(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Photo Diary: Woody Guthrie Center, Tulsa [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-11 Woody Guthrie is perhaps the best-known of all American folk singers. For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in July 1912 in a tiny little rural Oklahoma town, near the Creek Indian reservation. His father Charles was a land speculator and an official for the local Democratic Party (who named his son Woody after Democratic Presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson). Guthrie later credited his mother Nora with exposing her children to many varieties of music. Woody's childhood was marked by hardship. In 1919 his older sister Clara was killed in a fire which burned down the family home, and his father later lost all his money and fell into debt before being injured in a fire and moving to Texas to be cared for by his brother. In the 1920s, Woody's mother Nora became increasingly erratic, and was eventually institutionalized in a mental asylum. Unknown at the time, she was actually suffering from an inherited degenerative neurological disorder called Huntington's Chorea. During the 1920s, meanwhile, Oklahoma was going through wrenching changes. Originally intended as an "Indian Territory" reservation for east coast Native American nations who had been forcibly relocated west, Oklahoma had been systematically taken over by white Americans and became a US state. In the 1920s, oil was discovered, most of it on Native-owned land, and white swindlers quickly moved in to cheat the Natives out of their money and their land. Just as quickly, the oil fields dried up, and the once-wealthy oil towns now fell into squalor. After graduating high school, Woody went on the road, hitchhiking and riding freight trains around the country while working as a sign painter. After traveling to Texas to be with his father, he met and married his first wife, and they had three children. The marriage later ended in divorce. During his time in Texas Woody learned to play the guitar, fiddle, banjo and mandolin. In 1929, the United States was wracked by the Great Depression, and the west was hit by a wrenching drought that dried up the land and destroyed the soil--an event that became known as "The Dust Bowl". Virtually overnight, farms became worthless and were abandoned, as now-bankrupt ex-farmers trekked west to California hoping to find jobs. They became known as "okies". And one of these was Woody Guthrie. Arriving in Los Angeles, he performed odd jobs for a time before, in 1937, landing a job as a musical act for local radio station KFVD, first with his cousin Jack and then with a local performer who called herself Lefty Lou. Guthrie began writing his own songs, which drew heavily on his own experiences and which sympathized with the downtrodden and dispossessed. (One of his early songs was titled "Dust Bowl Refugee".) Many of his songs were in support of the labor union movement and became anthems on picket lines everywhere, and by 1940 he had become nationally known. He moved to New York City, where he began performing with and writing songs for other folk singers like Leadbelly and Pete Seeger. It was during this time that he wrote or performed many of his most famous songs, including "Union Maid", "Bound for Glory", "So Long, It's Been Good To Know Yuh", and the classic American anthem "This Land Is Your Land" (it was, he later explained, a satirical response to Irving Berlin's popular "God Bless America"). In 1941 he moved to the Pacific Northwest and was hired by the Bonneville Power Authority to write songs promoting the Grand Coulee Dam project. He was also asked to record a number of songs for the Library of Congress. When the US entered World War Two in December 1941, Guthrie joined the Merchant Marine and spent the war on cargo ship convoys, and survived the sinking of three cargo ships that were torpedoed by German U-boats. He also continued to perform whenever he was in the USA, and famously scrawled the slogan "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar. After the Japanese surrender he returned to New York City, where he married again and had four more children, including a son named Arlo--who would go on to become an iconic folk singer of the 1960s. In 1943, now nationally famous, Woody wrote his autobiography, which he titled Bound for Glory. It was turned into a movie in 1976 after his death. In 1952, Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntingtron's Chorea, the same genetic disease that had killed his mother. Over time he became progressively worse, was hospitalized in a mental asylum in California for the next 12 years, and died in October 1967. Guthrie is credited with having written over 3,000 songs (though most were never recorded), and having influenced the musical careers of later performers ranging from Bob Dylan to Joan Baez to Bruce Springsteen. In 1971 he was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and then the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Today, the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa OK is the repository for Guthrie's archives. It preserves handwritten lyrics, letters, photos and recordings. Some photos from a visit. The museum Inside the museum Guthrie’s most famous song Handwritten lyrics to “This Land is Your Land” India ink painting done by Guthrie in the 1940s, titled “When I Grow Big” Handwritten lyrics for “Dust Pneumonia Blues” A series of paintings featuring lyrics from “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” An anti-aircraft shell casing decorated by Guthrie during his time in the Merchant Marine A page from Guthrie’s FBI file One of the very few guitars known to have belonged to Guthrie A Pete Seeger banjo A John Cougar Mellencamp guitar A guitar autographed by the Russian band Pussy Riot Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie A traveling exhibit at the museum: the history of disco. I don’t know why this is here, but there ya go. 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