Woody Guthrie(1912-1967)
- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Charley and Nora Guthrie named their son after the Democrat elected
president that year. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie knew hard times as a
youngster (his house burned down, his sister Clara burned to death, his
father's small-town business and political careers never went anywhere,
his mother suffered from undiagnosed Huntington's Disease and was
declared insane), but he enjoyed performing (dancing, playing
harmonica, writing songs) and learning (he read voraciously in the
public library). In 1933 he married Mary Jennings, five years his
junior, with whom he would have three children. In 1935 he joined the
Oakies and Arkies driven to California by the Dust Bowl. His songs went
from describing the tragedy of the migrants to urging their
unionization. Though he wrote a column for the Weekly People, he never
joined the Communist Party. When Will Geer got
a part in the play "Tobacco Road" he invited Woody to join him in New
York where he met Pete Seeger,
Lee Hays, Leadbelly,
Cisco Houston. He was commissioned to write songs for a never-completed
documentary on Washington State's Grand Coulee Dam, and it was in the
Pacific Northwest that his family left him. Back in New York in 1940,
Woody joined Pete Seeger's Alamanc Singers and married Martha Graham
dancer Marjorie Mazia. His autobiography, Bound for Glory, was
published in 1943. He served in the Merchant Marine in World War II,
and three ships were torpedoed from under him. In 1947 his and
Marjorie's daughter, Cathy, was burned to death in an apartment fire.
They had three more children: Arlo, Joady and Nora. In 1953 he married
for a third time, to Anneke Van Kirk. They had a child, Lorinna Lynn
Guthrie. When Anneke and Guthrie divorced, their daughter was adopted
by a couple they knew, and did not have any further contact with
Guthrie. Lorinna died prematurely (at age 19) in 1973, in a car
accident in California.
In the 1950s he experienced bouts of irrational behavior and was often unable to play his guitar; his condition was ultimately diagnosed as Huntington's Disease. The rest of that decade and into the 1960s a new generation, notably including Bob Dylan, began to discover and play his music, adapting some of it to the new Civil Rights movement.
In the 1950s he experienced bouts of irrational behavior and was often unable to play his guitar; his condition was ultimately diagnosed as Huntington's Disease. The rest of that decade and into the 1960s a new generation, notably including Bob Dylan, began to discover and play his music, adapting some of it to the new Civil Rights movement.
