British protest singer billy bragg and will coffman. History has a habit of repeating itself every now and then and the songs that he was riding in the 1930s an 1940s and 50s can often have an amazing relevance for what is going on now. I think it is about time people started listening to Woody Guthrie again. And we hear the legendary folk singer pete seeger describe his first meeting with Woody Guthrie. He took over for 20 minutes and entranced everybody. I come from oklahoma, you know. It is a rich state. If you want lead, we have lead. If you want coal, we have coal in oklahoma. Woody guthrie. All that and more coming up. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Amy goodman commemorations are being held across the country this year to mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the countrys greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie. Born on july 14, 1912, in okemah, oklahoma, guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs, including this land is your land, pastures of plenty, pretty boy floyd, do re mi and this song, the rangers command. Narrator two fragments of film survive of guthrie performing. One of them, lost in the archives for 40 years has only just come to light. Woody guthrie [singing] but the rustlers broke on us in the dead hours of night; she rose from her blanket, a battle to fight. She rose from her blanket with a gun in each hand, said come all of you cowboys, fight for your land. Amy goodman a rare 1945 video recording of Woody Guthrie. Known as the dust bowl troubadour, guthrie became a major influence on countless musicians, including bob dylan, Bruce Springsteen, pete seeger and phil ochs. While Woody Guthrie is best remembered as a musician, he also had a deeply political side. At the height of mccarthyism, guthrie spoke out for labor and civil rights and against fascism. He died in 1967 after a long battle with huntingtons disease. But his music lives on. Over the next hour, well hear from folk singer pete seeger, the british musician billy bragg and the historian will kaufman. But first, Woody Guthrie, in his own words, being interviewed by the musicologist Alan Lomax Alan Lomax what did your family do . What kind of people were they, and where did they come from . Woody guthrie well, they come in there from texas in the early day. My dad got to oklahoma right after statehood. He was the first clerk of the county court in okemah, oklahoma, after statehood, as he is known as one of them old, hardhitting, fistfighting democrats, you know, that run for office down there, and they used to miscount the votes all the time. So every time that my dad went to town, it was common the first question that i ask him when he come riding in on a horse that evening, id say, well, how many fights did you have today . And then hed take me up on his knee, and hed proceed to tell me who he is fighting and why and all about it. Put her there, boy. Well show these fascists what a couple hillbillies can do. Alan lomax where did you live . On a farm . Woody guthrie well, no, i was born there in that little town. My dad built a sixroom house. Cost him about 7,000 or 8,000. And the day after he got the house built, it burned down. And then hed take me up on his knee, and hed proceed to tell me who he is fighting and why and all about it. Alan lomax what kind of a place was okemah . How big was it, when you remember it, when you were a kid . Woody guthrie well, in them days, it was a little town, about 1,500, and then 2,000. A few years later, it got up to about 5,000. They struck some pretty rich oil pools all around theregrayson city and slick city and cromwell and seminole and bowlegs and sand springs and springhill. And all up and down the whole country there, they got oil. Got some pretty nice old fields round okemah there. Alan lomax did any of the oil come in your family . Woody guthrie no, no, we got the grease. Amy goodman Woody Guthrie being interviewed by alan lomax. We turn now to will kaufman, author of the new book, Woody Guthrie, american radical. Kaufman is a professor of American Literature and culture at the university of central lancashire, england. Hes also a musician whos hes also a musician whos performed hundreds of musical presentations on Woody Guthrie. I interviewed will kaufman recently and asked him to talk about Woody Guthries childhood. Musical presentations on Woody Guthrie. I interviewed will kaufman recently and asked him to talk about Woody Guthries childhood. Will kaufman well, he was born in okemah, oklahoma, as you said, in 1912. He was born to a middleclass, fairly rightwing family. His father, Charlie Guthrie, was a smalltown politician, a Real Estate Agent and klan supporter, supporter of the ku klux klan. Amy goodman some said he was a klansman. Will kaufman yeah, theres no documentary evidence to firmly establish that Charlie Guthrie was a member of the klan, but theres no doubt that he supported them. Theres some anecdotal evidence that he sometimes rode out with them on their adventures and may have participated in a lynching. That affected woody years later. But theres no indication that woody was particularly all that political when he was growing up in okemah. And then after a number of family tragedies, like the burning down of their house, the death of his older sister in a house fire, the nearfatal burning of his father in a third fire, and the incarceration of his mother in the Oklahoma State mental asylumshe wasnt crazy; she had the misunderstood and undiagnosed huntingtons diseasewhere after all