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"Woody is a man who writes two or three ballads before breakfast every morning."
— Cisco Houston

"By 1940, he was a serious fellow traveler, a staunch supporter of organized labor, and a key figure in the folk song movement."
— Bryan K. Carman, A Race of Singers

"He [Guthrie] was losing his temper with audiences more frequently now -- it had become almost a trademark -- taunting and deliberately offending them when he sensed they were bored with his endless ballad verses."
— Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life

Woody Guthrie was a communist, more or less, wrote as many bad songs as good, and was often irresponsible in his personal life. I don't state this data to start a fight, but as a series of facts worth mulling over. While Guthrie may have never been a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party, he sang at their rallies, spouted Marxist philosophy, and wrote songs championing these beliefs. He loved to sing at radical union gatherings and for a short time even objected to the United States' entry into World War II. He also loved to write songs and was perhaps -- though it might be hard to believe -- more prolific than Ani DiFranco. Like her, though, he couldn't tell the difference between a first draft and a carefully-wrought piece of art. "This Land Is Your Land" sits proudly beside such tripe as "Hobo's Lullaby" and "Philadelphia Lawyer". Last but not least, Guthrie, who was fondly loved by his friends, family, ex-wives, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, abandoned his first family, drank enough to make him obnoxious at times, and wrote dirty letters to women he barely knew.

Of course nothing is necessarily wrong with being a communist or writing bad songs, and neither of these facts could dislodge Guthrie from his exalted position as the father of modern folk music (except to frothing-at-the-mouth right wingers). Furthermore, the fact that a number of artists are bad fathers (Ramblin' Jack Elliott), worse mates (Bob Dylan), and heavy drinkers (just about everybody), never seemed to effect their legacy. But even if shoddy behavior doesn't change the way posterity views a person's art, nobody wants to find out that one of his or her heroes is an idiot or asshole. Sure, he or she may be a great artist, but the way an artist lives alters the way we look at his or her art, often for the worse. I always felt so much empathy for the way Dylan poured out his soul on Blood on the Tracks; the songs are so sad and remorseful. A couple of bios later, I wasn't so sure I had been feeling sorry for the right person.

Artist

I had never thought too much about Guthrie as an artist, mostly because it was something that you assume. If you were a critic who wanted to claim you knew something about the roots of modern folk, you bought his old records freshly pressed into CDs. If you were an artist, you performed at Guthrie tributes, cut a song for the latest memorial album, or mined old lyrics for your latest project. The truth is, you're not really supposed to think about the artistry of the lyrics or the fact that he ripped-off melodies from other people's songs. Nor the fact that he can barely sing or play guitar, or that many of his poorly recorded songs make Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska sound like a state-of-the-art recording.

But folksongs and folk singing have changed quite a bit since the 1940s, and Goddess bless any neophyte approaching the croaky-voiced Guthrie for the first time. Indeed, he sings so often about dust, dust storms, and dust pneumonia that a new listener may conclude that all of that dust has clogged-up his vocal chords. It's also difficult, and at times no different than listening to field recordings, to appreciate the austere quality of one man/ one guitar in scratchy mono. Aesthetic is not a word that comes to mind very often when listening to the Dust Bowl Balladeer. Guthrie, like Dylan, wasn't blessed with a "pretty" voice, though a rustic quality may be an asset, a sign of authenticity, in folk music.

Authenticity, however, fails to address whether Guthrie -- on a particular song or album -- sings up to his potential. In other words, we don't need to ask if a singer can sing, but whether he or she has delivered a thoughtful, felt, or inspired song. In my experience with Guthrie's recordings, the earlier in his career a song was committed to disc, the more inspired it sounded. For instance, he nails just about everything on Dust Bowl Ballads, recorded in 1940. On a 1941 version of "Talking Columbia", Guthrie delivers the lyrics at a steady clip, offering a bright vocal and enunciating clearly. In a 1947 version for Folkways, he loses the edge by rushing the song, shaving 47 seconds from the earlier take. I can think of two pieces from 1949, "Wild Cyclone" and "Fastest of Ponies", that are absolutely horrible.

One of the songs that most disappointed me on The Asch Recordings is a 1947 version of "Pastures of Plenty", a song some cite as the best Guthrie ever wrote. His performance, however, is so limp as to be embarrassing. The bountiful imagery remains as flat as the page it was written on, and Guthrie sounds as though he'd consider it an accomplishment just to get through the song. Cisco Houston's version on a tribute album offers a staggering contrast. Houston's deep, rich voice, which some folkies considered too good for traditional music, splashes the rich lyrics on a large canvas. His version brings the song to its proper fullness; Guthrie's remains forever earthbound.

