Eclectic Company: Woody’s 100th

When Carolyn Woosley and George Swift and I formed the Music Museum of Southwest Louisiana to celebrate our area’s rich musical heritage, we quickly learned that the class of 1912 had produced an enormously creative, inventive and talented group of musicians, many of whom were still living. So our first projects were to collect and archive interviews with and information about those then 90+ year-olds including jazz pianist, composer and vocalist Nellie Lutcher, Good Shepherd Episcopal Church organist George Kreamer, two lifetime members of the Hackberry Ramblers — fiddler Luderin Darbone and accordionist Edwin Duhon — and Eddie Shuler, Cajun swing vocalist and bandleader, and owner of Gold Band Records (where Dolly Parton’s first single, “Puppy Love” was recorded) and Eddie’s Music House, an album and instrument emporium.

This year marks the 100th birthday of the class of 1912. As it turns out, that was an auspicious year for the arts fields throughout the country, as many vital actors, artists and musicians were born then, including Perry Como, Minnie Pearl, John Cage, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Sir George Solti. Among that stellar group was Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (born July 14, yes, Bastille Day), the Dust Bowl Balladeer from Okemah, Oklahoma (and father of Arlo Guthrie of “Alice’s Restaurant” fame) who fired the imaginations of Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, among an uncountable number of folksingers and singer-songwriters in succeeding generations, up to the present day. Woody is the composer of “This Land Is Your Land,” “Roll On Columbia,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Sinking of the Reuben James,” “Hard Travellin’,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos),” “So Long It’s Been Good To Know You,” and many other songs about America’s working people and their real lives, some of which were commissioned for an uncompleted film about the Grand Coulee Dam that the Bonneville Power Commission was building on the Columbia River.

After leaving the dust bowl of Oklahoma for California during the Great Depression — a trek made by many thousands, as depicted movingly in The Grapes of Wrath — Woody Guthrie developed into the social critic and colloquial commentator he’s remembered as. He became a “fellow traveler” (non-member supporter) of the Communist Party, and wrote his “Woody Sez” column of social observations in a rube’s accent for their Daily Worker newspaper, always emphasizing his hillbilly roots, pairing his words with cartoon-like drawings. When his commission to write songs about the Grand Coulee Dam was completed, Woody traveled to New York to join The Almanac Singers (which included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Millard Lampell), a political folksinging group, and over the next few years performed anti-fascist, anti-racist and pro-union songs with the group, writing “Union Maid” and others of the group’s most popular songs. Woody went into the United States Merchant Marine in WWII, and after his discharge, was drafted into the Army. While on furlough, he married and moved to Mermaid Avenue in Brooklyn, the site of his most creative and prolific work as a lyricist and songwriter.

His autobiography detailing his childhood in Oklahoma, Bound For Glory, was first published in 1943, and later adapted for film in the 1970s. Woody’s solo recordings were made mostly in the 1940s, and he toured and performed until he began to succumb to the debilitating effects of Huntington’s Disease (an incurable progressive genetic disorder in which nerve cells in certain parts of the brain waste away, or degenerate, causing dementia, erratic behavior and eventually severe loss of muscle control making ordinary daily living impossible) in the early 1950s, which caused him to be confined to a succession of mental hospitals where his symptoms could be monitored.

After he died in 1967, thousands of pages of Woody’s writings and drawings were archived, and a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating Huntington’s Disease was set up by his family. The archive became a foundation, and Woody’s daughter Nora began to assemble a living legacy to her father, inviting young contemporary performers to collaborate with Woody by composing music to some of his thousands of song lyrics. The result has been nothing short of miraculous. Check out Billy Bragg’s Mermaid Avenue or The Klezmatics Wonder Wheel to get a taste of new Woody Guthrie songs.

Woody’s centennial is being celebrated around the world with academic symposia, musical reminiscences, a Smithsonian Folkways boxed set and other recordings, radio and TV programs, and uncountable singalongs. In just the last month, the POSSLQ and I noted a Woody Guthrie tribute at every concert and festival we attended. You can celebrate Woody at home (sing a few choruses of “This Land Is Your Land” with your kids) or with others. Check out www.woody100.com for some nearby options.

On our way to Massachusetts a few weeks ago, the POSSLQ and I stopped for lunch at The Traveler Restaurant, a perfect combination of food and books in Union, Connecticut. The food was downhome with a modern twist — sandwiches with bursts of unusual flavors and unexpected ingredients, delicious kitchen-sink casseroles like mom might make with whatever was left in the fridge on Thursday night. And everywhere you looked were shelves of hardback and paperback books, intended for diners to read while eating, and to take away for free (up to three of them!) at the end of each meal. The Murdock family explained that this is their contribution to promoting reading, that the books come from remainders of library sales, estate sales, and the books that customers regularly regift them. The POSSLQ snagged Harry Kemelman’s series mystery, Someday The Rabbi Will Leave, and I read some of Art Buchwald’s humorous commentary on his four months-long stay in hospice and surprising temporary recovery, Too Soon To Say Goodbye, but left with Stanley Elkins’ critical study, Slavery: A Problem In American Institutional and Intellectual Life. The place was chockablock with familiar bestsellers, classics, oddball novels, and nonfiction of every description, with plenty of children’s books and even a few shelves of CDs. “Those free too?” I asked the waitress. With her nod, I swept out with a fair copy of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. Bonus!