Is this song your song anymore?: Revisioning Woody Guthrie's "this land is your land"

American Music

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 249-276

  Jackson, Mark Allan ^a  

^a LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049373882     PISSN: 07344392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1350126     Document Type: Review

References (90)

1. Original in Songs 1, Box 3, Folder 27, Woody Guthrie Archives, 250 West 57th Street, New York, N. Y. (hereafter WGA). Pete Seeger states he first heard the song from a recording rather than from Guthrie first-hand. Pete Seeger, "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie," in Woody Guthrie and Kathy Jakobsen, This Land Is Your Land (New York: Little, Brown, 1998), 30.
2. Additionally, when working with him in labor reform circles in California, Seema Weatherwax assumed Guthrie had not written "This Land" when they visited the migrant camps around Los Angeles in early 1940, because he never performed it for the laborers or their families. Seema Weatherwax, interview by Jane Yett, "In Touch with the Human Spirit: On the Road with Woody Guthrie," Californians 10, no. 4 (1993): 33.
3. Clifton Fadiman, "Minstrel Boy," New Yorker 19, no. 5 (March 1943): 68.
4. Songs 1, Box 3, Folder 27, WGA.
5. Generally, the popular version consists of the following chorus and three verses: (Chorus) 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. As I was walking that ribbon of highway, 1 saw above me that endless skyway. I saw below me that golden valley. This land was made for you and me. I've 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. " When the sun came shining and I was strolling As the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling. As the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting, "This land was made for you and me. "©
6. Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (New York: Viking Press, 1990), 155.
7. "What Makes a Song: A Talk with Irving Berlin," New York Times Magazine, July 28, 1940, 7
8. Charles Braun, "Let's Waive 'The Star Spangled Banner,'" Fact 2, no. 1 (Jan- Feb. 1965): 8.
9. Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer, 370.
10. Irving Berlin, Songs of Irving Berlin (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1998), 16.
11. David Ewen, The Story of Irving Berlin (New York: Henry Holt and Co. , 1950), 124
12. and Michael Freedland, A Salute to Irving Berlin (London: W. H. Allen, 1986), 178.
13. The sheet music sales figures from this period appear in the following issues of Variety magazine in 1939: Feb. 15, no. 12; Feb. 22, no. 13; March 1, no. 9: March 8, no. 10; March 15, no. 9; March 22, no. 5; March 29, no. 6; April 5, no. 11; April 19, no. 6; April 26, no. 7; May 3, no. 10; May 10, no. 10; May 17, no. 13; May 24, no. 8; May 31, no. 12; June 7, no. 13; June 28, no. 13; July 12, no. 13.
14. "Footnotes on Headliners," New York Times, July 14, 1940, 4.
15. Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Delta, 1999), 140-41.
16. Woody Guthrie, Sing Out! 17, no. 6 (Dec-Jan. 1967-68): 4.
17. Woody Guthrie, American Folksong (New York: Oak Publications, 1961), 4.
18. Klein, Woody Guthrie, 142.
19. Woody Guthrie, "I Don't Feel at Home on the Bowery No More," Box 2, Folder 3, Woody Guthrie Collection, in the Ralph Rinzler Archives, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. (hereafter WGC).
20. Woody Guthrie, Born to Win (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 146
21. and "'Irving Berlin Tells Adela Rogers St. Johns: 'I'd Like to Write a Great Peace Song,'" New York Journal American, Sept. 4, 1938, F,:3.
22. Woody Guthrie, letter to Alan Lomax, Sept. 19, 1940, Box 1, Correspondence Folder, Woody Guthrie Manuscript Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. In this quotation and in all others used in this article, Guthrie's idiosyncratic prose style and spellings have been retained.
