Woody Guthrie Biography Quotes 4 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known to the world as Woody Guthrie, was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma. His father, Charles Edward "Charley" Guthrie, was active in local politics and real estate during the Oklahoma boom years, while his mother, Nora Belle (Sherman) Guthrie, kept the household and sang old songs that seeped into his memory. The family's fortunes rose and fell with the land booms and busts, and a series of fires and illnesses darkened his childhood. Nora suffered from what would later be understood as Huntington's disease, a hereditary neurological disorder that also affected other family members and profoundly shaped Woody's life. After family tragedies and financial collapse, Woody spent part of his adolescence in Pampa, Texas, where he learned harmonica, guitar, and fiddle, and found a kind of education in libraries, on street corners, and through the people he met.

Learning the Road and the Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl years were the crucible of Guthrie's sensibility. He watched wind strip the topsoil from the Texas Panhandle and listened to the stories of neighbors losing farms, homes, and hope. As migrants from Oklahoma and Texas drifted westward, he busked, hitched rides, and worked odd jobs, absorbing the language and rhythms of the road. The music he made in these years was steeped in old ballads and hymns yet unmistakably new, filled with plainspoken observation and biting humor. He married young and supported himself however he could, often with his guitar and harmonica, writing songs that told the stories of people living through drought, foreclosure, and displacement.

California Radio and Writing the Dust Bowl Ballads
By the mid-1930s Guthrie had arrived in California, where refugee camps and farm-labor struggles gave him new subjects. In Los Angeles he performed on radio station KFVD, partnering with Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman, and became known for topical songs and banter that championed migrants and workers. He wrote pieces for newspapers and developed his plainspoken editorial voice in a column often titled "Woody Sez". In these years he wrote many of the songs that defined him: "I Ain't Got No Home", "Do Re Mi", "Vigilante Man", "So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh", and "Pastures of Plenty". Actor Will Geer helped introduce him to progressive circles, union halls, and the theater world, further sharpening his politics and broadening his audience.

New York: Almanac Singers and the Folk Left
In 1940 Guthrie went east to New York City, where folklorist Alan Lomax recorded long interviews and performances for the Library of Congress that captured both his songs and his storytelling. Around the same time, he recorded the landmark "Dust Bowl Ballads" for a major label, one of the first concept albums in American music. In Greenwich Village he moved into the network that became the Almanac Singers with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell, later joined by Bess Lomax Hawes and others. They sang in union halls, on picket lines, and at benefit concerts, advocating for labor rights and, later, antifascist unity. New York also brought him into contact with record man Moses "Moe" Asch, who would capture hundreds of Guthrie's performances, including children's songs and story-songs, on the small independent labels that evolved into Folkways Records.

War Years and Bound for Glory
During World War II Guthrie served in the Merchant Marine on dangerous Atlantic convoys alongside Cisco Houston and shipmate Jim Longhi. They sang to crews, wrote about sailors and submarines, and narrowly survived torpedo attacks. Later he did stateside Army service, continuing to perform for troops and workers. In 1943 he published his rambunctious and lyrical autobiography, "Bound for Glory", which mixed picaresque episodes with sharp observation and helped cement his public legend as a traveling troubadour. Throughout the war and immediately after, he kept up a torrent of songwriting, campaigning against fascism and for democratic ideals. His guitar famously carried the motto "This machine kills fascists", a slogan that captured the spirit of his work.

Return to New York, Family, and Prolific Recording
After the war Guthrie settled mostly in New York. He married dancer Marjorie Mazia, a member of the Martha Graham company, and the couple made a home in Coney Island. Their domestic life inspired a remarkable series of recordings for Moe Asch, including "Songs to Grow On" and "Nursery Days", in which Guthrie's humor and tenderness shone as brightly as his politics. A family tragedy in the mid-1940s deepened their bond and Marjorie's resolve to help him channel grief into work. They welcomed children, among them Arlo Guthrie, who would become a prominent singer and songwriter in his own right, and Nora Guthrie, who later guided the Woody Guthrie Archives and projects that brought his unpublished lyrics to new audiences. Close collaborators and friends such as Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger remained in his circle, and manager-promoter Harold Leventhal emerged as an important advocate for Guthrie's music.

Public Commissions and Topical Mastery
Guthrie's partnership with Alan Lomax led to a brief commission in the Pacific Northwest to write songs about hydroelectric projects for the federal Bonneville Power Administration. In a burst of creativity he produced pieces such as "Roll On, Columbia" and "Grand Coulee Dam", which linked New Deal public works to a broader, populist idea of American abundance and shared purpose. He also wrote narrative ballads like "The Ballad of Tom Joad", drawing on John Steinbeck's story to voice the plight and dignity of Dust Bowl migrants. Later, he penned "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)", mourning anonymous farmworkers killed in a crash and condemning the erasure of their names; the melody widely sung today was composed later by Martin Hoffman, but the lyrics are pure Guthrie, plain and piercing.

Illness, Hospitals, and the Folk Revival
By the late 1940s Guthrie's health began to falter, with mood swings and involuntary movements that baffled doctors until Huntington's disease was recognized as the cause. The condition gradually curtailed his performing life. Through long stays at institutions such as Brooklyn State Hospital and Greystone Park, he continued to write when he could, visited by friends who sang his songs back to him. Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, and others kept his repertoire alive. A young Bob Dylan sought him out, visiting him in the hospital and paying tribute with the early song "Song to Woody". As the late-1950s and early-1960s folk revival gathered steam, Guthrie's work became a touchstone for a new generation. His songs were recorded and performed by the Weavers, Odetta, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Dylan, and later by artists as varied as Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg.

Death and Legacy
Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, in New York City, from complications of Huntington's disease. After his death, Harold Leventhal worked with Marjorie and the Guthrie family to organize major tribute concerts that introduced his songs to even wider audiences. The family, especially Nora Guthrie, played a central role in preserving and curating his vast legacy of lyrics, drawings, and manuscripts, enabling collaborations that set his unrecorded words to new music. "This Land Is Your Land", written in 1940 as a populist rejoinder to sanitized patriotism, became one of the most enduring American songs, sung in classrooms, on picket lines, and at national ceremonies. Beyond the individual titles, Guthrie's achievement lies in how he widened the subject matter of American song, granting a voice to migrants, sharecroppers, sailors, children, and the unemployed, and doing so with a conversational wit that seemed to belong to everyone. Through collaborators like Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, and Moe Asch, and through the artistry of his children, particularly Arlo, his work continues to circulate as living tradition: plain, insistent, and unafraid to call the world by its right name.

Our collection contains 4 quotes who is written by Woody, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Puns & Wordplay - Freedom - Embrace Change.

Other people realated to Woody: Bob Dylan (Musician), Tom Glazer (Musician), Joe Strummer (Musician), Joe Klein (Journalist), Dave Van Ronk (Musician)