>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Good
afternoon everyone [chuckle].
I see many friends and
familiar faces in the audience.
My name is Betsy Peterson.
I'm the Director of the American
Folk Life Center here at the Library
of Congress for all of two months.
Not the Library of
Congress but me, [applause]
and this is my first opportunity
to introduce a lecturer
in the Botkin -- Benjamin Botkin
series and I'm thrilled to be here.
The Botkin series as many of you
I'm sure probably know is a chance
of the American Folk Life Center
to interact with scholars,
to interact with the public,
to interact with individuals
who are engaged in and interested
in folk life and cultural heritage
and it's one way for
us to share the wealth
of the American Folklife Center.
It's also an opportunity for
us to build our collections
and as you may notice there
are some cameras around.
We video tape all of the --
not the concerts the lectures
and later post them up on the web.
So you will have an
opportunity revisit this lecture,
but I say all of this also
is a reminder to everyone
to please turn off your cell phones.
That would be a good idea [chuckle].
Today this is I believe the
second lecture in 2012 that's part
of the series and today I have the
honor of introducing Nora Guthrie
who is the daughter of a great
American and a great American singer
and song writer Woody Guthrie
who you all know and love.
She's the Director of the
Guthrie Archives and the President
of the Woody Guthrie Foundation
and Woody Guthrie Publications.
For the last 20 years Nora has
been the steward in a sense
of her father's collection and
has supported ongoing research
into his life and career and has
worked to create new works based
on the legacy that Woody left
behind following his death in 1967.
Nora will be talking a bit
about many of the projects
and her relationship with her
father, but she's developed projects
in the last several years that
have brought Woody's vast cultural
and creative legacy to life.
Most recently in the work with
Bruce Springsteen and in the pairing
of Woody's lyrics with
contemporary artists
which I think has contributed
to maybe a reassessment
or rethinking of -- of his work.
She has also stewarded
the publication
or spear-headed the publication
of over 150 new lyrics
and arts works over
the last 20 years.
I don't know if some
of you saw on the web
on new year's day [background
noise] the post of --
I don't know if it was apocryphal
or not but a page from one
of Woody's notebooks of new year's
resolutions but it made the rounds
on Boingo, Boingo and elsewhere.
But this year is a special
year in all of this work
because it's a centennial of
Woody Guthrie's birth in 1912
and in celebrating that Nora's
coproducing in cooperation
with the Grammy Museum
in Los Angeles a yearlong
tribute to her father.
There will be events including
conferences, a touring exhibit,
concerts which will follow
Woody's road from Oklahoma
to New York culminating in a
concert here at the Kennedy Center
in Washington D.C. As
a coda to this as some
of you probably know the
American Folklife Center is proud
to be a home for some of the
work and collections related
to Woody Guthrie including original
correspondents, manuscripts, essays,
artwork, song lyrics and recordings.
And I am pleased to announce
that in honor of this lecture,
the AFC staff who works tirelessly
has just added a newly-updated
finding aid to our website.
So if you're interested I really
want to encourage you to discover
that finding aid but also,
all of the archival holdings
of the American Folklife
Center related
to Woody Guthrie and visit it.
It's called Woody Guthrie
Collections
in the Archival Folk Culture,
www.loc.gov
/folklife/guides/Guthrie.html.
And lastly what I'd like to
do is just take an opportunity
to present Nora with a very --
a small token of our
appreciation and affection.
This is a newly transferred
DVD copy of the 1947 film
"To Hear Your Banjo Play."
Which was written by Alan
Lomax, and it's from the Pete
and Toshi Seeger film collection
and we think it contains
some unknown footage of Woody
and Mary Guthrie square dancing.
So we thought you might
like to have that.
But enough of all of this and enough
of me talking and I will turn this
over to Nora Guthrie and please
join me in welcoming here.
[ Applause ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Thank you.
This is fun to be here.
My dad was here 70 years ago.
In 1940 Alan Lomax invited
him here to do some recordings
and here I am 70 years later
[laughter] still trying
to explain the guy.
But this is interesting.
This has a little square
dance footage on it
that we just discovered
about a month or two.
I've seen parts of this
film before actually
and the part I never paid
attention to was the dance sequence.
Its three squares for a 12 --
16, no for 12 people dancing
and I was looking at it.
we're working on publishing a --
a new manuscript from the archives
with Johnny Depp has a new imprint
of his own and we're working
with his crew to publish
this unknown manuscript
and while we were working with them
I was showing them some footage
like, "So this is what
Woody looks like."
That kind of stuff and then
there's this square dance going on
and I'm sitting there and I'm like,
"God damn, that guy looks familiar."
[Laughter] And he's like --
and I didn't say anything and then
the archivist was sitting over there
and she's thinking, "Good damn
that guy looks like Woody Guthrie."
Anyway, isn't that weird 70 years
later I'm looking at this film.
We excerpted it -- we have it
blown up and there is Woody Guthrie
with his first wife Mary, just
one of many people square dancing
and he was an extra in the film.
He dances very well I
must say, really cute.
So don't give me ideas
because every time I find stuff
like this I'm thinking,
"My next project --
Woody Guthrie a square dancer
-- hmm -- let's have nice film.
Well maybe we'll choreograph
something to that."
I don't know I'm always
getting ideas
because Woody just
inspires so many ideas.
The guy is all over the place and
therefore I am all over the place.
So what I thought I'd talk a little
bit about today is just a brief --
the program is called
My Father, My Partner.
And I thought I'd give you a
little bit of the first part
and maybe a little bit
more of the second part
because I think the second
part is more interesting.
For those of you who don't know,
Woody came to New York in 1940
in February and he shacked up with
Will Geer an actor who was living
in New York City at the time.
Stayed on his couch for
about a week and then moved
over to a flop house -- and
old hotel on Sixth Avenue
and 43rd Street, right across
from town hall for those
of you who know the city.
And it was right above a pawn shop
just a two story like little flat
and he spent about five
days in this boarding house
and one day he wrote a song
called "Government Road."
The next day he wrote a
song called "Jesus Christ."
The next day he wrote a song
called this land is your land
and the next day he wrote a
song called "Women's Hats."
And that kind of says
it all [laughter] --
in nutshell that's Woody Guthrie.
You've got a song about the
government, you've got a song
about girls, you've got a song
about the country, the land,
you got a song about
Jesus, spirituality.
