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Woody Guthrie. Courtesy of the Library of Congress hide caption

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Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Woody Guthrie.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Some have called "This State Is Your Land" an culling national anthem. Others say it'southward a Marxist response to "God Bless America." It was written and showtime sung past Woody Guthrie. Over time, it's been sung by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Folklorist Nick Spitzer has the story of an American classic.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was built-in in 1912 in Okemah, Okla. He recorded "This Land Is Your Land" during a marathon April 1944 session in New York for Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records. Guthrie was on shore leave from the Merchant Marines, one of his many occupations during the Depression and war years.

Growing upwards in small-town Oklahoma, Guthrie heard church hymns, outlaw ballads, blues, dabble tunes and popular music. The Guthries had been fairly prosperous — Woody's father was a pocket-sized-time political leader and businessman — only the family unraveled in the topsy-turvy oil economy of the '20s and '30s. The Guthrie family relocated to Pampa, Tex., after Woody's mother was committed to a mental institution for a mysterious nervous condition. That's when Woody took to the route.

As a male child, he'd already proven himself to be a gifted street entertainer — dancing, playing guitar and harmonica, making upward songs as he went. Words and music became a growing passion for him.

Original Lyrics

"This Land Is Your Land" wasn't released past Folkways until 1951, but the song was originally written in February 1940, when Woody Guthrie showtime arrived in New York City from Oklahoma. Guthrie had a keen ear for the recordings of Virginia's Carter Family, and he was not afraid to borrow. A 1930 gospel recording, "When the World's on Burn," sung by the Carters, must take provided the tune for what would get "This Country Is Your Land."

Musician, activist and Guthrie's fellow traveler Pete Seeger has probably sung "This Land" more than anyone else. He says that Guthrie made adept use of the pop melodies of the day.

"He tended to write words first, and later on on picked out a tune," Seeger says. "Woody in one case said, 'When I'chiliad writing a song and I get the words, I look effectually for some tune that has proved its popularity with the people.'"

Social Commentary

A man happier on the road than at home, he'd walked, hitched and ridden the rails all over the state. He went beginning to the Gulf Coast, then west to California, where he joined the half-million and then-called Okies and Arkies — Grit Bowl refugees migrating in search of meliorate lives. Although Guthrie purposefully threw himself into these travels partly to escape family troubles and his disintegrating first marriage, what he saw and experienced as he cris-crossed the country contributed to his emergence as a social commentator.

He was irritated past Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," sung by Kate Smith, which seemed to be endlessly playing on the radio in the tardily 1930s. And so irritated, in fact, that he wrote this song as a retort, at beginning sarcastically calling it "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land." Guthrie's original words to the song included this verse:

In that location was a large high wall in that location that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said 'Private Property.'
Only on the backside, information technology didn't say nothing.
This state was made for you and me.

This verse was recorded by Moses Asch in 1944, but non released. In fact, Guthrie'southward recorded version was more than or less lost until Smithsonian archivist Jeff Place heard the acetate master during a 1997 transfer of the recording to a digital format. Still, information technology was sung at rallies, around campfires and in progressive schools. Information technology was these populist lyrics that had appealed to the political Left in America.

Radical Verses

Guthrie'due south folk-singing son, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger take both fabricated a point of singing the more radical verses to "This Land Is Your State," also reviving another verse that Guthrie wrote but never officially recorded. This verse was scribbled on a sheet of loose-leaf paper now in the possession of daughter Nora'south Woody Guthrie Archives.

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple,
by the relief office I saw my people.
Equally they stood hungry,
I stood there wondering if God blest America for me.

Nora Guthrie says she has an idea why these words may not take been recorded at the 1944 session — and why the 'private holding' poetry that was recorded was not issued. "This is the early '50s, and [U.S. Sen. Joseph] McCarthy'south out there, and information technology was considered dangerous in many ways to tape this kind of material," she says.

"If my dad had washed the recording, I don't call back it would have meant annihilation to him if he was imprisoned, actually," she says. "He was quite used to living without and having nights in prison and things similar that. Similar most of the things, if we're talking about my dad, it gets very complex here. So I think, you know, The Weavers originally just recorded the beginning 3 verses — which, in one way, was very, very helpful to my dad, because we had no money. So thank God that they recorded something, and our family was able to get some royalties from that."

After in his life, Guthrie lost his ability to play guitar and sing, just he continued to write and inspire a younger generation of performers. Bob Dylan and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg and the ring Wilco — these are just some of the musicians who have followed in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie. When Guthrie recorded "This Country Is Your State," he ended with this verse:

When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling,
With the wheat fields waving, the dust clouds rolling,
The voice come up a-chanting, and the fog was lifting.
This country was made for y'all and me.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2000/07/03/1076186/this-land-is-your-land