A Tribute to Nora and Woody Guthrie: Congratulations and Happy Birthday!
*Right now, streaming on Folk Alley’s Classic Folk Channel, a special Woody Guthrie Tribute playlist in celebration of his July 14th birthday. 6 hours of music curated by Woody’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, including numerous covers featuring Arlo Guthrie, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Cole Quest and The City Pickers, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, The Mammals, Billy Bragg & Wilco, Odetta, Ry Cooder, Joel Rafael, Tom Morello, Dropkick Murphys, Jimmy LaFave and, of course, plenty performed by the man himself. LISTEN HERE.
On Father’s Day this year, Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie’s daughter, announced she was “goin’ fishin’” and retiring. For more than 30 years, Guthrie has kept her father’s legacy alive through her tireless, and often exhilarating, work as the president of Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., and the Woody Guthrie Foundation. In 1994, Guthrie co-founded the Woody Guthrie Archives with Harold Leventhal—her father’s manager—and archivist Jorge Arevalo Mateus. Two years later, in 1996, she co-produced the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum Tribute series honoring Woody Guthrie, featuring a concert that included, among others, Indigo Girls, Jimmy LaFave, Ani DiFranco, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Bragg. The proceeds from the concert enabled the archives to be open and free to scholars and students, allowing them access to her father’s personal materials and his other papers and artifacts. In 2013, Nora Guthrie—with Robert Santelli and the George Kaiser Family Foundation—co-founded the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, creating a permanent home for the Woody Guthrie Archive.
“Dance Around” – Woody Guthrie
Born on July 14, 1912, Woody Guthrie would have been 112 today. An inveterate reader and writer and advocate for the downtrodden, Guthrie used his guitar—on which he famously wrote the slogan “This Machine Kills Fascists”—his pen and his voice to give voice to those who could not speak for themselves. In 1940, he released the album Dust Bowl Ballads, songs based on his own experiences in the dust storms that plagued Oklahoma in the 1930s. The storms drove thousands of Oklahomans—who became known by the derogatory title “Okie”—including Guthrie and his family to migrate to California with hopes of starting over. He also wrote what has become his most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land” in February 1940; the song provided an alternative anthem to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Guthrie’s ballads advocating worker’s rights and social justice, encouraging deep attention to and often involvement with the political events of the time, has inspired numerous artists from Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan to Jeff Tweedy and Jonatha Brooke. While Guthrie wrote thousands of song lyrics as well as scores of letters, journal and diary entries, he left behind hundreds of unpublished lyrics and other unpublished writings when he died on October 3, 1967.
“Walt Whitman’s Niece” – Billy Bragg and Wilco
Since 1991, when Leventhal first gave her a box of her father’s materials to look through, Nora Guthrie has curated art exhibits, published several collections of Woody’s Guthrie’s writings—many of which had never been published before—and mounted tours and events designed to celebrate and honor her father’s enduring contributions to music, politics, and art and to remind us of Woody Guthrie’s vision for a better world. Most importantly, she has produced or co-produced numerous albums by artists who have set her father’s previously unpublished, and unrecorded, lyrics to music.
Almost immediately, she worked to get Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs—a lost songbook of his lyrics and illustrations—published by HarperCollins in 1992. She then co-produced an album of the same title with her brother Arlo Guthrie, and the project garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Children’s Album. In 1998, she collaborated with Billy Bragg and Wilco as Executive Producer of Mermaid Avenue, and she collaborated again with them on 2000s Mermaid Avenue: Volume II and 2012’s set Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Bragg and Wilco created new music for Woody Guthrie’s unpublished lyrics, and Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue: Volume II also received Grammy nominations.
In 2004, Guthrie served as Executive Producer for the Klezmatics’ Happy Joyous Hanukkah on which the band set Woody’s Hanukkah lyrics to music; in 2006, she produced the Klezmatics Wonder Wheel which contained her father’s lyrics dealing with Jewish themes and spirituality. The album won a Grammy in 2007 for Best World Music Album.
“Wheel of Life” – The Klezmatics
Folk rocker Jonatha Brooke’s 2008 album The Works features more of Woody’s unpublished lyrics, focusing on his love songs. Guthrie once again worked as Executive Producer for the album.
“There’s More True Lovers Than One” – Jonatha Brooke
In 2011, Guthrie and Rob Wasserman co-produced Note of Hope, a compilation of various artists from Jackson Browne and Ani DiFranco to Van Dyke Parks and Pete Seeger, among many others, paying tribute in song to Woody’s rich poetic and narrative legacy. One year later, Nora Guthrie served as Executive Producer on another collaborative album of songs that her father wrote in L.A., New Multitudes featuring Jay Farrar, Jim James, Will Johnson, and Anders Parker. 2016 brought Nora together with bluegrass standout Del McCoury as she produced Del and Woody.
“The Government Road” – The Del McCoury Band
Nora Guthrie’s most recent collaborations involve the folk punk band Dropkick Murphys. The band brought to life more of Woody’s unpublished lyrics on their 2022 This Machine Still Kills Fascists and 2023’s Okemah Rising, which also features guest performances by Violent Femmes and Woody Guthrie’s grandson Cole Quest.
“All You Fonies” – Dropkick Murphys
Although Nora Guthrie may be retiring, she’s handing over the work to her daughter Anna Canoni, who’s worked with the Archive for the past 21 years and is enthusiastic about bringing Woody’s legacy to new generations in the ways that Nora has done since 1991.
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*Keep reading for a few more of our favorite Woody and Woody-inspired tracks!
“Ticky Tock” – Wenzel & Band
“You Know the Night” – Jackson Browne
“Old L.A.” – Jay Farrar, Jim James, Will Johnson, and Anders Parker
“Deportee” – Ani DiFranco
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