Woody Guthrie: A Life

Amazon.com

Before he became Anonymous, author of the political novel Primary Colors, Joe Klein wrote this intelligent biography of America's legendary folksinger-activist. Klein's first book may not have created the fuss that Primary Colors did, but it attracted the attention of no less a celebrity than Bruce Springsteen, who used to cite it with respect during concerts before singing Guthrie's most famous lyric, "This Land Is Your Land." Klein's unearthing of two politically radical verses usually omitted from that song is just one instance of the solid research underpinning his vivid narrative of Guthrie's often tragic life (1912-67). Before Woody turned 15, his sister died in a fire and his mother was committed to an Oklahoma insane asylum with a mysterious disease he later learned he inherited; Klein's chilling description of Huntington's chorea is one of the book's strong points. Its heart is a full rendering of Guthrie's restless wanderings across Depression-era America, which fired his lifelong radicalism, and a scrupulously unsentimental account of Woody's oft-sentimentalized personality. He may have been a genius and a staunch advocate of the common people, but Guthrie was also a bad husband, neglectful father, and difficult friend, as Klein shows. He pays Woody's life and music the tribute of assuming they need no sanitizing, and this biography is all the more interesting because of it. --Wendy Smith

Customer Reviews:

The Epic American Tale.......2006-04-24

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie wasn't the most talented of musicians, but few people have had more influence on the landscape of American music. He was an incredibly prolific writer and the grandfather of the 1960s folk music revival, hero to the Dylan, Baez and the like.

Woody was to music what Steinbeck was to literature, capturing the California story of the thousands of "Okies" who emigrated to California looking for employment when dust storms devastated their farms during the Depression. But unlike Steinbeck, Guthrie was one of the people he sang about, leaving his poor Texas panhandle home and hitch-hiking, riding the rails, and singing his way across the country. Along the way, he listened to stories and felt the disenchantment of the other wayward wanderers. He captured those stories and sentiments, then put them to music. Woody quickly found an audience in his fellow immigrants, first around campfires, then on the radio. His character was more authentic than the slick corn-pone caricatures Hollywood had created. The large new audience could relate to Woody. And more importantly, he was voicing frustrations they could relate to.
Woody Guthrie's life was situated at the nexus of American music and American politics. He spent much of his life as a Communist (most people forget that, though not a threat to take office, the Communist Party had a sizable membership in America pre-WWII), and was one of the first people to use music to encourage political rebellion. He played the picket lines, helped organize rallies and played at Communist party meetings.

While his songs sound happy and simple to us today, the lyrics are often packed with anger and irony, expressing frustration at an America not living up to its promises. There was talk, for a while, of making Guthrie's "This Land is My Land" the national anthem. But in truth, the original "This Land is My Land" is far from the patriotic ditty schoolchildren learn today. It was actually a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," a song Woody found to be full of false hope. Along with the fourth verse, the final verse of Woody's version is typically exorcized:

"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
This land was made for you and me."

Personally, Woody was a complex guy, full of good intentions, but falling short on many counts. For all his success as a musician, he was a terrible husband to several women and an absentee father, often leaving his families for months at a time on wandering cross-country trips. He drank too much, was unpredictable and often a pain in the side of some of his closest friends. Only later in his life, when he was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, the genetic nervous disorder that killed his mother, did it seem like there may have been an explanation beyond selfishness for Woody's unpredictable behavior.

Joe Klein tells Woody's story with the kind of craft and poetry that such a story deserves. He paints a vivid portrait of Woody that jumps off the page with life, all quirky and charming and lovable and maddening and irresponsible and admirable and stupefying and brilliant. But WOODY GUTHRIE: A LIFE is more than the story of one man's life-it is the story of America in the last century, of its changing social climate, of its musical maturation, of its dreams and realities. All of these themes can be found in the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the only thing he ever sang about was what he saw in his lifetime.

A Great Biography! .......2006-02-07

....and I'd recommend this book even to those not especially interested in Woody Guthrie. The writing is superb, and Klein's reporting skills are without peer. The book also stands as a fine social history of Depression Era America.

A Fabulous Bio of a True American Hero.......2006-01-06

Klein has written a definitive bio of Woody Guthrie. He portrays Guthrie in his full humanity with flaws and all. As a result, this is a rich real portrait in which Guthrie is illuminated as a human that was able to achieve in-human feats during his life time. This book is a must for anyone interested in understanding this seminal figure of American history and culture.

