Woody Guthrie: A Life

by Joe Klein

Woody Guthrie: A Life Klein, Joe

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Americana, American History

490 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Joe Klein is a longtime Washington, D.C. and New York journalist and columnist, known for his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. Since 2003 he has been a contributor at the current affairs Time news group. In April 2006, he published Politics Lost, a book on what he calls the "pollster-consultant industrial complex". He has also written articles and book reviews for The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, LIFE and Rolling Stone.

Reviews

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly essential reading. I've been a fan of the *idea* of Woody Guthrie since I was a kid, but this was the first time I've really sat down and learned about the man. Hooo boy. I'm even more in love with his talent and silliness now, and (for better or worse) much more aware of the myriad tragedies in his life, and how they shaped his work and legacy. A well-written account of a tough life. *Very* well researched and for the most part objective and not reverential.

[Jonfaith]

I read this with my mates during that blurred summer of 2000. I finished it flying to San Francisco for my brother's wedding. I was hungover both ways on that trip. the only time I've ever flown with my parents. The only time. Klein's approach is solid, depicting the myth, sifting through evidence, standing in unblemished awe of the impact and legacy of the artist. Guthrie could be a real son of a bitch. He also had a huge heart. Standing in the airport waiting my for my parents to collect themselves, that felt strident yet elusive.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would get 4 1/2 stars if GR had such a thing. It's a fantastic book. Not only did it tell a thorough and complete view of an American icon from birth to death, but it encompassed both his own view of himself and how he was seen by others. And as the best biographies do, it included the culture and society around him in such a way as to give him context and educate the reader. This wasn't *just* a book about Woody Guthrie (who I've decided I really wouldn't like very much at all!), but was ALSO a book about the Dust Bowl, communism in the early- to mid-1900's, and the rise of folk music as a genre.

Totally readable and absolutely fascinating. I loved it.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too many biographies of music artists suffer from an over-reliance on quoted secondary sources, yielding books that don't feel "authored" because they lack a consistent narrative voice. I've put many such books aside in frustration over their prolific and unselective use of quotes that tend to vary wildly in tone, insight, and reliability.

This book is different. It was published in 1980, when Woody (who died in 1967) would have been just 68, and most of the people who had known him well were still alive and happy to share their memories with the author. This is one of the great strengths of this book: in constructing his narrative, the author relies heavily on knowledge informed by—but not direct quotes from—these reminiscences. He does quote selectively, but he doesn't overload us with quoted material, and most of the quotes he includes are from letters written by Woody himself.

Woody's life story is certainly book-worthy. The author of more than 3000 songs, Woody was an inspiration to, and huge influence on, so many more recent and contemporary artists (Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, ...). He grew up in Oklahoma and Texas, but lived most of his adult life in Los Angeles and New York. He "hoboed" around the country frequently, hosted radio programs in both LA and NY, served in World War II in both the merchant marine and the army, fathered 7 children with 3 different wives (but was always closest to his second wife Marjorie, a Jewish ballet dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, with whom he lived in Coney Island during the most stable periods of his adult life and had three children, including Arlo), fought hard for social justice, and had very little interest in money. He also suffered more than his share of profound personal tragedy, including the debilitating neurological illness that affected the last quarter of his life.

The overall result of this felicitous combination of talented author and fascinating subject is a lively and moving biography really brings its subject to life.

[Manzoid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography is stunningly and painfully intimate. Joe Klein did a fantastic job. This is a great read.

Guthrie is a tremendous American icon who not enough of us actually know about or perhaps have even heard of. He was a thousand contradictions. In his art and in his life, in his outrageous, childlike, precocious, brooding, energetic, and endlessly subversive behavior... he was just utterly himself, he embodied a particular American brand of freedom in life, outlook, and sense of possibility.

Even if you haven't got time to read this book, make sure the kids around you know all the verses to "This Land Is Your Land". You may not agree with the politics but it's worth knowing what the man actually said, it makes you think.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes noting the context and mental state we have when reading certain books says more than the actual words in the text. Certainly everything we take in is subject to interpretation and internalization. It's hard not to be nostalgic about home when you're an American living in Dubai and reading a book like this. I started it when I was home for a visit in rural Michigan and finished it back in Dubai. Not quite 500 pages about one extraordinary life. And Woody never seemed to quite fit anywhere. His creativity, eccentricity and his drive for freedom caused his success but also isolated him. There's something relatable in that. It appears He was alone in many ways yet had a huge heart or at least a great deal of empathy. Sometimes those with the biggest hearts have a hard time with relationships. I don't know why that is but I think the ability to look inside and see the unity outside (and the time it takes to do that kind of reflection) has something to do with it. Woody's voice, soul and love for humanity - the image he represents in American life is his legacy much more so than his music. That image can never live up to the reality of his humanized life and Joe Klein shows us a lot of the flaws which makes this a great, well-balanced read.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me." -Excerpt from This Land is Your Land, by Woody Guthrie

