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Okla-homey
2/23/2009, 07:17 AM
February 23, 1940: Guthrie writes "This Land is Your Land"

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69 years ago today, folk singer Woody Guthrie writes one of his best-known songs, This Land is Your Land.

Born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1912, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie lived and wrote of the real West, a place of hard-working people and harsh environments rather than romantic cowboys and explorers. Though he was a son of a successful politician and businessman, during his early teens his mother fell ill and the family split apart.

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Woody's Okemah, OK birthplace.

For several years, Guthrie spent his summers working as a migrant agricultural laborer. When he was 15, he left home to travel the country by freight train. Among his meager possessions were a guitar and harmonica. Guthrie discovered an eager audience among the hobos and migrant workers for the country-folk songs he had learned in Oklahoma.

In 1937, he traveled to California where he hoped to become a successful western singer. He appeared on several West Coast radio shows, mostly performing traditional folk songs.

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Soon, though, he began to perform his own pieces based on his experiences living among the vast armies of the poor and dispossessed created by the Great Depression.

While in California he also came into contact with the Communist Party and became increasingly sympathetic to its causes. Many of his songs reflected a strong commitment to the common working people, and he became something of a musical spokesman for populist sentiments.

This Land is Your Land, reflected not only Guthrie's support for the common folk, but also his deep love for his country. The verse celebrated the beauty and grandeur of America while the chorus drove home the populist sentiment that the nation belonged to all the people, not merely the rich and powerful.



Original 1944 lyrics:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Islands
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Probably the most famous of his more than 1,000 songs, This Land is Your Landwas also one of his last. Later that year Guthrie moved to New York where his career was soon after interrupted by World War II. After serving in the Merchant Marines, he returned to New York, where he continued to perform and record his old material, but he never matched his earlier prolific output.

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Guthrie's career was cut short in 1954, when he was struck with Huntington's Disease, a degenerative illness of the nervous system that had killed his mother. His later years were spent in a New York hospital where he received visitors like the adoring young Bob Dylan, who copied much of his early style from Guthrie.

Guthrie died in 1967, having lived long enough to see his music inspire a whole new generation and This Land is Your Land become a rallying song for the Civil Rights movement.


I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.

I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work." — Guthrie on songwriting

Bruce Springsteen brought back the song in 2008 at acoustic concerts in support of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, this time adding a "Yes We Can" chant before and after the song.

This Land is Your Land song was sung by Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger, accompanied by Seeger's grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.

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OU4LIFE
2/23/2009, 09:08 AM
Hoyt Axton done us all right too.

not to take away from Guthrie, just sayin.

Soonerchaz
2/23/2009, 09:42 AM
Thanks for the write up.

I've said for years that "Oklahoma Hills" should be the state song.

Rhino
2/23/2009, 12:45 PM
I've said for years that "Oklahoma Hills" should be the state song. It's the official state folk song.

Rhino
2/23/2009, 12:48 PM
There's some great songwriters from Oklahoma:
Hoyt Axton, Mae Boren Axton, Jimmy Webb, Moon Martin, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Roger Miller, Phil Seymour, Dwight Twilley, Lee Hazelwood, Jimmy LaFave...

But none were as good as Woody.

KC//CRIMSON
2/23/2009, 01:35 PM
There's some great songwriters from Oklahoma:
Hoyt Axton, Mae Boren Axton, Jimmy Webb, Moon Martin, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Roger Miller, Phil Seymour, Dwight Twilley, Lee Hazelwood, Jimmy LaFave...

But none were as good as Woody.

+1 David Gates