The Woody Guthrie Foundation and the BMI Foundation, Inc., are please to announce that Dr. Mark F. Fernandez has been awarded the Woody Guthrie Fellowship for 2012. The fellowship supports projects that examine Woody Guthrie in an American historical and cultural context, as well as projects that explore Woody Guthrie life and work in a global context.

Dr. Fernandez is a professor in the Department of History at Loyola University, New Orleans. Through his proposed research topic, Movement, Motion, and Travel in the Life and Art of Woody Guthrie, Dr. Fernandez hopes to examine the evidence that relates Guthrie to the industrial age, especially in the form of travel and transportation.

Since 2006, the Woody Guthrie Fellowship has supported the scholarly research of 20 individuals, ranging from visual artists to musicians to academic authors. Now in it’s seventh year, the Woody Guthrie Fellowship has produced a variety of excellent scholarly work, and has been the driving force for much new scholarly research on Guthrie and his life. Recent projects supported by the Woody Guthrie Fellowship include Will Kaufman’s 2010 book on Guthrie and politics, “Woody Guthrie: American Radical“; Martin Butler’s 2011 article “‘Words to Shoot Back At You’ : Woody Guthrie’s ‘War’ Against German Fascism“; and Rev. Stephen Edington’s forthcoming book on Guthrie and spirituality, entitled “Bring Your Own God.”

Funded by the BMI Foundation, Inc., the Woody Guthrie Fellowship Program seeks to further scholarly research at the Woody Guthrie Archives for the purposes of promoting and perpetuating the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie. More information can be found on the BMI Foundation Woody Guthrie Fellowship application site.

Job: Summer Internship – Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives

Position: Summer Intern

Job Location: Woody Guthrie Archives, Mount Kisco, NY

Salary: All summer internships at the Woody Guthrie Archives are unpaid.

Repository Description: The Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote, perpetuate, and preserve the social, political and cultural values that Woody Guthrie contributed to the world through his life, his music, and his work. Open to the public in 1996, the Archives holds the largest collection of Woody Guthrie material in the world, and has provided source material for many award winning publications, special projects, exhibitions, and films.

The collection contains over 10,000 items including Woody Guthrie’s original song lyrics, notebooks and diaries, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, personal papers, scrapbooks, artwork, films, and audio recordings, all of which document his life and artistry as musician, writer, illustrator, and political activist.

Additional information about the Woody Guthrie Archives can be found by visiting: www.WoodyGuthrie.org

Job Description: The Woody Guthrie Archives seeks to hire a maximum of two summer interns to work on a variety of independent and collaborative projects. This internship seeks to provide students who are currently pursuing a Master of Library Science (MLS) or some related variation, or who have recently graduated, with summer work experience in the field of Archives Management.

Projects will be assigned based on the intern’s skills and interests, and may include one or more of the following:

• Process a collection of vintage folk music and related posters
• Process a small collection of personal papers (0.5 linear feet)
• Process a collection of ~50 framed art pieces
• Create a finding aid for a collection of three scrapbooks, addressing preservation concerns
• Accession new materials into the Archives
• Transcribe original Woody Guthrie lyrics
• Provide reference assistance to in-house researchers
• Assist Archivist with licensing, copy requests, and other Archival duties

Internships run for a 10-week period from June through August 2012. The duration of Summer Internships vary depending upon the applicants’ availability; however, a minimum commitment of four weeks is required for all internships.

Job Requirements: Qualified applicants will possess an academic or practical background in Archives or History. A strong academic record combined with previous Archival experience, including arrangement and description of Archival materials, is preferred.  An appreciation for, or knowledge of, American Folk Music is beneficial. Current students or recent graduates are encouraged to apply. Ideal candidates are highly motivated and detail oriented with effective written and verbal communication skills. A resume and cover letter are required for application. Please include days/hours of availability in your cover letter and contact information for three references at the end of your resume.

Contact Information: Please email complete applications to Tiffany Colannino at tcolannino@woodyguthrie.org by May 6th, 2012.

The Woody Guthrie Archives is happy to announce that the research collection has found a permanent home in Tulsa, Oklahoma!

