie," JOURNALOF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 81 (1968), 62-64, Greenway's commentaries on Guthrie have appeared in popular and folknik publications. See especially "Woody Guthrie: Modem Minstrel," This Trend (SpringSummer 1948), 22-28; "The Folk Informant," Good News, vol. I, no. 2 (May 1961), I-2; "The Anatomy of a Genius: Woody Guthrie," Hootenanny, vol. i, no. 3 (May 1964), 16-17, 69-72; and "Woody Guthrie: The Man, The Land, The Understanding," The American West, vol. 3, no. 4 (Fall 1966), 25-30, 74-78. My own work is A Woody Guthrie Bibliography (New York, 1968).

RICHARD A. REUSS

274

he had severedhis ties with his early traditionalenvironment.Their published reminiscencesaccentuateWoody's later activities,observedby them firsthand, ratherthan his earlylife, which is of greaterinterestto folklorists.Guthrie'screative abilitiesreachedfull flowerjustas he was leavinghis folk milieufor good in 1940 and 1941. As Greenway has pointed out, Woody subsequently drew less and

less on his own traditionalfolk culturefor his workproducedin New York City.3 Thus, as scholars became familiar with his name in the I940s, Woody correspond-

ingly producedless of folkloristicinterest. Nor did Guthrieemergeinto publicview as a resultof the effortsof some diligent field collectorwhose name becamelinked to his, as is often the case with famousinformants.Leadbelly,for example,will inevitablybe associatedwith the Lomaxes;but thereis no comparablescholaror collectorprimarilyresponsiblefor bringing Woody Guthrieto the attentionof folklorists.In truth, Guthriefirst becamewidely knownthroughfolknik and left-wingcirclesratherthanas a result of academicconclaves.Alan Lomaxdid recordhim for the Libraryof Congressin 1940, but the recordingswere not widely publicizedand remainedgenerallyinaccessiblefor twenty-fiveyears. Lomax himself publishedvirtuallynothing on Woody until I960.4 The brief noticesaccordedGuthriein folklorepublicationsin recentyearshave done little to furtherresearchon his work, in part becauseof their brevity.No folklore journal reviewed his autobiography Bound For Glory, published in 1943,

or even mentionedhim in passinguntil the firstissue of the New YorkFolklore Quarterly appeared in 1945, where he is listed amongother folksingersappearing occasionallyon radio.5 The first meaningfulcommentof any kind by a scholarappearedin 1948, in CharlesSeeger'simportant"Reviews"article,which noted Guthrie'srelatively slow adoption of stylistic performancetraits characteristicof urban singers of folksong.6The only detailedanalysisof Woody Guthriein an academicpublication is found in John Greenway's American Folksongs of Protest (i953).

Not

only have folkloristsgenerallyneglectedGuthrie;literarycritics,socialhistorians, and other scholarsby and large have done the same. Woody's creativework as literatureand art has yet to be evaluatedseriously.Certainlyhis songs and prose are an eloquentchronicleof the Depressionand World War II generation,presentedfroma uniqueperspective,andmightprofitablybe studied. I.

Guthrie'simportanceto the folkloristlies not in his negligiblecontributionto oral traditionbut in his role as spokesmanfor variousfolk or folklikegroups.His ability to communicate the life, feelings, attitudes, and culture of his people from

the inside-using their terms, concepts, and modes of expressionrather than 3 Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 281-282. 4 The Folk Songs of North America (Garden City, New York, I96o), 426-431; see also Lomax's "Compiler's Postscript" to Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (New York, 1967), 364-366, and his notes in the brochure accompanying the Woody Guthrie Library of Congress Recordings, (Elektra EKL 271/272), released in 1965. 5 Elaine Lambert Lewis, "City Billet," New York Folklore Quarterly, I (1945), II3. 6 Charles Seeger, "Reviews," JOURNALOF AMERICAN FOLKLORE 6I (1948), 217.

