British protest singer billy bragg and will coffman. History has a habit of repeating itself every now and then and the songs that he was riding in the 1930s an 1940s and 50s can often have an amazing relevance for what is going on now. I think it is about time people started listening to Woody Guthrie again. And we hear the legendary folk singer pete seeger describe his first meeting with Woody Guthrie. He took over for 20 minutes and entranced everybody. I come from oklahoma, you know. It is a rich state. If you want lead, we have lead. If you want coal, we have coal in oklahoma. Woody guthrie. All that and more coming up. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Amy goodman commemorations are being held across the country this year to mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the countrys greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie. Born on july 14, 1912, in okemah, oklahoma, guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs, including this land is your land, pastures of plenty, pretty boy floyd, do re mi and this song, the rangers command. Narrator two fragments of film survive of guthrie performing. One of them, lost in the archives for 40 years has only just come to light. Woody guthrie [singing] but the rustlers broke on us in the dead hours of night; she rose from her blanket, a battle to fight. She rose from her blanket with a gun in each hand, said come all of you cowboys, fight for your land. Amy goodman a rare 1945 video recording of Woody Guthrie. Known as the dust bowl troubadour, guthrie became a major influence on countless musicians, including bob dylan, Bruce Springsteen, pete seeger and phil ochs. While Woody Guthrie is best remembered as a musician, he also had a deeply political side. At the height of mccarthyism, guthrie spoke out for labor and civil rights and against fascism. He died in 1967 after a long battle with huntingtons disease. But his music lives on. Over the next hour, well hear from folk singer pete seeger, the british musician billy bragg and the historian will kaufman. But first, Woody Guthrie, in his own words, being interviewed by the musicologist Alan Lomax Alan Lomax what did your family do . What kind of people were they, and where did they come from . Woody guthrie well, they come in there from texas in the early day. My dad got to oklahoma right after statehood. He was the first clerk of the county court in okemah, oklahoma, after statehood, as he is known as one of them old, hardhitting, fistfighting democrats, you know, that run for office down there, and they used to miscount the votes all the time. So every time that my dad went to town, it was common the first question that i ask him when he come riding in on a horse that evening, id say, well, how many fights did you have today . And then hed take me up on his knee, and hed proceed to tell me who he is fighting and why and all about it. Put her there, boy. Well show these fascists what a couple hillbillies can do. Alan lomax where did you live . On a farm . Woody guthrie well, no, i was born there in that little town. My dad built a sixroom house. Cost him about 7,000 or 8,000. And the day after he got the house built, it burned down. And then hed take me up on his knee, and hed proceed to tell me who he is fighting and why and all about it. Alan lomax what kind of a place was okemah . How big was it, when you remember it, when you were a kid . Woody guthrie well, in them days, it was a little town, about 1,500, and then 2,000. A few years later, it got up to about 5,000. They struck some pretty rich oil pools all around theregrayson city and slick city and cromwell and seminole and bowlegs and sand springs and springhill. And all up and down the whole country there, they got oil. Got some pretty nice old fields round okemah there. Alan lomax did any of the oil come in your family . Woody guthrie no, no, we got the grease. Amy goodman Woody Guthrie being interviewed by alan lomax. We turn now to will kaufman, author of the new book, Woody Guthrie, american radical. Kaufman is a professor of American Literature and culture at the university of central lancashire, england. Hes also a musician whos hes also a musician whos performed hundreds of musical presentations on Woody Guthrie. I interviewed will kaufman recently and asked him to talk about Woody Guthries childhood. Musical presentations on Woody Guthrie. I interviewed will kaufman recently and asked him to talk about Woody Guthries childhood. Will kaufman well, he was born in okemah, oklahoma, as you said, in 1912. He was born to a middleclass, fairly rightwing family. His father, Charlie Guthrie, was a smalltown politician, a Real Estate Agent and klan supporter, supporter of the ku klux klan. Amy goodman some said he was a klansman. Will kaufman yeah, theres no documentary evidence to firmly establish that Charlie Guthrie was a member of the klan, but theres no doubt that he supported them. Theres some anecdotal evidence that he sometimes rode out with them on their adventures and may have participated in a lynching. That affected woody years later. But theres no indication that woody was particularly all that political when he was growing up in okemah. And then after a number of family tragedies, like the burning down of their house, the death of his older sister in a house fire, the nearfatal burning of his father in a third fire, and the incarceration of his mother in the Oklahoma State mental asylumshe wasnt crazy; she had the misunderstood and undiagnosed huntingtons diseasewhere after all these tragedies, woody went to join his father in another boomto bust oil town in the texas panhandle, a place called pampa, texas. He dropped out of high school after two years, became a sign painter, married, had his first two children, and then sat there and watched as the dust bowl hit the center of the United States, and, you