ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER
Summer 2002

Summer's here and the time is right for visiting the Woody Guthrie Archives! If your travel plans include a trip to New York City this summer, and if you have an interest in Woody, or a specific project and research to conduct, please let us know beforehand and we will try to accommodate your needs. Most importantly, have a great, happy and safe summer. - Jorge Arevalo / Head Archivist

Nora, Joady, Woody, and Arlo (l - r), Coney Island Beach, 1950

Acquisitions/Accessions
As always, the Woody Guthrie Archives is grateful to the many generous people who donate Woody-related items to our growing accessions collection. Recent highlights include a bound collection of original "People's World" newspapers (May 1, 1939 to August 31, 1939), donated by collector Barry Ollman. These include Woody's pithy and controversial "Woody Sez" column. We also received original photo negatives of Woody at Greystone Park Hospital from an anonymous donor, and photographs from the 1960s of Woody's friends, Cisco Houston, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and his wife, June were donated by Robert Wylie.

Anti-Flag donated copies of their new CD, "Underground Network" (Fat Wreck Chords, 2001), which includes a song dedicated to Woody entitled "This Machine Kills Fascists." We also added two recently published books to our accessions: Karen Mueller Coombs' biography, "Woody Guthrie: America's Folk Singer" (Carolrhoda Books, 2002) and Elizabeth Partridge's "This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie" (Viking, 2002). Calico, the production company that produced the animated video, "This Land is Your Land" (1996) donated five original animation cells used in the video. Martha Wilson was kind enough to donate a letter written by Woody to friends, Elizabeth and Harold Ambellan in 1941.

Last, but certainly not least, we received rare wire recordings of Woody in performance, which we hope to make available to the public in the near future! We all owe a big thank you to Paul Braverman for this incredible gift.

Archives Projects
Together with Woody Guthrie Publications, we recently began a huge copyright project to ensure that Woody's words are legally protected. With thousands of songs in the collection, we are researching many of the lyrics and hope to identify the provenance or origin of much of this material. It is our hope that this will enable us to better serve the public by making these unpublished treasures available. For the present, however, we are unable to make copies of unpublished song lyrics, although the material can still be viewed at the Archives.

We continue to work with Rachel Crane, the Music and Art Librarian at Wichita State University, and one of our original processing archivists. Rachel will catalog our media collection of film and video. With over two-hundred uncatalogued items in the collection, we are grateful for her time and skills, and hope to produce a catalogue or finding aid that will provide researchers better access to this material.

We are also in the beginning stages of collaborating with Steven Brower, Art Director for "Print Magazine," on a book of Woody's artwork. The book will include some of the many genres of drawings and paintings that Woody created. This will be the first book focusing on Woody's visual art to ever be published!

Update: After about 3 years of some hard travelling across the country, the Smithsonian SITES exhibit, "This Land is Your Land: The Life and Work of Woody Guthrie" has come to the end of the road. The show's last stop was Oklahoma, where it received grand kudos from the good people of Oklahoma City. This exhibit has been a great success, with audience attendance numbers reaching into the millions. Although we wish everyone, everywhere could have experienced the travelling exhibit, we are happy to have Woody's materials "home" at the Archives, where they will be properly cared for, so they will be around for a long, long time to come.

Theresa Kubasak, a second grade teacher at The Baker Demonstration School in Evanston, IL, will be joining us this summer as our Education Intern. Theresa will be using her skills as an educator to develop school curriculum on the life, works, and times of Woody Guthrie. In addition, Theresa has been invited to lead public programs at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, the Donnell Children's Library and the Bank Street Bookstore. Theresa's programs will include a Storytelling/Sing-a-long Hour, based on archival material.

Recent Researchers and Visitors to the Archives
The Woody Guthrie Archives has seen some very interesting projects in the past few months. Scholarly interest in the life and works of Woody Guthrie continues to cut across disciplines with topics of fascinating diversity. We are always excited by the research that people are doing on Woody and it is our pleasure to share news about the projects that come through the Archives:

Ellis Paul, Singer/Songwriter - Recently visiting the Archives from Boston, Ellis Paul is in the midst of writing music to song lyrics by Woody.

