Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

by CRAY ED

• ISBN13: 9780393047592
• ISBN10: 0393047598
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

To recall the Depression era is to hear Woody's songs: he was the greatest folk musician of the twentieth century. Born in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie became a figure larger than life, a folk singer who captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs: "This Land Is Your Land," "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," "Going Down This Road Feeling Bad," and so many more. Although he was always proud to be called an "Okie," his life was on the road; he was a patriot and a political radical, but he was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the deadly fires that stalked his family, and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At the age of forty-two, Woody was cruelly silenced by Huntingdon's Disease. Ed Cray is the first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, and he has interviewed over seventy of the people who knew Woody best. On this basis he creates a haunting portrait of an American original who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself. 16 pages of photographs.

Author Biography

Ed Cray is a profesor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Author's Note	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Foreword	xvii
Studs Terkel
Introduction: Feathers from a Pillow	xix
The Guthries of Okemah	3	(17)
Jig Dance in a Minor Key	20	(17)
The Oil Patch	37	(11)
Starting the Panther	48	(16)
Black Blizzard	64	(14)
On the Jericho Road	78	(12)
West of the West	90	(13)
Old Familiar Songs	103	(14)
Guthrie's People	117	(13)
The Workhunters	130	(13)
Radical with a Twang	143	(17)
Talking Socialism	160	(13)
Some Kind of Electricity	173	(12)
Sleeping under Money	185	(15)
The Leakingest Roof	200	(15)
Erratic Stew	215	(13)
A Desperate Little Man	228	(14)
Marjorie	242	(13)
Breaking New Land	255	(13)
Seamen Three	268	(14)
Shackled	282	(11)
The Running Man	293	(16)
Worried Man Blues	309	(12)
The Noise of Roaches	321	(14)
The Compass--Pointer Man	335	(19)
Anneke Anni	354	(17)
Adversity Guthrie	371	(15)
I Ain't Dead Yet	386	(7)
Woody's Children	393	(11)
Afterword	404	(3)
Notes	407	(52)
Selected Bibliography	459	(6)
Selected Discography	465	(2)
Permissions	467	(4)
Index	471