Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)—dust-bowl balladeer, dedicated advocate of labor unions and other aspects of worker’s rights, passionate anti-fascist, and prolific composer of topical songs—still looms large as a twentieth-century American cultural icon. As I was coming up in the folk music revival of the 1960s and 70s, Guthrie seemed to be almost universally regarded as this movement’s patron saint; a man of pure motives and empathy for the downtrodden who sacrificed much for his causes. And when one of his songs was introduced on stage, a reverent hush would often descend upon the audience. Indeed, his songs were often works of considerable power, in which the dimensions of social inequities were clearly depicted in simple, yet hard-hitting language.
What Guthrie was truly like as a person is something that few of us pondered at the time, but in retrospect this is certainly a question well worth asking. With the aid of Guthrie’s letters, published writings (mostly columns in left-wing publications), and numerous interviews with family members and friends, Ron Briley sets out to provide an answer.
Does he succeed? Yes, in large part. We see Guthrie’s Dust Bowl origins in Okemah, Oklahoma, which brought him exposure not only to the hardships of his neighbors, but also to two important intellectual currents that were to define the way he saw the world—progressive Christianity (Jesus as protector of and advocate for the poor) and what he called “commonism” (a personal take on socialist/communist political thought). We see his charmed life as he moved around the country in the 1930s and early 40s—from Texas to California; and several times between the West Coast and New York City. In each place he landed, it seemed that radio stations rushed to hire him to host shows and publications sought him out to write columns. Once he arrived in New York, around 1940, influential figures in the folk revival such as Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger quickly anointed him as the true voice of the American farmer and worker, adopted him as one of their own, and saw that his music was recorded. Beginning in the mid-1930s he became fixated on defeating fascism in Europe (and at home) and dreamed of a post-fascist world in which society’s resources would be far more equitably distributed. And he suffered mightily following the conclusion of World War II, when this workers’ paradise failed to materialize and the country instead embarked on a period of reaction and red-baiting.
Guthrie was a man almost always in motion - as restless in love as he was geographically. He married three times and had numerous love affairs, a pattern—like so much else in Guthrie’s life—that was cut short in his early 40s by the onset of Huntington’s disease. By 1954, his condition had deteriorated to the point where he had to be permanently confined to a nursing facility, thereby putting an end to both his political activism and musical career.
One important aspect of Guthrie’s life and legacy still remains a mystery. What were the sources of his musical development? When he migrates from Pampa, Texas, to California at the height of the dust bowl and immediately lands work as a performer and writer, he seems fully formed as a musician and bard. What was there about his upbringing and early experiences that nurtured the artist and promoted his development?
I found one aspect of Briley’s approach somewhat troublesome. Although the subtitle describes the work as a “personal exploration,” I was often surprised to find the author interjecting his own experiences (and sometimes those of his parents and relatives) into the narrative as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the action or sitting in judgement on Guthrie’s behavior. And of the dozen illustrative photographs accompanying the volume, fully one-third of them show the author or members of his family posing in front of sites connected to Woody in his two hometowns: Okemah, Oklahoma, and Pampa, Texas.
These points are relatively minor, however, and all in all, after having perused Briley’s
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[Review length: 684 words • Review posted on March 4, 2021]