New Book Explores Woody Guthrie's Formative L.A. Years

The great American songwriter Woody Guthrie is usually associated with his home state of Oklahoma and the folk scene of New York City’s Greenwich Village. But it was his time in L.A. that helped define his politics. Those years are the subject of a new book, “Woody Guthrie L.A., 1937 to 1941,” co-edited by historians Darryl Holter and William Deverell.

Guthrie came from a middle-class family in Okemah, Oklahoma. His mother had Huntington's disease, which he eventually succumbed to as well, and she was committed to a state hospital.

Guthrie was pretty much on his own after the age of 16. He learned to play guitar in high school and performed old-time music with friends in a group called “The Corncob Trio.” He learned hundreds of hillbilly and folk songs, and began writing his own compositions about the dust storms that were driving families from their land in the Great Plains.

After hopping freight trains and doing itinerant work in Pampa, Texas, the young musician landed in Los Angeles, along with tens of thousands of other Dust Bowl refugees. But he learned that living in L.A. isn’t cheap, as he explored in his song "Do Re Mi."

California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.

“Woody was someone who read a lot of things and he was always interested in things, but his politics were relatively unformed when he came,” says Holter. “He came from places that were basically steeped in segregation. So it was a very different atmosphere, and he came to L.A. and a lot of his political views really changed. I describe him as a kind of a Dust Bowl populist.”

Guthrie never had a permanent address in Los Angeles. He crashed with friends in Echo Park and Glendale, and stayed in flophouses on Skid Row, where he also busked in cafes and bars and on streetcorners for spare change.

In the summer of 1937, Woody and his cousin, Leon “Oke” Guthrie, were hired to host the “Oklahoma and Woody Show” on L.A. radio station KFVD. A couple months later, Guthrie launched “The Woody and Lefty Lou Show” with Maxine Crissman, the daughter of a friend. He called her “Lefty Lou” because she was left-handed and because Lou rhymed with "Missou," her home state of Missouri. They received nearly 500 fan letters within the show’s first month, and it became the highest-rated show on the station.

“The show became very popular, particularly among the Dust Bowl population that lived in L.A.,” Holter says. “Even if you were poor you could listen to the radio. And a lot of letters came in, and Guthrie became sort of a minor radio celebrity.”

In 1939, Woody met Ed Robbin, a fellow radio host at KFVD, who got him a gig singing at a Communist Party rally at the Embassy Auditorium in downtown L.A. Guthrie became a fixture among L.A.’s radical left and performed at many political and union events around Los Angeles. He also wrote a column for the Communist newspaper People’s Daily World. He called it “Woody Sez,” and wrote in a hillbilly style to seem more authentic.

“Woody Guthrie is a very shrewd political actor,” Deverell says. “On the one hand, we might assume -- and that could be right -- that he's surprised by his rising success and fame. On the other hand, it may be in part cultivated by his own sense of a persona. So he's very clever about identifying as just folks.”

Guthrie visited Dust Bowlers in their encampments, which were nicknamed "Hoovervilles." For these migrants, the big city held plenty of danger.

“When they came to L.A., I mean this is a whole new experience. Not only was it big, noisy, full of cars, full of people, but also you could buy liquor all over, it wasn't dry. There were all kinds of temptations. You could buy your cars on credit. You could buy furniture on credit and lose it as well,” Holter says, citing Guthrie's song “Them Big City Ways.”

Brother John moved into town, rented him a flat and he settled down
Lord lord, he’s getting them big city ways.
Brought his wife and kids along, but fifteen dollars didn’t last long
Lord lord, he’s getting them big city ways.

Guthrie also traveled around the Golden State. He performed political skits with actor Will Geer to support strikers in the cotton fields of Kern County and got arrested at the state capital in Sacramento. He performed for migrant farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley. He met the writers John Steinbeck and Theodore Dreiser. Guthrie’s songs addressed issues of inequality that were amplified by the Depression, and are still relevant today.

“Things like police-community relations. Things like unemployment. Things like poverty. Things like homelessness. Things like really heavy rainfalls and people getting swept away by the L.A. River,” Holter says. “Things about love, things about sex, the same kinds of things we talk about today. And it's a kind of timelessness to the themes of his songs.”

Song's like “Los Angeles New Year's Flood:”

Kind friend, do you remember?
On that fatal New Year's night
The lights of old Los Angeles
Was a flick'ring, Oh, so bright.
A cloud burst hit the mountains
It swept away our homes;
And a hundred souls was taken
In that fatal New Year's flood.

“The L.A. River, in the early years of the Depression, it takes a heavy, heavy rainfall and it floods its banks. And many of those Okie and Arkie out-migrants from the Dust Bowl were living in encampments alongside the river. And they get washed away. Or at least their possessions get washed away,” Deverell says.

Woody Guthrie and his family left Los Angeles in 1939 and moved to New York, where he wrote “This Land Is Your Land” as a response to Kate Smith’s then-current hit “God Bless America.” The authors of the new book say Guthrie’s experiences in Los Angeles inspired what would become America’s “other” national anthem.

Guthrie eventually wrote some 3,000 songs, although we have the score for only about half of them. He’d revisit some songs and modify the lyrics, reflecting his own changing political ideas. For example, one stanza of “This Land Is Your Land” often gets left out:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Guthrie eventually became a hero to the burgeoning folk scene of the 1960s and a mentor to musicians like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Guthrie died in 1967. Interestingly, his ghost keeps popping up in the 2016 presidential election. When Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders campaigned in Oklahoma last month, he made sure to stop by the Woody Guthrie Center in downtown Tulsa. Sanders has been a longtime fan of Guthrie’s music, even covering “This Land Is Your Land” nearly 30 years ago. And at an Iowa rally earlier this year, he hummed along to the tune onstage with Vampire Weekend.

That’s not the only connection to the 2016 campaign.

Earlier this year, an archivist found in Guthrie’s notebooks some nasty things he’d written about Fred Trump, the father of Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Guthrie rented an apartment in Brooklyn belonging to Trump for two years. And Guthrie wrote angrily about what he called racist housing practices by the real estate mogul, specifically about the lack of diversity among the residents of Trump’s Beach Haven apartments.