WOODY GUTHRIE AND HIS FOLK TRADITION

275

those of elite Americansociety-renders him worthyof the attentionof the folklorist.In otherwords,Guthriewas a uniquedistillationof the culturalexperiences of severalgroups possessingfolk elements,at once a mirrorin which they saw themselvesandtheirmostarticulateandablechronicler. In enumeratingGuthrie's"folk communities,"one is faced with the problem of defining what constitutesa folk society.Classicalanthropologicaldefinitions have equated folk groups with the land-tiedpeasantrythat historicallyhas no comparableanaloguein the Americansociety-the smallfarmerandfrontiersman pushingthe line of settlementcontinuallywestward,formingand re-formingthe frontier,leaving in its wake a string of communitiesfashionedout of the conglomerationof elementsat hand.The older and moreisolatedof these communities solidifiedand becamemore or less homogeneousin character,that is to say, "folk groups." The newer ones were affectedby more sophisticatedforms of education,communication,and technologythat developedwithin an increasingly urbanizedAmerican society and in varying degrees leveled or preventedthe erectionof culturalbarriersseparatingeach communityand regionfrom the rest of the nation.Thus, spatialisolationand relativelysimpletechnologicaland communicationssystemshave formed the basic criteriafor determiningfolk society in the United States.My quarrelwith this traditionaldefinitionis that it is too limited.Otherfactorsbesidesgeography,minimalformaleducationandindustrialization,and lack of mass media may combineto enablea groupto producelore, as will be seenlaterin Guthrie'scase. A folk group or societyis a relativeconcept,and absolutesare impossibleto come by in the field, nor can they be unanimouslyagreed upon in the abstract (muchas folkloristsin the pasthavefailed to agreeon the precisenumberof years or versionsneeded to declarea song a "folksong"). The same holds true with regardto the southwesternregionalculturein which Woody Guthriegrew up as a youngman.The areawas settledand developedextensivelyby whitesas recently as the early twentieth century,just as newspapers,high-schooleducation,and industrialtechnologywere becomingfamiliarin most partsof the country.The "LastWest," therefore,had no time to develop either a prolongedisolationor narrowhomogeneity.But it was populatedby peoplewho had in commoncertain broad culturalattitudesand traditions,predominantlysouthern,and a stock of lore rootedin the Anglo-Americanexperience.If the settlementsin the partsof Oklahomaand Texas whereWoody lived were not fully developedfolk cultures in comparisonto others in America (the PennsylvaniaDutch and Ozark, for example), theyperhapswerethe closestto be foundin white societyin thatregion, and they certainlyapproachedthe notion of folk communitiesmore than most othersin the United Statesin the secondthroughthe fourthdecadesof the present century. Woodrow Wilson Guthriewas born July 14, I912, in Okemah,Oklahoma,

then a town of about a thousand people located some fifty miles southwest of Tulsa. In Woody's childhood years, Oklahoma was scarcely removed from its frontier stage of development. The white population consisted largely of settlers who had emigrated from nearby southern and prairie states, most of them having lived in the territory no more than a generation. Significant numbers of Indians and Negroes also resided in Oklahoma and often were in close contactwith whites.