This was the interest that he had.
He was interested in anything and
everything and one of the lessons
that I and anyone who's worked with
Woody's archives has learned is
that you're allowed to be
interested in everything.
A lot of times society kind of wants
to say, "Oh, what's your focus?
What's your focus?"
It'll work sometimes but sometimes
it's really nice not to have a focus
and just see what is
happening in front of you.
And that's what Woody has done, he's
given us all permission to stand
in one place and turn
around 360 degrees
and see what's happening around you.
Just look up from your
cell phone, turn around
and see what's happening
[background chuckle].
So back to my point -- so
he was in New York in 1940
and 1943 he met my
mother who was a dancer
with the Martha Graham
Company in New York.
This was a woman unlike
any other woman he had met.
A lot of women in New York were like
-- unlike women he had ever met.
He was hanging out
with Martha Graham,
he's hanging out with
Mother Bohr [spelling?],
he's hanging out with my mom
and that whole crowd of women
that were very, very active
in politics and in the arts.
They were real ground-breakers.
Anyway, one of the dancers was
working on a piece, a ballet
and she had choreographed a sequence
to one of Woody's Dust Bowl ballads.
He recorded it very shortly
after arriving in New York.
He arrived in February, he meet Alan
Lomax in March, he was recording
in the Library of Congress in --
I want to say March or April --
correct me if anybody
knows correctly --
March or April, a whirl wind
entrance into New York City
and East Coast cultural life.
By April he was back in
New York living and hanging
out with Pete Seeger who he met
here in at the Library of Congress.
He was an intern [background
chuckle], he was nineteen years old.
I think my dad was like 27, 28 --
maybe Pete was 20 but
you get the gist
of my drift here, two
awfully young guys.
They come back to New York, they
shack up with an artist in a loft
on 31st Street there in New
York and they have a little cot
that Woody's sleeping in and the
guy makes modern art sculpture.
Big like Picasso kind of like
sculptures and they put Woody
in a little cot in the back room
and Pete comes over every day
and Alan Lomax one day comes
over and gives them a pile
of papers this big and says, "These
are songs that my dad collected
that are from all over the country.
They're work songs, they're
protest songs, they're union songs.
but they're a little
bit too hot to handle.
So they don't want to publish them
but maybe you guys can
do something with it."
Within a couple of weeks little
Pete Seeger, he was a little kid,
can you imagine Pete Seeger at 20?
My dad at 27 put together with
Alan a new song book called
"Hard Hitting Songs
for Hard Hit People."
Right after that Woody gets
some radio shows in New York
and he becomes somewhat
of a celebrity.
He decides he doesn't
like being a celebrity,
and he leaves New York
[background laugh] .
That's the story but he does
come back later on and that's
where he met my mother in 1943
and she was in this ballet
and they said, "Let's get Woody to
come and play live for the ballet."
And so they went to the
loft where he was living
and they invited him
to come play live.
The show was like the next day.
They'd been rehearsing
to the record.
It was like, "Oh my God,
we get to play live."
And so he saw these
very pretty dancers
and said, "Sure, [laughter] sure."
Went over the -- to rehearsal.
He screwed up every note,
every line, every beat.
He totally wrecked the ballet like
in choreography it's like geometry,
you know, a dancer jumps on three
and someone has to
catch them on four.
But when Woody sang the song
he left out the four [laughter]
and then they have five, six, seven,
eight to get across the stage,
you know, leaping -- five and
a six and a seven and a eight
and he decides to do, nine 10,
11, 12, 13 and he's just like --
you know, screwing
up left and right.
So the head of the dance
ballet company said,
"How do we get him off the program?
Now that we've invited him on how do
we get rid of him or what can we do
to make him play better?"
So my mother who was
Miss Organization --
I'm just going to take a minute
to point out Miss Organization.
[ Noises ]
>> Nora Guthrie: That's her --
bottom left you can come
up later and see it.
And by the way the guy in the
middle is Morris Cunningham.
Anyway that's another story.
When I come back and I
do my dance lecture Woody
and dancers that's
a whole other story.
But anyway my mother
was sent to rehearse
with him overnight --
overnight [laughter].
And my mother made little flashcards
like for kids and she wrote
out the songs with a little
like a ping pong ball you know just
pointing, like "you got to do three,
four, sing this way Woody."
Well he was so amused that
this woman was spending a night
with him coaxing him with
the ping pong ball thing,
you know he just kept
doing it wrong [laughter].
Anyway, long story short,
that's how they met.
He did end up doing the
ballet and I heard it went off
without any catastrophes.
And then he stayed in New
York from then pretty much.
They got married and that's why I
have a Brooklyn accent [laughter].
People always ask like, "You don't
sound like you're from Oklahoma."
No, because we're all
Brooklyn born and bred,
Coney Island material, basically.
Coney Island trash some
people say [chuckle].
But -- so that's the background
and shortly after I was born
in 1950 my father started
showing serious symptoms
of Huntington's disease.
So my relationship with my father
was really one of a caretaker.
Anyone who's lived with someone
who's basically completely disabled,
you know what that's like and
I would say the first 16 years
of my life were not good.
My life was good but my relationship
with my dad was very, very,
very stressful and not pretty.
I don't know if it's okay
to use a word like ugly but,
in those days people
with Huntington's --
there was nothing known
about the disease.
There was no medication, there was
nothing and my dad was basically put
in a psychiatric [background noises]
ward with about 50 other patients
and just put there, you
know, just to survive.
My mother used to pay other patients
a couple of bucks to make sure
that he could eat because with
Huntington's disease you lose
control of your limbs and in the
wards they would just drop off trays
in front of the beds and
then come pick up the trays
in about a half an hour later.
So my mother had to pay patients
to make sure he got
the food to this mouth.
It's really like out of a
really bad Jack Nicolson movie.
You know, it's like whatever you
can imagine it really was like,
that and I didn't at all
enjoy going to the hospitals.
They were scary, and they
were dirty, and they smelled,
and people were really weird
in these wards -- as a child.
So my mother started bringing him
home on the weekends and he ended
up coming home most of the
weekends of those 15 years
where we basically
scrubbed him clean.
We washed him, we bathed him, we
did his laundry, we ironed shirts.
We filled him up with
high-calorie food
because when you have Huntington's
you're moving all the time.
Your body is burning
calories all the time.