Every so often, a book I'm reading leads me to my next one. In this case, it was Bruce Springsteen's biography, Born to Run. In his biography, The Boss heaped praise on Woody Guthrie: A Life, about an American folk singer who later inspired Bob Dylan who, in turn, inspired Bruce Springsteen to write songs about the American experience, especially the down-and-out working class.

Woody, who I was wholly unfamiliar with before reading this book, was best known for This Land is Your Land, which many thought to be a contender to replace The Star Spangled Banner as our national anthem.

Woody was from sunbaked and windswept Oklahoma. As a child, he was a charismatic boy, but an outcast at school who spent much of his time deliberately alone. His childhood was also not an easy one - his mother died of Huntington's disease while in an insane asylum and his sister died due to severe burns after her school dress caught fire in a freak incident at home. In fact, both causes of death - fire and Huntington's - would continue to wreak havoc on the Guthrie's for the next several decades.

Woody dropped out of school, but was very much a lifelong learner. He was a commited bibliophile, and scrawled his name on the punch card of countless books at his local library.

As his career began, Woody didn't seem to care much for money. In fact, he was known for giving it away to others when he had it. He was persistenly content, seemingly unaffected by America's Great Depression and Dust Bowl, subsisting fine at a time when most of the country was not.

Once called "Shakespeare in overalls," Woody found his niche singing political songs in a traditional folk fashion that captivated listeners. He disdained politicians, and often wrote songs that were performed at migrant camps and labor strikes, or included in labor union songbooks.

While he served for a period of time as a Merchant Marine during World War II, he largely fought the war on fascism with his songs and his poems, writing lyrics and stanzas that mobilized Americans.

And, yet, with all that has been written in the positive about him thus far, Woody was also a bit of a (pardon my language) wanderlust fuck-up. He was a philanderer, cheating on his own wife with other married women, and often abandoned his children for months at a time until his heartstrings pulled more than than the ones on his guitar. It wasn't uncommon for Woody to stand up at the dinner table and announce he was heading west to California and would be leaving immediately - with seemingly no forethought or planning. He struggled with alcoholism and, sadly, was even asked, by one of his own children, with tears in her eyes, when dropping by unnanounced after months on the road, to please leave, telling him that her mother (Woody's first wife) had made a good life for them and that he'd only upend it.

The tragedy of Woody's life only multiplied from there. At 40, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and then Huntington's - the same disease which killed his mother. While the disease ravaged his body, his inspiration on American folk music seemingly took off. Even young and yet undiscovered Bob Dylan made a pilgrimage to visit Woody before he passed.

Woody Guthrie, without a doubt, left a lasting legacy on American politics and entertainment. In fact, some of his songs lyrics would cut deep with America today, such as his lyrics about immigration:

"Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
All they will call you will be...deportees."

He was a talented man with a troubled life. Book-wise, while it may seem insulting to say his life story doesn't justify 470 pages, I did find quite a few of the chapters to be rather tedious and redundant. I'm also not quite sure why the author decided to include unabridged personal letters of Woody's that were highly sexual; it seems to me that Woody's sexual escapades already underscored that character point.

3.5 out of 5

[Himanshu Damle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I might not necessarily be a communist, but I have been in the red all my life", thus begins Joe Klein's fourth chapter of a remarkable biography of a remarkable personality, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (Woody Guthrie), father of the modern folk music in America. Known to have inspired the likes of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and even Bruce Springsteen among others, Woody Guthrie (WG, hereafter) was known for smash hits like "This Land is Your Land" and "Oklahoma Hills". The former was considered to be the Marxist Response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", and has become a patriotic anthem in kind, and was also favored by the fluctuating coterie of folklorists to have potentially become the National Anthem of the US of A instead of the "Star Spangled Banner".

