Woody Guthrie (born the July 14th 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma - died the October 3rd 1967) is a Chanteur and American Guitariste folk .

His/her mother baptized it Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in homage to the president Woodrow Wilson. She died of the disease of Huntington which she transmitted to her son.

He is the father of Arlo Guthrie.

Beginnings

Figurehead of the movement folk of the Years 1960, Woody Guthrie is before a whole musician of country. After a childhood marked by innumerable tragedies, Woody owes, as of adolescence, food of its talents of multi-instrumentalist while playing in the street, where it sells also his drawings.

Californian years

It engages very young person in the political action. Party for the California, like thousands of these " Okies" driven out by the misery of Oklahoma, and whose Romance (and the film) the Grapes of Anger tell the epopee, Woody Guthrie settles then in the middle of the social struggles, being opposed with its guitar and its songs to the militia of the fruit-bearing companies or the kindness of the police of the Californian State. Its reputation of frightening agitator is worth to him many contentions with the police force and justice. But its songs protesters draws also the attention of the listeners of country music and the New Yorkean folklorists. One of its more famous songs of protest is without question the title " Deportee" that a crash landing of plane transporting on its board Mexican emigrants, which has occurred inspired to him on January 29th, 1948. What sharpened more its spirit of rebellion was the treatment of the press charged to cover the event with respect to these twenty eight disaster victims who do not transfer their name at all quoted by this one; that they are written or by the radio, alleging that they acted only " of expulsés". For small the anecdocte, the song was in the beginning a poem of the singer, of which the additional music was composed by Martin Hoffman and was popularized later by Pete Seeger.

Its experiment of the " Dust Bowls" , the tempètes of dust, inspires a whole cycle of songs to him, to which he will add a ballade on Tom Joad, the hero of Steinbeck, to which he is identified.

At the end of the Thirties, enthusiastic partisan of the " New Deal" of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he is engaged by the administration of great work to sing in front of the workmen who build stoppings on Columbia River. He draws another cycle from it from at the same time poetic and political songs.

New York

After many adventures, the Capitol label offers to Woody Guthrie a contract of exclusive recording. Instead of accepting it, it leaves California and leaves to settle with New York. It becomes one of the favorites of Greenwich Village. Its folklore protester will exert a major influence on all the futures protest singers, as Pete Seeger with which it frequently takes part in a Hootenanny, Bob Dylan (which visits him to the hospital where it finishes its life as of its arrival in New York, and devote to him a song in its first disc), Joan Baez or Bruce Springsteen.

Its end

Woody Guthrie died the October 3rd 1967, overcome by the disease of Huntington. Its music had a considerable influence and fact part of the contemporary culture of the United States; its texts considered with the image of its temperament are carried by a music recognized like rough and without ornaments, and its work incontestably became a very important reference of the American song.

Its political commitment

To trust of its committed political convictions, it registered on all its guitars the sentence: " This Machine Kills Fascists" (" This machine kills the fascistes").

Songs

• House off Rising Sun (adaptation of Woody Guthrie according to traditional)
• The Dodger Song (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• I Ain' T Got No Home (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• C Re Semi (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Hardware, Ain' T It Hard (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• I Wrinkles Year Old Paint (adaptation of Woody Guthrie according to traditional a
• This Land is Your Land (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Liza Jane (Words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Could My Little Shoes Away (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Round and Round Hitler' S Grave (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Talkin' Hard Luck Blues (words & music of Woody Guthrie)
• Deportee (words & music of Woody Guthrie)

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