So he was like a stick figure and
on Sundays when he would come home
that was the role that the family
really played, washing, feeding,
cleaning and always with music
playing and always with people,
his friends, coming over to the
house to play music for him.
He particularly loved hearing
his own songs played to him
and I think he needed to feel
that this wasn't all for nothing,
that somehow he had done something
in this world that would outlast him
and he loved hearing his songs.
And one of the cute
stories is one is,
when the younger generation started
coming out on Sundays to visit.
People like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs,
et cetera, and they would all come
out like, "I'm going to play
my new song for Woody Guthrie."
And Woody would just look
at them and go, "Play mine."
[Laughter] He didn't
want to hear their songs.
And the few people that got it that
really understood what he was asking
for -- he was asking
to be kept alive
for a little longer
[background noise].
And if you're going to come out
and visit, you're going to help.
We're not here to give to you;
you're here to help with Woody.
And so the people that got
that and I have to really,
really credit Dylan, John Cohen
from the New Lost City Ramblers,
and some of those young guys
were absolutely fantastic.
And they learned very
quickly and Bob Dylan said,
"Learn very early on, my job was
to go out there and serve him,
not to have him serve me and tell
me what a great song writer I am."
And when people ask me
about my relationship
with all those people now,
I get really teary-eyed,
because they were absolutely
wonderful to come out and to play
"Pastures of Plenty" and "Pretty
Boy Floyd" and all those songs over
and over and over again for my dad
and I'll love them forever for that.
So in a nutshell I hope I've
kind of painted you a picture
about that early childhood.
There was no conversations by
the way when people ask me,
"What did your father say about
this or think about that?"
et cetera.
There were no conversations.
People with Huntington's have
a very, very hard time talking
and if he could talk all it would
be was to ask for something to eat
or drink -- something along those
lines, very simple sentences.
There were no long
philosophical talks about life.
Someone asked me the other
day, "What did he think
about the communist party?
Didn't he talk about it at home?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Give me a hot dog."
[Laugh] Very basic things
that he talked about
and he passed away in 1967, finally.
And I must say also during those
years there was constant music
around the house.
Always sent up from
Smithsonian Folkways
and Moe Asch was constantly
sending up his new recordings,
"Woody listen to this," "Woody
listen to that," et cetera.
So he really loved hearing the music
but again I'll just stress once more
he always wanted to hear his own.
If he had a new recording --
if someone had a new recording of
his songs that's what he wanted
to listen to and he would play
it over and over and over.
My relationship with folk music
was iffy [laugh], to say it best,
and I'll tell you why because
all the folk singers were guys
[background talking].
It's that simple.
And I remember all the guys
that came over, all the Dylans
and the Phil Ochs and
all the young guys --
they were hardly ever
women involved.
My mother was involved, but as a
caretaker not as a participant,
although she was a better
musician then any of them.
But it really seemed to
me to be a guy thing.
And they tuned a lot [laughter].
Do you know how annoying
it is to sit
around listening to ten people tune?
Like if you're not
tuning it's not fun.
Like if you're tuning you can get
into it, if you're not tuning --
it's like 20 minutes before
-- it's like, why am I here?
So I would helpfully leave the house
and leave all the guys to tune.
And then I would go
out in the streets.
I lived in Brooklyn at the time.
We were raised in Coney Island
in Brooklyn and I was dancing
in the streets with Martha
and the Vandellas, you know.
I was doing the Locomotion and
singing with the Everly Brothers
and just enjoying their
early rock and roll
and the music that came after that.
And I honestly didn't feel
included in the scene.
You know it wasn't as inviting
as you might have imagined.
And I was trying to remember
the other day if there was
like any women that came out.
I know Woody worked with women
with the Almanac Singers,
you know Sis Cunningham, Bess Hawes,
Jean Ritchie, all those people,
but for some reason in this scene,
like Woody was becoming a guy thing.
I see the guys; you know
what I'm talking about.
If you know all the guys, like,
suddenly they're wearing jeans
and they're wearing
plaid flannel shirts
and they're wearing work boots.
Can you see yourself now
in 1960 something or other?
Jeff, anybody [chuckle]?
I know you -- know you, and the
guys had a whole thing about Woody.
And that was a look, it was a walk.
How many guys walked down the street
with guitars just slung
over their backs?
Not in a guitar case just
slung over your back --
that was the look at that time.
Anyway it was something I
couldn't really identify with.
It didn't look like much fun and
so I really escaped folk music.
It was in my head,
it was in my life.
The first banjo I ever
heard was Pete Seeger;
the first harmonica I ever
heard was Sonny Terry.
You know, just by osmosis you
-- you learn, you pick up things
but I literally wasn't
involved in it at all.
Then just quickly I was in
modern dance in New York.
I took up my mother's
side because I was a girl
and because I was the youngest too.
I have two older brothers
and they both play guitar
and they're both really good.
And then I had right
above me Jack Elliot -
Ramblin' Jack Elliot
was living with us.
He was really good too.
And then you had all these other
guys like Dylan and Phil Ochs
and John Cohen and
they were all there
like they were all really good.
So what does a healthy girl do?
She does something else.
So I picked up piano
and I became a dancer.
Anyway I'm going to
fast forward until 19 --
1990s, and there was a
man named Harold Leventhal
who was managing everyone
in folk music in those days.
He was the first manager of
the Weavers and then he stuck
with folk musicians from then on.
His whole crew was at times Dylan,
Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Melanie,
Belafonte, I mean, Johnny Cash.
He just, like, did everybody --
everybody worked with him and he
called me up one day and said,
"I think I'm going to retire soon
and someone in the family has
to come here just kind of
keep track of a few things --
like, you know, if you get a
royalty payment, deposit it."
You know, simple little things
like that well, okay, all right.
So I went to help and I started out.
Joe Klein had just
done his interviews
for his book "Woody Guthrie a Life."
So I guess it was -- he
did those in the eighties
and Joe had just sent the office --
the tapes of the interviews
he had done.
He says, "You guys
can keep them there."
Now this was just an
office building, actually --
just offices like a cubical here,
and a cubical there,
and a cubical there.
There was no archives
there was nothing.
And so Harold put me in
the closet with a desk,
because I was volunteering.
He says, "You know, just one or
two times a week you come in."
My first job was to look at
the Joe Klein tapes and to type
up the names, who he's
interviewing and put a little label
on the box and then that's it.
