Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie is my hero for many reasons.

Let’s start with his earlier life, a little before the Great Depression. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was named after the Governor of New Jersey who later became President of the United States. He was born on July 14, 1912. Woody Guthrie lived through part of the Great Depression in the 1930s. When Woody was young, his mom died from various diseases, his grandfather suffered from the same thing and drowned and his sister died from an explosion.

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Later Woody grew older and when he did he started to get more and more interested in singing. He had no money to travel very far so he jumped trains for about 5 years to get around. Eventually, Woody’s father sent him west to Mexico. When he turned 19 Woody married his first wife. Her name was Mary Jennings. They had three children. He later left Texas to go to California, because of the Great Dust Bowl and didn’t take his wife with him.

He met with thousands of unemployed men and women looking for jobs in California. Many of his songs were about how he was concerned about the people’s conditions. He started getting famous in Los Angels and California, because of his partner Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman. Crissman was a singer on the radio. She set Woody up to be on the radio too. Woody sang folk songs. Lots of them were protest songs against social injustice. Songs like This Land is Your Land! That is a protest song against the overplaying of Irving Berlin’s song called “God Bless America.” A newscaster named Ed Robbin liked Woody and became his political mentor.

Many songwriters and singers look up to Woody as an influence. Some of them are Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. Because he sang a lot about his experiences in the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie earned the nickname "Dust Bowl Troubadour."

During World War II Woody Guthrie’s friends pressured him to join the army. He listened to them and joined. Woody wasn’t drafted as a soldier. He served as a dishwasher and a messman, which meant he worked in the kitchen and cleaned up after the soldiers. Although he mostly worked cheering up the soldiers on big voyages by singing and playing his guitar. Woody tried to write about experiences in the army, but he didn’t like what he came up with. Later Woody’s friend Jim Longhi, wrote a book about Cisco, Woody’s other friend wrote about Woody’s adventures and experiences in the army and things about the three friend’s lives called Woody, Cisco and Me. Woody Guthrie also sometimes tried to raise money for the “needy” or unemployed men and woman with not much money anymore. He not only sang but wrote political articles, books, autobiographical sketches for newspapers too. One of the articles he wrote was called “Folk Songs are on Their Way in.” Woody Guthrie wrote more than a thousand songs. Woodrow Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, at age 55.