Diagnosed with the rare Huntington's Chorea (Huntington's Disease), which WG inherited from his mother, the legendary anti-fascist and anti-materialist singer, songwriter, poet, author of the fictitiously-interrupted autobiography "Bound for Glory", WG passed on to the other side at the age of 55, leaving behind a legacy that breathes through the American country music even to this day. A prodigious painter (cartoonist), and a prolific writer, his was a life on the move, living and surviving in conditions of abject poverty, crashing in with his friends from the Almanac Singers, abandoned pick-up trucks, and hospitals, interspersed with short stints in decent living conditions while married to his second and third wives. That his status was legendary unmatched and unparalleled could be easily decipherable from Alan Lomax's quote about him, that WG was the best discovery made by Lomax, who is himself credited as the man who recorded the world.

Woody was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912 to Charles and Nora. Charles Guthrie was into real estate business, where he was more unsuccessful than not, and was an active democratic politician in the county. He was alleged to be involved with 39 others in the infamous lynching of African-American mother-son duo Laura and LD Nelson,a year before Woody was born. Woody wrote songs about the incident and also alleged that Charles showed increasing affiliation with the KKK in 1915. While poor with his school grades, Woody was a voracious reader and would often sneak into libraries reading texts on psychology. His interest in music was ignited by his childhood friend, George, an African-American boy who shone shoes for a living, and was adept at playing the harmonica. This is where WG's musical talent was piqued. Even as the family undertook some bizarre outings into the Chisos mountains across the border in Mexico in search of silver mines that WG's ancestor had marked as his property, WG was moved by the hardships of labor he witnessed along the way, compelling him to lyricize it through his 'miner's song'. A chapter on this adventure was struck off editorially from his autobiography.

In his early years, fire-related accidents made their first mark, when he lost his sister Clara to severe burns, caused by a tiff between his mother and sister. Such a cause of tragedy was to repeat itself on three more occasions, when his 4-year old daughter Cathy, from his second wife Marjorie succumbed to burns in a freak accident. His father, Charles too was a victim of burns, but survived. Last, but not the least, he himself suffered severe burns on his right hand rendering its use to nought. These episodes exacerbated his personality resulting in frequent feuds with Marjorie and Annette, his third wife, both of whom ultimately separated from him, with Marjorie tending and nursing him till the evening before the morning WG died.

During the Second World War, he was enlisted into the marine merchant navy and undertook three visits across the Atlantic. Post the war, he joined the army as a teletypist, and was discharged, whereafter he married Marjorie, who was a sexual conservative to begin. That she ceased to be one later is seen by scores upon scores of erotic letters that WG penned for her, which further helped stamp his reputation of someone with an enormously insatiable sexual prowess. WG had eight children from his three wives.

While, he steadfastly denied himself as a communist, his songs bordered on socialism, anti-fascism, political activism, labour unions, and the plight of working-class people. Trained in the classical genre of harmonica and acoustic guitar, he wasn't pleased when Bob Dylan went electric in the Newport Festival. For Woody, singing and songwriting was, he said in 1941,

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose…I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter how hard it’s run you down nor rolled over you, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in your self and in your work."

Criss-crossing the country in the company of Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, the conservative turn in the American politics, which then graduated in the negative sense towards reactionism saw the folklorists under increasing scrutiny forcing many of them underground, but WG wouldn't budge. He shifted towards writing copiously and finished a 900-pager "Seeds of Man", which was refused to be published in the original form due to the length of the text and use of expletives, considered unsuitable for the American audiences!!! Later, he did revisit the draft, shortened it considerably, which saw the light of the day posthumously. His contributions to children's stories through songs are still a literature to reckon with.

With the third marriage on the tenterhooks, his alcoholism and smoking increased significantly. Not known to talk a lot, his social behavior nevertheless took a turn down while the Huntington's caught up. Not known to have a cure even today, the disease slowly ate into him, making his final days a sorry portrait of the legendary status that he had acquired by then. He had expressed a strong desire to be cremated, and the final rites were a low-key affair, and his ashes were handed over to Marjorie in a can, who couldn't open it to let the ashes to the wind, but instead decided to immerse the can as a whole in the sea, where after a while it sunk.

His "Bound for Glory" was made into a film in 1976, and towards the end of the last century, the English musician, Billy Bragg, who has also written the foreword to Joe Klein's biographical sketch released the critically acclaimed "Mermaid Avenue", by setting to music Woody's voluminous corpus of unrecorded lyrics in two volumes.

Joe Klein's biography is a remarkably well researched work of WG, about whom, a complete life sketch is probably not written earlier. The 550+ pages are a view into the social history of the times, where one of the main protagonist was the inimitable Woody Guthrie, who lives on and resonates along...A definitive read.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Woody Guthrie! Sadly the author of this book somewhat tainted that for me. Joe Klein's liberalism-or-whatever sometimes misrepresents the politics of a deeply political character, and the book really suffers due to this sad fact. Klein describes racist rioters as, I believe, "a proletarian mob." Yuck. He even tries to rationalize someone's involvement in the KKK. In this book there is also an excess inclusion of private, lewd letters which Woody surely would not want to be read by you or me.