these tragedies, woody went to join his father in another boomto bust oil town in the texas panhandle, a place called pampa, texas. He dropped out of high school after two years, became a sign painter, married, had his first two children, and then sat there and watched as the dust bowl hit the center of the United States, and, you know, tens of thousands of square miles of destroyed farmland just wiped out. Woody was there. And he began to write about the dust. Woody guthrie [singing] back in nineteen twentyseven, i had a little farm and i called that heaven. Well, the prices up and the rain come down, and i hauled my crops all into town i got the money, bought clothes and groceries, fed the kids, and raised a family. Rain quit and the wind got high, and the black ol dust storm filled the sky. And i swapped my farm for a ford machine, and i poured it full of this gasiline and i started, rockin an a rollin, over the mountains, out towards the old peach bowl. Will kaufman some of those dust bowl ballads come out of, really, his late teens and early twenties, you know. Then he joined about halfa million other migrants heading westwards towards california, where they had heard there was lots of work out thereand, of course, they were wrong. And its there in california when woody getshe sort of hooks up with the right people, i suppose, and gets involved in the popular front out there in california, and this is the beginning ofreally, of his politicization. As you said, began writing columns for the peoples world out there andin los angeles, and got a show on a progressive radio station, kfvd, out in los angeles, and begins to circulate around the migrant camps, where the okies, as they were pejoratively called, were living in old dwellings of tar, paper and tin and old packing crates and the bodies of abandoned cars, under railroad bridges, by the side of rivers and what have you, and getting their heads broken when they dared to organize into unions. And woody began to witness that and began to write about it. And so, he began to see music as a political weapon then. Amy goodman will kaufman, talk about 1937, the turning point for Woody Guthrie as he takes on racial issues in this country. Will kaufman yeah, hehe arrived in california, i think, with the influence of having grown up in a state dominated by the klan and growing up in a family that supported the klan. He wasnt all that racially enlightened when he went out to california. Theres evidence in the archives that he would, you know, write these mock poems about africansAfrican Americans are bathing on the beach in santa monica with theyou know, giving off the ethiopian smell and with jungle rhythms pounding in their veins. And hed happily sing songs using the nword and words like coons and stuff like that, which were part of that White Mountain tradition. And so, hes on this radiogivinl and station sometime in 1937, and he announces that hes going to play a song from Uncle Dave Macon on the grand ole opry, and gid tanner and the skillet lickers, as well, recorded it, a lovely song called run, nigger, run. And he announces it, and he plays it. And he gets a letter from a member of his listening audience the next day. And i know that letter by heart. Ive seen it. He says, you were getting along pretty well on your program tonight, until you announced your nigger blues. Im a negro, a young negro in college. And i certainly resented your remark. No person or person of any intelligence uses that word over the radio today. And that letter really hit woody like a slap in the face. He was mortified. He apologized profusely on the air the next day. He made a big point of dramatically tearing out the song sheet from his notebook and tearing it to shreds and promising he would never use that word again. And as he later said, i apologize to the negro people for the frothings that i let slip out of the corners of my mouth. So this is the beginning of his conversion, i suppose, to eventually becoming one of the most ardent champions and activists for racial equality. Amy goodman you mentioned the lynching that occurred a year before he was born that his father will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman may well have been involved with. Will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman talk about how it came back. Will kaufman well, there wasabout a year before woodys birth, there was a policeman in okemah named george loney, who went to the house of a fellow named nelson, going to arrest him. I think the charge was sheep stealing or something minor like that. And i dont think nelson was there. But certainly his wife laura and his 12yearold son lawrence and a little baby, they were there. And this policeman was apparently very violent, very threatening. And Young Lawrence thought that his mother was in danger, and he grabbed a rifle, shot this policeman in the leg. Policeman bled to death on their front lawn. Lynch mobwell, first of all, laura and lawrence and the baby are brought to the jail near okemah. And then, about a week later, a lynch mob breaks into the jail, drags them to the Canadian River railroad bridge just outside of okemah. Laura was lynched. Lawrence, 15yearold13 to 15 yearold boy, was lynched, after being sexually humiliated in public. And the baby is left crying by the side of the road. And the citizens of okemah were so pleased with their handiwork that soon they were selling postcards to commemorate it. And woody saw that postcard, and he actually wrote a song about that. If you want to hear it, i can do it. He never recorded it. Its called dont kill my baby and my son. [singing] as i walked down that old dark town in the town where i was born, i heard the saddest lonesome moan that i ever heard before. My hair it trembled at the roots cold chills run down my spine, as i drew near that jail house i heard this deathly cry dont kill my baby and my son, dont kill my baby and my son. You can stretch my neck from that old river bridge, but dont kill my baby and my son. Amy goodman will kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, american radical. How do you know that melody and that song if Woody Guthrie never recorded it . Will kaufman yeah, ive seen the words. Woody really didnthe didnt write any music. He only wrote lyrics, effectively. I mean, he mayi think he wrote one mandolin tune called woodys rag or Something Like that. But effectively, what he would do is, for the most part, he would write lyrics down, and sometimes he would actually say, you know, to be sung to the tune of streets of laredo or something, and he would have a folk song in his head or even a song that, like, a friend of his like leadbelly wrote. He didnt really care. You know, hed stealhed steal music, you know, right and left, and admit it. So, for that one in particular, for instance, you could tellif you know the american traditional, you know, folk repertoire, you could tell sometimes what kind ofwhat song he had as a pattern in his head. And i could tell by reading the lyrics that he had the old tune wild bill jones in his head, so i just put it to wild bill jones. Amy goodman in 1940, Woody Guthrie moves to new york. Will kaufman right. Amy goodman why . Will kaufman he moves to new york because he has been involved in the labor struggles in the californian fields, in kern county, in particular, madera countykern county mostly. And, well, there were quite a few defeats in the californian fields at that point, and he befriended will geer, who people may know. Later on, he was the actor who played grandpa walton in the waltons. Well, he was a very good friend of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, political activist, communist activist. And geer was going to new york to star in tobacco road, a broadway version of tobacco road, and suggested to woody, look, you know, why dont you come out . Why dont you come out to new york . Theres a lot going on there. And so woody deposited his long suffering family in texas, back in pampa, and hitchhiked to new york in 1940. And that really was the onlyi suppose the only permament home that he had for the rest of his life would have been new york city. Amy goodman and talk about what being in new york meant for him. Who did he meet . What was he singing . Will kaufman well, he was singing some interesting songs, first of allwriting some interesting songs, because as he was hitchhiking north and east our of texas in that bitter cold new year of 1940, all hes hearing on the radio is kate smith singing irving berlins God Bless America. And thatsthat was the big hit of the year. And woody hated that song. Kate smith [singing] God Bless America some interesting songs, because as he was hitchhiking north and eastland that i love. Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above. Will kaufman now, i mean, theres two ways you can look at that song. You can look at God Bless America, written by irving berlin, all rightits the fearful prayer, almost, of a European Jewish immigrant to the United States whos nervously watching the rise of fascism in europe and praying that it wont happen over here. He actually wrote it back in 1917 and put it away. But, you know, looking at hitler across the sea, hes maybe thinking its time for that song to be resurrected. So thats a charitable way of looking at it. Its not bombastic, its not patriotic; its fearful, and its hopeful. Thats not the way woody saw it. Woody saw it as a strident, jingoistic, complacent, tub thumping anthem to american greatness. And now, he had just come from the dust bowl. Hed just come from the barbed wire gates of californias eden there. Hed seen the hoovervilles. Hed seen the bread lines. Hed seen labor activists getting their head busted. And so, hes thinking, whatgod blesswhat america, you know, is kate smith singing of . So he sits down and writes a song in response to irving berlin, and he calls it god blessed america for me. And later on, he decides to come back to that song and change the title, change the verses, change the refrain, and it becomes this land was made for you and me. And then he puts it away. So, thats one of the songs hes writing in 1940. Woody guthrie [singing] i 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. There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me sign was painted, said private property but on the back side it didnt say nothing this land was made for you and me. Amy goodman lets talk about this land is your land will kaufman ok. Amy goodman and what it became, in fact, for president obamas inauguration. Will kaufman yeah. I think probably the biggest audience, single audience, ever to hear that song was the inaugural concert for barack obama, where Bruce Springsteen and pete seeger sang the restored version. Because, you see, this land is your land has an interesting history. It starts off as god blessed america for me. And it contains a couple of killer anticapitalist verses that i dont remember singing in school, you know . And three of those verses were the ones thati mean, one verse, woody recorded one verse, i believe, in an unreleased