Woody Guthrie: His Life, Music and Myth

De: Stan Paregien Sr

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

You know many of Woody Guthrie’s songs: “This Land Is Your Land,” “Oklahoma Hills,” “The Sinking of the Reuben James,” “So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” “Roll On, Columbia,” “Union Maid,” “This Train Is Bound for Glory,” “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” and on and on. Now author Stan Paregien Sr makes it easy to learn more about the man himself and his philosophy, and to perhaps dispel a myth or two about him. This Kindle e-book is a carefully researched yet highly readable story of the diverse influences upon singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie and his continuing strong influence on generations of singers, writers and the ordinary folks whom he loved. The e-book has more than 300 pages of text and some 70 photos and illustrations. It is light on photos specifically of Woody because the Woody Guthrie Archives will not license anything for e-books. But there are detailed references to where Guthrie’s photos and lyrics may be found online and/or in standard books. And there are lots of links to videos of Woody’s music online. Guthrie, born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912, lived a hard life. Though born into a middle-class family, that situation turned sour and scratching out a living became an everyday battle. Then the family faced gigantic challenges which came in rapid-fire succession. That included (1) the terrible drought conditions in the mid-west during the late 1920s; the catastrophic years of the Great Depression starting in 1929; and the Dust Bowl days starting in the early 1930s and lasting most of the decade. One had to be very strong just to survive. Still, Woody Guthrie was determined to make his own way in life and to do it his way, using his voice and guitar, his typewriter and pen as his working tools. He became the voice of hard-hit people, everyone from union workers barely getting by to those immigrant day-laborers and sharecropping farmers who were starving without anyone seeming to care. That voice of protest was soon heard on small radio stations and in articles in small newspapers, but he also pressed their case on national radio shows and in well-known newspapers. When Guthrie died in 1967 in New York City, his life cut short at age 55 by the ravages of the same Huntington’s Disease which killed his mother, he was well on the way to becoming the founding father of modern folk music. His combination of powerful verbal images and simple—often borrowed—melodies worked to popularize his call for changes to the economic institutions in America to make them responsive to the needs of the poor and under-employed. Guthrie aimed his music (nearly 3,000 songs) and his books and drawings and poems at the common people. And in the same way, Stan Paregien Sr aims his e-book squarely at the ordinary people of the world. Scholars can find valuable information here, but the language and the format are right in line with one of Guthrie’s dictums: keep it simple.