60 Fun Facts About Woody Guthrie

Which US president was Woody Guthrie named after?

His full name was Woodrow Wilson Guthrie; Wilson was the Democratic candidate the year Woody was born, and won.

In which state was Woody Guthrie born?

He was born on July 14, 1912, in the small town of Okemah, and left the state at 17.

Guthrie's hometown of Okemah was named after a chief of which people?

The town was platted in 1902 on Creek Nation land and now hosts WoodyFest every July.

What phrase did Guthrie famously display on his guitar?

A bronze statue of him in Okemah reproduces the guitar and its slogan.

Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' in 1940 in response to which overplayed radio song?

He thought Irving Berlin's song was unrealistic and complacent, and signed his manuscript 'All you can write is what you see.'

The melody of 'This Land Is Your Land' was adapted from a tune recorded by which group?

Their recording 'When the World's on Fire' was itself based on the Baptist hymn 'Oh, My Loving Brother'.

Where did Guthrie write the original lyrics of 'This Land Is Your Land' on February 23, 1940?

He was staying at the Hanover House on 43rd Street; by one account he then forgot about the song for years.

Guthrie's 1944 'This Land Is Your Land' dropped two critical verses: one on hunger, and one on what?

The earliest known recording, from March 1944, still includes the verse about the sign that says 'no trespassing'.

Who performed 'This Land Is Your Land' with Pete Seeger at Obama's 2009 inaugural celebration?

Seeger's grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger joined them; Springsteen had been playing the song live since 1980.

At whose presidential inauguration did Jennifer Lopez sing part of 'This Land Is Your Land' in a medley?

She blended it with 'America the Beautiful' on January 20, 2021.

In 2002, 'This Land Is Your Land' was among the first 50 recordings added to which list?

The Library of Congress selects recordings each year for their cultural or historical significance.

What nickname did Guthrie earn after releasing his 1940 album about the Okie migration?

He wrote the album from his own experience of joining the migration of Okies to California.

Which label released Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940?

Nearly all of it was cut in a single day, April 26, 1940, at the label's Camden, New Jersey studios.

Which song on Dust Bowl Ballads was so long it had to be split across both sides of a 78 rpm disc?

It retells the story of the hero of The Grapes of Wrath, which had just been filmed.

Guthrie's 'Pretty Boy Floyd' portrays the Depression-era bank robber as what kind of figure?

He wrote it in March 1939, five years after Floyd was killed by a posse led by FBI agent Melvin Purvis.

At which Los Angeles radio station did Guthrie first find fame in the late 1930s?

He performed hillbilly music there with his radio partner Maxine 'Lefty Lou' Crissman.

What was Guthrie's radio nickname for his on-air partner Maxine Crissman?

Their KFVD show made him enough money to send for his family from Texas.

What was the title of the column Guthrie wrote 174 times for the communist newspaper People's World?

It was written in an exaggerated hillbilly dialect and usually came with a small comic drawing.

Which folklorist recorded hours of Guthrie's songs and conversation for the Library of Congress in 1940?

He later suggested Guthrie write an autobiography, thinking his childhood stories were among the best he had read.

A committee named for which author hosted the 1940 benefit where Guthrie first met Pete Seeger?

The event was hosted by the John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers.

Guthrie used his spot on the CBS radio show Back Where I Come From to get a booking for which friend?

The two had busked together in Harlem bars, and Ledbetter's Tenth Street apartment was a hangout for New York's folk scene.

Why did Guthrie quit the well-paid radio show Pipe Smoking Time after only seven broadcasts?

The Model Tobacco Company was paying him $180 a week, a large salary in 1940.

In 1941 the US government hired Guthrie for one month to write songs about which river's dams?

He wrote 26 songs in that month, including 'Roll On, Columbia, Roll On' and 'Pastures of Plenty'.

How many songs did Guthrie write during his single month working for the Bonneville Power Administration?

He called the Pacific Northwest 'a paradise', and the songs were released as Columbia River Songs.

What word did Guthrie and Seeger pick up for the Almanac Singers' informal concerts?

The Sunday events raised donation money to pay the rent on Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Which Almanac Singers labor song did the group later agree Guthrie wrote, so his children would get royalties?

Songs written at Almanac House were normally credited to all members collectively.

Which publisher issued Guthrie's partly fictionalized autobiography Bound for Glory in 1943?

Clifton Fadiman's New Yorker review called Guthrie and his songs 'a national possession, like Yellowstone and Yosemite'.

Who played Guthrie in the 1976 film Bound for Glory?

Hal Ashby directed and the film's cinematographer Haskell Wexler won an Oscar.

Bound for Glory (1976) was the first feature film to use which piece of camera equipment?

Inventor Garrett Brown operated it himself for the film's moving shots.

In which branch of wartime service did Guthrie sail as a mess man and dishwasher from 1943?

His friends Cisco Houston and Jim Longhi talked him into it after the Army refused him as a USO performer.