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RICHARD A. REUSS

Woody later reckonedthe populationof Okemahin his youth to be half white, one-fourthIndian, and one-fourthNegro.' Oil was discoveredin the vicinityof Okemah,and the influx of oil workersand the motleyassortmentof individuals who followed in theirwakeinfusedyet anotherelementinto the town'sdiversified setting. Not surprisingly,Woody absorbedtraditionalmaterialfrom manyparts of his society.His mothersang old balladsas well as "heart"and religiousnumbers; his father performedcowboy songs, dance pieces, and blues. Negro boys taughthim jigs andharmonicatunes,andthe day-to-daylife of the towninstructed him in the tales,saltysayings,and picturesquelanguagecommonto the regionand its peoples. He earlyexhibitedan uncommontalentfor makingmusic,or at least noise, as is well attestedby old-timeOkemahresidents,8who recallhis dexterity with the harmonica,Jew's harp, and bones and less frequentlyhis attemptsat pickingout tunes on the mandolin,guitar,and family piano. Woody performed regularly for high-school assemblies,the boys in the schoolyard,and casual listenerson the street cornersof Okemah,but his musicalbent was primarily instrumentalratherthan vocal. There is no evidencefrom this periodof his life to suggestthathe would laterbecomea balladmakeror a prolificwriter.Few longterm residentsof Okemahclaimthat Woody madeup songs as a youngster;only one, Colonel Martin,a boyhoodfriend, is specificin this respect.Martinasserts that Woody,while in his earlyteens,createdthe chorusof whatbecame"SoLong, Its Been Good to Know You" from a phraseused as a cliche.9No corroboration of Martin'saccount,however, has yet come to light. Similarly,what evidence thereis for an earlymanifestationof talentin the youngWoody Guthriesuggests that it lay primarilyin the field of drawingratherthan songmakingor writing. The few songswith an OklahomasettingthatWoody composed-such as "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "OklahomaHills,"-and his detailed sketches of latter-day Okemahfrontierlife in nine chaptersof BoundFor Gloryand elsewhereall were writtenafterhe movedfromthe state. In 1929 Woody left Okemahand followed the oil boom to Texas, eventually the settling with relativesin Pampa. The Texas Panhandleculturewas much associates his in that in left behind he one the same as Oklahoma,except Pampa were more often drawnfrom the roustaboutand bootleggersegmentsof society than had been the casein Okemah.It was in the Panhandlethat Woody received his principalexposureto the earlycommercialhillbillymedium.He now learned to play the guitar,mandolin,tenor banjo, fiddle, and drumssufficientlywell to travel aboutthe countrysideas a memberof pick-upcountrydancebandsand in his Uncle Jeff'smagic show. He begancomposinghis own songs, thoughhe still sang only infrequentlyin public, and there is abundanttestimonythat his uncle and aunt (Jeff and Allene Guthrie) were in far greaterdemandlocallyas musical specuentertainers.His prose at this time was limited largelyto "psychological" lations,now lost. His descriptionsof life on the TexasPlainswerewrittenlater.x0 7Woody Guthrie, Library of Congress Recordings (Elektra), Side i. residents by Rosan A. Jordan and Richard A. Reuss, August s Field data collected from Okemah 15-18, 1966. 9 Interview, August i8, 1966. See Bound For Glory (New York, 1943), chs. 9-12; American Folksong (New York, 1947), o10 3-5; and Hard Hitting Songs For Hard-Hit People, 21-26.

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It was also in Texas, not Oklahomaas is frequentlyasserted,that Woody encounteredthe Dust Bowl-still a vivid regionalfolk memorytoday-which he was to depict so graphicallyin his songs and in his autobiographyBound For Glory. In summingup Guthrie'sformativeyearsandthe environmentthatmoldedthe directionshis talentswould takehim, it maybe saidthatthe culturalmilieusof the Oklahomaand Texas periods accomplisheddifferentfunctions. The Okemah yearswere essentiallya time of passiveabsorption,not just in termsof repertory, but of style, form, and idiomaticexpression.The Texasyears,on the otherhand, saw the crystallizationof Guthriethe performer,as he was generallyto be in his best years.As a writerWoody did not reachcreativematurityuntil 1940, but as a performerthe only significantelement missing by the time he left the Texas Panhandlewas his radicalcommitment,which he acquiredon the West Coastin 1938 and 1939.

In March1937 Woody hoboedto California.For the next five yearshe led a nomadic life, simultaneouslymoving in three cultures: hobo, migratory,and labor-radical.He had been exposed to the first two while still in the Pampa vicinity but becamepart of them only after moving to the West Coast.Woody witnessedthe Okie exodusas it passedthroughthe Texas Panhandle,chieflyover Highway66, and also madeseveraltripsaroundthe Southwestby himself in hobo style before migratingto California.It was in this latterstate, however,that his contactswith both Okie and hobo groups were sustainedto the point that he actuallybecamea temporarymemberof each. For the betterpart of two years (I937-1939),

