was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on this date in 1912. We, of course, know him as Woody Guthrie.
This from David Hajdu in a review in The New Yorker earlier this year of a new biography of Guthrie:
…”This Land Is Your Land,” a song that most people likely think they know in full. The lyrics had been written in anger, as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which Woody Guthrie deplored as treacle. In addition to the familiar stanzas (“As I went walking that ribbon of highway,” and so on), Guthrie had composed a couple of others, including this:
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people—
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God Blessed America for me.
Woody Guthrie died in 1967.