know, tens of thousands of square miles of destroyed farmland just wiped out. Woody was there. And he began to write about the dust. Woody guthrie [singing] back in nineteen twentyseven, i had a little farm and i called that heaven. Well, the prices up and the rain come down, and i hauled my crops all into town i got the money, bought clothes and groceries, fed the kids, and raised a family. Rain quit and the wind got high, and the black ol dust storm filled the sky. And i swapped my farm for a ford machine, and i poured it full of this gasiline and i started, rockin an a rollin, over the mountains, out towards the old peach bowl. Will kaufman some of those dust bowl ballads come out of, really, his late teens and early twenties, you know. Then he joined about halfa million other migrants heading westwards towards california, where they had heard there was lots of work out thereand, of course, they were wrong. And its there in california when woody getshe sort of hooks up with the right people, i suppose, and gets involved in the popular front out there in california, and this is the beginning ofreally, of his politicization. As you said, began writing columns for the peoples world out there andin los angeles, and got a show on a progressive radio station, kfvd, out in los angeles, and begins to circulate around the migrant camps, where the okies, as they were pejoratively called, were living in old dwellings of tar, paper and tin and old packing crates and the bodies of abandoned cars, under railroad bridges, by the side of rivers and what have you, and getting their heads broken when they dared to organize into unions. And woody began to witness that and began to write about it. And so, he began to see music as a political weapon then. Amy goodman will kaufman, talk about 1937, the turning point for Woody Guthrie as he takes on racial issues in this country. Will kaufman yeah, hehe arrived in california, i think, with the influence of having grown up in a state dominated by the klan and growing up in a family that supported the klan. He wasnt all that racially enlightened when he went out to california. Theres evidence in the archives that he would, you know, write these mock poems about africansAfrican Americans are bathing on the beach in santa monica with theyou know, giving off the ethiopian smell and with jungle rhythms pounding in their veins. And hed happily sing songs using the nword and words like coons and stuff like that, which were part of that White Mountain tradition. And so, hes on this radiogivinl and station sometime in 1937, and he announces that hes going to play a song from Uncle Dave Macon on the grand ole opry, and gid tanner and the skillet lickers, as well, recorded it, a lovely song called run, nigger, run. And he announces it, and he plays it. And he gets a letter from a member of his listening audience the next day. And i know that letter by heart. Ive seen it. He says, you were getting along pretty well on your program tonight, until you announced your nigger blues. Im a negro, a young negro in college. And i certainly resented your remark. No person or person of any intelligence uses that word over the radio today. And that letter really hit woody like a slap in the face. He was mortified. He apologized profusely on the air the next day. He made a big point of dramatically tearing out the song sheet from his notebook and tearing it to shreds and promising he would never use that word again. And as he later said, i apologize to the negro people for the frothings that i let slip out of the corners of my mouth. So this is the beginning of his conversion, i suppose, to eventually becoming one of the most ardent champions and activists for racial equality. Amy goodman you mentioned the lynching that occurred a year before he was born that his father will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman may well have been involved with. Will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman talk about how it came back. Will kaufman well, there wasabout a year before woodys birth, there was a policeman in okemah named george loney, who went to the house of a fellow named nelson, going to arrest him. I think the charge was sheep stealing or something minor like that. And i dont think nelson was there. But certainly his wife laura and his 12yearold son lawrence and a little baby, they were there. And this policeman was apparently very violent, very threatening. And Young Lawrence thought that his mother was in danger, and he grabbed a rifle, shot this policeman in the leg. Policeman bled to death on their front lawn. Lynch mobwell, first of all, laura and lawrence and the baby are brought to the jail near okemah. And then, about a week later, a lynch mob breaks into the jail, drags them to the Canadian River railroad bridge just outside of okemah. Laura was lynched. Lawrence, 15yearold13 to 15 yearold boy, was lynched, after being sexually humiliated in public. And the baby is left crying by the side of the road. And the citizens of okemah were so pleased with their handiwork that soon they were selling postcards to commemorate it. And woody saw that postcard, and he actually wrote a song about that. If you want to hear it, i can do it. He never recorded it. Its called dont kill my baby and my son. [singing] as i walked down that old dark town in the town where i was born, i heard the saddest lonesome moan that i ever heard before. My hair it trembled at the roots cold chills run down my spine, as i drew near that jail house i heard this deathly cry dont kill my baby and my son, dont kill my baby and my son. You can stretch my neck from that old river bridge, but dont kill my baby and my son. Amy goodman will kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, american radical. How do you know that melody and that song if Woody Guthrie never recorded it . Will kaufman