At this point Woody first made money with his musical ability by singing, dancing, and playing the harmonica on the street for change. He also searched the alleys and trash piles of Okemah looking for scrap to sell. On occasion, his friends' families took him in for extended periods, but he was often on his own. During this time, he also began wandering, hoboing to the Gulf of Mexico and back, as well as making other various excursions in the area.
In 1929, Woody joined Charley in Texas, in the panhandle region near Amarillo. Some other family members lived there also. Jeff Guthrie, Charley's half-brother, taught Woody how to play the guitar after he moved there. Jeff was a fine musician, and he had even won some regional contests. Woody found other beginning musicians to play with and formed what he called the “Corncob Trio”. One of the members was Matt Jennings, whose younger sister Mary married Woody in 1933 and eventually had three children together. But times continued to be tough for Woody. By the time of his marriage, many changes had come to the region. The Great Depression had already swept across the nation. Over-plowing had removed the natural grassland, and the wind swept up the dry earth in great waves that could blot out the sun. One journalist who came to the area famously called it "The Dust Bowl." We can say that Woody Guthrie was born in a period which was not productive and pleasant, although some good events were occurring. In the mid-1930s, Woody first realized the power of music to capture the truth about people and places. In thinking back about this time, he wrote, "there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about." One of his first songs to reflect what he saw happening around him became one of his most famous, "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You."
Due to the combined suffering of the Great Depression and the drought, many people from Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri packed up their belongings and traveled west in search of work. An estimated four hundred thousand made their way to California, which was the aim for most people “ There’s something going on out there in the Wes’ and I’d like to learn what it is”- Casey in the Grapes of Wrath.
Woody ‘hoboed’ his way to Los Angeles in 1936, where he eventually formed a musical partnership (small enterprise) with his cousin Jack Guthrie. Jack divided his time doing construction work and singing professionally, and his goal was to be a full time country and western singer. The two cousins soon came together and began performing together. Jack did most of the actual vocal work and guitar playing. Woody's role was that of the recognizable helper, providing back up and comedy while performing unique pieces and singing the solo.
Jack later became a fairly big country and western star, and his biggest hit was "Oklahoma Hills". This caused some debate in the family since Jack was listed as the composer, and yet Woody said the song was actually his. A sensible picture of that situation was Woody wrote an early version, but Jack reworked the song, adding new lyrics, and so making the final song a combined piece of music. In the end, a quite friendly agreement was made and both Woody and Jack were given credit.
But for the time being Jack and Woody were just one of a number of small-time cowboy singing groups in Los Angeles. They made what they could by singing in bars. They performed country-western tunes around town and promoted themselves on radio station called KFVD. Later, Jack dropped out of show business for a time and Woody started singing with Maxine Crissman, with whom he dubbed "Lefty Lou." This pairing was so successful that he was able to bring Mary and their children to Los Angeles in 1937. Woody dropped the cowboy songs that Jack preferred and stuck mostly to traditional folk tunes. He also begin to sing some of his own songs. Many of the songs Woody and Lefty Lou performed were old-style tunes such as "A Picture from Life's Other Side" and "Boll Weevil." But Woody also began composing some of his original songs and compositions in their shows like: "Talking Dustbowl Blues" and " If You Ain’t Got The Do Re Mi" which explored and exposed the harsh reality of the California as well as reflecting the politicization of the time.
Although the rumors of California being a land of absolute opportunity that had brought a rush of agricultural laborers from everywhere in the 1930s, the reality was rather different. The great farms that stretched across California's rich valleys did need workers and pickers, but so many positions were available that wages were put downward. The pickers lived in their cars, tents, or shacks they built out of whatever materials they could find. These camps were sometimes called "Hoovervilles" and the people in them "Okies." Although Woody never lived in one of these camps, he did make his way to California as a "Dust Bowl refugee" and traveled around the state singing to the farm laborers in 1938. He also sang at government camps that gave these people some quantity of dignity, health, and safety. To join him was Will Geer, an actor who helped Woody understand the injustice of an economic system that would allow Americans to live in such poverty.
When Will Geer left California for New York , he insisted on Woody to visit. A few months later, opportunities in Los Angeles dried up, so Woody moved his family back to Texas before he could visit New York in 1940. Almost immediately, his career shot up. At a charity performance for the John Steinbeck Committee Woody met Alan Lomax, the assistant in charge of the Archive of
American Folk Song. Impressed with Woody's songwriting ability, Lomax arranged for a recording session at the end of the month. Afterwards, he helped Woody get a recording contract, which came in the album Dust Bowl Ballads. New York though was quite different for Woody’s tastes. From what biographers say, Woody Guthrie was the first person in New York to actually launch the ‘jeans’ fashion, which was typical wear for workers and farmers. All of this success changed Woody's life in several ways. He had enough money to bring Mary and their children to New York, where they rented a comfortable apartment in Manhattan. For the first time in decades, Woody was not living in poverty. Another change for Woody was the pressure of having a steady job. But soon, he wrote, "I got disgusted with the whole sissified and nervous rules of censorship on all of my songs and ballads, and drove off down the road across the southern states again."
With Mary and the children, Woody eventually ended up in California for several months before traveling up to Oregon to work as an "Information Consultant" on a documentary about the dams being built there. During this time, he wrote 26 songs, including "Roll On, Columbia" and "Pastures of Plenty."
In June 1941, Woody returned to New York City without Mary and the children. There he immediately joined the Almanac Singers, whose members were Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell. They played benefits, appeared on radio programs, made albums, and sang against "Hitlerism and fascism homemade and imported . . . and made up songs to pay honor and tribute to the story of the trade union workers around the world." Woody continued to perform with the group until late 1942, when it separated.
During this period, Woody's personal and professional situation changed dramatically. After he met dancer Marjorie Mazia in 1942, the two became lovers and she eventually became pregnant with his child. Unfortunately, both she and Woody were still married to other people, causing some conflict in their lives. Woody was also writing his autobiographical novel Bound for Glory, and the autobiography and his fourth child appeared at the same time in early 1943.
World War II was happening when Woody came for the first time to New York. After America entered the fight in 1941, he sang songs against the Nazis, such as "Round and Round Hitler's Grave" and “Reuben James." But he became more directly involved in the spring of 1943 when he joined the Merchant Marine. He shipped out three times and was torpedoed two times. Then in May 1945, he was put into the Army just as the war came to an end, although he returned to ‘life’ by the end of the year.
Earlier, while visiting home between his Merchant Marine trips in the spring of 1944, Woody met and recorded for Moses Asch, who ran a succession of independent labels that would eventually become the legendary Folkways Records also known as the “Asch Recordings”. They continued their relationship until Woody stopped recording in the early 1950s.
By 1946, Woody's family life was stronger than it had been in years. A year earlier, he and Marjorie had finally married. While she worked as a dancer during the day, he stayed home often and played with their daughter Cathy Ann. Unfortunately, in February 1947 Cathy suddenly died in an electrical fire in the Coney Island apartment . The next year Marjorie gave birth to their first son, Arlo Guthrie.
The couple went on as best as they could and later on in the years they had three children. As the 1940s came to an end, Woody still participated in various benefits and wrote hundreds of songs, stories, and also poems. He also had started writing a novel, but eventually he gave up leaving it incomplete. In addition, his behavior, which was never normal, became more and more erratic.
By the 1950 his health started becoming worse and was put into various hospitals around New York. During the same period, when he was not in the hospital, he roamed around, visiting friends and family. From 1949 to 1952, Woody traveled around. Woody became dangerous at times, forcing Marjorie to call the police. He checked himself into a hospital in May, for alcoholism, which he was trying to convince himself that, that was his only problem. In July, he was transferred to Brooklyn State Hospital where he was diagnosed with Huntington's Chorea.
Huntington's Disease, also known as ‘HD’, is a hereditary brain disorder that affects people all over the world. It takes its name from Dr. George Huntington, a physician from Long Island who published a description of what he called "hereditary chorea" in 1872. From the Greek word for "dance"= chorein. Chorea refers to the involuntary movements which are one the common symptoms of HD. Therefore Huntington's Disease was called Huntington's Chorea. But, because "Chorea" is only one symptom of the three which are characteristic for this disease, it was in later years called Huntington's Disease and not anymore Huntington’s Chorea!
In September he was released and quickly made his way out West once more. He lived on The Geers' property in California where he met Anneke Marshall, who was to be his third wife. She was married to an actor and aspiring writer when they met, but in a short time Woody had moved in with the couple, and then he and Anneke ran away together. For a time they lived in Florida, where Woody injured his arm in was involved in another accidental fire. They moved back to California and to New York where they had a daughter. Woody continued to write, and in the summer of 1954 traveled the country one last time. Then in September of 1954, he checked himself back into Brooklyn State Hospital. Woody was mostly in and occasionally out of various hospitals for the rest of his life. Anneke left Woody in 1956, but he had other visitors including Marjorie, friends from the folk music world, and a great population of fans.
During 1950s-1966, Marjorie Guthrie, family and friends continued to visit and care for him. In the mean time new styles of music were developing and new artists were replacing the old ones. To visit Woody were Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and many other young folksingers who brought their guitars and their songs to play for him, and perhaps even to thank him. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967 while he was at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York. “His ashes were sprinkled into the waters off of Coney Island's shore.”
A month later, on Thanksgiving 1967, Arlo Guthrie released his first recording called “Alice’s Restaurant”, which was to become an anti-war anthem for the next generation.
During his life, Woody Guthrie wrote nearly 3,000 song lyrics, published two novels, created artworks, authored and unauthored manuscripts etc. We willl never forget you Woody.
“Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who still listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit.”
-John Steinbeck
Bibliography: Bound For Glory, Encyclopedia Brittanica 1971, W.G. official site, Rolling Stones Archive, various sites for pictures (mainly google search ‘images’), Read biographies from various sites and took most important information and summarized, Documentary ‘This Machine Fills Fascists”
