Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie FROM THE PUBLISHER
Writer, singer, and political activist, Woody Guthrie is perhaps the single most important figure to have influenced the tradition of American folk music in our time. During his life, Guthrie wrote more than twelve hundred songs, including what has become the unofficial national anthem, "This Land Is Your Land," the rollicking "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," and the moving "Pastures of Plenty."
Wherever he was, Woody Guthrie surrounded himself with like-minded friends, artists, and performers. In California, he met actor Will Geer, singer Cisco Houston, and author John Steinbeck. In New York City he met Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, and Huddie Ledbetter, and became a member of the politically active Almanac Singers. Despite moments of success, and fame, Guthrie never forgot his calling or his roots. In the same manner that Steinbeck's seminal The Grapes of Wrath and Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men emerged from, and later defined, the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie's music honored and heartened the abandoned, the lost, the dispossessed and disgruntled in an America darkened by poverty. His was the voice of Everyman.
Guthrie's life was particularly tumultuous. He was hounded by a bizarre series of fires, left motherless at a young age, tagged as a subversive by the FBI, and riddled in his later years with Huntington's disease. Yet through the breadth of his craft, and his dedication to and belief in the power of song, Guthrie left an indelible mark on the tradition not only of folk music but of music at large - and paved the way for some of the most influential singer-activists of our time, including Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Bruce Springsteen.
Thefirst biographer to have full access to the Woody Guthrie Archives, Ed Cray has drawn from thousands of letters and interviewed over seventy people close to Guthrie to capture the spirit of a man too often misunderstood and too little celebrated.
SYNOPSIS
Cray (journalism, U. of Southern California) tells the story of writer, folk singer, and political activist Guthrie (1912-67), America's balladeer, as Studs Terkel calls him in the Foreword. He is the first biographer to have full access to the Woody Guthrie Archives, and interviewed over 70 people close to him. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Guthrie's prose was usually impulsive, sometimes affected and so word-drunk that it didn't necessarily connect up very well. But in the well-organized context Cray provides, it makes sense as further proof of a genius who meant to poke holes in the facade of received culture, and succeeded better than the genius in question was lucky enough to see.
— Robert Christgau
Publishers Weekly
The biographer of Gen. George C. Marshall (General of the Army) turns his prodigious skills to view another complex American hero with an equally complex story-folk singer and political activist Woody Guthrie. Cray's access to thousands of pages from the Woody Guthrie Archives (including previously unpublished letters, diaries and journals) allows him to present a comprehensive picture, although sometimes the detail keeps Cray from moving the story along. However, this is the definitive biography of a songwriter whose legendary image for the past half-century has been "the banty, brilliant songwriter who had stood up for the underdog and downtrodden." Cray provides a superb look at Guthrie's background as a real estate agent's son. He carefully details how Guthrie moved from a fairly conventional career in country music to a recreation of his image through remarkable songs, like his "Dust Bowl Ballads,'' and gained a whole new Depression-era audience: "The Okies and Arkies, the Texicans and Jayhawkers, had become Woody's people." Cray also expertly observes how the "writerly discipline" of these works was missing in his post-WWII songs. While Guthrie's folk hero status is a given today, Cray shows just how much effort it actually took for a new generation of folk singers such as Bob Dylan to raise awareness of Guthrie's importance as the man himself fell victim to Huntington's disease. Finally, Cray fully explores one of the real heroes in this story, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, who stuck with the singer during and after their stormy marriage. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In his song "Christmas in Washington," Steve Earle issues a call for Woody Guthrie's return because our times require his unflinchingly honest and prophetic voice. Cray (Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren) answers with this vivid portrait of the peripatetic Okie bard's life, music, and hard times. Drawing on materials from the Woody Guthrie Archives and interviews with Guthrie's friends, the author chronicles the songwriter's birth and youth in Oklahoma and Texas, marked by his sister's death, his mother's committal to an insane asylum, and his father's tumble from wealth to poverty during the Depression. His days in New York City's Greenwich Village and his death in 1967 from Huntington's chorea are also covered. To boot, Cray tells the stories behind some of Guthrie's best-known songs (e.g., "This Land Is Your Land") and provides detailed information about his Communist ties. Guthrie has deeply influenced the likes of Earle, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Ani DeFranco; Cray eloquently bears witness to his tremendous significance in this definitive biography. All libraries will want to own a copy. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/03.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A lively, graphic portrait of the balladeer and activist who made ants-in-his-pants into an art form. Woody Guthrie (1912-67) doesn't emerge here as any sort of icon, but he does shine through as a force of nature, a deep-running reservoir of disobedient energy applied to music, politics, and writing. Cray (Chief Justice, 1997, etc.) makes few assumptions; rather, he follows close on Guthrie's heels, letting the acts speak for themselves. In terms of number and content, they are a hell's-afire riot. The author aptly characterizes his subject's music as simple, idiomatic, and direct, rich in symbolism, steeped in old oral traditions, yet, amazingly, crafted in mere minutes or hours. Guthrie's politics, on the other hand, took shape more gradually over a couple of years-a near-geological amount of time for this itchy soul. Cray neatly couples the singer's musical and political evolution, showing how they fed upon one another: a black man fired his first interest in music, and thus fired his questioning of racism. But Guthrie was never as ingenuous as he made it sound when he said, "Left wing, right wing, chicken wing-it's the same thing to me. I sing my songs wherever I can sing 'em"; this prairie socialist evolved into a "full blood Marxican," though seldom a dogmatic one. Guthrie had "to do a little something different . . . learn a little something different every day," which didn't make him much of a husband or father, though it kept him curious. His biographer shrewdly charts his passage through radio programs and the Almanac Singers, his stint as a leftist columnist and the writing of Bound for Glory, his patriotic socialism during the war years and the sad days of increasingly crazybehavior that led to his institutionalization. Guthrie's last years were dark, shadowed by the horrible death of his daughter, FBI probes, and his drastic physical decline from Huntington's chorea. A jam-packed life, unfolded with an artful blend of perspective and admiration. (16 photos, not seen)
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