What happened to Guthrie's last ship, the Sea Porpoise, off Utah Beach in July 1944?

Twelve crew were injured but Guthrie was unhurt and the ship made it back to England for repairs.

What did Woody Guthrie call the whirligig contraption he built on a troop ship's stern?

He had earlier used the same name for his guitar, according to shipmate Jim Longhi's memoir.

Guthrie's second wife Marjorie taught at the dance school of which choreographer?

They met when she was assisting Sophie Maslow with Folksay, a dance piece built on Guthrie's songs.

On which Coney Island street did Guthrie and Marjorie raise their family after the war?

His post-war years there were among his most productive as a writer.

Which children's song did Guthrie write for his son when the boy was about nine?

It appeared on his collection Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child.

Guthrie's 1947 novel House of Earth finally appeared in 2013 under whose publishing imprint?

The novel, about a couple building an earthen house against Dust Bowl weather, contains explicit material he could not get published in his lifetime.

Which young singer studied under Woody Guthrie at home and became the model for how Dylan and Arlo performed his songs?

He said Guthrie's only teaching advice was: 'If you want to learn something, just steal it.'

The 1948 California plane crash that inspired 'Deportee' upset Guthrie because news reports omitted what?

He wrote it as a poem; a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman set it to music a decade later.

Which landlord ran the Brooklyn complex where Guthrie lived in 1954 and wrote a scathing song about him?

The song, 'Old Man Trump', was written at the Beach Haven complex in Gravesend.

An accident in Florida left Guthrie unable to play guitar again. What caused it?

He was living in a bus on land called Beluthahatchee, owned by his friend Stetson Kennedy.

Which 19-year-old admirer regularly visited Guthrie at Greystone Park hospital in New Jersey?

The visitor's debut album in 1962 included 'Song to Woody', set to the tune of Guthrie's '1913 Massacre'.

Bob Dylan's 'Song to Woody' borrows its melody from which Guthrie song?

It was one of only two original songs on Dylan's 1962 debut album.

According to family legend, which recording was Guthrie listening to shortly before he died in 1967?

His son Arlo had brought the recording to his bedside at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.

What was done with Guthrie's remains after his death in October 1967?

By the time he died, the folk revival had brought his songs to a whole new audience.

Three months after Guthrie's death, Harold Leventhal produced a tribute concert at which New York venue?

Dylan, The Band, Judy Collins, Odetta and Richie Havens all performed on January 20, 1968.

In what year was Guthrie inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

What was the face value of the 1998 US postage stamp honoring Guthrie and three other folk musicians?

The Postal Service issued 45 million of the folk-musician stamps in its Legends of American Music series.

Which British singer and American band set unheard Guthrie lyrics to music on a 1998 album?

Nora Guthrie approached Bragg in 1995 after he played a tribute concert in Central Park.

Which klezmer band won a Grammy for an album built on Guthrie lyrics, Wonder Wheel?

The band also recorded Guthrie's Hanukkah lyrics, which he wrote while living among Coney Island's Jewish community.

The Woody Guthrie Center, which houses his archives, opened in 2013 in which city?

The George Kaiser Family Foundation bought the archives and later opened the Bob Dylan Center nearby.

How many children did Guthrie father across his three marriages?

Two of his daughters died of the same inherited disease that killed him.

Guthrie's illness was misdiagnosed for years before doctors in 1952 identified it as what?

His mother had suffered from the same inherited disorder; his second wife Marjorie went on to found what became the Huntington's Disease Society of America.

Arlo Guthrie's only top-40 hit was a cover of which Steve Goodman song?

The 1972 single is a wistful tribute to long-distance passenger trains.

In 1966 Interior Secretary Udall gave Guthrie which honor for his Bonneville dam songs?

Udall also named a Bonneville electrical substation after him.

In which Texas town did Guthrie's father run a flophouse, where Woody joined him in 1929?

Rather than attend high school there, the 18-year-old learned songs by busking and read in the library at Pampa's city hall.

Which three famous songs came out of Guthrie's month working for the Bonneville Power Administration?

Guthrie was hired to write songs for a documentary about the Columbia River dams and produced 26 in a single month.

Guthrie's mother Nora was committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane when Woody was what age?

She suffered from Huntington's disease, which the family did not recognise at the time; Woody inherited it and died of complications in 1967.

Who were the core members of the Almanac Singers alongside Guthrie and Pete Seeger?

The group shared meals, chores and rent at the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village, and split songwriting credits.

Guthrie's daughter Cathy died at age four in what kind of accident?

Fire shadowed Guthrie's life: his childhood home burned in 1909, his sister Clara died after her clothes caught fire, and his father was badly burned in 1927.

Which poet, then a junior editor at Common Ground, did Seeger introduce Guthrie to in 1941?

Carl Sandburg's folklore and poetry collections separately inspired the dance piece Folksay, which adapted some of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads.