The short list of influential activists who are also musicians from the 20th Century must begin with two men, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. These men were from entirely different backgrounds, yet somehow moved generations of Americans to see the need for justice, equality, and balance in a country with lofty ideals enshrined in its founding documents. The disparity between ideals and actual reality in the United States has been a central bone of contention between moneyed and impoverished American citizens from the beginning of the republic to the present day. The dialogue between the haves and the poverty stricken has never ceased, and today is perhaps the most burning issue in contemporary America. The issues can be framed in numerous ways, but in music, the emphasis has been focused on the plight of average working class men and women. Their daily lives have been struck by economic exploitation and the accompanying misfortunes that living on the edge of homelessness and in poverty bring.
The death of Pete Seeger silenced a generation whose members were first hand witnesses to the Great Depression and the horrible impact it had on families, especially children alive at that time. Woody Guthrie was a progenitor of the music that brought awareness of poverty's impact on the Nation. Born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912, Woody Guthrie's family was hit between the eyes by The Great Depression, with a series of tragedies besetting the family, and causing the disintegration of their tenuous economic health before the Depression was even a year old.
The drought that hit the American Prairie in the Thirties was devastating to a generation of Midwestern Plains dirtfarmers, partially due to subsistence farming methods being used on land probably not fit for farming, and also due to the extended drought that made huge dust storms become the scourge of any farmer and his family that lived in the Great Plains. The term which was employed to describe this horrible condition was The Dust Bowl. Woody Guthrie's family had a farm which was leveled by the drought, and he joined the mass migration of Midwesterners who left The Great Plains for California from 1931 through 1940. California became the Promised Land for these families, and many of them slept on the beaches of California while waiting for some sort of break in their misfortune that would help them find a job. Some Californians were unfriendly to the migrants. The New Deal brought public works projects to California and the West, and many young men joined the Civilian Conservation Corps to improve the infrastructure of The United States.
My own father and mother migrated from Michigan to a top secret town that officially did not exist during World War II in North Central New Mexico. My father was fortunate to find a steady job, and my mother became a substitute teacher in this town, named after the Los Alamos Preparatory School which existed there prior to the second World War. The Hill, as it was called during the War, was a huge boost to the poverty stricken area of Northern New Mexico. The projects across the United States that The New Deal generated employed hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dust Bowl, and it is no coincidence that Woody Guthrie's songs from the late Thirties and early Forties are often about the Dust Bowl and The New Deal.
Of the some 2000+ songs that Woody Guthrie wrote in his brief but prolific career before Huntingtons Chorea took his health away, my favorites are in a collection entitled Dust Bowl Ballads. Originally released in 1940 on Victor, the album is comprised of 14 of Guthrie's most famous songs. A concept album issued 25 years before anyone coined the term, the songs on Dust Bowl Ballads strike a balance between songs that hit you in the gut and songs that hit you in the brain. Woody Guthrie was the consummate story teller, and each song is a story in itself. The entire album appears to be a song cycle about a family named Joad, who parallel the experiences that John Steinbeck chronicled in his The Grapes of Wrath.
Cover Art for the 1964 Folkways Dust Bowl Ballads Reissue
Woody's masterpiece begins with a song called The Great Dust Storm (Dust Bowl Disaster). As with all of the tunes on Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody's presentation is simple, accompanying himself on his guitar. The tune is written in waltz time, and the scope of the tragedy unravels in just over three minutes. In somewhat of a geographical manner, Woody describes the area that was impacted while simultaneously sharing how Dust Bowl victims felt. He sings "we thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom." The storms covered their farms with dust, forcing them to pile into their cars and jalopies, and leave their dreams, never returning.
I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore is a reflection on the aftermath of the dust storms. The topic of being dispossessed of his dreams and nest egg by the "rich man" is broached for the first time. He reflects on being homeless, picking up spot jobs wherever he can, and describes his wife dying on the floor of their cabin before they left. Whatever meager worth their farm had was taken by the bank, the lien holder of the farm. This iconic song has as much meaning today as it did in 1940, with people with mental illness roaming the streets of this country today, cutting their lives short, living the brutal lifestyle of homelessness.
Homelessness in America 2014
Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues recalls the life of a man who trades his farm for a truck in which he hauls whatever he can pick up. The migration to the West Coast is described with reflections on the state of the family riding in the back of the truck, traveling much the way immigrants from Latin America are brought to this country stuffed in hot trucks like sardines in a tin can. Guthrie describes his family being hungry, and his wife cooking up a "potato stew" with potatoes borrowed from other migrants, He closes by saying he hopes his kids will eat the stew. He ends the tune taking a shot at the "fatcat" politicians who he says would have taken away the stew if they could.
Track 4, Vigilante Man, asks just who is a vigilante man....the song describes the insanity of wanton violence, using the struggle of finding a warm place to sleep when homeless only to be chased out of that warm place to illustrate the random violence homeless migrant people encounter. In reflecting on what a vigilante man is, Woody uses actions to define the term. In each scenario Woody sings about, violence and the haves and have nots are used to shine a light on the disregard of the plight of a homeless person by those who have a warm place to sleep and a job. Dust Cain't Kill Me, the next song, uses the dust storm to show the resilience of a person who will not surrender his hope to the numerous misfortunes he and his family have experienced. Guthrie's own resilience is shown in the powerful conclusion to the song, in which he reflects on losing his farm, and other aspects of what was once a sheltered family life.