So that's what I did.
And then Harold came in and he
put a big box of stuff in my --
I don't want to say office, in
my closet [chuckle] and he says,
"This is your dad's stuff.
Why don't you look through it?"
I went, "Eh, what am
I going to find?
You know, I don't know."
Aren't I dumb [laughter]?
My dad taught me it's
really fun to be dumb too
because then you can get smart.
If you start smart there's
nowhere to go [chuckle].
Start dumb -- straight up.
So I reached into this box of stuff
and I pulled out a piece of writing
that I looked at and it was called,
"I say to you woman and man I say
to you woman and man go dance."
Well my ears perked up with that one
because all along I didn't think
I had a relationship with my dad.
Like I didn't think I had a real --
you know, the guys had
the real relationship,
they all played guitar, you know,
and mine was kind of peripheral.
I read through this piece
of writing, I swear to God,
everything in this
poem was something
that I had done with my life.
I say to you, "Woman go dance."
Well, [inaudible] I
did it, I went dancing.
"I said to my woman,
Go to your vote box
and dah, dah, dah" -- I did that.
"I say to my woman, Dance out and be
in an office" -- and
it's very poetic.
I'm not being poetic
I'm paraphrasing.
Basically he listed about ten things
that he was inspiring a woman to do.
And then the last line of
the whole thing is like "and
if your guy has trouble
with that, screw him."
[Laughter] He didn't write
that word but he said,
"If your guy has trouble with it."
He says to the guy, "you
haven't found your juicy life.
If you have a problem with your wife
or your lover having
a juicy wife it's
because you don't have a
juicy wife -- a juicy life.
[Chuckle] So don't stop her
from doing what she has to do."
Anyway I started getting
all teary eyed.
I actually cried and I realized that
my father had been encouraging me
and inspiring me to live a very rich
and full life and it wasn't at all
about folk music, it was about life.
And that's where I got the
like the light bulb went off
because I had no credentials to
do anything with Woody's material
as long as it was just
limited to a guitar.
I don't tune [chuckle].
I thought -- but here was
saying, "It's much more than that.
It's about life.
It's about voting it's about
your work, it's about sex,
it's about this, dah, dah, dah."
And I went, "I did it, I did that.
That's what I've been doing."
So I felt like my dad
going, "Good kid,
good kid now let's get to work."
And so the first thing I did
was I called up someone --
I believe it was Jeff Place -- I
think he was somebody like that
and I said, "We've got these
boxes of my dad's stuff here
and I don't know what
to do with it."
And they sent up someone, an
archivist, to come up to my closet
and sit -- I remember sitting there.
I think I had the original
"This Land Is Your Land"
on the desk [background noise].
And for you archivists in
the room just go like this.
[Laughter] Don't listen
this is going to hurt.
And I think I had like hot chocolate
[laughter] and I had like this
"Land is Your Land" original lyrics,
like "Jesus Christ" original lyrics,
"Pretty Boy Floyd,"
you know, it was like,
"What do I do with this stuff?"
[Laughter] The archivist who came
up very politely sat down and said,
"First thing we do is this.
[Chuckle] Move the hot
chocolate away from the lyrics."
[ Laughter ]
>> That's how the archive started
and the man was Jorge Arevalo
who's still working with us today.
He taught me what an archive is, he
taught me not to drink hot chocolate
when you're handling primary
source materials which I now know
that language, et cetera and what --
what really escalated them was
as we started unpacking these
boxes it was very, very interesting
to me -- I just kept finding things
that I had never heard of before.
I heard of Dust Bowl ballads.
I had heard of some
of the material --
you know, the songs "Pastures
of Plenty," and all that stuff.
But I was finding weird
stuff that I never knew about
and I thought, "Well that's me.
I don't know anything.
You know I'm not in folk music
so I don't know anything."
So I showed a pile
-- Pete Seeger came
in one day and, "Pete
come look at this.
Have you seen this?
Have you seen this?"
These were all lyrics and he's
like, "No, no, what's that?"
I said, "These are like
-- Woody wrote these.
Don't you know?
You guys traveled together,
you're like best friends,
don't you know all this stuff?"
And he goes, "No, I never saw that."
And then I asked Arlo,
my brother like,
"You know that dad wrote
this and wrote that?"
No, he didn't [background
noise] know it.
And I still don't know the answer.
Don't anyone ask me why.
Nobody saw it in 40
years I have no idea.
All I know is that we
uncovered 3,001 lyrics to date.
Someone here might
know the exact number
of recorded Woody Guthrie songs.
I would guesstimate
on the high end 300.
I might be over...
>> Male speaker: Maybe four.
>> Nora Guthrie: Maybe
four of his own songs?
>> Male speaker: Probably
not his own yeah.
>> Nora Guthrie: Probably
200, 300 of his own songs
but then we had counted
3,001 to date.
Plus all the artwork and
original writings and everything
and I really became fascinated.
Bob Dylan once said
a wonderful thing.
He said, "If you listen to Woody
Guthrie's songs you'll learn how
to live."
And that stuck in my gut.
And I realized, we all have the
potential to have a relationship
with this man, and it has nothing
to do with the guitar and tuning.
You can approach him from lots and
lots of different access points.
And that's what happened to me.
I approached him from a
poem and through this poem,
"I say to you woman
and man go dance."
I suddenly became interested like,
"Boy this is like early
feminist kind of stuff."
1941 he's writing this, and then
I started reading more and more.
And the awareness that I was
talking about in the very beginning,
this 360 degree view of
life, for some reason,
I really don't know why,
hasn't really been notated
correctly in my point of view.
So we all know about the folk
side of Woody and we know many
of the folk songs he wrote.
But I died when I found out he
wrote a song about Ingrid Bergman.
It was a love song
to Ingrid Bergman.
It was more than a love
song it was like an offer.
[Laughter] I died when I found
out that he was writing songs
about Joe DiMaggio and
baseball players at the time.
I could just go through
-- you give me a letter
and I'll tell you a lyric that
begins on any topic from A
to Z. Zoos -- he wrote songs
about Zoos and animals.
And that's when I really became
very, very involved with the body
of work and the reason being is
because I went to a conference
of which I wasn't a speaker.
I was like sitting in the
back seat there and most
of the scholars were talking about
Woody's work at this conference
and I would say 50%
of it was not correct.
Through no fault of the
scholars or the researchers.
