注4：Karen Mueller Coombs,《Woody Guthrie: America's Folk Singner》, p89。
Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was elected president in the 1912 election the same year Guthrie was born. His sister died in a tragic fire at their house. He worked as a sign painter. At age 19, he left home for Texas, where he met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children. He used his musical talents to earn money as a street musician and by doing small gigs. He left Texas and his family with the coming of the Dust Bowl era, following the Okies to California. The poverty he saw on these early trips affected him greatly, and many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by the working class. He frequently donated money made from his music gigs and busking to help various peoples and causes. A lifelong socialist and trade unionist, he also contributed a regular column, "Woody Sez," to the Daily Worker and People's World newspapers. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) for some years. Conservatives frequently criticized the ostensibly Communist leanings of Guthrie's work; although he was never actually a member of the party, he did express sympathy towards the party many times, which was not unusual among 1930s folk singers.[1]
In the late 1930s, Guthrie achieved fame in Los Angeles, California, with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music. While appearing on radio station KFVD, a commercial radio station owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat, Guthrie also began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually end up on Dust Bowl Ballads. In 1939, Guthrie moved to New York City and was embraced by its leftist and folk music community. He also made perhaps his first real recordings: several hours of conversation and songs, recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, as well as an album, Dust Bowl Ballads, for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey. He began writing his autobiography, Bound for Glory, which was completed and published in 1943. It later became a motion picture in 1976 (see See Also).
In February 1940, Guthrie wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land." It was inspired in part by his experiences during a cross-country trip and in part by his distaste for the Irving Berlin song "God Bless America", which he considered unrealistic and complacent (and he was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio). The melody is based on the gospel song "When the World's on Fire," best known as sung by the country group The Carter Family around 1930. Guthrie protested class inequality in the final verses:
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing." [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"]
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.
These verses were often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie himself.
In May 1941, Guthrie was commissioned by the Department of the Interior and its Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of the federal dams; the best known of these are "Roll On Columbia" and "Grand Coulee Dam." Around the same time, he joined Pete Seeger in the legendary folk-protest group Almanac Singers, with whom he toured the country, and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.
Guthrie originally wrote and sang anti-war songs with the Almanac Singers, but after America's entry into World War II he began writing anti-fascist tunes. Guthrie famously wrote the slogan "This Machine Kills Fascists" on his guitar. He joined the U.S. Merchant Marine, where he served with fellow folk singer Cisco Houston, and then the U.S. Army.
In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land," along with hundreds of other songs over the next few years.
1943年照片