Track 6, Dust Pneumonia Blues, describes "dust pneumony" and shows the manner in which many miners' health was disregarded by the coal companies of the 20th Century. The physician the song's protagonist sees tells the miner "you ain't got long." Woody shares that "if you want to get a woman, you sing a California song." Pretty Boy Floyd, the next song, tells a story about a criminal who was known as a latter day Robin Hood, committing crimes and sharing his loot with poor farmers and other people who needed help that was not forthcoming from the respectable people with money. The song describes the good turns Mr. Floyd did for the working people of Oklahoma, destroying mortgage documents, paying off debts, and feeding the destitute. Known as the "Robin Hood of the Clarkson Hills," Floyd was protected from arrest by Oklahomans grateful for his generosity. His grisly death at the hands of the FBI is sung about in this song, with Woody reflecting that "some men rob you with a gun, and others with a pen."
The US Post Office Wanted Poster for Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd
Track 8, Blowin' Down This Road (I Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way), reflects the resilience Dust Bowl veterans had, with Guthrie labeling himself as a "Dust Bowl Refugee" The anger this man sings about in his song is reflected in the refrain "I Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way." He sings that his kids need three square meals a day, and that his own feet need $10 shoes because "$2 shoes don't fit." The name Tom Joad is best known to the Rock Music generation as part of an album title by Bruce Springsteen. The two part ballad by Woody Guthrie is a powerful reflection on the migration of a family from Oklahoma to California after the family farm fails. They honor the family patriarch by burying him on the side of the road on the farm, but bury his wife, the matriarch, on the "California side" of the road. The Joads piled in the back of a truck and went to California. Tom Joad has to leave his family, due to killing a vigilante man who shot the preacher who accompanied the Joads to California. The saga is a story of injustice and intolerance of the Joads and fellow Dust Bowl families who migrated West. The song concludes in a manner similar to many working man songs, with Joad telling his elderly mother that he will be wherever poor people and starving children are in the world.
Track 11, Dust Bowl Refugee, is a reflection on the migrant workers who service the large farms in the California Central Valley. The interesting aspect to this song is that Woody makes the Mexican Farm Workers and the Dust Bowl people who came to California a combined force. The protagonist of the song wonders if he will always be a Dust Bowl Refugee. It is easy to see how Cesar Chavez would be inspired by the tunes of Woody Guthrie on this album. Track 12, Do Re Mi, is one of Woody Guthrie's best known songs, and chronicles the warning of a dejected migrant to the Joad family that California is not what everyone believes it to be, and urges the Joad family to turn around and go back to where they came from. The migrants from a variety of states are warned in the song to return to where they began their trip to The Promised Land. Do Re Mi is also notable for the double guitar parts that Woody recorded for the song, which complement each other, establishing the conflicted nature and setting of the song's lyrics.
The album closes with two powerful tracks, Dust Bowl Blues and Dusty Old Dust (So Long Its Been Good to Know Yah). Track 13, Dust Bowl Blues, seems to chronicle the experiences of the song's singer in somewhat of a reflective manner, looking back on the horrible experiences the family went through when they were living in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl years. From that standpoint, the listener is left wondering what the state of the family named Joad is in the years following the migration to California. Dusty Old Dust (So Long Its Been Good to Know Yah) presents a look back to the initial part of the story by the singer, who on his deathbed is remembering what brought him West, and is recorded in waltz time, similar to the album's opening track. The story concludes with a complex double viewpoint, recalling the family saying goodbye to their neighbors in the mid Thirties, and the singer whose story the album tells wishing the listener farewell from his deathbed.
Very few video tapes/films exist of Woody Guthrie performing live. This short snippet of Guthrie singing a song called
Rangers Command, is a cool chance to see his guitar playing, which was extraordinary for the time. The clip dates from 1945.
Rare Woody Guthrie clip from 1945
In what turned out to be a shortened career due to Huntington's Chorea, Woody Guthrie established a benchmark which spawned a generation's interest in folk music and Americana. The Folk Movement of the late Fifties and early Sixties owes its existence to Woody, Pete Seeger, and the field recordings done by the Lomaxes. His prolific songwriting led to a number of his songs remaining unrecorded by Guthrie himself. The website maintained by Guthrie's family is a tremendous resource for learning about this most American of balladeers. This is the site's link:
Official Woody Guthrie website
In reviewing Woody Guthrie's recorded works, Dust Bowl Ballads retains a truthfulness that is at once universal and autobiographical simultaneously. The hardships that the Guthrie family overcame in the Twenties and Thirties remain unknown to most listeners. His sister died and his mother was institutionalized with what was later determined to be Huntington's Chorea when Guthrie was still a teenager. The Guthrie family's experience in the Dust Bowl years in Oklahoma mirrors the experiences the Joad family had on this album. The Great Depression left an indelible mark on people my father and mother's age, young people who were raised through this time of suffering and hardship. Today, it is almost inconceivable to the average American, but with large banks being willing to toy with mortgages, investments, and other measures of middle class prosperity, it is entirely possible that despite the best intentions of people in regulatory roles, that the United States could experience another Great Depression, with another prophet like Woody Guthrie speaking the truth as Woody did in the Thirties and Forties. We can hope that more sensible heads will prevail.
Text copyright 2014 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved
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