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|---|---|---|
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | 928 GUTHRIE, WOODY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | 921 Guthrie, Woody 2004 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Ed Cray creates a haunting portrait of the larger-than-life folk singer who influenced Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and popular music itself, and who captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs: This Land is Your Land, Going down this road feeling bad, and many more.
Author Notes
Ed Cray is a profesor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The biographer of Gen. George C. Marshall (General of the Army) turns his prodigious skills to view another complex American hero with an equally complex story-folk singer and political activist Woody Guthrie. Cray's access to thousands of pages from the Woody Guthrie Archives (including previously unpublished letters, diaries and journals) allows him to present a comprehensive picture, although sometimes the detail keeps Cray from moving the story along. However, this is the definitive biography of a songwriter whose legendary image for the past half-century has been "the banty, brilliant songwriter who had stood up for the underdog and downtrodden." Cray provides a superb look at Guthrie's background as a real estate agent's son. He carefully details how Guthrie moved from a fairly conventional career in country music to a recreation of his image through remarkable songs, like his "Dust Bowl Ballads,'' and gained a whole new Depression-era audience: "The Okies and Arkies, the Texicans and Jayhawkers, had become Woody's people." Cray also expertly observes how the "writerly discipline" of these works was missing in his post-WWII songs. While Guthrie's folk hero status is a given today, Cray shows just how much effort it actually took for a new generation of folk singers such as Bob Dylan to raise awareness of Guthrie's importance as the man himself fell victim to Huntington's disease. Finally, Cray fully explores one of the real heroes in this story, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, who stuck with the singer during and after their stormy marriage. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A lively, graphic portrait of the balladeer and activist who made ants-in-his-pants into an art form. Woody Guthrie (1912-67) doesn't emerge here as any sort of icon, but he does shine through as a force of nature, a deep-running reservoir of disobedient energy applied to music, politics, and writing. Cray (Chief Justice, 1997, etc.) makes few assumptions; rather, he follows close on Guthrie's heels, letting the acts speak for themselves. In terms of number and content, they are a hell's-afire riot. The author aptly characterizes his subject's music as simple, idiomatic, and direct, rich in symbolism, steeped in old oral traditions, yet, amazingly, crafted in mere minutes or hours. Guthrie's politics, on the other hand, took shape more gradually over a couple of years--a near-geological amount of time for this itchy soul. Cray neatly couples the singer's musical and political evolution, showing how they fed upon one another: a black man fired his first interest in music, and thus fired his questioning of racism. But Guthrie was never as ingenuous as he made it sound when he said, "Left wing, right wing, chicken wing--it's the same thing to me. I sing my songs wherever I can sing 'em"; this prairie socialist evolved into a "full blood Marxican," though seldom a dogmatic one. Guthrie had "to do a little something different . . . learn a little something different every day," which didn't make him much of a husband or father, though it kept him curious. His biographer shrewdly charts his passage through radio programs and the Almanac Singers, his stint as a leftist columnist and the writing of Bound for Glory, his patriotic socialism during the war years and the sad days of increasingly crazy behavior that led to his institutionalization. Guthrie's last years were dark, shadowed by the horrible death of his daughter, FBI probes, and his drastic physical decline from Huntington's chorea. A jam-packed life, unfolded with an artful blend of perspective and admiration. (16 photos, not seen) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Although Woody Guthrie has been a favorite topic of children's books in recent years, there has not been a substantive adult biography written about him sinceoelein's definitive Woody Guthrie0 (1980). Cray ( Chiefustice: A Biography of Earl Warren,0 1997) may well supplantlein, as he was given access to the Woody Guthrie Archives, which contain previously unpublished letters, diaries, and journals. Although his narrative is sometimes too thick with details, Cray eloquently sums up the Okie songwriter's sorrowful life, during which he endured his sister's and daughter's deaths by fire, his mother's committal to an insane asylum, and his own diagnosis and death from Huntington's disease. Cray is especially insightful on Guthrie's politics and his deep empathy for Depression-era migrant workers. A man of contradictions, the songwriter emerges as an intellectual who took pains to hide his intellect and as a crusader for social justice who neglected his own family. His second wife, Marjorie, takes on near-heroic stature as the caregiver who, though they were long divorced, looked after him during the last decade of his debilitating illness. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist
Choice Review
With this biography, Cray (journalism, Univ. of Southern California) updates and expands on Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life (CH, Jul'81). Born in 1912 into a middle-class family in Okemah, Oklahoma, Woody soon began the rambles that would continue until the debilitating effects of Huntington's disease confined him to a hospital in the 1950s. By the late 1930s he had a family and had begun his professional musical career in Los Angeles, where he also plunged into radical politics before moving to New York in the 1940s. There he met Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and others in the burgeoning folk music revival. A prolific song writer, Guthrie penned "This Land Is Your Land" in 1940 as a counter to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Following his war service in the Merchant Marines, he fostered a second family, pursued political activism, and continued his itinerant lifestyle until stopped by his lingering illness and the final end in 1967. Cray concludes with a deft exploration of Woody's legacy. The book is enriched with photos, detailed notes, and a selected bibliography and discography. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All academic and public collections. R. D. Cohen Indiana University Northwest
Library Journal Review
In his song "Christmas in Washington," Steve Earle issues a call for Woody Guthrie's return because our times require his unflinchingly honest and prophetic voice. Cray (Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren) answers with this vivid portrait of the peripatetic Okie bard's life, music, and hard times. Drawing on materials from the Woody Guthrie Archives and interviews with Guthrie's friends, the author chronicles the songwriter's birth and youth in Oklahoma and Texas, marked by his sister's death, his mother's committal to an insane asylum, and his father's tumble from wealth to poverty during the Depression. His days in New York City's Greenwich Village and his death in 1967 from Huntington's chorea are also covered. To boot, Cray tells the stories behind some of Guthrie's best-known songs (e.g., "This Land Is Your Land") and provides detailed information about his Communist ties. Guthrie has deeply influenced the likes of Earle, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Ani DeFranco; Cray eloquently bears witness to his tremendous significance in this definitive biography. All libraries will want to own a copy. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/03.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Author's Note | p. xiii |
| Acknowledgments | p. xv |
| Foreword | p. xvii |
| Introduction: Feathers from a Pillow | p. xix |
| Chapter 1 The Guthries of Okemah | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 Jig Dance in a Minor Key | p. 20 |
| Chapter 3 The Oil Patch | p. 37 |
| Chapter 4 Starting the Panther | p. 48 |
| Chapter 5 Black Blizzard | p. 64 |
| Chapter 6 On the Jericho Road | p. 78 |
| Chapter 7 West of the West | p. 90 |
| Chapter 8 Old Familiar Songs | p. 103 |
| Chapter 9 Guthrie's People | p. 117 |
| Chapter 10 The Workhunters | p. 130 |
| Chapter 11 Radical with a Twang | p. 143 |
| Chapter 12 Talking Socialism | p. 160 |
| Chapter 13 Some Kind of Electricity | p. 173 |
| Chapter 14 Sleeping under Money | p. 185 |
| Chapter 15 The Leakingest Roof | p. 200 |
| Chapter 16 Erratic Stew | p. 215 |
| Chapter 17 A Desperate Little Man | p. 228 |
| Chapter 18 Marjorie | p. 242 |
| Chapter 19 Breaking New Land | p. 255 |
| Chapter 20 Seamen Three | p. 268 |
| Chapter 21 Shackled | p. 282 |
| Chapter 22 The Running Man | p. 293 |
| Chapter 23 Worried Man Blues | p. 309 |
| Chapter 24 The Noise of Roaches | p. 321 |
| Chapter 25 The Compass-Pointer Man | p. 335 |
| Chapter 26 Anneke Anni | p. 354 |
| Chapter 27 Adversity Guthrie | p. 371 |
| Chapter 28 I Ain't Dead Yet | p. 386 |
| Chapter 29 Woody's Children | p. 393 |
| Afterword | p. 404 |
| Notes | p. 407 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 459 |
| Selected Discography | p. 465 |
| Permissions | p. 467 |
| Index | p. 471 |