They had no access to this material.
They just -- nobody knew.
If Pete Seeger doesn't know,
[chuckle] very few people knew.
So that's when I began thinking that
my responsibility really had to be
to get some of this material out so
that the next conference 20 years
later which are taking place now --
now they don't have any excuse.
Now there's no excuse.
If you don't know it's because you
didn't read or you didn't listen
or you weren't paying attention.
And what I really tried
to do is look at all these
from 360 degrees perspective
of Woody's lyrics in particular
and create projects
like Woody always did.
What do they call them?
Like cycles, song cycles.
Is that the term you guys use?
Something like that.
[Inaudible speaker]
But it's the idea --
well you have one idea and
you write a whole bunch
of material based on one idea.
So a dust bowl ballad
is an example of that.
Woody did the cycle on Vanzetti
song -- cycle's pieces around that.
He did children songs around that.
Well then I found out that he did --
he would write tons of
stuff about Jewish holidays.
Give me a break dust
bowl balladeer [chuckle].
Do you -- ever hear a guy
from Oklahoma says,
"How many latkes -- ?"
I can't even do it.
It doesn't even -- it doesn't work.
He wrote a song called, "How
Many Latkes Can You Eat?"
I can't even say it in a Western
-- how many -- I can't do it.
How many how many latkes
-- no, that's not right.
He wrote the "Blintz Tree."
[Laughter] He wrote "Nosh O Nosh
on My Hamantash" [laughter].
Give me a break.
[Laughter] He wrote serious
songs, he wrote the whole story
of Hanukkah in 19 verses.
It's a long story.
For every night Woody
wrote two versus
and every character in
the story is correct.
I checked it with a Jewish scholar.
I said, "Is he right?
Did he get it right?"
"Yeah he got it right."
So that -- with that kind of stuff
I collected all of that material,
as much as I could,
and put it into --
in a song cycle box and then said,
"Who's around that I can work
with to get this material out?"
So that, sometimes a Jewish
organization comes and says,
"We want to do -- we want to do
a nice thing on Woody Guthrie."
And I say, "Have I
got a song for you."
[Laughter] So I had the pleasure
of recording with the Klezmatics.
I did two albums with
the Klezmatics.
One on Jewish life and
culture called "Wonder Wheel"
which they won a Grammy for
that year, and another one
of Woody's Hanukkah songs which were
all written, like, within 10 days.
He would sit himself in one place
and just write Hanukkah songs.
Like "Hanukkah Tree," "Hanukkah
Gelt," "Hanukkah Dance,"
"Hanukkah Toot," "Hanukkah
Sleep," Hanukkah Everything.
Hanukkah, Hanukkah, Hanukkah.
And then he would spell Hanukkah
in different ways [laughs].
So that's the kind of thing
that I've spent the last 20
years just trying to get my head
around because I think when you look
at studying Woody's
Hanukkah material,
you find out more than
just Hanukkah.
You find out what Woody
things about religion,
of what Woody thinks
about spirituality.
One of the lines in one
of the Hanukkah songs,
it's called "Hanukkah's Flame,"
and he describes a
menorah in the window.
And he says, "Okay, so you have
your menorah lights up your home
in your religion but, it also lights
the path that goes by your window
when someone is going
somewhere else."
I loved that image that your
religion can actually shine a light
on someone else's path
on their journey
to find their religion
or their spirituality.
So that's why I like
doing this material.
I get back to Bob Dylan -- you
can actually learn how to live
by looking at this material.
Another thing that came up in the
conference years ago was the fact
that Woody didn't write love songs.
He was mostly known for his
political and his Dust Bowl ballads.
And here I had hundreds
of love songs [laugh] --
lyrics that were never recorded
some were really raunchy
and will never be recorded.
And some were you know,
palatable and they were recorded
and I was able to -- the tone
of those particular
lyrics really reminded me
of jazz, actually, a lot of them.
And I had the opportunity of doing
an album with Jonathan Brooke,
with jazz musicians Christian
McBride and Joe Sample.
Some of you knows, and Steve
Gad -- great drummer --
so putting together an
ensemble that would set music
to these un-recorded lyrics.
So there will never
be another conference
that said Woody Guthrie
didn't write love songs,
because you didn't do your
homework if you can say that.
And anyway it's just been like
going through these projects little
by little and finding so many
different topics that have to do
with the world around us.
As an example, though, of
one of Woody's love songs --
this is the difference
and this is what turned me
on to Woody's love songs.
Because when he whispered
sweet something
in her ear, you know what he said?
"I love the unions.
[Laughter].
It's you and me baby in a union.
We're going to go out
and picket together.
We're going to boycott together."
[Laughter] I thought,
who says stuff like that?
You know. [Laughter] How
does Woody turn union
into the sexiest thing this
side of the Mississippi?
And not only that, but
why didn't anyone else?
Why aren't unions sexy?
Why aren't they places where people
fall love and meet and work together
to make the world a better place
and procreate and have union kids?
[Laughter] I thought
he's take on it was
so interesting, you
know what I mean?
I think the juiciness
of everything --
there was another lyric that
I did with Michael Ferranti,
if you know him, rap singer.
She really likes him
[indicates audience member].
Michael Ferranti is a rap singer
from the coast, west coast
and I did a song with him
called 'Union Love Juice.'
[Background sound] Union love juice
don't you think people would line
up to join for a song like that?
And the temptations of
a love song like that?
And this is the world
that Woody lived in.
He fell in love with a union woman.
It was passionate, it was sexy,
it was -- you could dance to it.
You know what I mean?
And I did this song with Michael
Ferrante and one of the reviews
of the album later said; "this
is a Guthrie inspired album."
This is a tribute to Woody.
Contemporary writers writing about
their thing as a tribute to Woody --
because Woody Guthrie never would
have written "Union Love Juice."
Can you imagine?
First of all he didn't even call
and ask and do his fact check,
the critic -- can you imagine
this is what the perception
and sometimes it's such a boring
perception, and it's horrible,
because it's a very juicy
guy here we're talking about.
And he's whispering sweet nothings
into these girls' ears about unions
and picket lines and et
cetera and socialism at times.
[Laughter] So I immediately
got in touch with the critic
and said, "Do your homework.
This is a Woody Guthrie lyric.
I have not changed one word of it;
this is what he says in the song."
And that's an album called
"Note of Hope" that I did
with a base player named Rob Lawson.