This book is very flawed and I could only recommend it to staunch fans of folk music. It is very well researched but doesn't take itself too seriously which is refreshing in the genre of the artist-as-genius hagiographies, but again, wholly disappointing.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not only a masterful biography of one of America’s most mythical artists, it provides an origin story of the folksy, rambling, singer-songwriter archetype many of my favorite artists fit into. As usual, many of the stories would make my eyes roll if they were included in a work of fiction: The repeated tragedies befalling the Guthrie family related to fire. The difficulty in differentiating between Woody’s personality and Huntington’s Disease and how that may have contributed to his creativity, prolific output, as well as the internal demons he battled throughout his life.

[Andrew Lindstrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fairly well written about an incredibly interesting person, but it doesn’t do a good job of engaging with the political aspects of Guthrie’s life, and when it does it seems more interested in falling over itself to bash communism than to engage with why it had a broad base of popular support during the Depression. The choice to publish two page erotic letters that Woody wrote to Marjorie is also sort of baffling - a few quotes would have been fine and felt less voyeuristic.

Worth reading, especially the parts about his battle with Huntington’s disease, but also sort of baffling at times

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully wrought story of the amazing life of Woody Guthrie, America's bard. Klein has done a superb job of bringing out all the prickly complexity of Woody's character as well as his incredible talent. Very highly recommended.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an epic. Woody Guthrie's life was something of an epic, too, but the book is so clearly based on what could be learned from written correspondence and Woody's own book that, particularly during his adult life, it can read more like a literary analysis or psychological profile based on writing samples than a biography.

Woody famously came from the Oklahoma dust bowl and roamed and rambled as a folksinger through the early-to-mid Twentieth Century. In his travels, he picked up an abiding love of communism and the American worker (the "People"). After settling in New York, he enjoyed some commercial success, but was ultimately sabotaged by a combination of the vagaries of folk music popularity and his own erratic behavior. By the time folk music was popular again in the 1960s, he had devolved into a semi-functioning state of psychiatric and neurological disease.

Klein's book delivers a captivating early history of Woody's life--assisted no doubt, by the self-conscious, romantic, autobiographical volumes Woody himself wrote--but fills the gap between Woody's own organized writings and more recent contemporaneous recollections with what seems exclusively to be his letters with his second wife Marjorie. Not that the letters aren't interesting--Woody was an obsessively prolific and provocative writer--however, the book runs a bit long on tangential commentary about the how and where of, for example, Woody's training with the military, and is short on the details of his songwriting and activism.

Despite some slower portions, this book is among the most complete for information about Woody's life and politics. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in Woody Guthrie, the early folk movement in the US, or social pop culture phenomena.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 5 out of 5]

To reduce these truly incredible 512 pages down to one word: Breathtaking.

The scope of this biography was as great as the scope of America itself. Interspersed amongst Joe Klein's detailed historical explanation of the Dust Bowl, the Communist party in America, and the folk-music scene as it evolved from the 30s to the 60s is actual primary text from Woody Guthrie himself.

This book is magnificent in all that it portrays, and not a dull moment exists throughout the pages. Every time I picked this book up I felt that I learned something new -- and beyond that, I felt that I understood something new.

Joe Klein brings to light the struggles that existed in the folk music scene. The rivalries and the depth of the radicalism that truly existed in the time. He breathes life and factual information into the slow degeneration of Guthrie from outspoken uncompromising lone wolf to the courageous man with an active mind who no longer could control his body.

Woody Guthrie was a remarkable soul who grasped what(ever) it was to be an American. I wish more people would read this book.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is pretty much the best book ever. Nonfiction, but it reads like a great, engrossing novel. Joe Klein really seems to understand and love Woody Guthrie, which may sound obvious but is important in making a biography deeply great. Woody's politics and the general politics of the early 1900s really interest me, and this bio goes into those issues--money, poverty, class, farmers, cops, etc. Also, Klein's account of Woody's disease, Huntington's Chorea, grabbed hold of my imagination and hasn't let go for all the years since I read this book. It sounds like WG was so prolific, including writing 50-page sexy letters to his wife every damn day, because of the disease's deteriorating effects on his brain. Just so interesting. If you have an antipathy to nonfiction (Elizabeth!), don't be scurred of this book. It's so worth reading.

