Voice of the People

The gods broke the mold after they made Woody Guthrie, but the shards shine on

The young Dylan was just one of many pilgrims who came out on visitation Sundays to pay respects to the bard. “I remember other people would come out and say, ‘I just wrote a song and I want to play it for Woody Guthrie,’” Nora recalls. “But Bob Dylan never said that. Bob told him, ‘I want to play your songs.’ Because he knew my father wanted to hear that there was a piece of him that was going to stay. That was the medicine he needed: knowing the creation lives on.”

Nora Guthrie may well be reflecting on her own mission. Serving as president of Woody Guthrie Publications, which she co-founded in 1994, she has carefully managed her father’s legacy and his vast artistic output: recordings, lyrics, drawings, paintings, poetry, prose, artifacts, and more than 3,000 songs. The organization’s Vice President is Nora’s daughter and Woody’s granddaughter, Anna Canoni.

The works at the Morgan reveal the breadth of Guthrie’s creativity as well as its fountain-like constancy. From his early years living in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle until he was stymied by Huntington’s in his mid-40s, Woody continually churned out stories and tunes, notes and art — documenting his roaming adventures, speaking out for the downtrodden and dispossessed, entertaining his kids and friends, and railing against tyranny and oppression.

In our current times it’s a lesson in artistic persistence, courage of conviction, and ultimately triumph of spirit. For while Guthrie enjoyed more than his fair share of good times, rapt audiences, and critical accolades throughout his career, his was often a sad and lonely life.

As the exhibition makes clear, “This Land” had a circuitous history: It was revised several times and finally released in 1944, after Guthrie had hooked up with his second wife (and steadfast caretaker) Marjorie, and shortly before he was dispatched to Europe with the US Army. While its six verses reflected Guthrie’s populist political leanings — he was often associated with the US socialist movement and Communist Party, but never actually joined either — they were later trimmed to three, and the tune took on a patriotic hue not unlike the very jingoism it parodied.

“I am often surprised when I hear folks saying that my father wasn’t a good father, that he rambled, that he womanized, that he didn’t bring home the bacon,” writes Nora Guthrie in Songs and Art • Words and Wisdom. “All true. He certainly was not a conventional father. But what is a ‘good’ father?’”

Woody summed up his view in “Child Sitting,” an essay in the book: “Watching kids is the highest form of art in the world. It can be as bitter as a drink of carbolic acid or as sweet as a warm cup of new milk and wild honey.”

There were more hard times to come. Guthrie had become increasingly erratic as a father and husband — to the point where Marjorie threw him out of the home they shared on Brooklyn’s Mermaid Avenue — long before he was officially diagnosed with Huntington’s disease in 1952. (By then he had briefly married his third wife Anneke and fathered one more child, Lorina.) Contracting the rare, dreadful disease that took his mother, Woody lost his mobility and freedom, as well as his writing chops, though his creative embers still glow in some final works in the exhibition.

I don’t know, I may go down or up or anywhere
But I feel like this scribbling might stay

Maybe if I hadn’t of seen so much hard feelings
I might not could have felt other people’s

So when you think of me, if and when you do,
Just say, well, another man’s done gone
Well, another man’s done gone

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