As reported in the New York Times and Tulsa World, the George Kaiser Family Foundation has acquired the Woody Guthrie Archives, which will relocate to a newly renovated and redesigned space in a re-purposed warehouse in Guthrie’s home state of Oklahoma after the 2012 Centennial Celebrations. Read a note from Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives Director Nora Guthrie about the upcoming move.

About the Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives:

First opened to the public in 1996, The Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, perpetuate, and preserve the values that Woody Guthrie contributed to the world through his life, his music, and his work. The Archives holds the largest collection of Woody Guthrie material in the world, and has provided source material for many award winning publications, special projects, exhibitions, and films.

The collection contains over 10,000 items including original song lyrics, notebooks and diaries, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, personal papers, scrapbooks, artwork, films, and audio recordings that document Guthrie’s life and artistry as musician, writer, illustrator, and political activist. A listing of all items in the Archives can be found by visiting What’s In The Collection. Scholarly researchers consult materials in the collection and spend days studying the documents housed in the Archives. Recent projects based on research at the Archives include Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary film The Dust Bowl, Will Kaufman’s 2011 book “Woody Guthrie: American Radical,” Dreamland Pictures film 1913 Massacre, John S. Partington’s 2011 collection of critical essays entitled “The Life, Music and Thought of Woody Guthrie,” with numerous new music, film, and book projects in the works. Over the years, hundreds of researchers and scholars have consulted materials in the Woody Guthrie Archives, and an updated listing of some of these individuals demonstrates the breadth of topics that are covered by the documents in the Collection.

In addition to supporting research and scholarship over the past 16 years, the Woody Guthrie Archives has also curated thematic exhibits for museums worldwide, delivered educational programming to bring Woody Guthrie’s life and legacy to the public, supported an annual Woody Guthrie Fellowship, piloted an International Archives Exchange Program, and actively supported teachers and educators by providing Guthrie-based curricula via their website.

To learn more about the Woody Guthrie Archives, please visit the Archives Homepage, or contact Archivist Tiffany Colannino: tcolannino <at> woodyguthrie.org

The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, in conjunction with BMI Foundation, Inc., are please to announce that the application period for the 2012 Woody Guthrie Fellowship program is now open!

In recognition of Woody Guthrie’s centennial in 2012, the 7th Annual Woody Guthrie Fellowship will be awarded to one applicant working on a research topic or theme directly related to Guthrie’s life, work or contribution to American music and world culture. The BMI Foundation, Inc., in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives, will award up to $3,000 to support scholarly research at the Woody Guthrie Archives in Mt. Kisco, NY.

The Woody Guthrie Fellowship Program seeks to further scholarly research at the Woody Guthrie Archives for the purposes of promoting and perpetuating the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie. This fellowship seeks to support projects that examine Woody Guthrie in an American historical and cultural context, as well as projects that explore Woody Guthrie life and work in a global context.

Please Note: The Woody Guthrie Fellowship supports research solely for the purpose of scholarly publication (i.e. non-musical, non-performance, non-theatrical, non-film, non-internet, non-dance projects, etc.)

More information about the 7th Annual Woody Guthrie Fellowship Program, including an application packet, are available via the BMI Foundation, Inc. Woody Guthrie Fellowship page.

Application Deadline: January 31, 2012

In celebration of the first night of Hanukkah, the Klezmatics performed Woody Guthrie’s song “Hanuka Gelt” on the Conan O’Brien Show (December 19, 2011).

Click  to watch their performance.

The Woody Guthrie Archives holds over 3,000 lyrics written by Guthrie, including a dozen or so songs he penned about Hanukkah. Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, Aliza Greenblatt, a prominent Yiddish poet who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Guthrie – the Oklahoma troubadour – and Greenblatt – the Jewish wordsmith – often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor activism.

Woody Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics came as a surprise to Nora Guthrie, director of the Woody Guthrie Archives and Woody’s daughter. She became aware of his connection to Judaism in a chance encounter with the Klezmatics and Itzahk Perlman. Following a concert at Tanglewood, where (unbeknownst to Nora) Perlman and the band had performed some of Greenblatt’s Yiddish songs, Guthrie was introduced to Perlman as “Aliza’s granddaughter.” She recalls, “All my life, I’ve been introduced as Woody’s daughter, Arlo’s sister, and Marjorie Mazia’s daughter…but this was the first time I’d ever been introduced as ’Aliza Greenblatt’s granddaughter!’ Then Itzhak asked me how I liked his version of Aliza’s song – I almost fell through the floor. I never knew she wrote songs – I always thought she was just my Bubbie!”