version, about excoriating private property. But theres other verses in there. And, you know, thats what petepete said, you know, ill sing this song, as long as i can sing the whole thing, and as i recorded it earlier, so you can hear the progression of that song from the angry and bitter satire that it originally was to the Unofficial National anthem that it became. Amy goodman did springsteen and seeger sing the whole song . Will kaufman they did. They did. They sang the whole thing, and they sang it right into the face of american power, right intothey had to sing it to the president of the United States. There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. Sign was painted saying private property. but on the other side, it didnt say nothing. That side was made for you and me. You know . Big audience for that one. Pete seeger and Bruce Springsteen 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. I 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. 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. In the squares of the city, by the shadow of a steeple; by the relief office, i saw my people. As they stood there hungry, i stood there wistless, this land was made for you and me. There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me a great big sign there said private property but on the back side it didnt say nothing that sign was made for you and me. Amy goodman pete seeger and Bruce Springsteen singing this land is your land in 2009, a day before president obama was inaugurated. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report, with a Woody Guthrie special. Im amy goodman. Woody guthrie was born a hundred years ago, on july 14, 1912. Were continuing our conversation with will kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, american radical. I asked him to talk more about guthries move east in 1940. Will kaufman he gets to new york. Will geer is putting on aorganizing a concert, a benefit concert for the John Steinbeck agricultural committee. Amy goodman which is what . Will kaufman the steinbeck committee to aid agricultural [organization] migrants, it was a benefitfundraising organization that was just raising money for the migrants, for the dust bowl migrants, out in california. Steinbeck didnt have anything to do with it except lending his name, his name to it. Amy goodman of course, he wrote the grapes of wrath. Will kaufman and he wrote the grapes of wrath, of course, yeah, and became a friend of Woody Guthries there in california. So woody said, yeah, of course ill sign up to that. And so, will geer hasfor this new york concert, he has a roster of some of the top up andcoming political folk singers there, also alan lomax, whos probably one of the most important figures there. Hes the archivist of american folk song at the library of congress and also a musicologist, folk song collector, like his certainly more conservative father john lomax was. And so, alan lomax also had gathered around him a number of important folk singers young pete seeger, harvard dropout, lee hays from the commonwealth college, leadbelly huddie ledbetter, josh white, other black musicians from the piedmont. And so, that is the concert in whichwhen Woody Guthrie first meets pete seeger. Lomax later said, go back to that night when woody first met pete, and you can date the renaissance of American Folk Music to that night. You know. Amy goodman will kaufman is author of american radical. During an interview on democracy now , the legendary folk singer pete seeger talked about alan lomax and Woody Guthrie. Pete seeger well, alan got me started, and many others. Hes the man who told Woody Guthrie, he says, Woody Guthrie, your mission in life is to write songs. Dont let anything distract you. Youre like the people who wrote the ballads of robin hood and the ballad of jesse james. You keep writing ballads as long as you can. And woody took it to heart. He wasnt a good husband. He was always running off, but he wrote songs, as you know. Amy goodman do you remember when you first met Woody Guthrie . Pete seeger oh, yeah, ill never forget it. It was a benefit concert for california Agricultural Workers on broadway at midnight. Burl ives was there, the golden gate quartet, josh white, leadbelly, Margo Mayo Square dance group, with my wife dancing in it. I sang one song very amateurishly and retired in confusion to a smattering of polite applause. But woody took over and for 20 minutes entranced everybody, not just with singing, but storytelling. I come from oklahoma, you know . Its a rich state. You want some oil . Go down in the ground. Get you some hole. Get you more oil. If you want lead, we got lead in oklahoma. Go down a holele and get you soe lead. If you want coal, we got coal in oklahoma. Go down a hole, get you some coal. If you want food, clothes or groceries, just go in the hole and stay there. Then hed sing a song. Amy goodman in 1940, Woody Guthrie appeared on a new york Radio Program featuring the folk singer leadbelly. Radio announcer good afternoon. Your municipal station presents another in the series, folks songs of america, featuring that great negro folk singer of louisiana, huddie ledbetter, better known to you as leadbelly. And leadbelly has as his guest today the dustiest dust bowler of them all, Woody Guthrie of oklahoma. Woody guthrie well, i think now were going to sing you one. Heres a song here that has to do with a book and a Motion Picture that come out here a while back by the name of the grapes of wrath, wrote down by a man, John Steinbeck, who