Woody sang on radio station KFVD, Los Angeles, at first with

Missouri-bornMaxine Crissmanas "Woody and Lefty Lou," later alone as "Woodythe Lone Wolf." His listening audiencewas comprisedmostlyof Okie migrantsand other transientswho preferredthe sentimentalfolksongs and hillbilly humorhe dispensedas a singer,yarnspinner,and down-homephilosopher. His recurrentwanderingsthroughthe length and breadthof Californiaand the PacificNorthwest broadenedhis personalcontactswith the life and hard times of the Dust Bowl refugees, with whom he found a deep culturaland spiritual identity and aboutwhom he would write with compassionand a gentle humor. The extremetraumaof theiruprootaland theirstrugglefor survivalin the hostile Californiaatmospherebound the Okies togetherin commonspirit and cultural experience.In the few years that the Okie communityexisted as a discernible entity in California(having been absorbedby the war industriesduringWorld War II), it producedlore born of its traumaticlife to supplementthe older materialsbroughtalong in the trek west. Traditionalformsof folksong and folk expressionwere retained,but lyric and prose contentfrequentlywere alteredto reflectcontemporaryexperience,as amply demonstratedin Todd and Sonkin's collectionof more than two hundredOkie songs-now in the Archiveof American Folk Song, Library of Congress.11Woody Guthrie was in no way a stranger 11 For published examples see Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin, "Ballads of the Okies," New York Times Magazine (November 17, 1940), 6-7, 18; reprinted in American Folk Music Occasional, No. I (Berkeley, California, 1964), 87-91. Migrant mimeographed publications such as The Towsack Tattler (Arvin, California) also contained songs and versification by the Okies about their experiences.

278

RICHARD A. REUSS

to this milieu, and his talentsmade him by far the greatestspokesmanproduced by the Okie migrantcommunity. Woody belongedboth to hobo and Okie groupsat varioustimes. In the long run, however, he probablyspent more calendartime with hoboes, tramps,and bums than with displacedOkies. But there can be no doubt which of the two groups is more importantinsofar as his overall creativework is concerned.His Dust Bowl ballads, the ramblinglyrics like "Hard Traveling,""This Land Is Your Land,"and "RamblingRound,"and the triumphantColumbiaRiversongs all stem principallyfrom his migrant experiences.By contrast,only his great ballad "East Texas Red," part of four chapters of Bound For Glory-nos.

I, 13,

14, and I8-and a few other incidentalwritings directlyreflect his contacts with the hoboworld. The last importantsubculturefor whichWoody actedas spokesmanwas chiefly distinguishedfrom the othergroupsby its ideology-the labor-radical syndrome createdby the militantrise of the CIO and the communistmovementduringthe depressionof the 1930s. Broadlyspeaking,anygrouphavinga continuousexistencein time is boundto developtraditionsas an outgrowthof its isolatingfeatures, with quantityand formto be determinedby localcircumstances. The Depression's labor-radical movementwas no exception.Thoughits impacton the nationalscene of the 1930s was profound,its lore paradoxicallywas the end productof a largely self-imposedisolationfrom the broaderAmericanculture. The same radio broadcastson KFVD that broughtWoody local fame among Okie migrantsin Californiaeventuallybroughthim to the attentionof political radicals.Ed Robbinhas told how he introducedWoody to left-wing audiencesin 1939, beginning with a Tom Mooney rally early in the year.12For many "progressive" intellectuals,Guthrie was the living incarnationof social issues they had grappledwith eitherin the abstractor at firsthand.The timing of his emergence on the scene hardlycould have been more auspicious.John Steinbeckhad justpublishedThe Grapesof Wrath,the La FolletteCommitteewas investigating crooked labor practicesagainst migratoryfarm workersin California,and the Okies were very much a part of the nationalconsciousness.The suddenpresence of a dynamic,articulatespokesmanfrom the Dust Bowl community,not only issuesin the vernacular sociallyconsciousbut ableto verbalizeaboutcontemporary of the "folk,"produceda substantialimpacton manyurbanindividualspolitically left-of-center.Ed RobbinremarkedaboutGuthrie'sinitial debutbefore a radical audience: There was this skinny lad on the stage, the very embodiment of these people [the Okies], speaking their language and in their voice, in bitter humor and song, with the dust of his hard traveling still on him, a troubadour, a balladeer, a poet, who had ridden the rails and the jallopies, worked the orchards and the fields, lain in the jails, faced the cops and the clubs of the vigilantes-here he was drawing out his hard, bitter, humorous songs.13

Not every left-winger took to Woody or his idiom, then or later, but enough who did were so imbued with the spirit of proletarian romanticism that a natural tendency developed to drape Woody in the venerable garb of the Noble Savage 12 Edward Robbin, "This Train Is Bound For Glory,' " People's World, October 28, 1967, 6-7. 13 Robbin, 6.