yeah, ive seen the words. Woody really didnthe didnt write any music. He only wrote lyrics, effectively. I mean, he mayi think he wrote one mandolin tune called woodys rag or Something Like that. But effectively, what he would do is, for the most part, he would write lyrics down, and sometimes he would actually say, you know, to be sung to the tune of streets of laredo or something, and he would have a folk song in his head or even a song that, like, a friend of his like leadbelly wrote. He didnt really care. You know, hed stealhed steal music, you know, right and left, and admit it. So, for that one in particular, for instance, you could tellif you know the american traditional, you know, folk repertoire, you could tell sometimes what kind ofwhat song he had as a pattern in his head. And i could tell by reading the lyrics that he had the old tune wild bill jones in his head, so i just put it to wild bill jones. Amy goodman in 1940, Woody Guthrie moves to new york. Will kaufman right. Amy goodman why . Will kaufman he moves to new york because he has been involved in the labor struggles in the californian fields, in kern county, in particular, madera countykern county mostly. And, well, there were quite a few defeats in the californian fields at that point, and he befriended will geer, who people may know. Later on, he was the actor who played grandpa walton in the waltons. Well, he was a very good friend of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, political activist, communist activist. And geer was going to new york to star in tobacco road, a broadway version of tobacco road, and suggested to woody, look, you know, why dont you come out . Why dont you come out to new york . Theres a lot going on there. And so woody deposited his long suffering family in texas, back in pampa, and hitchhiked to new york in 1940. And that really was the onlyi suppose the only permament home that he had for the rest of his life would have been new york city. Amy goodman and talk about what being in new york meant for him. Who did he meet . What was he singing . Will kaufman well, he was singing some interesting songs, first of allwriting some interesting songs, because as he was hitchhiking north and east our of texas in that bitter cold new year of 1940, all hes hearing on the radio is kate smith singing irving berlins God Bless America. And thatsthat was the big hit of the year. And woody hated that song. Kate smith [singing] God Bless America some interesting songs, because as he was hitchhiking north and eastland that i love. Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above. Will kaufman now, i mean, theres two ways you can look at that song. You can look at God Bless America, written by irving berlin, all rightits the fearful prayer, almost, of a European Jewish immigrant to the United States whos nervously watching the rise of fascism in europe and praying that it wont happen over here. He actually wrote it back in 1917 and put it away. But, you know, looking at hitler across the sea, hes maybe thinking its time for that song to be resurrected. So thats a charitable way of looking at it. Its not bombastic, its not patriotic; its fearful, and its hopeful. Thats not the way woody saw it. Woody saw it as a strident, jingoistic, complacent, tub thumping anthem to american greatness. And now, he had just come from the dust bowl. Hed just come from the barbed wire gates of californias eden there. Hed seen the hoovervilles. Hed seen the bread lines. Hed seen labor activists getting their head busted. And so, hes thinking, whatgod blesswhat america, you know, is kate smith singing of . So he sits down and writes a song in response to irving berlin, and he calls it god blessed america for me. And later on, he decides to come back to that song and change the title, change the verses, change the refrain, and it becomes this land was made for you and me. And then he puts it away. So, thats one of the songs hes writing in 1940. Woody guthrie [singing] i roamed and rambled and i followed my footsteps to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; and all around me a voice was sounding this land was made for you and me. There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me sign was painted, said private property but on the back side it didnt say nothing this land was made for you and me. Amy goodman lets talk about this land is your land will kaufman ok. Amy goodman and what it became, in fact, for president obamas inauguration. Will kaufman yeah. I think probably the biggest audience, single audience, ever to hear that song was the inaugural concert for barack obama, where Bruce Springsteen and pete seeger sang the restored version. Because, you see, this land is your land has an interesting history. It starts off as god blessed america for me. And it contains a couple of killer anticapitalist verses that i dont remember singing in school, you know . And three of those verses were the ones thati mean, one verse, woody recorded one verse, i believe, in an unreleased version, about excoriating private property. But theres other verses in there. And, you know, thats what petepete said, you know, ill sing this song, as long as i can sing the whole thing, and as i recorded it earlier, so you can hear the progression of that song from the angry and bitter satire that it originally was to the Unofficial National anthem that it became. Amy goodman did springsteen and seeger sing the whole song . Will kaufman they did. They did. They sang the whole thing, and they sang it right into the face of american power, right intothey had to sing it to the president of the United States. There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. Sign was painted saying private property. but on the other side, it didnt say nothing. That side was made for you and me. You know . Big audience for that one. Pete seeger and <