Some of you might know his name and
we brought in people like Lou Reed,
Madeleine Peru, Nelly McKay, if
you know her name, Chris Whitley --
blues guys, even Studs Terkel.
I was able to record with Studs.
There was a wonderful scene, a bar
scene, that Woody had written about,
and I wanted someone who
could deliver a bar scene,
and that was the voice
of Studs Terkel.
So I've had the opportunity
to work with again,
I'm going around 360 degrees -- if
there's a song and it's about love,
well, it takes one kind of
musician to pull it off.
If it's a song about Judaism
or Hanukah takes another
kind of musician.
And I haven't limited myself for
one second to working with anybody
and everybody in any genre
because I basically want
to say that's what
I learned from him.
On our birth certificates under
religion it says all or none.
[Chuckle] You can't
top that, you know,
he's basically saying,
"All baby, all."
And that's what I've been
trying to do with my work
for the last 20 years
and in addition to trying
to be organized enough,
taking my mother's genes now
and creating the archives.
It's been open to the public
for about 20 years now
and we've had some really, really
interesting research going on,
so that it's not just me.
I feel like I'm going to go to
my death, to my grave saying,
"He wrote love songs," or "he wrote
this -- Hanukah songs" or whatever."
And I feel like as I get older
other people have to start taking
on this work because it can't just
be me going around making speeches
and entertaining people with
Woody Guthrie's stories, you know.
So that's what I -- I
opened the archives hoping
that people would really come in
and look at these lyrics, et cetera.
Luckily out of the 3,001
lyrics that I know about,
they're not all good, that's a joke.
[Laughter] I don't have to worry
about recording 3,001 lyrics.
I could get away with 2,000.
But then, I had a really funny
experience, where I had a punk band
up in the archives one day.
We were working with
one of the lyrics
and they [background
talking] were from Boston.
This was called Dropkick Murphys,
if anyone knows that band,
and they were looking through stuff.
And they found the stupidest
lyric in the archives.
It's just got to be the dumbest
thing, is it on this picture?
No it's not there.
It's so dumb we didn't
even put it up there.
It's two verses and he must've been
drunk when he wrote it and it says,
"I'm shipping up to
Boston, ho ho ho,
I'm shipping up to Boston, ha ha ha.
I'm a pirate, I've got one leg."
and I can imagine because
he was researching --
he was doing the Sacco and
Vanzetti stuff with Cisco Houston
and they were going up
to Boston supposedly
to research Sacco and Vanzetti.
The guys must have been so bombed
and he's writing pirate songs
up there instead of
researching Sacco and Vanzetti.
Such a dummy -- not Woody, the song.
Anyway so these guys took it back
with them, they're from Boston like,
"What the hell it's got
the word Boston in it",
they just thought that was cute.
And they came out with a masterpiece
called "I'm shipping up to Boston."
Mike Scorsese heard it and
made it one of the theme songs
for his film "The Departed."
Then the Red Socks were
in the series that year,
[background laughter] they heard
it because they're Boston and it's
like here's a Boston band doing a
Boston song and a Boston Red Sox.
So they played it at
every damn baseball game
for the Boston Red Sox.
Then what happened?
They won the series.
[Laughter] And everyone's playing
this [sounds] and Papelbon,
the pitcher, he comes out in the
middle of the freaking World Series
and he's doing an Irish jig
to a Woody Guthrie's song.
[Laughter] There's a lot of really
bizarre things that happened when --
so I've tempered myself whenever
I say the songs aren't good.
Sometimes it depends
with what you do with it.
These guys did a great job with it.
And the other thing -- I'll just
go back in time a little bit --
the first opportunity I had
to work with these lyrics was
with Billy Bragg and Wilco -- and
that was kind of an experiment
and I'll just tell
you a short story.
Someone had sent a -- someone
had sent a tape to the office,
a cassette tape, they had seen
a lyric published in a book
and it was a young singer.
He decided to set it to music.
Sent us a tape, and he sent it to
Harold Leventhal, and Harold comes
to my office and he's like,
"Can you believe these people?
What do they think?
They can just write music
to Woody Guthrie's lyrics?
What are they crazy?"
And he threw it in the
garbage and he walked out.
Now Harold has been protecting Woody
and Pete and all these other singers
for many, many years -- that's his
job -- you know, to be the manager.
So I picked it up out of the
garbage pail and I walked
into his office I said,
"Have you listened to it?"
"No." Back in the garbage pail.
I picked it up and I said, "I think
maybe I'll just give it a listen."
And I took it back to my room and
I played it, and it was just one
of the most beautiful songs that was
written by guy named Slade Cleaves.
And he had taken one
of Woody's lyrics,
"This Morning I Am Born
Again," absolutely brilliant job
and I went back into Harold's
office said, "This is good,
this is beautiful, people should
be hearing this kind of stuff."
So that was the chanciness,
that was the thing
that really gave me the impetus
to take chances like this
and when I first worked with Wilco
and Billy Bragg, that's what we did.
We quietly without anyone knowing
for probably six months we're
sending tapes back and forth,
and there was real
controversy at the time.
I don't know how librarians
and archivists feel about this,
this seems to be two
different camps of opinion.
But some people at the time saying
it was like rewriting history.
If he left the play half-finished
you should leave it half finished.
That's in its purest form.
And I was thinking, "He was
just a frigging song writer
and I think he would have liked
to have heard his songs sung."
And for various and sundry reasons,
because of Huntington's disease,
because of World War Two, because
of Dust bowls, because of tragedies,
he never had a straight
trajectory in his life.
He was, every time he got going
with writings something came
up and interrupted him."
And I really feel like I'm
just trying to catch up.
You know, I'm not doing
anything other than that.
I'm just trying to catch up.
If there hadn't been a war, or if
there hadn't been Huntington's,
if there hadn't been dah, dah,
dah -- he would've done all this.
He would've done all this.
And my job has just been
to make up for lost time.
And finally I'll just say, the
way I work with the archives now,
is I can be very in the moment with
the material because I know a lot
of material pretty well
in my head right now.
And just as an example,
when Congress held the
hearings with the bankers?
Remember they all flew in?
The bankers and they did their
thing in front of Congress?
And it was just like stunning,
just stunning, how do you respond
to a thing like that with these
bankers explaining calmly what they
did and why it's all
good [background noise]
and these things happen,
it's capitalism you know.