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WOODY

GUTHRIE (1942)

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RICHARD A. REUSS

280

stereotype.He was quicklyidealizedas a "rusty-voicedHomer"14 and "the best folk balladcomposerwhoseidentityhas everbeenknown."•5He becamea radical prototypeof the democraticand enlightenedwhite "folk,"muchas Leadbellyand Josh White were left-wing symbolsof the Negro "folk"duringthe sameperiod. In whatbecamea widelyquotedpassage,JohnSteinbeckwrote: Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression.I think we call this the American spirit.16

The Left's romanticvision of Guthrie also flourishedin the communistpress of those years.One early Daily Workerfeatureon Woody displayedhis photographand caughtthe essenceof the Noble Savagestereotypeneatlyin the caption: "'Woody,' that's his name. He's a native of Oklahoma,who's come East for a time. He can tell you all about the Dust Bowl, the original charactersof 'The Grapesof Wrath'and of the latestletterhe got from John Steinbeck.He strums a guitar,singspeople'ssongsandwritescolumnsfor the Daily Worker.'"•No one, however,ever contributedto buildingGuthrie'simagewith moreexuberanceand gustothanMike Quin,popularcolumnistfor the People'sWorld.On one occasion he woundup an extravagantreviewpraisingGuthrie'sappearanceon CBSradio's "Pursuitof Happiness"in a stateof lyriceuphoria."Singit Woody, sing it!" he exhorted."KarlMarxwrote it and Lincolnsaid it and Lenindid it. You sing it, Woody.And we'll all laughtogetheryet."'8 Such simplistic characterizationof the vagabond people's minstrel was, of course,an illusion. Friendsand close associatesrealizedthat Guthriewas a far more complex personalitythan the image projectedby the mass media would suggest.Yet, encounterswith Woody'serraticbehaviorandunorthodoxutterances often proved disquietingto many leftists. Irwin Silber wrote a fiery partisan critiqueon the subjectfor the radicalNationalGuardian. Like most revolutionaries, Woody was, at best, only partially understood by the revolutionary movements of his time. The puritanical, nearsighted left of the forties and early fifties didn't quite know what to make of this strange bemused poet who drank and bummed and chased after women and spoke in syllables dreadful strange. They loved his songs and they sang "Union Maid" or "So Long" or "Roll On Columbia" or "Pastures of Plenty"... on picket lines and at parties, summer camps and demonstrations. But they never really accepted the man himself-and many thought that as a singer, he was a pretty good songwriter, and they'd just as soon hear Pete Seeger sing the same songs.... 19 14 Olin Downes and Elie Siegmeister, A Treasury of American Song (New York, 1940), 338. Alan Lomax as quoted by John Greenway in American Folksongs of Protest, 275.

15 16

Steinbeckwrote these words in

1940.

They may have been intendedfor the liner notes of

Guthrie's Victor Dust Bowl Ballads or for the anthology of Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, publishedin 1967 after a twenty-fiveyear postponement.In any event the statementwas being quoted in feature articles on Woody (see A Woody Guthrie Bibliography, nos. 152 and 153) by September 1940o. 17 "Sings People's Ballads," Daily Worker, April 2, 1940, p. 7. 18s "Double Check," People's World, April 25, 1940, p. 5.

19Irwin Silber,"Woodie [sic] Guthrie:He Never Sold Out,"The National Guardian,October

14, 1967, p. o10.