The greatest biography ever written.......2005-10-07

Every Christmas, I buy multiple copies of this book and give it away to friends and family. Every spring/summer, I receive multiple messages of enthusiastic thanks and gratitude. No one who reads it comes away unaffected.

Basically, I will just say this is the most riveting biography I've ever read, and I've read it many times (am rereading it now actually).

There are two primary reasons why this book is so far above all other biographies:

1.) Joe Klein's writing is fantastic. His research is thorough, but his ability to communicate to an audience complex historical, socio-political, medical, and psychological concepts is virtually without peer.

2.) Woody Guthrie's life simply is one of the most fascinating lives I've ever read about. From his birth (even before his birth) straight through to his death, his life never gets boring. There is no plateau, where a great artist achieves his best work and then self destructs or mellows, etc etc.....every single period of Woody's life is equally fascinating. He was an incredible human being, a very complex artist and man-and he happened to straddle many periods of history. You will be constantly surprised. Sometimes you want to strangle him and then he turns around and does something so unbelievabely heroic, that you can hardly believe it actually happened. There is NO ONE like Woody Guthrie today....nor was there ever another in any other time period, the guy was truly a one and only.

I couldn't recommend this book enough. It's so good that not until 2004 was another biography attempted on Woody, and I can't imagine it could be any better than this.

Woody Guthrie's Primary Color.......2005-10-05

I agree with all the high praise of the other reviewers. This book is fantastic. Now here's my gripe.
That Joe Klein's biography of Woody Guthrie is an impressive distillation of massive amounts of research into a masteful narrative is beyond dispute. However, what shocks this reader is that a political analyst such as Klein, a one-time political reporter for Rolling Stone and author of Primary Colors, should be so inept at handling the political aspect of Woody Guthrie's music. As anyone familiar with the history of communist politics can readily perceive, Guthrie was profoundly shaped not simply by his first-hand experiences or his sympathy for the misfortunes of others, but by articulate communist (and other Marxist) views. This inspiration is seamlessly translated into some of the greatest songs Guthrie wrote, including "This Land is Your Land," "The Greatest Thing that Man has Ever Done," to name a few. Klein, however, proves singularly unequal to the task of dealing with this controversial aspect of Guthrie's music and instead falls into a rote recitation of liberal gripes about the Communists, even to the point of indulging in red-baiting comments about many communists "couldn't even speak English" (the national language?). Klein's text clearly reveals that Guthrie was a profoundly intelligent and well-read man, but when it seems that the hero of his piece is reading and agreeing with the editorials of the People's Daily, not to mention getting the left viewpoint first-hand from the speeches given on the very stages he regularly played, Klein implies that Guthrie never really took a serious interest or was dispositionally incapable of understanding what that politics was about. The implication that Guthrie was somehow naïve about the content of his politics can scarcely stand up to a thorough examination of Guthrie's recorded output.
Klein's comments on the conservative Republican dominated politics of California in the 1930s seem quite tame in comparison to the sort of scorn that the heeps upon Guthrie's communist associates - "romantics" and "blowhards" whose newspapers, in which Guthrie, after all, wrote a considerable amount, was, except for those pieces, were just so much "turgid" and "crude" philosophizing. Guthrie's politics never amounted to anything more than "comic fantasies of the struggle between the workers and the bosses.: Klein, of course, has every right to express his opinions on these matters, but it his views diverge sharply from those of Guthrie himself and do little to illuminate him. As for Guthrie's communist friends and associates, these characters are as one-dimensional as a McCarthyist caricature of communism to which they retain some connection.
The intrusion of Klein's own views about the supposedly marginal and self-marginalizing character of communist politics in the United States in the 1930s mars entire sections of this book. Guthrie was in fact what Klein seems incapable of acknowledging as ever having existed, namely a thinking, independent minded Marxist artist, at least during important periods of his career. Even more implausible is Klein's implication that if Guthrie was "red" this was highly uncommon among hillbilly singers of his day, a misapprehension that an afternoon spent with field recordings from coal mining country (and elsewhere) in the Smithsonian Institute's American folk music field recordings would soon dispel. This complaint may seem somewhat extraneous to some, but to this reader that it appears Klein in his anxiousness to claim Guthrie for his own brand of progressive liberalism has singularly failed to convey a vital sense of Guthrie's politics and that of many in his chosen milieu. This failing results in a near complete absence in Klein's work of anything like a serious discussion of how Guthrie negotiated the limitations of the dominant brand of Marxism at the time, that of the Communist Party of the United States, in order to critically appropriate Marxian radicalism for himself and for his art in producing (significant portions of) what is surely one of the greatest bodies of work of any American musician in the 20th century. In short, one is left pondering how so ludicrous a form of politics could ever have inspired an artistic achievement as massive as that of Woody Guthrie. What is missing is a genuine attempt to communicate Guthrie's artistic integrity, a failure rooted ultimately in the author's inability to find any integrity in the communism Guthrie so manifestly espoused in his music. One suspects that more time spent interviewing communists Guthrie knew may have helped Klein to enter, if not sympathetically (which isn't really the issue), at more more fully into aspect of his material. At any rate, only a more earnest attempt at assessing how communism enabled Guthrie's songwriting would have allowed for a convincing for a convincing of how it constrained it.
Klein's implicit claim that Guthrie was great despite his political commitments is, particularly with an artist like Guthrie, simply implausible and detracts from Klein's overall achievement in this book. His position is deeply anachronistic chiding Guthrie for hankering after sects in a time in America's history when the Communist Party was no mere sect, a time before the de-radicalization of the labor movement and the McCarthyist purge of communists from positions of influence in society. We no longer live in an America where a music group such as the Almanac Singers, a group with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger sang, can sustain itself by going from picket lines to union hall meetings one city after the next just by passing the hat. But such an America did exist, and Woody Guthrie's music, especially that from 1940-1, bears unmistakable testimony to the fact. One may also seriously wonder if Guthrie could ever have ever have so fully overcome the racism of his family and upbringing, the sexual honesty for which he strove in his (wonderfully documented) relationship with his second wife, Marjorie, not to the mention the myriad other ways in which Guthrie refashioned himself from the materials that were ready-to-hand were it not for his time spent with the radicals Klein so easily dismisses as dogmatists and intellectual time-servers. Still, this said, it must be said that Klein's book is the best evidence against its own testimony and is unlikely ever to be surpassed.

Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (American Crossroads)

Average customer rating:

Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (American Crossroads)
Peter La Chapelle
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0520248899

Book Description

Proud to Be an Okie brings to life the influential country music scene that flourished in and around Los Angeles from the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s to the early 1970s. The first work to fully illuminate the political and cultural aspects of this intriguing story, the book takes us from Woody Guthrie's radical hillbilly show on Depression-era radio to Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" in the late 1960s. It explores how these migrant musicians and their audiences came to gain a sense of identity through music and mass media, to embrace the New Deal, and to celebrate African American and Mexican American musical influences before turning toward a more conservative outlook. What emerges is a clear picture of how important Southern California was to country music and how country music helped shape the politics and culture of Southern California and of the nation.

Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

Average customer rating:

An in-depth biography of patriot, political radical, and musician Woody Guthrie
Review of the Book ... not Woody or his life
A USEFUL, WELL WRITTEN BIOGRAPHY - Good Read
A dissent ...(This Land is Your Land?)
The guy behind the folk hero

Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie
Ed Cray
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0393327361

Book Description

"A beautiful job….In exploring the nuances of Guthrie's work, Cray's exacting style is pitch-perfect."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

A patriot and a political radical, Woody Guthrie captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs. He was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the fatal fires that stalked his family and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At forty-two, Woody Guthrie was cruelly silenced by Huntington's disease.

The first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, Ed Cray has created a haunting portrait of an American who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself. 8 pages of illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

An in-depth biography of patriot, political radical, and musician Woody Guthrie.......2006-04-05

With a forward by Studs Terkel, Ramblin' Man: The Life And Times Of Woody Guthrie is an in-depth biography of patriot, political radical, and musician Woody Guthrie, as told by Ed Cray, the first biographer granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive. An independent-minded and influential figure, marked as a subversive by the FBI and haunted by the mental illness that affected his mother, Guthrie continued his influential work in both politics and music until Huntington's disease ended his efforts at the all too young age of forty-two. A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this extensively researched and highly immersive life story.

Review of the Book ... not Woody or his life.......2005-08-26

Two stars is generous ... I only wanted to give it one and a half. This book is TEDIOUS!! It is just plain difficult to read and the details are way, way too much. I never at any point felt like I wanted to turn the page or that I couldn't put the book down. Rather, I wanted to (and did) skim read the pages and throw the book down. Woody's music was great and his life facinating but unfortunately neither was conveyed in an interesting way via this book. My recommendation is to read Woody's biography ... Bound for Glory.

My son hated Stienbeck's "Travels with Charlie" ... so I'm keeping this book in case he misbehaves ... I'll make him read it.

A USEFUL, WELL WRITTEN BIOGRAPHY - Good Read.......2004-10-10

Mr. Cray does a nice job on this one indeed! Not only do we get a very well researched biography of a very interesting life, but we get a very good picture of the times he lived. We are now being flooded with works addressing this era of American History, rightfully so, and this work gives us another "slant," one we may find missing in other works. I must admit to being one of those who knew only one side of the Guthrie story, the musical, and was certainly ignorant of what made, what caused that wonderful music to exist. It is good to be able to put the music and the man into proper prespective. I do think we have to take care and not be overly judgemental of the Gutheries of this world and their chosen life styles and politics. Most sucessful men and women in our history have certainly had their dark side. We have to be able to take the good with the bad and I feel this biography has done a woderful job in pointing this out. I found the text to be easy on the eye, facts well presented and foot notes to be wonderful (almost as helpful and interesting as the bulk of the book itself). I highy recommend this one.

A dissent ...(This Land is Your Land?).......2004-08-19

I have to admit that I am in the minority in concluding that this biography was just OK, and for my purposes, not deserving of the 5-star reviews which have been bestowed upon it. Perhaps, if I was an avid Guthrie fan and knew quite a bit about him and his life before starting this book, I might have had a different reaction, because then the book might have been useful in filling in gaps in my knowledge. However, my knowledge of Guthrie before reading the book (and I suspect that of others as well) was only that he was a man who was hugely influential over the development and growth and 20th-century American folk music, and, not insignificantly, the man who wrote "This Land is Your Land." Indeed, as more or less conceded in the Introduction, that song is his most enduring accomplishment, and virtually the first sentence about him in most of his obituaries mentions that he composed it. I have always loved that song and was very curious about its creation and how it came to be virtually one of our alternate national anthems.

With that hope in mind when I bought the book, I was shocked at the unbelievably terse and cursory treatment given that song, and that is one of the primary reasons for my disappointment in the book. Whie the Introduction does talk about the song and its importance a bit, that proved to be just a tease. The entire rest of the book consists of less than 1 page in total in discussing the song. On page 165, he is writing out some lyrics to the song. Then, with virtually nothing in between, we are advised in the footnotes that "it is the song most likely to be remembered and sung by later generations" (p. 442) and that it is "one of the most influential songs in rock history." (p. 455). Well I for one was curious as to how the song traveled the long journey from point A (its creation) to point B (one of the most influential songs in rock history), but Cray is of no help whatsoever on this point. In fact, he hardly discusses it at all after the Introduction.

A few of the many questions I had about that song before reading the book (all of which were unanswered by Cray) were: 1. Was Guthrie ever interviewed about any aspect of the song (e.g. its creation, influence, etc.) and if so, what did he say? 2. Did Guthrie ever write anything about the song? 3. We are always told (as we were here) that the song was an "angry response" to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". If so, why is it that there is no hint of that in the verses of the song which are most commonly sung and why did he delete one of the verses that clearly was a response to Berlin (which is quoted in the Introduction)? Also, do we know that it was an "angry response" solely from the one obscure verse of the song that is never sung, or did Guthrie ever comment about his motivations? 4. How did the song seep into the national consciousness. Was there some DJ somewhere who started playing it over and over? Was there some "tipping point"? These questions are entirely unaddressed by Cray, who, after telling us that the song was written, essentially says nothing more about it, other than to advise us at the end that it is one of the most influential songs ever. This is just a huge void of information. 5. Even Cray's brief discussion of the song was confusing. We are told that "he borrowed the tune from the Carter Family's 'Little Darling, Pal of Mine'". By "borrowed" does that mean that the music is not his and that he is responsible for the lyrics only--i.e. that he "sampled" the Carter family's song (to use current rap terminology)? I had always thought that both the words and music were by Woody alone. So what does Cray mean that he "borrowed the tune"? 6. What were the financial implications of the song for Guthrie. It seemed that he lived on the verge of poverty virtually his entire life and yet he must have received some substantial royalties from this song. Given that Cray was fairly diligent at many points when discussing Guthrie's financial situation and income and royalties, I was surprised that there was no discussion of what this huge song meant to Guthrie financially (of course, given the almost complete absence of mention of every other aspect of this song, perhaps I shouldnt have been surprised).