[Kim Ruehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question, one of the finest biographies I've ever read. Guthrie was a walking puzzle in his day, and remains as such today. His exquisite talent seemed to have been channeled out of nothing and nowhere, like some magical quality which just drew strangers to his study. Klein does a wonderful job of showing that, though his talent was inexplicable, his personality and motivation were well-formed and fiercely honed.

Anyone interested in American folk music, the way the music of the mid-20th Century has influenced most areas of our culture ever since, the labor movement, social change, social justice and the arts, hobo culture, the American Communist party, McCarthyism, storytelling, contemporary history, what constitutes an artist's clear conscience, or simply who this Woody Guthrie character was...would be well-advised to pick up this book. (And, of course, read it.)

[WM Rine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the best biography I have ever read. Klein not only untangles the complex man beneath the myth of the traveling man who penned so many indelible American folk songs. He also gives you the tumultuous times in which Guthrie lived in fascinating detail. (He seems to have had a knack for finding himself in places where things weren't peaceful or settled.) From the oil boom towns of Oklahoma and the Texas in the teens, twenties and thirties, to great migration to California during the Depression and Dust Bowl, the doings of the Communist Party during the Depression, the growing folk music scene in New York in the 40s and 50s -- Klein brings it all in meticulous (and new slow) detail. Even if you're only marginally interested in Guthrie's life or music, this will fascinate.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

ever since i borrowed/stole my mom's box of springsteen's "live 75/85" and heard the boss stutter out "there's this fellow joe klein who wrote this book called woody guthrie a life and it's, it's a really good book" i wanted to find time for it. and i did, and it was well worth it. frightfully sad at times (particularly after hearing the billy bragg/wilco version of "one by one) and frightfully funny at others, really pretty important to anybody making american music i'd guess.

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book. Lots of history through the 20s and the depression years. Woody Guthrie was an amazing man, but he sure had his quirks! I guess the disease was eating away at him. The music and his songs still live on today. This Land is Your Land, what a song, I watched it on U tube with Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen. The book captures that time and the spirit of Woody, despite all his problems, he was a brilliant man!

[Diane Mueller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woody Guthrie came from an area in OKlahoma that my mother came from and maybe that is why I knew his name growing up. I remember having This Land is Your Land in our school books when I was young but I never truly knew much about the man until I read this book. His story is tragic and difficult to read at times. Warning some very sexually graphic letters of his are shared in one chapter. Overall it was well written and gave insight into the man and his history.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Life is a big book that offers a comprehensive overview of Woody Guthrie's life. Sadly, most of it's not that interesting. Author Klein fails to weave the wealth of biographical detail into a compelling story. Guthrie mostly comes off as an undeserving dick, a drunk, and a philanderer. But I guess he did write some good songs.

[Rheanna doncses · Rating 5 out of 5]

i recieved this book as a xmas present, and was skeptical. But I have to tell you, it became one of my favorites. This is a story about woody, but also his entire family. It is heartbreaking! After you have reaf this book, listen to the billy bragg/ wilco albums based on guthrie songs- you'll be crying!

[Stephen Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best biographies not only tell the story of it's subject but brings to life the world and the times in which the subject lived. No bio I have ever read does so like this one. It is the best biography I have ever read. One could see how not only Woody Guthries music but how his life could be so influential.

[Diane Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is this a well-detailed and honest biography of a remarkable life, but the author also gives excellent historical background. The reader gets a nice background in the Dust Bowl, Okies, American Communism, and the boom of folk music in the 1940's and the 1960's. Guthrie's life wasn't always a role model, but the author looks at his life honestly, and there is still much to be admired.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book out in high school because I had to do a project on someone from the Great Depression. I ended up reading the whole book. A well written book about an interesting man who had an interesting life. I think I might read it again.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's been a few years since i read this book, but i do remember that while i was reading it, i couldn't put it down. i carried it around in my bag and would read a little bit at a time any chance i got.

[Tonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes biographies can be sort of a snooze, but there was nothing snore-inducing about this one. A really interesting read about a completely fascinating character. Highly recommended -- especially for fans of roots music....or music in general.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this highly enough. I was almost in tears at the end. Such a well-researched, well-documented biography yet not a bit dry. I didn't know when I started reading it last week that his birthday was in July. I finished this four days from his birthday, July 14.

[Duke Orsino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best biography of a musician I've ever read. Steeped in american political history as well as the music, Guthrie is a key figure, and this book does his life justice.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

an amazing & tragic life