358 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
that he, Guthrie, and Lomax wanted to convey:
unvarnished truths about life, in contrast to the
falsehoods of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway.
American folk music had reached a pivotal
moment in its historical development. The pre-
paratory stage had been set by the recognition
that folk songs did not have to be anonymous
works of great antiquity, that recent songs by
known song writers could enter the oral tradi-
t ion a nd b ecome pa r t of t he fol k r ep er tor y. Now
the concept of who could or could not be a folk
musician was undergoing a similar transfor-
mation. For the early song catchers, folk musi-
cians were plain people embedded in their
traditional communities and cultures. Thanks
to the efforts of the Lomaxes and others, some
of these folk musicians—such as Woody Guth-
rie, Leadbelly, and Jean Ritchie—had traveled
outside their home communities to perform,
sometimes in comparatively formal concert
situations, for larger audiences unfamiliar
with their music’s original contexts and mean-
ings. Along the way, these musicians had learned how to present their songs in
a more accessible package, by including spoken introductions and explanations.
The fi nal step in this pivotal transformation was the rise of the “urban folk”
singer: a musician who performs folk songs from a traditional culture that is not
his or her own. In many cases, these new folk singers of the 1940s learned the songs
they performed secondhand, through the work of collectors such as the Lomaxes,
though most of them followed up that introduction with fi eldwork of their own. In
this way, Manhattan-born, Harvard-educated Pete Seeger became a singer of songs
only remotely connected with either New York City or Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Another important factor separated this new breed of folk singers from their
traditional forebears: whereas the singers whose songs were collected by Cecil
Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell were amateur musicians, the urban folk sing-
ers were determined to make their livings as performers. Yet how were these
musicians to make a living selling their noncommercial songs?
Early in 1941 Seeger joined with Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and Guthrie to
form the Almanac Singers. Singing about peace, war, and politics, the group set
up Almanac House, a cooperative in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where
they lived and held weekly musical gatherings. They sang at union and political
rallies and occasionally on the radio. They also made recordings. The Almanacs
have been called the fi rst urban folk-singing group, pursuing a goal stated by
Lampell: “We are trying to give back to the people the songs of the workers.”
Guthrie summarized the group’s activist philosophy: “The biggest parts of our
song collection are aimed at restoring the right amount of people to the right
amount of land and the right amount of houses and the right amount of grocer-
ies to the right amount of working folks.”
The Almanac Singers possessed the talent and charisma of successful
entertainers, though they rejected that label. And as they sang for a wideningWoody Guthrie Tells a Radio Audience
the Difference between His Songs and
Popular Songs (1944)I
hate a song that makes you think that you are not any
good. I hate a song makes you think that you are just
born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good
for nothing.... Songs that run you down or poke fun at you
on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fi ght those kind of songs to my very last
breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that’ll prove to you that this is
your world and that if it’s hit you pretty hard and knocked
you for a dozen loops, no matter how hard it’s run you
down or rolled you over, no matter what color, what size
you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that
make you take pride in yourself and in your work.In their own words
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