threw the pack on his back and went right out amongst the people to see just what is going on in the United States. And it just so happened that he hit a jackpot, because he knew whatwhere he was going and knew what he was writing about. So, i didnt read the book, but then i seen the picture three times. And i come home, and i sat down. I wrote up a little piece about it. The name of this is the ballad of tom joad. [singing] tom joad got out of that old mcalester pen there he got his parole after four long years on a man killing charge tom joad come a walking down the road, poor boy tom joad come a walking down the road it was there he found him a Truck Driving man there he got him a ride said i just got aloose from the old penitentiary charge called homicide, poor boy, it was a charge called homicide. Amy goodman Woody Guthrie performing on the radio in 1940. That same year, he formed the almanac singers with pete seeger and others. I asked will kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, american radical, to talk about the significance of the group. Will kaufman the almanac singers were really spearheaded by pete seeger and Millard Lampell and lee hays, and it had various personnel in this band. They were areally wanted to form, i guess, what would have been the first selfconsciously proletarian, Progressive Music Group in america, group of singers. The idea was using song as a means of championing the Union Movement and the anti intervention movement, until of course the war starts, and then they do their flipflop and go from being anti interventionists into war champions. They didnt last very long. Theyre dissolved, theyre broken up by about 1942. But they wrote quite a few songs which were sort of the prototype for many of the political folk groups that followed, including the weavers, which in a sense grows out of the almanac singers, as some of the same people who were in that group become the weavers, as well. Amy goodman paul robesonwhen did Woody Guthrie meet paul robeson, the famous singer, actor, dogged by the u. S. Government, by the fbi . They took back his passport. Will kaufman yeah. He would havei guess it would have been around in the late 40s, when he actually met robeson, because both of them were on the board of peoples songs, which was an organization started by pete seeger as a means, again, of energizing the Union Movement through song. And he admired paul robeson very much. I dont believe he ever sang with them. I saw one letter in which he mentions having met him. But he certainly supported him. And he was there, of course, during thesethe peekskill riots of 1949. Amy goodman well, talk about the peekskill riots. Exactly what happened . Will kaufman ok, 1949, august, late august, Early September of 1949, the civil rights congress, through peoples songs, got paul robeson to agree to sing a benefit concert at the golfing grounds up inor the lakeland picnic area up in peekskill, Westchester County. And before robeson even got to the grounds, he neverin fact, he never even made it to the grounds, because for the whole previous week, the peekskill evening star and other local newspapers and the ku klux klan and other rightwing organizations were firing up the populists to prevent robeson and to prevent his followers from coming to peekskill. Robesonyou know, it was all this robeson, you know, jew loving commie kind of stuff like that, because robeson had declaredhis crime was declaring, in the midst of the cold war, that no African American would voluntarily go to war with the soviet union. Hed been to the soviet union. He said he was treated with more respect there than he was ever treated in the United States. And for that heresy, he was met with a burning cross on the hills above peekskill, which, you know, kind of proved his point. And so, he never made it to the grounds there, but the concertgoers did. They were on the grounds there, and they were met by masked gangs of men and women and teenagers hurling rocks and abuse and beating them up with, you know, fence posts and baseball bats, and destroying the grounds and what have you. And so, robeson is not able to sing at peekskill that week. But he makes a declaration. He says, i dont get scared when fascism comes near, like it has at peekskill. And he says, im going to come back in a week, and im going to sing this concert. And in the intervening week, they amass between 20,000 and 30,000 supporters to protect robeson and to protect the concertgoers. And they make it into the grounds. He sings the concert. Hes buzzed by police helicopters, fbi helicopters, who try to destroy the sound. But he sings the concert. And then, theres no violence on the grounds, but the concertgoers, as theyre leaving, they are directed deliberately into an ambush road by the Westchester County police. And all along the road there, there are gangs of teenagers and mostly young people with rocks and boulders piled high at periodic staging posts along the road all the way towards the bronx, on bridges overhead. And they are destroying the cars. Theyre throwing boulders through the windows. Glass is shattering. Hundreds of people are getting injured. Pete seeger was there. He recalled what it was like to have his car surrounded by mobs, rocked back and forth. Hes got, even now, embedded into his chimney breast in his home up in beacon, new york, a huge boulder which had crashed through the windscreen and almost killed his young son danny. And this is collusion between the Westchester County police and the ku klux klan and the