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Prophet Singer Prophet Singer THE VOICE AND VISION OF WOODY GUTHRIE MARK ALLAN JACKSON UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON AMERICAN MADE MUSIC SERIES ADVISORY BOARD DAVID EVANS, GENERAL EDITOR JOHN EDWARD HASSE BARRY JEAN ANCELET KIP LORNELL EDWARD A. BERLIN FRANK MC ARTHUR JOYCE J. BOLDEN BILL MALONE ROB BOWMAN EDDIE S. MEADOWS SUSAN C. COOK MANUEL H. PEÑA CURTIS ELLISON DAVID SANJEK WILLIAM FERRIS WAYNE D. SHIRLEY MICHAEL HARRIS ROBERT WALSER www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Frontis: An illustration of the vigilante actions of various “Citizens Committees,” c. 1946. Sketch by Woody Guthrie. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Archives. Copyright © 2007 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition 2007 ϱ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, Mark Allan. Prophet singer : the voice and vision of Woody Guthrie / Mark Allan Jackson. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (American made music series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57806-915-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-57806-915-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Guthrie, Woody, 1912–1967. 2. Folk singers—United States—Biography. 3. Folk music—Social aspects—United States. I. Title. ML410.G978J33 2007 782.42162Ј130092—dc22 [B] 2006020846 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS [ vii ] PROLOGUE [ 3 ] GIVING A VOICE TO LIVING SONGS CHAPTER ONE [ 19 ] Is This Song Your Song Anymore? REVISIONING “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND” CHAPTER TWO [ 48 ] Busted, Disgusted, Down and Out DOCUMENTING THE STORIES OF AMERICA’S AGRICULTURAL WORKERS CHAPTER THREE [ 93 ] The Poor, Hard-Working Man Blues DOCUMENTING THE TROUBLES OF OTHER AMERICAN WORKERS CHAPTER FOUR [ 127 ] Skin Trouble DOCUMENTING RACE AND REDEMPTION CHAPTER FIVE [ 166 ] Stepping Outside the Law CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN GUTHRIE’S OUTLAW SONGS [ v ] CHAPTER SIX [ 204 ] That Union Feeling TRACING A VISION OF A BETTER WORLD EPILOGUE [ 253 ] THIS SCRIBBLING MIGHT STAY NOTES [ 259 ] INDEX [ 293 ] [ vi ] CONTENTS Acknowledgments Many people and institutions must be recognized for their help in making this book possible. I have to start off by mentioning certain friends who shared their enthusiasm about music with me. So I salute Casey Whitt, John Snyder, Cody Walker, Derek Van Lynn, Maxine Beach, Robin Becker, and David Koen in no particular order. They allowed me to see the deep places in America’s music, made me think about its beauty and meaning. I am also appreciative of the support I received from Louisiana State University and its faculty. Financial support from a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship helped me bring this work to a conclusion. But my deepest gratitude goes to John Lowe and Frank DeCaro for their detailed criticism and unyielding support. Both these scholars challenged my ideas and my writing with sharp comments. Although I claim all faults found here, they helped make this project better than I thought possible. I never doubted their faith in my work. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge the rest of my dissertation committee—Patrick McGee, Carl Freedman, and Pat Marerro—for their contributions. A couple of important archives and their staffs have greatly aided my research and encouraged me personally. I want to give a nod of appreciation to Nora Guthrie and the crew at the Woody Guthrie Archives, especially Jorge Arevalo and Michael Smith, for their kind assistance and permis- sion to quote from their materials. The staff at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center also has helped guide my research on Woody Guthrie and his songs; I owe them much credit. [ vii ] A considerable amount of the research that made this project possible was aided by a Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution (SI) and by the help of certain staff members. In particular, Jeff Place of the Ralph Rinzler Archives at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage provided me guidance through the Woody Guthrie Papers and end- less insight into our nation’s music, and Stephanie Smith was extremely helpful in providing images from the archive for use in this project. I also want to thank the archive as a whole for its kind permission to quote from unpublished materials held there. While I was at the National Museum of American History, both Charlie McGovern and Pete Daniel commented on various sections of this book; they have also helped me immensely simply by being my friends. Needless to say, I owe much thanks to the SI for its overall support. The University Press of Mississippi also offered me much support as this project came to publication. A