Two other criticisms. First, much of the book is of a "just the facts ma'am" variety with Cray painstakingly advising us of Guthrie's peripatetic movements at all times (like a travelogue) with not a whole lot of analysis in between. Second, I got the distinct impression that Cray does not have much of a musical background, and thus, while there is alot of discussion of Guthrie's song lyrics, there is hardly any about the musicianship itself.

The guy behind the folk hero.......2004-08-18

Ed Cray's new biography goes a long way toward clearing up some of the hagiographic fog that's collected around Guthrie since his long illness and death. The romantic picture of Guthrie is that he was an artistically restless drifter who threw in his lot with the farmers and laborers of the Depression era. There's some truth to that picture. Guthrie undoubtedly was a good poet and wrote some good songs and prose (although his skills as a performer were uneven), was extremely restless, and seems to have had a genuine concern for the poor. But these bare facts only scratch the surface of his complexity. He was also a self-indulgent tomcat who took little responsibility for his many children; a prima dona performer who frequently insisted doing things his way or no way; a person whose idiosyncracies and freeloading perpetually tried the patience of his friends and acquaintances (see, for example, Cray's account of Woody's refusal to carry his weight when he lived in the Almanac Singers cooperative); and a chronic mythmaker, in both his memoir and his tales, when it came to his relations with the working class. In the eyes of many (although certainly not all), there apparently was a charm to him that overrode his blemishes. But the blemishes are still there.

In a curious way, the people who come across as the real heroes of this biography are the less celebrated types such as Pete Seeger and Will Geer, both victims of the McCarthy witchhunt, and Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia, Arlo's mom and Guthrie's second wife, who nursed Woody during the final years, long after they were divorced. Compared to them, Woody both lived a pretty comfortable life and was less committed to the farmers and laborers he sang about. Touchingly, it was these same people whose loyalty to Guthrie helped make him into one of America's folk heroes after his death.

This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie (Golden Kite Awards (Awards))

Average customer rating:

Hard times and great songs
4+
Below me the golden valley
We shall overcome ! !
Outstanding book.

This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie (Golden Kite Awards (Awards))
Elizabeth Partridge
Manufacturer: Viking Juvenile
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0670035351

Book Description

Before Springsteen and before Dylan, there was Woody Guthrie. With "This Machine Kills Fascists," scrawled across his guitar in big black letters, Woody Guthrie brilliantly captured in song the experience of twentieth-century America. Whether he sang about union organizers, migrant workers, or war, Woody took his inspiration from the plights of the people around him as well as from his own tragic childhood.

From the late 1920s to the 1950s, Guthrie wrote the words to more than three thousand songs-including "This Land is Your Land," a song many call America's unofficial national anthem. With a remarkable ability to turn any experience into a song almost instantaneously, Woody Guthrie spoke out for people of all colors and races, setting an example for generations of musicians to come. But Woody didn't have the chance to find everything he was looking for. He was ravaged by Huntington's disease, just like his mother, and died in a mental institution at the age of fifty-five.

Customer Reviews:

Hard times and great songs.......2006-02-24

Like every other genius, Guthrie had hard times all his life. But that may be why he wrote so many great songs of people's lives. The world needs not superficial love songs but real love songs.

4+.......2005-09-24

I have not read other books about Woody, but I don't feel I have to, to get an appreciation of who he was and where he came from. Until I read this book, I really had no idea what a great musician he was. I'm a fan of Arlo, but knew very little about Woody.
Woody's parents didn't have it easy - his father, Charley didn't like to face the reality of what was happening to his wife, he would drink so he didn't have to face it.
Woody explored just about every belief looking for answers, answers to life and how to live his life. He was mostly interested in the Communist Party and their beleifs.
At times Woody was a counselor to those who were lost, sick, hungry, wanting work and he would give them "commonsense answers", the people would go away satisfied with what Woody had to say to them.
Woody would quite frequently sing his songs to down and out families in migrant camps, always identifying with the workers.
Woody began to suspect the same illness that haunted his mother was effecting him also, he knew that Huntington's disease could be passed along generation to generation.
My heart breaks for all the people who loved Woody and for Woody himself. It's a tragic story, but one worth reading.

