CHAPTER 14 | THE RISE OF URBAN FOLK MUSIC 355
had come to hate a popular hit that seemed to be every where that winter, Irving
Berlin’s “God Bless America.” As Guthrie saw it, Berlin’s song—whose text invoked
the timeless phrase “home, sweet home,” a reference to a song from the early
1800s (see chapter 2)—glossed over social inequality as if it were God’s will. In
February, shortly after reaching New York, Guthrie wrote a song in six stanzas
that answered the falsely inspirational quality of Berlin’s hit. The fourth stanza
reveals a hard edge of disenchantment:Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property.
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing—
God Blessed America for me.And the sixth challenges Berlin’s song directly:One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief offi ce I saw my people—
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if
God Blessed America for me.A few years later, and with changes, Guthrie’s number became “This Land Is
Your Land,” a song hardly less affi rmative than Berlin’s, and an anthem of the
1960s counterculture.
After the “Grapes of Wrath” concert Lomax invited Guthrie to Washington
to record for the Archive of American Folk Song. He soon discovered that the
singer had a huge repertory (including “Gypsy Dav y,” Child ballad no. 200,
which Guthrie sang to his own guitar accompaniment). And he learned too that
Guthrie used the phonograph to expand his repertory and refi ne his style. Alan’s
sister Bess Lomax, who shared a house with Guthrie in 1941, recalled that count-
less repetitions of blues recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Slim
helped him work on vocal delivery.
Guthrie recorded his own song “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You”
(LG 14.5) at the Library of Congress in March 1940, accompanying himself on
guitar. In waltz time and verse-and-chorus form, this ballad takes an unsen-
timental look at the impact of Depression-era droughts and dust storms on
the people of the west Texas plains. Partway through a series of choruses and
interludes, Guthrie breaks into storytelling mode over a guitar background.
Using the chorus as an ironic punch line, he tells of a preacher who, facing
the same hardship his worshipers were going through, decided to “cut price
on salvation and sin.” Calling his fl ock together for a message of consolation,
he prepared to read his sermon. But fi nding the meetinghouse too dusty, “he
folded his specs and took up collection” before heading out of town, singing,
“So long, it’s been good to know you.”
Though neither Guthrie’s singing nor his Carter-style guitar playing sounds
remarkable, both were major infl uences on the following generation of folk
musicians. The unforced vocal delivery, with no attempt to mask his regional
accent, allows Guthrie to move easily between speaking and singing. The artless
quality of his voice and delivery, and the rolling rhythm that carries him over
the rough edges in his singing and playing, set a standard that many folk-revival
musicians took as a model of authenticity.LG 14.5“This Land Is Your
Land”172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 355 23/01/13 8:38 PM