gangs and the newspapers and what have you. And Woody Guthrie was there. He wasi wasreally been surprised that none of the major biographies about woody have made a point of actually placing him physically at peekskill, because he was so astounded by what he saw. He was on a bus with lee hays, and he said, you know, ive seen some bad stuff, but this is about the worst i have ever seen. And lee hays remembered that, that, you know, woody was leading these frightened people in the bus. He was leading them in singing songs, like imyou know, takes a worried man to sing a worried song, im worried now but i wont be worried long. And hes got really good attitude to him. You know, hes making quite brave jokes, like, you know, anybody got a rock . Theres a window what needs to be opened back here. You know, things like that. And at one point, hays remembered that woody pinned up a shirt against the window to stop the glass from breaking inwards, and he said, wouldnt you know it . Woody pinned up a red shirt. You know. And woody was so astounded by what he saw, in the space of a month he wrote like 20, 25 songs about peekskill, that he never recorded. He put them into ahe put them into a makeshift little collection of songs called peekskill songs. He never recorded any of them, but billy bragg, you know, the english radical folk singerabout 20 years ago, nora guthrie, woodys daughter, who presided over the archives, began inviting contemporary month he wrote like 20, 25 songs about peekskill, that he never recorded. He put them into ahe put themmur dads lyrics to music. And one of these that billy bragg put to music didnt end up on the double album that came out of there, mermaid avenue, it was called, that he did with wilco, but they did record it. It didnt end up in the final track, but its one of woodys great odes to paul robeson and what happened at peekskill. [singing] paul robeson hes the man who faced down the ku klux klan over peekskills golfing ground his words came sounding and all around him there to jump and clap and cheer i sent the best i had my thirty thousand. The klansman leader said old paul would lose his head when thirtyfive thousand vets broke up his concert. But less than four thousand came to side in with the klan and around pauls lonesome oak my thirty thousand. A beersoaked brassy band went snortling around the grounds four hundred noble souls westchesters manhood and you know they looked exactly like fleas on a tigers back or lost fish in the waters of my thirty thousand. My thirty thousand. When paul had sung and gone mothers and babies going home cops came with guns and clubs and they clubbed and beat em well i would hate to be a cop caught with a bloody stick, cause you cant bash the brains of thirty thousand. Each eye you tried to gouge, each skull you tried to crack has got a thousand thousand friends all along this green grass if you furnish the skull someday ill pass out the clubs and guns to the billion hands that love my thirty thousand. Each wrinkle on your face i will know it at a glance you cannot run and hide nor duck nor dodge them and your carcass and your deeds will fertilize the seeds of the ones who stood to guard my thirty ousand. Amy goodman will kaufman, american radical, Woody Guthrie. Woody guthrie, american radical is his book. Howard fast said about peekskill, thats the sound of fascism. Not in germany, but here in america. Remember it talk more about the redbaiting at that time and how guthrie responded to that. Will kaufman well, it was going onthe redbaiting really started with theeven before, i suppose, the election of truman in the late 40s. First what woody watches, to his astonishment, is the purging of the Union Movement. I mean, the communist movement, the communist party and affiliated organizations had worked to build the americanmany of the american unions and the cio and what have you. And then they join in the purge, right after the war, of much of the left wing and much of the militancy of the Labor Movement. So thats the first thing that woody watches to his utter disillusionment. He calls himselfhe says, you know, my radical soul is so lonesome at this point. He feels increasingly marginalized politically. And then, of course, with the cold war and the truman doctrine about containing communism in greece, woody writes songs against truman, writes songs expressing his astonishment that britain and the United States could support the greek monarchy against the workers rising there, and just sees not only the Labor Movement and the Union Movement becoming increasinglythe fangs brought out of it, drawn out of it, but then elsewhere in the wider culture, where basically mccarthyism takes hold. He sees hanns eisler being deported and writes a song about that, expressing his fears about what life in a mccarthy dominated america might be like. But then something happens. His huntingtons disease kicks in seriously about 1952, and so he is increasingly immobilized, increasinglyhis behavior is increasingly more erratic, and he finds that he has difficulty writing. He cant speak as well. He canthe gets increasing bodilya lack of coordination. And he sort of drops outafter 1952, 1953, hes prettyhes sort of becoming less and less of a public figure at that point. But he is watching from the sidelines what is going on. Pete seeger gets called to the mccarthy committee. Well, mccarthy is gone, but the committee is certainly still there, 1955. And unlike burl ives, who named names to the committee, and unlike josh white, who called himself a communist