WOODY GUTHRIE AND HIS FOLK TRADITION

281

For many,indeed, the Noble Savageimage was less threatening.The stereotype in the leftof the Dust Bowl troubadourgavewayto a moreurbanerepresentation was Left never but as a whole the the as reallyable 1940s progressed, wing press to fathomWoodyGuthrienorseriouslywantedto tryto do so. Recent academiccriticism,notablythat by John Greenwayand Ellen Stekert, hasemphasizedthe negativeinfluenceof the left-wingmilieuon WoodyGuthrie.20 It does not, however,give proportionateconsiderationto the positive featuresof the relationship,for it was the communist-dominated labor-radicalatmosphere that providedWoody with the spiritualnourishmentand raisond'etrehe needed to producehis best work. For nearlya decadeprior to his initial contactswith urban radicals,Guthrie had sought a rationalefor his existence.He had read avidly and sometimesdabbledin the occult sciences:popularpsychology,hypnotism,astrology,spiritualism,faith healing,fortunetelling,and Orientalphilosophy and mysticism.He was at varioustimesa memberof the Churchof Christ,a practicingfaith healer,an authorof a book on "psychology,"a collectorof Rosicrucianliterature,and an admirerof Lao-tseand Omar None of these Khayy.m.21 interestsproved sustainingintellectualprops or capable of guiding his energies into meaningfulchannelsof productivity.It was the radicalsocialgospel of the New Deal era that finallyfilled his spiritualvoid and elevatedhis hillbillyversificationto quiteanotherplaneof socialcommentary, wherehe spokefor the national traumasand triumphsas well as for regionalconditions.One mayplausiblyargue thatGuthrie'scommunismwaspoliticallynaiveandhumane,in largemeasurerooted in frontieragrarianradicalismratherthan in Marxor the Partyline; but only sheer bias and anticommunistfervorwill permitthe criticalobserverto deny the emotionalsolace,socialdirection,and organicsynthesisthe Left gave to Guthrie's workin the dayswhen both the Movementand he were dynamicand young. The years 1939-1941 were a transitionalperiod in Woody's life, as he continuedto move easilyin and out of his earliersouthwestern,hobo, and Dust Bowl environments;but he graduallyforsookall of them for the urbanleft-wingmilieu in which he largelyfunctionedthereafterto the end of his activecareer.It probably would be accurateto say that the first significantbreakwith his earlierenvironmentscamein FebruaryI940, when he made his firsttrip to and prolonged stay in New York. In the next yearand a half he made two extensivejourneys back to old familiar scenes in the Southwestand on the West Coast and then touredsome of these sameareasagainwith the AlmanacSingers.But duringthis time he consistentlyused his talents to describeconcepts,events, and political causesthat were not centralto the experienceof the groups he had previously representedin Californiapriorto his going East.By the fall of 1941, when Woody settled in New York more or less permanently,the separationfrom his earlier folk milieu was complete.BoundFor Gloryand occasionalsongs like "EastTexas Red"-drawn from his life in the southwestern,hobo, and migrantfolk complexes-continued

to come from his pen in the next year or so; but from the time

20 Greenway,"The Anatomyof a Genius" and "Woody Guthrie: The Man, The Land, The Understanding";Ellen Stekert,"Centsand Nonsense in the Urban Folksong Movement:19301966," in Folkloreand Society,ed. BruceJackson(Hatboro,Pa., 1965), I61-164. 21 Data collected from Pampa, Texas, residentsand Maxine CrissmanDempsey, June I968. See also BoundFor Glory,ch. 12.

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he entered the merchant marine in 1943, the great mass of his voluminous writings, personal reminiscences, and songs ceased in most instances to reflect his former traditional environments. It would be hard to underestimate the importance of these transition years for Woody Guthrie, for in them he produced the bulk of his greatest work: most of the Dust Bowl ballads, all of the Columbia River songs, the long ballads "Pretty Boy Floyd," "East Texas Red," and "Tom Joad," the lyric songs "This Land Is Your Land" and "Hard Traveling," most of his best labor and war verse, Bound For Glory, and several of his finest essays. All were written between 1939 and I942. This material is a creative fusion of Guthrie's folk heritage with a leftwing social consciousness. The rural Southwest of Woody's youth gave him an instinctive knowledge of ballad structure, folksong style, and the folk idiom. Migrant and hobo wanderings of his early manhood provided crucial themes for his pen, drawn from first-hand observation, to mold into verse and prose. Contacts with Communists and other radicals sharpened and focused an innate sense of social concern developed out of the experiences of his early life. His own artistic abilities enabled him to weld these diverse strands into a unique synthesis of folk-styled poetry and social gospel. Prior to the time Woody encountered the Left, he held no special status within society other than that of another "good" hillbilly songwriter. Later, after radical publicity brought him to the attention of urban intellectuals, he became a symbol of the Okie trauma and the turmoil experienced by anonymous millions of Americans during the depression. The folksong revival ultimately enshrined him as one of its culture heroes, admiring or worshipping him not only for his songs and prose, but for his "free" life-style, uncompromising honesty, and spiritual independence. Guthrie's most unique and viable period as a creative artist, however, lies during those years of his life when he belonged exclusively to no one group, when he was able to effectively blend old forms and new experiences and draw freely on the varied esthetic and intellectual material his several worlds had to offer him. Much of his voluminous output is unworthy of remembrance, but his more lasting creations have made no small contribution to the American heritage. An appreciative national government tendered him official recognition for his efforts to awaken the American people to "their heritage and the land" in ceremonies sponsored by the Department of Interior on April 6, 1966.22