Below me the golden valley.......2004-03-08

Elizabeth Partridge set herself up with a monumentally difficult task when she decided to write an authoritative juvenile biography of the great Woody Guthrie. How to write a story about a man that was simultaneously brilliant and woebegotten? Who spoke out for racial equality, strength among the masses, and freedom while also leaving every family who ever loved him? Partridge has done as good a job as could be done, considering her circumstances. The result is a meticulously researched labor of love that is just as much tribute as it is tell-all. As Pete Seeger himself has said about the work, "The best book about Woody ever written".

Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma to a mother with Huntington's Disease and a father who joined lynch mobs and Klu Klux Klans. Talking about this point in Woody's life, Partridge simultaneously displays all the harsh horrible things Woody had to deal with growing up without actually condemning anyone. In fact, the portions of the text that talk about Charley Guthrie (Woody's father) joining in the persecution of African-Americans aren't related with any commentary at all. It's as if Partridge is working on the assumption that the readers will be able to process these facts and come to their own conclusions, rather than have interpretations rammed down their throat. It is also the first moment the author gives the audience the benefit of the doubt. It is not the last.

Moving on through Woody's life, we see him grow up, loose his parents (one way or another), and join various bands. We also see him beginning to travel all across the country on his own. At last, Woody marries and it becomes clear that he is not exactly prime husband material. Abandoning his wife regularly to travel (sometimes when she's just about to give birth), Woody joins various causes around the country. When Woody and his wife finally break up, her narrative abruptly ends. Patridge has a habit of following the people in Woody's life meticulously right up until the moment Woody breaks off all contact with them. Then, their story ends immediately. We never really learn how Woody's father ended his life. Or what became of Woody's children by his first wife (though an afterword in the back of the text explaining Huntington's Disease explains that all but three of his children died either of the disease or of car accidents). Do we criticize Partridge for her choice or narratives? Or do we accept that she really couldn't continually follow Woody's friends and relatives because of space and narrative issues? I'm inclined towards the latter, though it would have been nice to see a little afterword that explains what became of everyone.

Moving towards Woody's second wife, the war, and his battle with Huntington's, Partridge nicely melds text with social commentary. Woody's acceptance of all people, regardless of color, is especially well done. As he sinks further into Huntington's, and has an affair with a pretty young folk singer, the reader sees how Woody finally loses control. A little more information about the talented Arlo Guthrie (his son) would not be out of place at this point, but this is Woody's story, I suppose. Finally, we read Woody's death. The story ends.

Partridge is to be commended for how interesting this book is. As I read it, my husband continually asked me why this was considered a juvenile book. Apart from being published by a press for young readers, I have to assume it's considered a youth text because its so doggone interesting. The words are a little larger than you'd find in an adult biography. The pictures a little more interesting and consistent. On the whole it's a great read. Most wonderful of all is how well the book has been researched. Partridge includes an Afterword about her own personal connection to the subject, a tribute to the Woody Guthrie Foundation, information on Huntington's Disease, Acknowledgements (in which she mentions her interviews with Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seegar), Source Notes, a Bibliography, an Index, Picture Credits, and Permissions. She is nothing if not extensive.

"This Land Was Made For You and Me" is not the world's most definitive biography written with youth in mind, but it comes pretty darn close. But don't limit it to the kids. Read it yourself. Learn a little more about what made the great man tick. Though it's over-quoted, here's what Woody himself had to say about his music:

"I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. I am out to fight those kind of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood".

We shall overcome ! !.......2003-10-20

I really enjoyed this book.A longtime fan of Woody and have the bulk of his music that has been published.I have other books of Guthrie;namely, Woody,Cisco,&Me by Jim Longhi,Pastures of Heaven by Woody,edited by Marsh and Leventhal,Woody Guthrie-a life by Joe Klein and this is a very good addition.Though it is a quick read, there is a lot of fresh stuff;plus a lot of really good pictures I've not seen before.
If Pete Seeger says "The best book about Woody ever written", it's got to be good. Can you imagine Pete saying something he didn't believe? Get it,it's a keeper and enjoy it.

Outstanding book........2003-07-07

An always interesting and well presented recap of an astonishing
life. This book has stayed on my nightstand to be picked up again and again at all hours.

