Woody Guthrie is often regarded as the patron saint of American folk music. He embodied the spirit of our country by singing for the ordinary people and standing up for their rights. His song lyrics addressed issues of poverty, racism, and injustice in a proud, poetic, and compassionate manner. His influence on contemporary music has been immense, and the man himself has been mythified in endless music, movies, and books. The legend of the wandering troubadour as the nation’s conscience has been imprinted by his stamp.
However, the real Woody Guthrie often gets lost behind the image. He was a regular human being, meaning that he was a flesh-and-blood person, rather than a saint. His songs were worked on rather than easy gifts from the muse. The bulk of his recordings, writings, and artwork is preserved in the Library of Congress and the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Guthrie left behind hundreds of songs, many of which were unpublished, that continue to inspire musicians and activists.
Most recently, a gold mine of Guthrie’s home recordings from 1951-52 has been restored using cutting-edge Music Source Separation (MSS) technology. The result, Woody at Home Volumes 1 & 2, produced by Steve Rosenthal, curated by Nora Guthrie and Anna Canoni, has just been released. While the sound is far from the high fidelity of modern recordings, the raw material is intimate, complemented by the background noise of his kids playing nearby and other ambient sounds.
Guthrie passionately chokes out the words even when they hurt on these 22 tracks. He’s less concerned with melody than with fervor. He wants the words to be heard for their emotional meaning rather than their tunefulness. Listening to the versions here of some of his most familiar songs is enlightening. For example, take “Deportee”, a song about the plight of undocumented immigrants, which has been covered by artists with beautiful voices, such as Joan Baez and Emmylou Harris, as well as earnest singers like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.
This version of “Deportees” features Guthrie talk-singing in the first person more than really singing while he strums his guitar rhythmically. He assumes the identity of the nameless outcast, which lends a strain of black humor to the tragic tale. He describes how he has died in geographic detail before he gets to the drama of the plane crash to show how the situation has always been rigged against the working poor. The disparity between the rich and the poor is the original sin.
Guthie’s religious beliefs were tied to his view of economics. As he explicitly sang on “Jesus Christ”, “He said to the rich, ‘Give your goods to the poor’ / So they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.” Guthrie makes his point about today’s rich in the last verse, “This song was written in New York City / Of rich men, preachers and slaves / Yes, if Jesus were to preach like he preached in Galilee / They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.” The version here sounds less like a sermon and more like a threat. Guthrie’s voice may be weak at times, but he clearly expresses his moral indignation.
The other tracks here include everything from lighter tunes preaching love (“One Little Thing an Atom Can’t Do”, “My Id and My Ego”) to earnest narratives (“Buoy Bells for Trenton”, “Peace Calls”) to him just talking to his record company (“Howie, I’d Like to Tell Yuh,” “I’d Just Want to Tell You Fellers”). It includes 13 songs Guthrie never recorded elsewhere.
There are no great revelations here, but that’s the point. Woody Guthrie was just a regular person with a gift for song and a sense of right and wrong. One finds him a companion for peace and an advocate for justice during a dark time in our nation’s history—1951 was the heart of what’s now known as the McCarthy Era, a period of intense political repression in the United States. He doesn’t care how pretty he sounds or how suspicious his actions may be; he knows he has a voice, and he is going to use it to make the world a better place for everyone.