dupe or a dupe of the communists, and theywoody excoriated them in letters. I mean, some real bitchy stuff coming out of Woody Guthrie about his former friends there. Pete seeger decides to take the First Amendment, not the fifth. He takes the First Amendment you have no right to ask me these questions, you sitting up there on thatyou know, in your inquisitorial dais there. And so, he gets slapped with a contempt of congress citation, and hes convicted. And hes looking at 10 years in jail. And its not until 1961 that his conviction is overturned on a technicalitygot nothing to do with a moral standing. In fact, ironically, the judge who overturned it was julius hoffman, who sent the rosenbergs to the chair. But amy goodman not so far away from where he was, at sing sing. Will kaufman not so far, thats right. Amy goodman in ossining, new york. Will kaufman thats right, yeah, yeah. So, woody is certainly aware of the mccarthy committee. He knew that he was on a number of lists, because he was mentioned a few times in huac testimony. He was named a few times. And hed say, you know, thank god im on these lists. I mean, thered be something wrong if i wasnt on mccarthys lists, you know . Things like that. Amy goodman you mentioned that pete seeger went before huac will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman the house un american activities committee. Guthrie was never called before it, but he did write an impassioned defense of pete seeger. Will kaufman yeah. Its one of the most heartbreaking things to read that i came across in the archives. Its a letter that he wrote to pete seeger. And woodysone of the symptoms of huntingtons disease is that it has an incredible impact upon ones sense of languagesentence construction, spelling, wordplay, whatever. His biographer joe klein calls it linguistic anarchy. And so, he wrote a very moving letter to pete seeger, basically saying, look, pete, i hear youre not going to haveyou may not have to go to jail now, and thats great. But ive never heard you say one evil or hateful or dangerous thing, and these people on this Unamerican Committee are the most un americanistic people ive ever heard of. And stuff like that. So amy goodman would you like to read the letter . Will kaufman yeah, whenhes talking about harold leventhal, his manager, harold leventhal, or hal, and Fred Hellerman of the weavers, who came to visit woody in hospital. And woody wrote to seeger. He says, hal and freddy told me when they visited me here a few little weeks ago how you mite not have to go to jail for another two or more years for refusing to testify before my unnamerican committee theyre all a big bunch of the very unnnamericanistic people i ever did hear of. To me you are just another goody martyr pete over on my side of gods eternal love since i never did ever even hear you speakout actout nor so much as even breathe out one little breathe of hateyful hatreds of no earthy sort my crazy committee to me are always my very worst sorts of haters always anyways. Amy goodman that was the letter that Woody Guthrie wrote will kaufman that woody wrote to pete seeger. Amy goodman in defense of pete seeger. Will kaufman yeah. Amy goodman before huac, the house unamerican activities committee. What did Woody Guthrie himself feel were his most important achievements . Will kaufman he would say, as he did say, just telling the stories of people who he encountered and putting their stories to music. He often said, yeah, i havent written an original word in my life. Everything i write down is something i heard from you out there, and im just telling you something you already know. So he would say that he wasused music as a means of telling stories that otherwise would not get told, from people who would not be heard otherwise. And as far as he was concerned, that was his lifes mission. Amy goodman will kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, american radical. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. As we continue our Woody Guthrie special, we turn to the british rocker and activist, billy bragg. In 1998 and 2000, bragg participated in two wellknown albums paying tribute to Woody Guthrie. On mermaid avenue volumes 1 and 2, billy bragg composed music for lyrics written by Woody Guthrie and performed many of the songs alongside the albums other main contributor, the band wilco. Concerned, that was his lifes mission. I asked billy bragg to talk about how the project came about. Billy bragg about 20 years ago, it was now, i did a show here in new york city in central park with pete seeger to celebrate woodyswhat would have been woodys 80th birthday in 1992. And i met his daughter nora, and she told me that in the Woody Guthrie archive they had lyrics of songs that woody had written during his lifetime, which although woody had written lyrics and music, he had actually kept the tunes in his head. He couldnt write music notation. Now, i cant do that. I dont write music notation, so i understood where he was coming from. And she invited me to come and look at some of these lyrics, with a view to write some new tunes, to give them life, really. And i was a bit skeptical about this. I think i might have said to her Something Like, surely this is bob dylans job, not mine. But she felt that she needed someone both from a different generation and also from perhaps, you know, another culture, to be able to step back a little bit from woody, rather than someone who grew up singing this land is your land. And she saw a link, and there is a link, with myself and woody. You