II. The folk tradition Woody Guthrie inherited from the Southwest is usually evaluated in terms of the songs he acquired there, but it should be noted that Guthrie's folk repertory was by no means limited to songs alone. He knew large numbers of anecdotes, jokes, toasts, proverbial phrases, and witty sayings, which he effectively utilized in his varied roles as raconteur, soothsayer, humorist, and writer. Many of these were clearly traditional; others might prove to be so with a little investigation. His language, for example, was studded with colorful neologisms and idiomatic expressions: "colder'n old Billyhell," "out like Lottie's 22 Robert B. Semple, Jr., "U.S. Award Given to Woody Guthrie," New York Times, April 7, 1966, p. 47.

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eye" (went kaput), "That boy don't care if school keeps or not," "Take it easy, but take it," and endless others. Apparently no one made any effort to collect these, or his yarns and other witticisms; and such as are extant must be culled from his writings and the memories of friends. A more detailed record, however, does exist for the traditional songs in his memory. At the time he was singing on Los Angeles radio (1937-1939), Woody drew his song material almost entirely from his southwestern cultural experiences. His repertory consisted of folksongs, hillbilly pieces, and compositions of his own based on folk and hillbilly models. His contacts with the few popular singers of folksongs of that period were almost nonexistent; yet, within two years after leaving California for New York City, he had absorbed numerous songs alien to his own musical tradition from the small clique of urban folksingers gathering in the East during the early forties. No folklorist ever tried systematically to collect Guthrie's traditional song repertory. The Lomax recordings for the Library of Congress in March 1940 were conceived of as a documentary word-portrait rather than as a folkloristic probe.23Moses Asch recorded a large number of traditional songs from Woody, frequently in conjunction with Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, and others; but, in the absence of external documentation and control data, it is often difficult to tell whether Guthrie is singing a song from his own tradition or one he learned from the early folksong revival milieu. For instance, his version of "Buffalo Skinners" has been praised by scholars as an excellent example of American folksong style, which it is; yet I know of no evidence indicating that Woody knew the song prior to the mid-i94os, when it was released on the Asch album Struggle (Asch 36o). Indeed, his lyrics closely follow the text published in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. It is largely through surviving manuscript collections kept by Guthrie himself, and the fortuitous actions of Alan Lomax, that there is any clear delineation of Woody Guthrie's "pre-revival" folksong repertory. Lomax recorded Guthrie for the Library of Congress scarcely a month after the latter arrived in the East in 1940, and before Woody had much chance to absorb new material from other singers. Lomax, however, was not interested in the hillbilly songs that comprised a significant portion of Guthrie's repertory; hence there is little trace of such material in the Archive of American Folk Song recordings. Far more significant than these recordings was a manuscript collection Lomax procured from Woody shortly thereafter and had copied for the Libraryof Congress. Entitled "Songs of Woody Guthrie," typed copies of the collection are on deposit in the Archive of American Folk Song. A photocopy of the original manuscript in Woody's hand and typescript is on microfilm in the Music Division of the Libraryof Congress. This collection contains texts of two hundred songs Woody sang over the radio in California to his Okie and political audiences on the West Coast. A breakdown shows half of the songs to be of Guthrie's own authorship, the rest being divided roughly into 6o percent folksongs and 40 percent hillbilly items, parlor ballads, or sentimental religious pieces. Among the traditional songs are versions of three Child ballads ("Barbara Allan," "Gypsy Davy," and "The Golden Vanity") and more 23

Interview with Alan Lomax, August

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1966.