The revelation about her grandmother’s history encouraged Nora Guthrie to bring her father’s Jewish songs to light, and she enlisted the Klezmatics – one of the world’s preeminent klezmer groups – to help her do this.

In 2004, the Klezmatics recorded the album Happy Joyous Hanuka, and Guthrie’s “Hanuka Gelt” is also featured on their 2011 album Live At Town Hall. In 2006, the Klezmatics recorded a second album of Woody Guthrie’s songs, the GRAMMY award winning album Wonder Wheel.

Read more about Woody Guthrie’s Yiddish Connection.

Woody Guthrie at 100
Woody’s Legacy to Working Men and Women

September 7-9, 2012

A Conference and Concerts at Penn State

Click here for Call For Papers

The GRAMMY Museum is partnering with the Guthrie Family and the Woody Guthrie Archives to create the centennial celebrations of Guthrie’s life and work. The year-long celebration will include a host of concerts, programs, and events taking place throughout the country. Penn State is one of four universities that will host those events, and we seek papers for an interdisciplinary conference devoted to Woody Guthrie and his legacy.

The conference on September 7–9, 2012, will include performances on the evenings of Friday, September 7, and Saturday, September 8. Papers may address any aspect of Guthrie’s legacy and influence — with regard to folk music, art, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, media studies, politics, and culture; labor history; gender, free speech, and class issues; the history of social movements; the global fight against fascism; and/or the work of the many writers, artists, and musicians whom Guthrie inspired and influenced.

Send 200-word abstracts to:
woodyguthrie.psu.conference@gmail.com by March 1, 2012.

We remember Woody Guthrie’s “stud buddy”, William Stetson Kennedy.  Born on October 5th, 1916 in Fruits’ Cove, Florida, Kennedy was a true Southern gentleman, whose concern for people and determination to fight against oppression of any kind was destined to bring the two men together.  Equal parts activist, folklorist, writer and agitator, Kennedy was an agent of change, immersed in a broad range of progressive activism that encompassed many of the social movements and events that define modern American political history.

Seemingly present wherever there was action, the “Zelig”-like Kennedy confronted injustices of all kinds.  As a young man during the Great Depression, he left college to join the WPA, and later worked with Zora Neale Hurston, not only breaking color lines, but collecting and documenting Floridian folklore to produce the ground-breaking Palmetto Country (1942), a naturalists manifesto.  The connections Kennedy made between the folklore of his region and the land itself established an enduring model of environmental and cultural awareness.

An early and staunch civil rights proponent, Kennedy’s hatred of racism was manifested in his efforts to expose the inner working of the Klu Klux Klan, despite the risks involved. Infiltrating it locally at its mid-century height of power, his incisive investigative journalism resulted in the controversial I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan, The Klan Unmasked (1954), a work which went as far as the halls of the U.S. Congress while gaining national notoriety for its depiction.

When, in the 1950s, Woody Guthrie sought refuge from his growing personal struggles, Kennedy provided him a writers haven on his bucolic “Beluthahatchee” estate (trans. “Land of Forgiveness”).  Though Kennedy and Guthrie had met in NYC while stumping for Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign, their common interests, ranging from Union labor activism to anti-Jim Crow segregation, from the Popular Front to anti-Fascism movements, from collecting stories to collecting folk songs, their friendship was based on a strong mutual respect and love of people.  Guthrie’s Florida “squats,” in fact, proved so productive that he composed more than 57 songs under the “Beluthahatchee” theme.  Many of them evince an evolving race consciousness and appreciation of southern Blues structures (the collection of “Belathuhatchee” song lyrics is housed at the Woody Guthrie Archives).  Guthrie also wrote songs for Kennedy, including the political jingle “Talking Stetson Kennedy” and the ballad “Beluthahatchee Bill”—the former appears on Billy Bragg’s Mermaid Avenue Volume II (Elektra 62522-2, 2000), the latter was composed during Guthrie’s final November 1951 visit.

“Freedom lovin’, freedom huntin’, easy ridin’ Bill;
Ya’ve hung me, ya’ve swung me,
Ya’ve beat me to your fill,
But ya’ didn’t slack my speed, not Beluthahatchee Bill!”