Phillip Buehler, artist and MFA student at the School of Visual Arts - Phil Buehler researched Greystone Hospital, where Woody spent the last years of his life battling Huntington's Disease. In the Archives, Phil explored Greystone as Woody experienced and wrote about it, and did fieldwork at Greystone, where he retraced Woody's steps. Phil did an incredible job of looking at this dark period of Woody's life and presenting it as a beautiful and contemplative work of art. The final project, "Wardy Forty: The Reverberations of Ruins," opens on June 13, 2002 (6pm-8pm), and will continue from June 14-June 30 (12pm-6pm). The address is 639 1/2 Hudson St., NYC (at the corner of Hudson and Horatio). Take the A,C,E, or L train to 14th Street & 8th Ave.

Kelly Spurgeon, Doctoral candidate at University of Kansas - Kelly Spurgeon has been researching educational philosophies for his Ph.D. dissertation, including Woody Guthrie's perspective on education. Through his research at the Archives, Kelly has found some strong links between Woody's writing and the philosophy of John Dewey.

Pete LaChapelle, Ph.D., Smithsonian Fellow - Dr. Pete LaChapelle visited the Archives a few years ago, while he was writing his dissertation on folk music in Southern California. Woody Guthrie was naturally included in his paper. This time around, Pete rifled through the Archives to further support his doctoral research, which he is using to write a book on the same topic.

Mike Hill, Researcher - Mike Hill visited the archives and researched the great many, prolific letters Woody wrote to his children over the years. Mike's research is for a book by Dorie McCullough Lawson to be published by Doubleday in 2003. The book is a collection of letters written by famous Americans to their children, including John Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alexander Graham Bell, and Woody Guthrie. The introduction to Ms. McCullough's book will be written by historian, Pulitzer Prize winner, and her father, David McCullough.

Andrew Ames and Erin Lindsay, Freelance Producers - Andrew Ames and Erin Lindsay are currently working on a documentary film about preserving treasured songs for the The History Channel. Woody's "This Land is Your Land" will be featured in the film. "Save our Sounds" is scheduled to air in December 2002.

Robert Koppelman, Ph.D., Broward County Community College - Dr. Robert Koppelman is in the final stages of writing his book, "Sing Out Warning, Sing Out Love: The Writings of Lee Hays," which will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2003. Robert has found some terrific photographs in the Archives of Lee Hays, the Weavers, and Cisco Houston to use in the book.

David Rosenbloom, Singer/Songwriter - David Rosenbloom, of Rockland County, NY visited the Archives to research songs Woody wrote about having faith. David wrote and recorded a song with The Outlanders titled "Woodrow Wilson Guthrie," on the CD, "Music Is" (Trembling Veil Records, 2000).

Visiting the Archives
The Archives welcomes researchers, scholars, artists, musicians, publishers, filmmakers, and those pursuing interests related to the life, works, and times of Woody Guthrie. The Archives is open by appointment only and our hours of operation are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am-6pm. We encourage visitors to look through the Collection Finding Aids before they come, and have an idea of the materials they will be using. Appointments can be set up with the Assistant Archivist.

Internship Opportunities
We are a small, but very busy office. If you are interested in interning at the Woody Guthrie Archives, please submit a resume, a brief proposal of the type of work you are interested in doing, and a list of three references. Tasks and responsibilities might include: inventorying processed and unprocessed materials, assisting with research, transcriptions, answering reference calls, providing administrative support and assisting in various projects, and other duties as assigned. Ideal candidates will have a background in archival or library science, museum studies, music history, or related area. An interest in, and special knowledge of, Woody Guthrie and folk music is a definite plus, as are A/V skills. Applications and inquiries should be sent to:

Archivist
Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives
250 West 57th St. Suite 1218
New York, NY 10107