FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
‘My Name is New York’: NYC through the eyes of Woody Guthrie
08.01.2014
05:19 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
For obvious reasons, it’s easy to think of the great American folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie as a lifelong hardscrabble dust bowl Okie, but the reality is, the man called New York City home for nearly three decades, from 1940 until his death in 1967.

Of course, that was at a time when lower Manhattan, especially Greenwich Village, was an urban bohemia, a haven and incubator for America’s artists and musicians. Those times are gone—I’m in NYC at least once a year, and every year, more and more of the Village looks like it’s been eaten by a strip mall. So it goes, but the character of what’s been lost there may be irreplaceable, as a startlingly rapid gentrification is eating into every once-affordable art enclave in that fabled city. I realize that the emergence of an arts district often heralds gentrification—I’ve long lived in such a neighborhood myself, and seen firsthand those kinds of changes, for better and worse—but from an outsider’s perspective, what’s been happening to NYC, especially the northern part of Brooklyn in the last several years, seems unusual and kind of alarming in speed and scope. So these photos of Woody Guthrie’s New York seem to me especially valuable documents. They’ll be part of a 3-disc audiobook set to be released in September, titled My Name is New York. A regular dead-trees edition, by Guthrie’s daughter Nora, has been available for a couple of years.
 

The Hotel Savoy-Plaza, 59th Street at 5th Avenue, Manhattan, at the southeast corner of Central Park. Guthrie lived here with Will Geer, an actor, activist and Communist who’d be blacklisted in the ‘50s, but would nonetheless go on to fame in the ‘70s as Grandpa on The Waltons. This is where the Apple Store is now.
 

Guthrie, rockin’ one out for the shoeshine guy.
 

Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at Seeger’s wedding, 129 MacDougal Street, 1943. Currently an Italian restaurant, and for all I know it might have been one then, too.
 

Woody Guthrie in 1943, at McSorley’s Ale House, which still exists at 15 East 7th Street, Manhattan. Photo: Eric Schaal for Time Life. Used with permission from Getty Images. WGA.
 

31 East 21st Street, Manhattan, where Guthrie and Pete Seeger lived with sculptor Harold Ambellan in the ‘40s.
 

5 West 101st Street, Manhattan, right off Central Park West. Once Guthrie’s music started making him some money, he moved here, and sent for his wife and kids in Texas to join him. Frequent guests here included Alan Lomax, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, and Burl Ives. The building is still there, but I’m assuming mere mortals can’t afford to live in it anymore.
 

Woody Guthrie performing in the New York City subway, 1943, a Bound for Glory publicity shot. Photo: Eric Schaal. WGA.
 

A Woody Guthrie paleo-selfie, from a subway photo booth, ca. 1945. WGA.

The audiobook set includes recorded interviews with, among others, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, and totally unsurprisingly, Guthrie’s famous-in-his-own-right son, musician Arlo Guthrie. It’ll also include music, naturally, by Guthrie and others. Notably, one of the tracks is a home demo of the song that gives the package its name, “My Name Is New York.” Here are Guthrie’s typewritten lyrics, and the song itself.
 

 

 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
08.01.2014
05:19 pm
|
Wonderful photos of Woody Guthrie in Greenwich Village, 1954
09.06.2012
05:16 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Arthur Dubinsky took these photos of Woody Guthrie in New York City’s Washington Square Park in 1954.

In the photo below Guthrie is jamming with Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, which the uncropped photo at the very bottom makes clear.

There’s very little info on Dubinsky available on the Internet other than that he lived in New York City for awhile and later in Los Angeles. I wonder what other photos he may have taken. He was in the right place at the right time and based on these remarkable shots seems to have quite a talent for picture taking.
 
image
 
image
 
Thanks to Babylon Falling.