And I was freaking out and
Woody had written a song called
"Jolly Banker."
[laughter] And when you look
at the words it basically
described that scene.
And I waited a couple of
days because it was such a --
such a shocking sight, that I was
sure someone was going to jump up
and create the next
great banker song,
you know -- or something like that.
And I waited and I waited and by the
third day I just couldn't stand it
anymore and I called Wilco and
they were in the studio that night
and I said, "I need
the song tomorrow.
Tomorrow -- here's the words, record
it and it's going out tomorrow."
And they did it.
It went out on the internet, and
suddenly Wilco was being interviewed
on Money Market Watch [laughter].
I love it, I love it.
They should be asking people
like Wilco on Market Watch
and what they think
about the economy instead
of asking just economists.
They should be asking all of us to
put in our two cents about this.
And when I have Woody's lyrics it's
a way for me to put in my two cents.
I found another lyric that I just
recorded with Tom Morello called
"Ease My Revolutionary Mind."
And it's also on that "Note of
Hope" album with Rob Wasserman.
And it's just one of
those screaming songs
like this guy is a young pissed
rebel -- he's just so like, "Grr,
I hate Republicans, I hate
Democrats, I hate ..."
[ Laughter] He's going on
and on and on, and it's,
the chorus of the song says,
"I need a progressive woman
to ease my revolutionary mind."
[Background laughter] Now I
have felt that way for 10 years,
personally, I'm like
somebody calm me down.
Just calm me down.
I went through the last president
and going through what we're going
through now - sometimes -- I don't
know if any of you I'm like sweating
at night, I'm rolling back and
forth like, "Ah, this is killing me,
I need a progressive man,
[laugh] to calm me down."
And so here is this wonderful
lyric that he had written
about progressive and he goes,
"I need a liberal hearted woman.
I need a socially progressive mama."
And again it's sexy it's
juicy, you can dance to it.
And it's all about what
we're going through now.
And again I had waited a day or two
to, is anyone else going to do this?
If not I'm calling
Tom Morello tomorrow.
I need a song.
So it's given me the opportunity
to participate [laugh] as a citizen
in a way, to put things out
there and to put ideas out there.
How come there are no pop tunes with
the words "liberal woman" in it?
I just, I really don't
understand it.
I don't understand it.
Why aren't people writing
songs using those words?
Liberal, progressive --
I mean you don't have
to if you don't believe that,
but if you do believe it why
aren't we hearing songs like that?
So I kind of sometimes
use Woody as a --
you know, as something to get
something going, in a way.
And it also reminds the song
writers that they have the freedom
to use any language they
want in their material.
And you don't have to be an
underground punk rock group with,
you know, to use words like that.
Wonderful ordinary citizens who
have nine to five jobs and some work
in banks and some are
doctors and lawyers;
they would like those songs too.
It's not all about being off the
radar or down under some place.
So that's one of the reasons I try
to time it with the news someday
where I just hear something
and I just pull out a lyric
like this song has
to happen right now.
So that's what I've been
doing the last 20 years.
[Background laughter] Any questions?
[ Applause and Laughter ]
>> Nora Guthrie: So if anyone has
any questions I think we have a
few minutes.
Yes?
>> Female Speaker: I'd like
to ask about Peggy Seeger,
Pete Seeger's sister, how
come she didn't come around?
Or did she come around?
And...
>> Nora Guthrie: I don't know.
She's asking why Peggy
Seeger didn't come around.
Maybe she did come around and I
was out dancing in the street.
[Inaudible] She was
in England then yeah.
Yeah. Yes?
>> Female Speaker: I want to
ask you about the Red Scare.
I heard studio 360 and they
talked a lot about how --
for a while Woody was considered to
be a communist, did that effect you
when you were growing up?
>> Nora Guthrie: Yeah, the
question was, the Red Scare --
did that affect our
family life at all?
A couple of answers to that.
No because he was in the hospital.
The FBI did keep files on him while
he was in the hospital watching
who was coming and going and
then the final report said,
"He's so sick we don't
think he's dangerous."
[Chuckle] But the other
side of it was that we --
we did attend progressive schools.
We went to a little school
in Brooklyn called Brooklyn
Community Woodward School.
And for any of you who might
know the name Margo Mayo,
she was a square dance
instructor, a musicologist.
And she was the music teacher in
this little tiny little school
in Brooklyn and it was
ethnically diverse.
You know it was --
everybody went to this school.
It was progressive politically.
A lot of the teachers
had been black-listed.
Let's put it this way.
All the schools I went to,
the teachers were black-listed
and couldn't teach anywhere else.
So I had a very good education
[laughter and applause].
So that affected us too
because really the teachings,
the high school that I went to,
a number of really interesting
people came out of that school.
It was Elizabeth Irwin,
which was the high school
of the little red school
house on Bleaker Street.
Toshi Seeger actually went to
the little red school house.
So our lineage relationship with
these schools go back a long time.
And Angela Davis was in the
school, the Rosenberg children were
in my school, the Mississippi
-- you know --
Andrew, The Three --
yeah Chaney -- yeah...
>> Female voice: Mary Travers
>> Nora Guthrie: ...went
to my -- went to my school.
Mary Travers went to my school.
So it was -- Earl Robinson was the
music teacher at the high school.
Speaking of Earl, I'll just
tell you one funny story --
another place you'll find Woody
Guthrie you would never expect
but there's going to be a quiz --
there's going to be a Trivial
Pursuit question quiz after this.
The least -- the place
you least expect for Woody
to make an appearance on
Broadway through Yip Harburg.
Yip had just done the
Wizard of Oz --
came to New York with Harold
Arlen and were being black-listed,
[background cough] they were on
the list of suspected communists
and Harold Arlen --
they came to New York
to create a new musical together.
Harold Arlen decided it was a little
too scary and went back to Hollywood
to do another musical there.
Yip stayed in New York and through
Earl Robinson that's what made me
think of this, he was also
a black-listed composer
from the West Coast.
[Background coughing] They
were all working in New York --
introduced him to Woody and
they started working together
and Yip wrote "Finian's Rainbow."
And the character of the
father in "Finian's Rainbow"...
>> [ inaudible male voice ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Exactly,
could you say
that a little bit louder
please [laughter]?
>> [ inaudible male voice ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Right, right, sorry
-- the romantic guy is Woody --
there's a character, Woody.