Having had the privilege of working with “Stets,” I recall him as an intriguing, enigmatic, thoughtful and yet lucid and transparent individual. Always ready to express his informed views, Kennedy had an infinite literary, political and cultural wellspring from which to draw. His willingness to share his knowledge and stories was only exceeded by his kindness, humor and wit.  William Stetson Kennedy passed away on August 27th, 2011.

A Selected Stetson Kennedy/Woody Guthrie Bibliography

Bucuvalas, Tina.  1994.  South Florida folklife / Tina Bucuvalas, Peggy A. Bulger, and Stetson Kennedy.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Bulger, Peggy A.  “Stetson Kennedy: Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy.” Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1992. (by Peggy A. Bulger, who assumed the directorship of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 1999).

Bulger, Peggy A. “Stetson Kennedy: Folklore and the Struggle for Human Rights.” The Folklore Historian 8 (1991): 56-66.

Cray, Ed.  2003.  Ramblin’ Man, The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie.  New York: W.W.Norton & Company.

Cunningham, David.  2004.  There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence. Univ. of California Press.

Kennedy, Stetson. 1942. Palmetto Country. NewYork: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.

_____.   1946.  Southern Exposure.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.

_____v. 1954 (Guthrie: 267-272, 276)

_____.  1959

_____. “Way Down Upon . . . Gathering Tales of Folklife in Suwannee Country.” FHC Forum 17 (Spring/Summer 1993): 22-27.

Klein, Joe.  1980.  Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York:Random House.

Terkel, Studs. 1995. “Stetson Kennedy, 77.”  In Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century By Those Who’ve Lived It.  New York: New Press, 391-400.

Willens, Doris. 1988.  Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hayes. Lincoln and London: W.W.Norton & Company/University of Nebraska Press.

The Woody Guthrie Archives remembers singer and banjo player Wade Mainer, who passed away September 12th, 2011 at the age of 104.

Mainer was known as the “Grandfather of Bluegrass,” as his music and playing style bridged the gap between old-time traditional mountain music and what would become the emerging sounds of bluegrass. Born in North Carolina, Mainer played throughout the 1930s with a band led by his older brother, J. E. Mainer and the Mountaineers, until he started his own group, the Sons of the Mountaineers. The Sons of the Mountaineers were signed to RCA Victor records, and Mainer performed with the group until 1953. In addition to recording over 150 songs between 1935 and 1941 and appearing on numerous radio programs, Mainer performed live shows throughout the United States, including a 1942 show at the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt invited him to play for the President.

Mainer and the Sons of the Mountaineers also traveled to New York City, where they met Woody Guthrie. Guthrie and Mainer performed together as part of the cast of the 1944 BBC Radio production “The Chisholm Trail,” a ballad opera in three parts that was recorded in Manhattan. A recording of this program can be heard via the Center for Cultural Equity.

Guthrie related strongly to Mainer, and followed-up this meeting with a personal letter. Dated September 17, 1944, Guthrie wrote Mainer how much he appreciated seeing “…a mountaineer band with no silly rube costumes on,” and mentioned that “… a lot of radio people still think of us that way.” He told Mainer how much he respected the band’s natural style and message, and encouraged them to keep up their style, especially in times of war: “a musician with an instrument does our enemy just as much damage as any soldier with a flamethrower, a grenade, or a gun. Because it is the spirit that wins any war.”

Throughout his 104 years, Wade Mainer made a living by working in cotton mills, performing as a bluegrass musician, working at a General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan, and as a touring Christian gospel musician. Mainer’s extensive life is covered in Dick Spottswood’s 2010 biography “Banjo On The Mountain: Wade Mainer’s First 100 Years.”

Obituaries for Wade Mainer can be found via The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other sources.

Woody Guthrie Archivist Tiffany Colannino delivered a presentation at the Society of American Archivists’ Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL last month. Her paper, “Folk Songs as Oral History: Examining Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads,” was part of the panel presentation Celebrating Studs: Activism and Oral History in the Archives, which explored cultural and political uses of oral histories for advocacy and social change.