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
09.06.2012
05:16 pm
|
Shocking: Was Woody Guthrie a racist?
07.13.2012
06:19 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, and here in Los Angeles, where Guthrie lived pre-fame, a town square will be re-dedicated in his honor. But in the midst of all of the nostalgic left-wing lionization of the singing poet of the Dustbowl, the downtrodden and the little guy (and the songwriter of “This Land Is Your Land”), a seldom-discussed aspect of the great folk singer’s life has come to light…

In a post titled “Little Known Fact: Woody Guthrie Was a Big Ol’ Racist” by Jonny Whiteside on the LA Weely’s blog, Whiteside lays out the case (supported by several Guthrie biographies), that Guthrie was not always the enlightened, politically progressive Okie sage who influenced Bob Dylan:

Having blacked-up as a teenager in Okemah to perform a half-baked minstrel show, Guthrie while living in Echo Park took time out from championing oppressed white Okies to doodle his innumerable cartoons of what he described as “jungle blacks,” a group he also referred to as “n*ggers,” “darkies,” “chocolate drops” and, yes, “monkeys.”

After encountering a group of African-Americans on Santa Monica Beach one day in 1937, Guthrie immortalized the meeting in a lengthy poem that included stanzas like “What is that Ethiopian smell / upon the Zephyrs, what a fright!” and “We could dimly hear their chants / and we thought the blacks by chance / were doing a cannibal dance.”

Broadcasting on Pasadena’s KFVD, Guthrie often indulged in on-air employ of ebonics and was stunned when a black listener characterized the singer as “unintelligent” after hearing Guthrie perform songs with titles like “Run, N*gger, Run” and “N*gger Blues.” Fortunately for him, recordings of these tunes do not survive.

(Guthrie apologists are quick to point out that “n*gger” was then in common usage. But it’s intended meaning was pejorative then—and, yes, racist—just as it is now.)

Later, Guthrie said, “A young Negro in Los Angeles wrote me a nice letter one day telling me the meaning of that word [n*gger] and that I shouldn’t say it anymore on the air. So I apologized.” He next “tore all the n*gger songs out of his songbook.”

Sounds like he had a change of heart. And, indeed, he went on to pen anti-racist songs.

But the bottom line is that Guthrie was clearly not the simple, working-man’s champion that he’s portrayed as. The full story is the full story, and glossing over the man’s faults does everyone a disservice. Even if it is his birthday.

You can hear two of the four recently unearthed Woody Guthrie songs, “Big City Ways” and “Skid Row Serenade” here.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.13.2012
06:19 pm
|
Woody Guthrie: New Year Resolutions

image
 
Still wondering what (if any) New Year Resolutions to make? Well, for inspiration take a peek at Woody Guthrie’s “New Years Rulin’s” for 1943, found in one of his journals dated January 31st, 1942.

1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2.  WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3.  WASH TEETH IF ANY
4.  SHAVE
5. TAKE BATH
6. EAT GOOD - FRUIT - VEGETABLES - MILK
7. DRINK VERY SCANT IF ANY
8. WRITE A SONG A DAY
9. WEAR CLEAN CLOTHES - LOOK GOOD
10. SHINE SHOES
11. CHANGE SOCKS
12. CHANGE BED CLOTHES OFTEN
13. READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS
14. LISTEN TO RADIO A LOT
15. LEARN PEOPLE BETTER
16. KEEP RANCHO CLEAN
17. DONT GET LONESOME
18. STAY GLAD
19. KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING
20. DREAM GOOD
21. BANK ALL EXTRA MONEY
22. SAVE DOUGH
23. HAVE COMPANY BUT DONT WASTE TIME
24. SEND MARY AND THE KIDS MONEY
25. PLAY AND SING GOOD
26. DANCE BETTER
27. HELP WIN WAR - BEAT FASCISM
28. LOVE MAMA
29. LOVE PAPA
30. LOVE PETE
31. LOVE EVERYBODY
32. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT

 
image
 
See the full page here. And here’s Woody singing “All You Fascists Bound To Lose”.
 

 
With thanks to Ivana Aleksic
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.02.2012
04:32 pm
|
Woody Guthrie Soundtracks Great Depression II
08.14.2009
10:17 pm
Topics:
Tags:


I recently had what felt like the ultimate Great Depression II moment: sitting on a chair in front of a sidewalk caf?ɬ

Posted by Jason Louv
|
08.14.2009
10:17 pm
|