And the opening sequence I
believe was done by Sonny Terry?
Does anybody know that for sure?
Sonny Terry played the opening
harmonica from the musical
and Pearl Lang who was
with the Graham Company --
again this circle of people
that were my father's friends --
did the opening dance sequence.
So "Finian's Rainbow" is just
chocked full of my aunts and uncles,
and friends like that,
and characters.
So they corresponded and et cetera.
But that's another lecture
-- Woody Guthrie on Broadway.
[Background laughter] Anyway any
other questions before we just...
>> Female Speaker: Were you
ever afraid of new artist's take
on Woody's songs like cloudy or
overshadowing who he actually was?
>> Nora Guthrie: I'm
not really afraid
of much [background
laughter] just in general.
I think that I do my
research, I do my homework.
Once I decide to work with
an artist, I'm -- it's yours.
I don't look over your shoulder,
I don't edit, I don't cut.
If I've done my homework and I feel
like this is someone who's really
talented, then who am I to say,
"The phrase is too long,
don't cut that word."
I mean you've got to
make the song work
and some artists have just found
that the lyric just
works perfectly as it is.
Some have done it as punk
rock tunes, some have done it
as jazz tunes, some have done
it with acoustic instruments,
[background coughing]
with accordions.
That's my homework is to make sure
that the person I'm
working with I trust.
And not trust to do
what I want them to do,
trust that they're
going to be creative.
And my job is to give them
the freedom to be creative.
The first thing I do is I
say, "Look Woody eye to eye.
Do not look up at him, it'll stink,
it'll be horrible if
you look up at him.
You've got to work with him
like Rodgers and Hart, you know,
like Gilbert and Sullivan,
like Ira and George.
You've got to work together it's a
collaboration and you have the right
to say that the lyricist,
there's too many words
in that I can't sing
it at that clip."
As I imagine that George probably
said to Ira once in a while.
"You got too many words
in that cut it down."
So you know what I mean?
You have to really trust
the creative processes,
and trust the artist
you're working with.
They don't all come out the way
I would've imagined them but,
hey, who am I?
[ Inaudible comment ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Yeah.
Yep. Okay.
I'm just going to get
you, and then you,
and then they're going
to kick me out.
Yeah I'm sorry yes.
>> Female speaker: I wanted to know,
a couple of years ago someone
gave me a copy of that...
>> Nora Guthrie: Artworks.
[ Inaudible female voice ]
>> Nora Guthrie: She's
asking about Woody's artwork?
Woody started out life as painter,
as a sign painter and illustrator,
when he was living in Pampa, Texas.
And that was the first real job
of work that he had in his life
and song writing was something he
did on a -- like a garage band.
Him and he's guys and he's friends
they just kind of wrote songs
on the side, but he really
started out as an illustrator --
doing illustration and art work.
There's not a lot that has
survived from that period of time.
He did a lot of oil
paintings in particular.
And only I think two
have survived that time.
And then he decided for financial
reasons, purely financial reasons
that he would write songs instead.
and the reason being he said when
you do a painting you sell it once
and then hangs on the
wall for 40 years.
When you do a song every time
you sing it they pay you.
It was purely financial and
he said, "I can sing it"
and they'd say hey,
you got another one?
Here's another nickel
or another beer.
Now this was 1935, when
people needed money.
So I don't want you to think that
in the present day that I'm saying
that -- this is in 1935
in Dust Bowl Pampa, Texas.
That's how he made a living
and that's how he made a
living going cross country
at saloon and bars.
He was very quick witted, so he
could easily make up a song if any
of you asked him right now, write a
song about sitting here in Library
of Congress, he could
do it in five seconds.
And you'd like that and
you'd throw him a nickel.
And that's -- that's how he worked
his way across the country a lot
of times when he travelled,
but it started with art.
And just to answer your question
it's not a lot has survived that's
in the Smithsonian
Folkways Collection.
He always enjoyed illustrating his
own recordings and I don't know
if you can see this here but
there's a lyric Jesus Christ that's
on the bottom.
Woody often painted a lyric as
the final thing that he did.
He would write a song
and when he was happy
with it he would paint on top of it.
And if you pardon the expression,
it's kind of like a dog peeing
on the tree and said, "This
is [background noise] mine."
It was a way of him really saying,
"This is my song I
finished it I like it."
And he would paint it.
I think the song is
on the bottom there
"Jesus Christ" -- yeah you can see.
Anybody else?
Yeah.
[ Inaudible question ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Absolutely.
[ Inaudible comment ]
>> Nora Guthrie: Well it's
really sweet because I --
I was talking on Jeff Brown on
PBS this morning about something.
He was like, "Where's Woody now?"
And I said when we recorded
"Revolutionary Mind"
with Tom Morello [background
noise] I said that's
like the love song of the occupiers.
I said, "Just think these kids
sitting in tents right now,
kissing, in Zuccotti Park.
They're kissing these kids, they're
holding hands, they're dating.
They're grooving around finding
each other, they're falling
in love in this movement.
It's not purely political
it's juicy.
It's life, it's bigger than that.
It's not about an -- just an agenda.
The 99% is about a rich full
life and that includes --
" that's what I said so
"Revolutionary Mind,"
it's like this is the
occupy love song.
[ Laugh] And I know there's other
songs being created constantly.
I think, for me, we're
talking about distribution
and that's a really big issue.
And I am an idiot when
it -- I got lost.
I don't have a cell phone.
I have -- this is not,
that's not my turf.
And I feel like, if I could
just come up with ideas
and then work people
can distribute them
and I think the distribution what
you're talking about is going
to be one of the hottest things
going in the next couple of years.
Because I -- when I
say things like that,
that I wasn't hearing the
songs, I am totally main stream.
I work nine to five, I come home,
I turn on the news, and I --
I don't have the time,
I'm not an investigator.
I live in a community we all
get up, we all got to work,
we're teachers we're this,
they come home we make dinner,
then we do laundry and we sit and
we watch the news for an hour.
That's life, that's life --
so how to distribute music
so that it reaches this
-- my -- this community?
The working people, you know.
That's [chuckle] I'm
handing that one over to you
and then we'll know much
more about what's going on.
Of course I know because I,
people get in touch with me
on the telephone all the
time, that are working
with social protest, et cetera.
Thank you.
Anyway that's it.
[ Applause ]
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