Guthrie also had a problem that plagues a number of writers: he never knew what to keep and what to throw away. For every "This Land Is Your Land" Guthrie wrote, he penned several clunkers like the "Ladies Auxiliary".

Oh, the Ladies' Auxiliary is a good auxiliary.
It's the best auxiliary that you ever did see.
If you need an auxiliary, see the Ladies' Auxiliary.
It's the Ladies' Auxiliary.

Pretty deep, huh?

Even within good songs, Guthrie was never quite sure what to toss out and what to keep. When he was performing with the Almanacs at the beginning of WW II, the Germans sank a U.S. ship called the Rueben James. He decided the incident would make a good song, proceeded to write one, and then brought it to the Almanacs. Although they liked the song, they suggested that it might be more effective -- less boring -- if Guthrie didn't include all the names of the 86 passengers who went down with the ship.

Radical

A few years back Fortune asked Billy Bragg if Guthrie had been a communist. Bragg said, "He did do gigs for the Communist Party, but remember that back then the Communists were part of the whole movement against fascism." In other words, Bragg, like a number of people (who should've known better) before him, dodged the question. True, the American Communist Party did eventually support the Allies in WW II (after Pearl Harbor; before, many called for neutrality); but Guthrie became involved with the Party in 1938, a couple of years before the war got underway. Communism, or some type of radical change in the system, in fact, was perhaps the only political philosophy Guthrie ever articulated clearly. The wealthy, he insisted, made their fortunes off the backs of working men.

But when Guthrie started to reach cult status in the '60s, a number of supporters realized that no matter how big of a fool Joe McCarthy had been, most people preferred non-Red heroes. (Which seems to be true -- When President Clinton hung a medal on Pete Seeger a few years back, several thought it unpatriotic). Bryan K. Carman notes in A Race of Singers, "As Guthrie became increasingly popular, journalists and scholars alike began to emphasize his optimism and individualism at the expense of his radicalism". Unionists and communists, it seems, aren't the kind of heroes you can sell in America.

It's easy to find examples of Guthrie's political philosophy in his songs. Pieces like "Jesus Christ" and "Pretty Boyd Floyd", in fact, spelled things out clearly. In "Jesus Christ" Guthrie blames the bankers, cops, and preachers for nailing Christ to the cross. Why? Because Jesus told rich people to gather all of their belongings, sell them, and give the money to the poor. His Christ was a socialist, and Guthrie takes things one step further by insisting that if Jesus were to preach the same sermons in modern day New York City, he'd be laid in his grave again. In "Pretty Boyd Floyd", a small-time crook is converted into a populist Robin Hood who pays farmer's mortgages, delivers groceries to the poor for Christmas, and leaves $1000-dollar bills beneath the napkin of anyone nice enough to give him a meal. Guthrie also sang the praises of the two martyred anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, and he movingly recalled the plight of the 73 children who were smothered during a strike in "1913 Massacre". When not writing songs, he composed missives for the communist rag, The Daily Worker. His views were plainly stated in a manuscript titled "The Final Call", a piece of which was reprinted in the liner notes to The Asch Recordings: Hard Travelin':

I ain't in favor of a bloody revolution. . . . But I'm high in favor of a Change in things that'll give you and me and all of our folks plenty of what they need to get along on. . . . I really hope to God that the Rich folks will give you these things as fast as you can step up and throw out your chest and ask for them. You make everything they got. . . . I hope to God that you don't have to hurt nobody in getting your fair and honest share. . . . But, in case anybody tries to step in and stop you from changing things into a better world -- use your strength.

Sounds like communism to me. After all, a good capitalist would never go around singing "This Land Is Your Land" -- which sounds like a socialist redistribution plan -- or making negative statements about private property signs -- basically undercutting the Forth Amendment. Or sing the praises of a progressive government that builds dams to bring electricity -- for next to nothing -- to poor rural residents. Clearly Guthrie loved his country, believed in hard work, and realized the shortcomings of Joe Stalin, but he also believed that the very structure of the American political system favored some and left others out. Obviously, a system so unfair needed to be changed.