Woody, Cisco, and Me: Seamen Three in the Merchant Marine (Music in American Life)

Average customer rating:

A Story about America, a Story about Folksingers, History oh so Fine
Fast paced, hilarious, touching and a lot of fun!
A valuable addition to Guthrie lore, and WWII as well...
Great book
good biography expands one's own life, this book does this

Woody, Cisco, and Me: Seamen Three in the Merchant Marine (Music in American Life)
Jim Longhi
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

A Story about America, a Story about Folksingers, History oh so Fine.......2006-12-30

Three seamen in the Merchant Marine when America was at war were Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Jim Longhi, this book's author. Not many people know Woody shipped out with the Merchant Marine in 1943 with nothing more than a seabag, well he took along a guitar, a mandolin, a case of books and a portable typewriter. One might have thought he was going to a concert and not to war, but Woody played guitar, wherever he went, the Grand Coulee Damn or U-boat infested waters. And with fellow folksinger Cisco along for the ride, you can bet the playing on that boat was mighty fine.

Though they had regular duties aboard, Woodie and Cisco were morale boosters and with U-boats lurking, storms raging, seas rough and waves high, they were certainly appreciated. On more than one occasion they saw other ships in their convoy go down, but this page turning book isn't only about the terror of the deep during war, it also has quite a few laughs thrown in. You just won't believe the cooking school bit Woodie, Cisco and Jim had to go through and you'll enjoy all heck out of their shore leaves. Still, war is grim business.

This is a must read for any fan of Woodie Guthrie's or Cisco Houston's. It's also a very good book which reads like fiction, though every word is true. I can't recommend this highly enough, it's a story about America, a story about folksingers, a story you'll never forget.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Fast paced, hilarious, touching and a lot of fun!.......2002-06-02

The main reason I bought this book, and (unfortunately) it wasn't too easy to find, was to learn more about Cisco Houston. There hasn't been much written about him except a few pages of reference here and there in his contempories biographies and stories. In that regard, this novel didn't disappoint. Many sides of Cisco are shown - strong and solid, brilliant, an athlete, a quiet war hero looked up to by men from all walks of life, a fair and honest man with a strong sense of justice, a man among men who also liked his women, his booze, his gambling, and who would not mince words. Also, someone with a tender heart of gold. Woody is portrayed as the icon he is, at times almost a "wizard" able to snatch victory out of the clutches of defeat, able to rally huge groups of men and children from all cultures and walks of life with his singing. And the author, Jimmy Longhi, manages to bare his soul throughout much of this rollicking, constantly funny and often touching story which, for the most part, takes place during a less than two year period - the final two years of WWII - during the three times that Woody, Cisco and Jimmy shipped out with the Merchant Marines.
The style of this book is so entertaining, so fluid, so descriptive that it's amazing that Longhi's main walk of life is that of lawyer, not author (although he is also a playwrite). The story is filled with memorable characters - Davey Bananas, Nino Sala, Courtroom Kelly, Newington, Frank Strahele, the evil Jojo, Mando - to name a few. I really had trouble putting it down. Parts made me laugh out loud while others brought a tear to my eye. As a bonus, this story draws you into the realities of WWII. The extreme patriotism among men from all walks of life regardless of race (although archaic prejudicial customs are brought to light) or political conviction (the far left or "reds" were as much behind beating Hitler as the far right), the thoughts and fears of the soldiers before the Normandy invasion, the abject poverty of Sicily, northern Africa and Belfast. This is a great read and highly recommended.

A valuable addition to Guthrie lore, and WWII as well..........2001-11-16

Most fans of Woody and Cisco know they made a few trips as merchant seamen during the War, and were torpedoed once and were on another that hit a mine. This wonderful book makes that period REAL, in excellent detail, because Jim Longhi was present. His depiction of Woody reveals a man who had been somewhat famous for three years, and who was still ten years away from being disabled by Huntington's Chorea. The Woody here is almost totally admirable...a bit nutty, but in a brave, sweet way. The book also represents perhaps the closest thing we'll get to a real biography of Cisco Houston, Woody's long-time best friend and arguably still the best singer of Guthrie songs. Meeting Jim Longhi, whose existence I was unaware of despite years of researching Woody and Cisco, was quite a pleasure. He's a fine writer, and obviously a good man, who can poke fun at himself, looking 50 years back at the zealotry of his youth. The book has just about everything...war, music, humor, exotic places, danger, hints of love and sex, fantastic coincidences, political debates---it would make a great movie in skilled hands. The character of Courtroom Kelly, introduced briefly in the mid-section of the memoir, is unforgettably hilarious. In l968, I spent more than 30 days as an Army private sailing to Vietnam on a troopship, so Jim's portrait of shipboard life heading to a war zone for troops and crew alike resonates with me. He and Woody and Cisco were usually mess attendants, but on one trip Jim was a cook and baker. He does a fine job proving how important such workers are to the men they feed. The most touching segment is how Woody insisted on singing to troops down in the hold during submarine attacks on the convoy, competing with the noise from depth charges, and sickness-causing storms, and even racist military policies keeping black and white soldiers from enjoying the same concert at the same time. One comes away even more a fan of Woody and Cisco than before, and with a new friend, Jim, whose singing career didn't survive the voyages, but who lived to tell us an interesting and important tale. Get the book and see for yourself.

