"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."
— Woody Guthrie
The great Woody Guthrie was born on this day in 1912 in a small town somewhere in Oklahoma. Anyone familiar with his songs knows that he was a poetically raw songwriter, a troubadour for the troubled, a rough-around-the-edge songster who captured the voice of the disenfranchised.
He had the gritty voice of a weary traveller singing around a campfire. Songs of working-class defiance coalesced with the warmth of storytelling and authenticity. He once said, “Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.”
He sang for the migrants and the factory workers and the people struggling through the Great Depression. He sang for the wanderers and the vagabonds and the people toiling through the Dust Bowl. His most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land," became an anthem of American folk music.
Bob Dylan once said: You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.
In honor of Woody’s birthday, I’d like to share a poem written by the great outlaw poet, Kell Robertson. I hope you enjoy it.
For Woody Guthrie
Out of the dust coughing toward the cool waters of California your people my people Charlie Arthur Floyd people your voice a dry spell on the plains a rusty nail a creaky windmill songs with hard words dry throats working man's hands right down on the ground walking on grandma's grave and a scorn for laws to make money from music that music which came out of hard times of people And the face of a starving child turns into dollars for slick-eyed boys stars only when the rhinestones glitter under the spotlights But back there Zapata swings his rifle around you play your guitar sing everybody's songs and the eyes of man retain the fire to fix the fences or burn the world down.
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