variety of editors and advisors—David Evans, Kip Lornell, Craig Gill, Anne Stascavage—all skillfully guided my manuscript along. The careful and concerned copyediting by Carol Cox was extremely valuable and valued. Also, the design staff ’s creative force brought extra pizzazz to the book. All their efforts are greatly appreciated. Finally, I want to thank my family, who stood by me even when they were not exactly sure what it was I was doing. My father, Lee Jackson, gave me compassion for all working people and their struggles and a belief that all honest labor is noble and worthy of praise. My mother gave me faith that there was good in the world—all you had to do was look for it. She endowed me with a sympathy for the human condition. Throughout my life, my parents have given me a rock to stand on. They are my church. This book is dedicated to them. [ viii ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Prophet Singer Prologue GIVING A VOICE TO LIVING SONGS At more than one point in his life, writer and political activist Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie ( July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967) broke the world of song into distinct categories: There are two kinds of songs—living songs and dying songs. The dying songs—the ones about champagne for two and putting on your top hat—they tell you that there’s nothing to be proud of in being a worker, but that someday if you’re good and work hard, you’ll get to be boss. Then you can wear white tie and tails and have songs made up about you. I like living songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work, songs that try to make things better for us, songs that protest all the things that need 1 protesting against. Too often, Guthrie believed, the popular media of his day only offered Americans “dying songs,” those voicing giddy visions of glamour and romance, a carefree image far removed from the experiences of the majority of the American people listening to their radios and phonographs. He fur- ther argues, “I did not hear any [songs of protest] on the radio. I did not hear any of them in the movie house. I did not hear a single ounce of our history being sung on the nickel juke box. The Big boys don’t want to hear our his- tory of blood, sweat, work, and tears, of slums, bad housing, diseases, big [ 3 ] blisters or big callouses, nor about our fight to have unions and free speech 2 and a family of nations.” Even while recognizing that much of America’s commercialized music excluded dissenting voices and tranquilized the popu- lace, he also believed that “living songs” could fight against the forces of conformity and complacency and could be a powerful means for equitable societal change. He writes, “Music is a weapon, the same as a gun, and can 3 be used by the slave just the same as by the big boss.” For him, songs have the potential to point out the wrongs done to the majority of Americans even as they could also express a vision of a better, more just nation. As Guthrie was born on Bastille Day and named after Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic presidential candidate at the time, it might seem that he would be automatically inclined to mix dissent and history into his writing. But it was not an inborn sense of injustice that pushed him to make the statements he did, to protest the ills he saw. Hard experience helped direct his work. His own family, once graced with a solid middle-class posi- tion, fell into ruin in the 1920s, suffering an economic decline shared by many others in the rural South and Southwest after World War I. When the Great Depression came to the rest of America in the 1930s, the people whom Guthrie knew best had already experienced almost a decade of decreas- ing return on their labors. While living in Texas during the height of the Depression, he also felt the sting of black dust storms raging the land and saw the plight brought on by drought in the southwestern plains. From his travels out of this area and to the West Coast, he learned of displaced farm- ers from other states and regions, tying their struggles together, especially in the “factories in the field” described by social critic Carey McWilliams in 1939. Guthrie’s understanding of the struggles of other working-class people grew during the early 1940s as he continued traveling the nation and encountering lumbermen, steelworkers, sailors, miners, and other laborers—eventually realizing that only a privileged few never knew hunger or hardship. During this same time period, in part due to his encounters and friendships with a variety of white and black artists with leftist political and social views, he also began to break away from the prevailing prejudices of his time and to advocate for racial groups other than his own.

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