ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER
Fall / Winter 2007

The original wire reels. Photograph by Bradly Brown.

With the recent release of The Live Wire, Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949, the archives has been set ablaze with greater interest in Woody than ever. Fortunately, we have a new assistant archivist on staff to help with the many calls and requests that we reularly receive.

Please join me in welcoming Tiffany Loiselle to our staff. Ms. Loiselle comes to us by way of Simmons College (and MIT!) and we are thrilled to have her working with us to provide research services for the Collection. (She also adds a bit of international flavor to our organization-- she's from Canada!)

In keeping with the international theme, we are debuting the "Global Woody" public program this Fall even as we continue to receive more and more material that highlight Guthrie's global research. From Peoria to Ottawa to Middletown, Guthrie has somehow become contemporary and even "cool." We welcome all this activity, and more. In particular, we look forward to this year's BMI Woody Guthrie Research Fellowship applicants. So if you have a Guthrie project, please consider applying to the program.

Enjoy the LIVE WIRE! (that is Woody!)

Jorge Arévalo Mateus
Curator

Archives Projects

It has been nearly five years in the making, but the Woody Guthrie Archives is pleased to announce that The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949 has finally been released!  Generated from a donation of rare wire recordings that have been digitally transferred and restored, The Live Wire is accompanied by a 72-page book illuminating aspects of the performance as well as the history of the project.

Another audio project which the Archives has recently completed is the transfer of over 100 hours of interviews conducted by Joe Klein in the late 1970s in preparation for his 1980 biography, Woody Guthrie: A Life. These interviews-many of them more than thirty-years-old-have been transferred from analog audio cassettes into a digital format, thereby allowing access to these invaluable oral histories.

And, thanks to support from BMI, Inc., we are in the middle of yet another major digitization project!  We have begun to scan our collection of Guthrie's notebooks, which consists of more than 90 handwritten, bound booklets that Guthrie penned during the period from the late1930's to the mid 1950's. This project will not only ensure greater access to fragile Guthrie notebooks, it will help to preserve the entire collection for future researchers.

Last but certainly not least, we are pleased to announce that applications for the 2007 BMI Foundation Woody Guthrie Fellowship are presently being accepted. A limited number of short-term fellowships will be selected to support scholarly use of the Woody Guthrie Archives.  For application details see http://www.bmifoundation.org/pages/WGuthrie.asp.

The deadline for completed Fellowship applications is December 1, 2007, for projects beginning after January 1, 2008.

Exhibitions and Programs

Global Woody: Language, Culture, History and Harmony, our most recent presentation, premiered at the Green Street Arts Center in Middletown, Connecticut on September 28th.  Presented by Jorge Arévalo Mateus, this program examines the cultural and linguistic barriers that Guthrie's music and writings transcends.  Tao Rodriguez Seeger was on hand to perform his unique take on Guthrie and other international folk music.

Woody's music is alive and well in all parts of the world, as demonstrated by this recent article about Woody's influence in the UK, written by Will Kaufman for The Times Higher Education Supplement , September 28, 2007. This just goes to show that the global reaches of Woody, as shown in the Global Woody presentation, continue to grow!

The 2007 Ottawa Folk Festival hosted a special Tribute to Woody Guthrie, including a multi-media presentation with Nora Guthrie, which highlighted artifacts from the Archives. The "Hard Travelin'" exhibit, including five artwork pieces selected by Nora Guthrie, was hung for the duration of the festival, and then moved to the CUBE Gallery in Ottawa for another week.

In celebration of Woody's birthday, Dave McDonald, a general music teacher at Charter Oaks Primary School in Peoria, IL, organized an exhibit consisting of an extended version of the "'Hard Travelin': Lyrics and Photographs" exhibit and the "This is the Hand" exhibit.

New Productions and Publications

Martin Butler has published his book, Voices of the Down and Out: The Dust Bowl Migration and the Great Depression in the Songs of Woody Guthrie, which is based on research he conducted at the Archives.

Ron Briley's forthcoming article, "Woody Guthrie and the Christian Left: Jesus and the 'Commonism," based on research conducted at the Archives under the 2006 BMI Fellowship program, is to be published in October 2007 by Texas Music History.

A high school textbook entitled The Americans, to be released in 2008 by McDougal-Littell, will include an archives image of Woody Guthrie and a discussion of his lyrics in order to assist students in learning about the plight of Americans during the Depression.

Recent Researchers and Visitors to the Archives

Bill Singerman, middle-school teacher from Illinois, visited the Archives to develop a curriculum for his students at The Ancona School, who are studying the Dust Bowl through the work of Woody Guthrie.

Evelyn Johnson visited the Archives from South Dakota to work on developing a lesson plan for K-3 students aimed at teaching equality and respect for all people by focusing on self-esteem and motivation through the music and life of Woody Guthrie.

BMI fellows Ron Briley and Guy Logsdon visited the Archives to work on their projects. Briley's research, focused on Guthrie's political ideology, helps support his book tentatively titled To Seek a Better World. Logsdon's research centered upon Guthrie's connection to Oklahoma, which will be published in an upcoming book tentatively titled Woody's Roots: His Oklahoma Hills.

Special Accessions

We are grateful to all those who have donated material to the Archives over the last few months. Recent accessions include CDs, publicity flyers, and announcements relating to the seven annual Woody Guthrie birthday celebrations in NYC, materials donated by Guy Logsdon from the 10th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, OK, and an oversized poster featuring Woody Guthrie which was donated by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, who produced it in conjunction with the Oklahoma 2007 Summer Reading Program.

Applications for Conducting Research at the Archives:

Encouraged by the range of scholarship, creativity, and inspiration that the Woody Guthrie Collection offers, the Archives welcomes researchers, scholars, artists, musicians, publishers, filmmakers, and those pursuing interests related to the life, works, and times of Woody Guthrie.

Interested researchers must complete an Application for Research Form. Successful applicants are invited to set up an appointment with the archivist on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays between 10:30 AM to 5:30 PM.

We encourage visitors to look at the Online Collection Finding Aids on our website before visiting the archives. At this time, due to limited staff time and to protect the delicate collection, we are unable to accommodate general interest visits. We hope that our ever-improving website will satisfy general interest.

For further information or questions, please contact the archivist.