Great book.......1998-07-03

This is a terrific tale of friendship, heroism and the power of a magnetic personality. While there have been numerous attempts to paint the definitive portrait of Woody, none have shown this particular picture. To the list of scalliwag, drunkard, genius, writer, singer, guitarist, vagabond and saint, we now must add "war hero."

good biography expands one's own life, this book does this.......1997-05-07

As a long time listener to Woody, and Cisco I was familiar with Woody through his writings and the biographical material about him. However, Cisco, seemed to have only existence as Woody's "sidekick". This book introduces the reader to a remarkable, and very interesting person. Jimmy Longhi's book provides the reader with an opportunity to relive those days with three remarkable me

Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie (American Music Masters)

Average customer rating:

Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie (American Music Masters)

Manufacturer: Wesleyan / Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Book Description

For the first ever American Music Masters event sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, musicians and folkies came together to salute the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie, America's folk troubadour. With contributions from Guthrie's son Arlo and his longtime friends Pete Seeger and Harold Leventhal, and with new appreciations and insights provided by scholars and critics, Hard Travelin' continues that celebration, offering a new understanding of Guthrie's contribution to America's music and culture. It is illustrated with photographs and drawings, many never-before-seen, from the Woody Guthrie Archives.

Guthrie's songs -- such as "This Land Is Your Land," "Pretty Boy Floyd," or "Roll on Columbia" -- are still known and sung by many Americans, while the story of his life has taken on a mythic cast -- the modern troubadour, the hobo balladeer and union supporter, the wandering folk singer who heard and wrote in the voice of the people. Guthrie's influence is felt not only whenever someone sings one of his songs, but any time a modern folk group or rocker sings a protest song or joins a social or political cause.

In this book, Guthrie's family and friends offer personal and often poignant recollections of his life. Noted writers such as Dave Marsh, David Shumway, and Robert Cantwell shed new light on the Guthrie legacy, including an expanded appreciation of his impact on rock and roll, through such figures as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. They also assess Guthrie's place in the political and social movements of his time, especially his support for unions and for the communist party; his attitudes toward race; and the little-studied topic of his visual art, the often very personal drawings, doodles, sketches, and paintings that he produced throughout his life. The book concludes with a valuable biblio/discography.

Reflections: The life and times of Woody Guthrie

Average customer rating:

Reflections: The life and times of Woody Guthrie
Thelma Bray
Manufacturer: Bray
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006RT4GI

There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: The Life of Woody Guthrie

Average customer rating:

There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: The Life of Woody Guthrie
Anne Neimark
Manufacturer: Atheneum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back;

This land was made for you and me.

We still sing his songs. We still hum his tunes. And many of us still heed his message. Woody Guthrie, the political hillbilly and hayseed minstrel, has become part of the patchwork dreams and social conscience that compose America. His songs have been passed along from person to person to become modern anthems of hope and survival through challenging times.

Behind Woody's music, however, was a life that was a tragedy, comedy, passion play, and soap opera in one. He traveled from state to state and marriage to marriage, battled catastrophic fires and debilitating disease, singing all the way in saloons and on street corners, in junkyards and on picket lines. A modern-day troubadour, Woody never let go of the voice of the people -- the outcasts and outsiders rather than the "easy streeters" -- in search of the "freedom highway" that led straight from the heart of his songs to the land "for you and me."

Average customer rating:
Woody Guthrie : A Life
Joe Klein
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PCN028

Average customer rating:
Anne E. Neimark There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: the Life of Woody Guthrie.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article): An article from: The Horn Book Magazine
Betty Carter
Manufacturer: Horn Book, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books
ASIN: B0008FGKQU
Release Date: 2005-06-01

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Horn Book Magazine, published by Horn Book, Inc. on September 1, 2002. The length of the article is 381 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Anne E. Neimark There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: the Life of Woody Guthrie.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Betty Carter
Publication: The Horn Book Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2002
Publisher: Horn Book, Inc.
Volume: 78 Issue: 5 Page: 600(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Children's Review, Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books