Written in the late 1930s, Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads document the journey and the hardships experienced by Guthrie and over half a million other individuals displaced from areas affected by the Dust Bowl, and who headed to California following the false promise of easy work, warm weather, and good pay. As such, these songs can be viewed as valuable primary source resources detailing a first hand account of the laborers struggles. Ms. Colannino used two songs from the album, “If You Ain’t Got The Do Re Mi” and “Dust Bowl Refugee,” in addition to material from an interview conducted by Marjorie Guthrie in 1949, and a 1940 interview with Elizabeth Lomax to contextualize the songs. Additionally, Ms. Colannino discussed how Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads helped the laborers better understand their own experiences and realize that they were not alone in their struggles, how they played a role in educating the nation as to the plight of the laborers and advocated for their right to seek employment and housing, and how they remain a valuable resource for researchers and scholars who cite these songs as sources of oral history.

Founded in 1936, the Society of American Archivists is North America’s oldest and largest national archival professional association. SAA’s mission is to serve the educational and informational needs of more than 5,500

This month’s issue of Metropolitan Archivist contains an article describing the outcome of the International Archives Exchange Program pilot project. Written by Woody Guthrie Archivist Tiffany Colannino and Lippman+Rau Archivist Nico Thom, this article describes the process and outcomes of the first ever Archives Exchange between the two institutions.

This issue of the Metropolitan Archivist also features original artwork by Woody Guthrie on the cover, provided courtesy of the Woody Guthrie Archives.

The Metropolitan Archivist (ISSN 1546-3125) is issued semi-annually to the members of the New York Archives Round Table. The Metropolitan Archivist consists of Feature Articles, Repository Reviews, Book Reviews, ART News and an Interview.

Read the article, “From Mount Kisco to Eisenach: An International Archives Exchange Program,” below, or download the full Summer 2011 Issue of the Metropolitan Archivist.

“Note of Hope,” the latest album of previously unreleased Guthrie lyrics set to music by contemporary artists led by Rob Wasserman, will be released by 429 Records on September 27th, 2011. Click to read the full press release.

The collection features GRAMMY®-winning bassist Rob Wasserman’s collaborations with Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Kurt Elling, Michael Franti, Nellie McKay, Tom Morello, Van Dyke Parks, Madeleine Peyroux, Lou Reed, Pete Seeger, Studs Terkel, Tony Trischka, and Chris Whitley.

The Woody Guthrie Archives holds over 3,000 lyrics written by Guthrie, but only a mere 10% of these were recorded during his lifetime. Since 1998, Woody’s daughter and Woody Guthrie Archives Director Nora Guthrie has worked with contemporary musicians to bring hundreds of these previously unrecorded lyrics to life, inviting artists to work within the Archives and set their own music to his lyrics, poetry, and prose. The results have been stellar, and continue to provoke audiences with the timeless nature of Guthrie’s words.

This latest release is the result of nearly a decade of collaboration with award-winning artists who worked closely with Guthrie’s original lyrics to create the innovative album, “Note of Hope.” The album includes 12 new songs from the Woody Guthrie Archives which come from Guthrie’s lyric sheets, notebooks, and even correspondence, and presents a shockingly contemporary viewpoint on love and society, considering that many of these lyrics were written nearly 70 years ago.

The release of “Note of Hope” is the first in a series of events leading up to the 2012 centennial celebration of Guthrie’s birth. More information about the Woody Guthrie Centennial Events can be found at Woody100.com.

LISTEN to the radio version of Jackson Browne’s 15-minute track, “You Know The Night.”

Through the generous support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and with the incredible efforts of Woody Guthrie archivist Tiffany Colannino and board member Anna Canoni, the Woody Guthrie Archives Preservation and Digitization Project has been completed.  The culmination of the two-year project will have a tremendous impact on future researchers, scholars, artists and the general public.  Significantly, the grant project also marks the first major conservation and preservation effort for the landmark collection about Woody Guthrie’s life, work, and music.

As the largest collection of truly rare and unique Guthrie related material—acknowledged alongside the collections at the American Folklife Center (Library of Congress) and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (Smithsonian Institution)—the Woody Guthrie Archives contains material of unparalleled national and global cultural value that has benefited from professional conservation and preservation treatment and care afforded by the grant.  The digitization of the grant material further means that originals will be handled less, therefore ensuring their long-term preservation.

