354 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
WOODY GUTHRIE
In March 1940 a landmark concert was held at New York’s Forrest Theater for
the benefi t of migrant farm workers. Billed as a “Grapes of Wrath” evening, after
John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, the concert was historic because the featured art-
ists were folk musicians. Festivals during the 1930s had placed folk singers and
players in front of paying audiences, and some had sung on the radio, at union
events and political rallies, and even in nightclubs. Nevertheless, to present
them in an evening concert setting, on a New York theater stage and in sup-
port of a political cause, was a novel idea. Among the singers who appeared that
night, Woody Guthrie, newly arrived in the city, seems to have left the strongest
impression.
Born in 1912 in Oklahoma, Guthrie was a talented, prolifi c writer who also
sang and played guitar and managed to avoid formal schooling in any of these
pursuits. From his teenage years he lived a wandering life, including stints as a
laborer, street singer, and hobo. In the course of his lifetime Guthrie wrote or
adapted more than a thousand songs, refl ecting his travels and emphasizing the
Great Depression, the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, New Deal politics, and
union organizing. Scornful of music with no message, Guthrie sang his politi-
cally inspired songs on picket lines, in marches, and at protest meetings. Alan
Lomax, who heard Guthrie for the fi rst time at the “Grapes of Wrath” concert,
found him “miraculously” untouched by popular singing styles, a genuine polit-
ical radical, and a gifted entertainer.
Lomax’s respect increased even more as he experienced Guthrie’s talent as a
songwriter. During a cross-country trip to New York City in early 1940, GuthrieK Oklahoma-born Woody
Guthrie (1912–1967)
parlayed genuine folk roots
and political radicalism into
a prominent place in the
folk revival movement that
began in the late 1930s.the Dust Bowl172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 354 23/01/13 8:38 PM