Woody Guthrie, American Radical (review)

At the inauguration ceremonies of newly elected US President Obama crowds cheered as folk singer and veteran activist Pete Seeger stepped out alongside rock star Bruce Springsteen to sing Woody Guthrie’s anthem to the people – “This Land Is Your Land.” This time the song, written as Guthrie’s response to the ultra-patriotic “God Bless America”, was performed as originally written with the inclusion of two essential verses (one an attack on private property greed, the other identifying the grim reality of poverty), so often deleted from schoolbook texts, song collections and even labour music songbooks published by trade unions. In the final years of his life, physically ravaged by the debilitating effects of Huntington’s disease, Guthrie despaired over what would become of his musical and political legacy. Would it too be ravaged by the diseases of anti-communist hysteria, of McCarthyism, Cold War rhetoric, commercial censorship and even the conservative ideological shift in the ranks of organized labour? His concern was warranted. Singers and songwriters in years to follow often copied him in form, but not in content.

In the past two decades musicians have reawakened to a past tradition of what is now referred to as folk, world and roots music. This has been paralleled in the past decade by a growing body of a music of resistance by songwriters expressing social concerns in tandem with worldwide protests against global neoliberalism and economic crises. Guthrie has been increasingly acknowledged by more well known popular music celebrities as a musical influence, but his hard-edged politics has often been played down perhaps for the purposes of commercial consumption.

One can purchase a T-shirt of Guthrie holding his guitar upon which he handpainted the now famous scrawl “This machine kills fascists.” The smoking cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth in the original photo has been conveniently airbrushed out. This seemingly small change of image is symbolic of the moderated political discourse which soft-pedals Guthrie’s hard political edges. He is recognized as the songwriter who fought for “social justice” instead of socialism, singing songs for “the people” instead of the working class, the economically and politically dispossessed. His travels and flights from family are often portrayed as mere “wanderlust” and not placed in the context of a politically driven performer who took his music directly to the very working class he sang about.

To his credit author William Kaufman clears the decks from the first page by reprinting Guthrie’s poem “Socialismo,” a mixture of political acumen, humour and homespun dialect recognizing that the process of constructing a new world would be no easy struggle: “My name is called Socialism . . . If I do happen to tear a part of your house down on my way growing up towards the sky, don’t be afraid. I’ll fix it back a whole lot better than I found it.”

Reviewing the massive collected works of Guthrie, published and unpublished songs, poetry, political commentaries, personal letters, radio talks and interviews alongside the reminiscences of close musical compadres Kaufman provides a clearer insight into an artist politically committed, thoughtful, outspoken, often frustrated and angry with those who did not share his passion. Kaufman’s criticism of former biographies is that Guthrie’s politics have too often been lost in the intimate details of his personal idiosyncrasies, the effects of his later affliction of Huntington’s disease, personal family tragedies, his sexual meandering and infidelities. Ed Cray’s biography (Ramblin’ Man, 2004) makes much of Guthrie’s non-proletarian class background and stresses that the singer was not one of the Oklahoman thirties farmers Dust Bowl refugee. Guthrie’s father was a landowner, a real estate agent and vociferously anti-socialist. While Kaufman acknowledges this he places this in a broader historical context noting that Oklahoma was no conservative political backwater. The state had a substantial and lasting tradition of left-wing ferment including a vibrant Debsian Socialist Party that rivalled the party centres of the east, the Social Gospel tradition, prairie socialism and farm...