Man

The last part of this portrait -- the man himself -- is perhaps the most disturbing and difficult piece of the puzzle to assess. Some of Guthrie's rude behavior has been ignored because he had Huntington's chorea, a disease that causes mental deterioration and seems to make impulse control of sexual urges and anger more difficult. Guthrie certainly had an impulse control problem. Unfortunately, like other diseases and disabilities, it's difficult to know where the disease/difficulty stops and the person begins. Also, if you're not careful, Guthrie gets off the hook for all the nasty things he did (like other troubled artists) while still getting credit for being a great folksinger/songwriter. Even when someone doesn't have any symptom you can pinpoint, it's impossible to know why a person did what they did, meaning, when we interpret a person's actions, we all draw different conclusions.

My favorite "bad" Guthrie story -- and there are a hell of a lot of good ones -- took place in the summer of '49. Guthrie, John Henry Faulk, and little Arlo walked to Coney Island by way of the beach to meet Alan Lomax. Arlo was upset about something and kept screaming. After telling him to shut up a couple times to no avail, Guthrie grabbed a handful of sand and stuffed it in Arlo's mouth until Faulk shouted at him: "Goddammit, Woody, you crazy son of a bitch, cut that out." And there was Jackie Gibson, who was pregnant by Guthrie ("the result of an unsuccessful attempt to fend off a drunken Woody on Pete Seeger's couch" wrote Joe Klein in Woody Guthrie: A Life). Gibson asked for money for an abortion but received a letter that vacillated between erotica and a recommendation not to have one. She paid for her own. Guthrie also spent a small amount of time in jail for writing an obscene letter to one Mary Ruth Crissman.

Perhaps the worst transgression though, was the way Guthrie more or less abandoned any responsibility toward his first family. He married Mary Jennings in 1933 and in 1935, Mary had the first of their three children. Guthrie came and went at his whim, whether that meant hanging out at the local saloon or heading to California (they lived in Oklahoma) for a month at a time. Right before the birth of their second child, he left again and Klein writes: "She was beginning to realize that all this traveling might not be just a stage in Woody's life." Of course Mary might have dealt with these departures with an open mind if the country hadn't been in the midst of a Depression and if she hadn't needed money for the kids (even when he was making money, he wasn't too dependable about bringing it or sending it home). Sometimes, he carted Mary and the children with him, but this proved an erratic and unstable way to live. After seven years Mary, who was still young (23), said the hell with it.

From this point on, Guthrie would occasionally send money or toys and write letters, but he had little contact with his children for the remainder of his life. In one of his rare visits in 1947, he fell asleep and pissed on Mary's couch. Finally his daughter Sue asked him to leave: "Daddy, I've missed you very much and I love you, but Mom has made a good life for us here and it hurts her to have you stay, and so maybe you'd better just go." He left on the next bus.

Guthrie, R.I.P.

What all of these assertions mean, and whether they're even believed, will depend on the individual. Personally, I admire Guthrie's songwriting, but wish that record companies would stop issuing worthless material for critics to over-praise. I have a four-disc box set from Smithsonian Folkways that I plan to edit down to one good disc when I get a CD burner. I also admire Guthrie's politics. Too many songwriters -- Dylan and perhaps Springsteen -- seem to believe that the old system can be fixed with the proper reforms. In other words, the government as dictated by the American Constitution is basically a sound system in need of a few repairs. Guthrie, however, suggested in his songs and writings that the institutions themselves were deeply flawed and needed to be overhauled. The Constitution never called for a redistribution of wealth; Guthrie did.

Good songs and good politics, however, don't make a good person. Nothing that I've read about Guthrie made me wish that I could have met him. Not just because he was a sexist or couldn't control his anger -- though neither of these typical male traits are anything to brag about -- but simply because he didn't treat people very well. When it came right down to it, Guthrie, the great humanitarian and voice of the Dust Bowl refugees, wasn't a very nice person.

Today, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie is more a myth than artist, radical, or man. A son of the Midwest, he rode the rails, lived as one with the Dust Bowl refugees, and gave voice to the common man. A singing Walt Whitman, he sketched out a vision of America in anthems like "This Land Is Your Land" and "Pastures of Plenty". Reviewers seldom discuss the quality of a Guthrie recording: it's assumed. If Billy Bragg adds music to a few of the master's leftover lyrics, or if Ani DiFranco gathers a ragtag group of artists for a tribute, it's gotta be a good thing. Like Jesus Christ, we avoid the messy little details that might get in the way of granting Guthrie sainthood.