know, joe strummer of the clash, one of my heroes, was a huge Woody Guthrie fan. In fact, he used to call himself woody before he called himself joe strummer. You know, obviously dylan, another huge influence on me, was hugely influenced by woody. And then you get back to the little guy himself. You know, hes the father of the political song tradition, as far as, you know, in our culture is concerned. So amy goodman talk a little about him, for people, young people especially. Billy bragg wellyeah, well, Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 in okemah, oklahoma, and during the last Great American depression, he was writing incredible songs about the internal migrations in the United States of america, people who had to leave the dust bowl, the areas of the texas panhandle, of oklahoma, of arizona, and move to the fruit orchards in california. It was a huge mass migration, similar to the kind of migrationits kind of a east towest migration. Now the migration is kind of like south to north thats going on. But that great migration is still going on. And woody wrote these incredible songs and eventually ended up coming to new york city in 1940, lived out in coney island. And although he himself never really had, during his lifetime, had a career in which heyou know, anything like mineyou know, he never did gigs, he never went on tour, he never sold tshirts, he barely made recordsthe people around him, people like pete seeger and the weavers, were singing his songs and popularizing his songs. And this was particularly during the 1960s in the folk revival. And people like bob dylan, you know, had heard legend of this guy Woody Guthrie. It was almost like perhaps he might not exist. He might just be, you know, like johnny appleseed. People did think, in the 60s, did he exist . But he did exist, and he was actuallyhe was infirm. He was suffering from a terrible degenerative disease called huntingtons disease, and he was in the Brooklyn Hospital here in new york. Dylan saw him before he died. He died in 1967. But his legacy was to write thei suppose, what you might call the founding songs of political pop, you know. And i would argue that he was the First Alternative musician. He wrote his most famous song, this land is your land, as an alternative to the number one hit single in jukeboxes in 1940, when he was hitchhiking to new york. Every time he went and stopped in a bar, someone would put this song on the jukebox. And it was irving berlins God Bless America. And he hated it. It was like, how can you say that aboutyou know, it was still the depression. In the 1940s, the depression hadnt ended in the United States of america. It was only the Second World War that we ended the depression. And he sat down, and he wrote this song called god blessed america for you and me, and which later became this land was made for you and me. So, woody was thehe was the first punk rocker, and the last elizabethan balladeer. He was many, many things, woody. Amy goodman so talk about some of the lyrics that you found. Billy bragg wethe album that we made, mermaid avenue, myself and wilco in the late 90s, we actually recorded a lot more material that has never been released. And next year, were hoping to release that whole full thirda whole third album, another 16, 17track stuff. But woodys original songs, the songs that he wrote back in the 1930syou know, i mean, the one that im going to play for you now, which is one of his classic songs, with these images of people losing their houses to the banks, of gamblers on the stock markets making millions, when ordinary working people cant afford to make ends meet, and of people dying for want of proper free healthcare, you know, this song could have been written anytime in the last five years, really, in the United States of america. Actually, this song is over 70 years old. Its called i aint got no home in this world anymore. [singing] i aint got no home, im just aroamin round, just a wanderin worker, i go from town to town. And the police make it hard for me no matter where i go and i aint got no home in this world anymore. No, i aint got no home in this world anymore. My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, a long and dusty road that a million feet have trod; now the rich man took my home and drove me from my door and i aint got no home in this world anymore. No, i aint got no home in this world anymore. I was farmin on the shares, and always i was poor; my crops i laid into the bankers store. And my wife took down and died all on the cabin floor, and i aint got no home in this world anymore. No, i aint got no home in this world anymore. I mined in your mines and i gathered in your corn i been working, mister, since the day that i was born now i worry all the time like i never did before and i aint got no home in this world anymore. World anymore. No, i aint got no home in this world anymore. Now as i look around, its mighty plain to see this world is such a strange and a funny place to be; where the gamblin man is rich while the workin man is poor, and i aint got no home in this world anymore. No, i aint got no home in this world anymore. Amy goodman the british singer and activist, billy bragg, covering Woody Guthries song, i aint got no home in this world anymore. Woody guthrie was born a hundred years ago, on july 14, 1912. Democracy now is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. Email your comments to outreach democracynow. Org or mail them to democracy now p. O. Box 693, new york, ny 10013. Box 693, new york, ny 10013