THIS WEBSITE KILLS FASCISTS:
The Online Home for Woody Guthrie
by Tim Frommer
Who'd've thunk it? A folkie dead nearly a half-century is hip and online. The Woody Guthrie Archive maintains a comprehensive web site on social humanism's favorite son that's only missing one key element -- sound! Nearly a decade after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, daughter Nora called on the talents of Billy Bragg and Wilco to put music behind some of her father's unpublished lyrics. The Mermaid Avenue collections were well-received, but are a drop in the old oaken bucket of Woody-ania available.
Woodyguthrie.org has a detailed biography of the singer and noted lefty with plenty of vintage photographs (note: load time on a dial-up connection will be slower, but worth it) and recollections from Guthrie on various stages of his life and points on the journey. A bona fide Okie, Guthrie was born in the heart of the Dust Bowl in Okemah, OK, lovingly referred to as the "square dancingest, drinkingest, fist fightingest, gamblingest" Oil Boom town, among other colorful Guthrieisms.
The biography follows Guthrie to Texas where he formed his first band at the age of 21 to California in the late '30s, and criss-crossingly around the U.S. Along the way, he befriended and performed with the likes of Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Brownie McGhee and Cisco Houston. In New York, he became a mentor to a young Ramblin' Jack Elliott (currently the subject of a documentary by Elliott's daughter). Ever the itinerant, Guthrie never really settled in one spot eventually passing away at age 55 in Queens, New York in 1967.
For scholars and Woody-philes a searchable database of the Archive's collection will be available online in the coming months. A research request form is currently the only method to access the collection online.
Links throughout the site take one to a catalog of available Guthrie products including memoirs, annotated anthologies of his lyrics and scores of recordings. These include Guthrie's timeless work with Folkways founder Moses Asch to a live recording in Cleveland during the "Hard Travelin'" festival in 1996 to volumes of works for children, certainly a neglected area of his work in comparison with his social commentary. How great would the site be if sound or video samples were included from even a fraction of the cultural and musical milestones listed here. Guthrie's '30s radio program from south-of-the-border station XELO, Library of Congress-archived conversations with Alan Lomax, the Folkways recordings, clips from biopic Bound for Glory and any of the other speechifying, Hell-raising, Sacco and Vanzetti-supporting, IWO-rallying, WWII-serving momentos that are preserved. A significant missed opportunity, but one that hopefully will be rectified by the Archive and Foundation.
Undoubtedly, one way to help that mission is through a catalog purchase on the site. Well over 100 items are available. Also, for the next 18 months, "This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie " an exhibit co-curated by the Smithsonian and the Woody Guthrie Arhives, is traveling the country. It includes photographs, video, Guthrie's paintings and drawings, rallying posters and more. Currently on view at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the exhibit will be on display at Texas A & M University, the John Steinbeck Center in Salinas, CA, and Tacoma, WA before closing in April 2002 at the Oklahoma State Historical Society.
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