Woody: Celebrated Oklahoma singer/songwriter/ author's' 110th birthday

Jul. 17—Asked to name Oklahoma's great singers and musicians and a whole array of names comes immediately to mind.

Some of them are so familiar they are known by their first names alone. Yep, I'm talking to you Garth and Reba.

For many Oklahoma music fans, including me, another native of the Sooner State falls into that category — Woody Guthrie. Born just up the road in Okemah, Woody is still revered by many as the father of the modern folk song and among the first of the singer/songwriters.

It seems I've known about Woody Guthrie almost as long as I can remember. Although he was ill and no longer performing at the peak of the great folk boom in American music in the early-to-mid 1960s, he was already a hero to some of the most prominent artists who rode that wave to mass popularity, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Born in Okemah on July 14, Woody would have celebrated his 110th birthday on Thursday, which has me thinking about Woody and his immense contributions to American song.I still remember as a kid being thrilled to learn that one of the nation's best-loved songs had been written by an Oklahoman — then learning about all the other memorable songs that Woody had written.

In addition to his songs, Woody also wrote newspaper columns, poems and books, including his engrossing autobiography "Bound for Glory." After the first chapter which begins in the 1940s, the book goes back to Woody's childhood growing up in Okemah, then continues to when he moves to Texas. Woody also tells about riding boxcars and thumbing his way to California during the Great Depression —singing, writing and learning new songs along the way.

It's reminiscent at times of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Grapes of Wrath." While Steinbeck's novel is about the fictional Joad family who moved from their home in Sallisaw, Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression, Woody writes about what he really lived through during the same era in "Bound for Glory."

It's also the book that helped inspire a young Bob Dylan to learn a plethora of Woody's songs and to travel East so the then-unknown Dylan could meet his hero — a goal he accomplished when he visited Woody at a hospital in New Jersey.

Woody had been hospitalized after being arrested for so-called vagrancy by New Jersey. police He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he was termed delusional by his doctors when he told them he was a singer and songwriter, as well as the author of several books. It took Guthrie's wife, Marjorie, to convince the doctors that Woody indeed, was a recording artist, songwriter and author.

Woody's books included "Born to Win," a collection of poems, stories, essays, song lyrics, letters, journal entires and other writings joined together. I used to have a copy of the book, which worked well despite — or maybe, because of — the various formats it included. I remember Woody relating how he came to title the book "Born to Win" after hearing an account of World War II soldiers being transported to a beach for a landing amidst hostile fire while listening to Ted Daffan's Texans hit song "Born to Lose."

That stirred up Woody, who contended a song with such a negative message should certainly not be played to soldiers going into battle, inspiring him with his book's title, "Born to Win."

By the way, esteemed singer Ray Charles had no such qualms about "Born to Lose," recording the song on his 1962 breakthrough album, "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" and scoring a hit with the song.

As for Woody's songs, he wrote and recorded a number which continue to reverberate today. Here are some of my favorites and I'll save his most well-known for last:

—"Oklahoma Hills" — This is a song Woody wrote with his cousin, country singer Jack Guthrie, which Jack scored a hit with in 1945. Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys scored another hit with it in 1961, ending the song with the "Boomer Sooner" coda played on steel guitar. Although I'd heard Thompson's version, I learned the song from a recording by Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie, on Arlo's "Running Down the Road" album.

Michael Parks, the actor who starred in the TV series about a wandering motorcyclist named "Then Came Bronson" is among the many other artists who also cut a version of the track.

"Oklahoma Hills" has also been deemed by the Oklahoma State Legislature at the Official Folk Song on Oklahoma

I used to the think the song's lines "Way down yonder in the Indian Nation, riding my pony on the reservation" was poetic license on Woody's part, since at the time no one at the time thought there were no reservations in Oklahoma anymore. Turns out that's just one more thing that Woody was right about.

—"Ramblin' Round" — How could I not include the song that provided the inspiration for the title of this column? Again, I learned it from an album by Woody's song Arlo. During some of my own rambling years I took some of the lyrics to heart: "Ramblin' round your city. Ramblin' round your town. I always see a friend I know, when I go ramblin' round, boys, when I go ramblin' round.

—"So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" — Originally titled "Dusty Old Dust," this is another of my favorite Woody songs. It must not have beeneasy to write a humorous song about something as devastating as the Dust Bowl, but Woody does it with this song, which also encompasses several other themes, such as love and marriage.

I once read that Woody told a young Dylan, it's easy to find a melody when writing a song. Find another song, just change a few things and you've got something new. That's a songwriting method Woody obviously used on "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," because the verses use the melody of the traditional cowboy ballad, "Billy the Kid."

—"Pretty Boy Floyd" — This is a song I first heard on The Byrds' country music album titled "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." Roger McGuinn sings a straight-up country-folk version, complete with fiddles and banjos on the song which includes a line referencing the Canadian River shore.

Woody's song about the famed Depression-era outlaw paints him as a sort of Robin Hood, leaving sacks full of groceries at the door of hungry farmers. It also includes one of my favorite lines ever: "As through this life you travel, you will meet some funny men, who will rob you with a sixgun, or with a fountain pen."

—"Pastures of Plenty" — This is one of Woody's most heart-wrenching ballads of the plights of the Oklahomans who left their native state during the Dust Bowl: "It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed. My poor feet have traveled a hot, dusty road. Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled. And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold."

—"This Land Is Your Land" — Woody's most well-known song has been sang around a jillion campfires, from countless stages and even at a presidential inauguration. It contains some of his most poetic lines about America.

Oh yes, the part previously mentioned about Woody being arrested for vagrancy when police did not recognize his as one of the most gifted songwriters the nation has produced may be thought of as something that wouldn't happen in the modern era — but it has.

On July 23, 2009, a 24-year-old police officer noted a man dressed in sweat pants and blue jacket walking during a heavy rain along a residential street in New Jersey, looking at houses along the street.

She pulled up and asked him for ID. He said he didn't have any with him. When she asked the man his name, he told her — but either the officer didn't recognize the name or didn't believe the man. When she asked him where he lived, he told her he was on tour and was staying at the Ocean Place Resort and was going to perform a concert that evening.

She had the man get into the back seat of her cruiser. To check out his story, they drove to the hotel where the man said he was staying — and where a no-doubt puzzled tour manager told the police their soaking wet passenger was indeed Bob Dylan, set to perform a concert that night with a couple of well-known opening acts, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp.

And what was Dylan doing wandering the streets of New Jersey in the driving rain? Looking for the house where a young Bruce Springsteen had written the rock classic, "Born to Run."

Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com.