23. Klein, Woody Guthrie, 144
24. Guy Logsdon, "Notes on the Songs," This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, vol. 1 (Smithsonian Folkways Records, 1997): 10
25. and Guy Logsdon, "Woody's Roots," The Music Journal (Dec. 1976): 21.
26. Woody Guthrie, "Mario Russo," in Box 4, Folder 2, WGC.
27. Ernie Marrs, "The Rest of the Song," Broadside, no. 8 (January 1968): 8.
28. Woody Guthrie, letter to Marjorie Mazia, December 17, 1942, 4-6, in Songs 2, Notebook 11, WGA.
29. "Army, Navy Back Bill to Hit Aliens," New York Times, April 13, 1939, 92
30. This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, vol. 1, track 14
31. Box 2, Folder 1, WGC.
32. Gordon Friesen, "Woody Guthrie: Hard Travellin'," Mainstream 16, no. 8 (1963): 5.
33. Jeff Place, interview with author, March 31, 1999. Side 1, track 1, to This Land Is Your Land (Folkways Records, 1951): Seeger, "Tribute to Woody Guthrie," 30.
34. Side 2, track 1, Bound for Glory: The Songs and Story of Woody Guthrie (Folkways Records, 1956)
35. side 1, track 1, Songs to Grow On: American Work Songs, vol. 3 (Folkways Records, 1961)
36. side 7, track 10, The Folk Box (Elektra Records, 1964)
37. side 1, track 1, The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie (Vanguard, 1972) : side 2, track 1, Bonneville Dam and Other Columbia River Songs (Verve/Folkways, 1966)
38. side 2, track 1, This Land Is Your Land (Folkways Records, 1967)
39. side 5, track 10, World of Popular Music: Folk and Country (Follett Publishing Company, 1975)
40. side 2, track 5, Original Recordings Made by Woody Guthrie (Warner Brothers, 1977)
41. side 2, track 7, Folkways: The Original Vision (Smithsonian Folkways, 1988)
42. track 1, Troubadours of the Folk Era, vol. 1 (Rhino Records, 1992)
43. track 2, Folk Hits Around the Campfire (K-Tel, 1995)
44. track 15, American Roots Collection (Smithsonian Folkways, 1996)
45. track 1, This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, vol. 1 (Smithsonian Folkways Records, 1997).
46. Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land" (Decca, January 1952). A recording of this track is held by the Ralph Rinzler Archives.
47. Disc 10, track 31, Songs for Political Action, complied by Ronald Cohen and Dave Samuelson (Bear Family Records BCD 15720, 1996).
48. Moses Asch, interview by Israel Young, "Moses Asch: Twentieth Century Man, Part II" Sing Out! 26, no. 2 (1977): 26.
49. Klein, Woody Guthrie, 286.
50. Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone (Bethlehem, Pa. : Sing Out Publications, 1993), 142.
51. Harold Leventhal, interview with author, October 16, 1998.
52. Judy Bell, interview with author, Nov. 28, 2001
53. and Klein, Woody Guthrie, 375. Examples of the publishers are Birchard, Silver Burdett, and Ginn, as noted by Judy Bell in an interview with author, Nov. 3, 2000.
54. John Cashman, "Folk Hero," New York Post, April 19, 1966, p. 27, col. 1.
55. Hendrick Hertzberg, "Star Spangled Banter," New Yorker 73, no. 20 (July 21, 1997): 5.
56. Sing Out! 4, no. 7 (1954): 3
57. Reprints from Sing Out! vol. 1, ed. by Irwin Silber (1959), 1
58. and The Collected Reprints from Sing Out! (1959-64), vols. 1-6
59. ed. Irwin Silber, Paul Nelson, Ethel Raim, Pete Seeger, and Jerry Silverman (Bethlehem, Pa. : Sing Out! Publications, 1990), 4.
60. Woody Guthrie, California to the New York Island: Being a Pocketful of Brags, Blues, Bad-Men, Ballads, Love Songs, Okie Laments and Children's Catcalls by Woody Guthrie, ed. Millard Lampell (New York: The Guthrie Children's Trust Fund, 1958), 45.
61. Woody Guthrie, Woody Guthrie Folk Songs: A Collection of Songs by America's Foremost Balladeer, ed. Pete Seeger (New York: Ludlow Music, 1963), 7. Variety, May 1, 1963, 75.
62. Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, 143.
63. The better known of these artists include Paul Anka, Harry Belafonte, the Brothers Four, Glen Campbell, David Carradine, the Mike Curb Congregation, Jim Croce, Bing Crosby, Jack Elliot, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Connie Francis, Arlo Guthrie, the Harvesters, Ella Jenkins, the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, Loretta Lynn, Jay and the Americans, Country Joe McDonald, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the New Christy Minstrels, Odetta, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Tex Ritter, Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, the Staple Singers, Bruce Springsteen, the Tarriers, the Wayfarers, the Weavers, and Glen Yar borough.
64. The Bosses' Songbook: Songs to Stifle the Flames of Discontent, 2nd ed. , collected and edited by Dave Van Ronk and Richard Ellington (New York: R Ellington, 1959), 3, 14, 18.
65. Marrs, "The Rest of the Song," 8 and 9.
66. American Favorite Ballads: Tunes and Songs as Sung by Pete Seeger (New York: Oak Publications, 1961), 30
67. "Woody Guthrie/Another Image," Sing Out! 18, no. 4 (Oct. -Nov. 1968): 34.
68. A Tribute to Woody Guthrie (Warner Brothers Records, 1972), track 27.
69. Pete Seeger, "Portrait of a Song as a Bird in Flight," Village Voice (July 1, 1971): 5.
70. Trwin Silbert and Fred Silber, eds. , Folksinger's Wordbook (New York: Oak Publications, 1973), 315.
71. Seeger, "Portrait of a Song as a Bird in Flight," 5.
72. Woody Guthrie, letter to Columbia Recording Company, ca. June 1942, Box 1, Correspondence Folder, WGC.
73. Seeger, "Portrait of a Song as a Bird in Flight," 5. However, it was only in a version of this article in his 1993 book Where Have All the Flowers Gone (p. 145) that Seeger actually attributed the first of these verses to McDonald.
74. Judy Bell, interview with author, February 1, 1999.
75. Woody Guthrie, 101 Woody Guthrie Songs, Including All the Songs from "Bound for Glory" (Ludlow Music, Inc. 1977), 86-88.
76. Bound for Glory, directed by Hal Ashby (United Artists, 1976). Rereleased by MGM/UA Home Video (1991).
77. Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin' directed by Jim Brown (Ginger Group and Harold Leventhal Management, 1984). Rereleased on MGM/UA Home Video (1986).
78. Track 14, A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadhelly (CBS Records, 1988).
79. Tom Burton, interview with author, March 2, 1999.
80. Jerome L. Rodnitzky, Minstrels of the Dawn: The Folk-Protest Singer as a Cultural Hero (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1976), 146
81. Howard Zinn, Postwar America: 1945 1971 (In dianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 179.
82. Peter D. Goldsmith, Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records (Washington, D. C. : Smithsonian Press, 1998), 360.
83. Wayne Hampton, Guerrilla Minstrels: John Lennon, Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986), 243.
84. Kristi Witker, How to Lose Everything in Politics Except Massachusetts (New York: Manson and Lipscomb, 1974), 135.
85. David Dunaway, How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 276.
86. However, it was only in his 1993 book Where Have All the Flowers Gone (p. 145) that Seeger actually attributed this verse to Cappy Israel.
87. Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n Roll Music (New York: K. P. Dutton, 1976), 125.
88. For particulars concerning this issues see Dave Marsh, Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 255, 260-64, 266
89. and Jon Wiener, Professors, Politics and Pop (London: Verso, 1991), 309.
90. Quoted by Mark Rowland, "Notebooks of Plenty," Musician, no. 236 (July 1998): 23.