While ensuring that the material will be preserved for future generations, the IMLS grant greatly benefits the public at large by providing online research access to previously unavailable primary source material from the Woody Guthrie Archives. Once limited to onsite researchers due to their extremely fragile condition, these treasured resources can now be viewed by musicians, folklorists, students and teachers, and scholars without endangering the stability of the physical items, further enabling deeper insight into the life and times of this iconic historical American figure.  The ongoing impact of this project will be tracked by monitoring the use of these materials via the Internet, onsite visitors, and use in publications, documentaries, and other media formats.

Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives Director, Nora Guthrie, and Curator, Jorge Arévalo Mateus, will issue press releases and work with news media outlets to raise awareness of the availability of these resources.  The project director-curator and WGA staff will also work to establish connections with related interdisciplinary collections through institutional, historical, and cultural organizations to foster even greater awareness of the benefits of the grant project.

As Julie Martin of NEDCC has written: “The Woody Guthrie Archives staff has helped ensure the longevity of the Woody Guthrie collection by doing their ‘preservation homework,’ and by planning and carrying out the activities required to protect the original works of this legendary artist who inspired musicians such as Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Jonatha Brooke, and many others.”  Julie Martin’s article Sitting With Woody explores the conservation and preservation treatment completed by the NEDCC in support of the Woody Guthrie Archives Preservation and Digitization Project, and an accompanying photo essay illustrates these techniques.

As we approach the centennial celebrations in 2012, thanks to the IMLS grant, administered through the New York State Education Department, the Woody Guthrie Archives has begun to preserve the historic and cultural heritage and legacy of Woody Guthrie, enabling greater dissemination of and access to its unique resources with people in the US and around the world.

A job well done!

A previously uncatalogued lyric written by Woody Guthrie was recently found, tucked away in a letter Guthrie wrote to his second wife, Marjorie Mazia Guthrie. “The Heart of Marjorie” was penned by Guthrie on April 26th, 1952 in Okemah, Oklahoma, and mailed to Marjorie, who was living in New York City. The discovery of this ‘new’ lyric brings the Archives count of Woody Guthrie songs up to 3000. Written on the back of packing paper from the Liberty Drug Store in Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, this love song is one of thousands of unrecorded songs Guthrie wrote during his lifetime.

Musician, activist, and American icon Pete Seeger visited the Woody Guthrie Archives’ new location in Mt. Kisco earlier this month with his wife, Toshi, and their daughter, Tinya. Seeger met Woody Guthrie on March 3rd, 1940 in New York City at a benefit concert to raise funds for the John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers. Held at the Forrest Theater on West 49th Street, the Grapes of Wrath Evening featured Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Alan Lomax, among others, and marked the beginning of a friendship between Seeger and Guthrie that would span nearly three decades. In 2009, Pete Seeger performed Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land” with Bruce Springsteen at President Obama’s Inaugural Celebration, demonstrating the strong and enduring connection between the two songwriters.

At 91 years of age, Pete Seeger has an endless supply of memories and recollections from throughout his prolific career, and it was an honor to provide him, his wife Toshi, and their daughter Tinya, with a tour of the Woody Guthrie Archives. Seeger shared his first hand account of the Peekskill Riots of September 4th, 1949 while looking through the dozens of lyrics Guthrie wrote documenting the day; and talked about traveling with Guthrie to Union rallies, strikes, and protests across the country. He reviewed scrapbooks created by Guthrie in the early 1940s that document the founding of the Almanac Singers, a topical, touring singing group started by Pete Seeger, and which included Guthrie as one of it’s ever-changing members. Seeger also looked through Guthrie’s personal address book, locating his 1941 address (both under “S” and under “P”), and viewed notebooks, song lyrics, record albums, booking cards, artwork, and many other items created by Guthrie.

Pete and Toshi Seeger are Foundation Advisors for the Woody Guthrie Archives.

The Woody Guthrie Archives is proud to support Children’s Neurobiological Solutions, a nonprofit research foundation improving the lives of children disabled by neurological disorders through research focused on brain repair and regeneration, and recently donated a personal tour of the Archives to the CNS charity auction. We would like to thank auction winner Andy Bloch for his generous support in helping raise much needed funds for CNS, and we truly enjoyed providing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the Woody Guthrie Archives. More information about Children’s Neurobiological Solutions, including different ways to help the research foundation, can be found by visiting their website.