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Holding Out For A Folk Hero

It’s the centenary of the birth of Wooody Guthrie, a towering figure in American folk and a huge influence on Bob Dylan and others.

Greg McAteer, 29 Aug 2012

He was commissioned to write about the construction of the Coulee dam and moved to Oregon and Washington State for a brief but creatively rich period. However when his contract expired he wanted to return to New York. Sick of the traveling Mary told him to go on his own. In New York once more he re-established his connection with Seeger and joined his Almanac Singers. While there he met and married Marjorie Mazia with whom he had four children. During the Second World War he tried to convince the US administration to let him support the war effort by performing for the troops. With his leftist politics they were never going to allow it and he joined the merchant marine along with his friends Jim Longhi and Cisco Houston.

After WWII he moved to Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island and wrote prolifically, penning, among other projects, two albums of songs for children. He took Ramblin’ Jack Elliott under his wing at this time. It was from Elliott rather than Woody himself that the Guthrie-obsessed Bob Dylan learned most of his performance skills. Tragically the same degenerative disease that killed his mother had started to afflict him, making performance difficult. The disease affected him mentally as well as physically and he would fly into fits of temper. Marjorie, worried about the children, asked him to leave and they divorced. Woody moved back to California for a time, where he met and married his third wife Anneke. With the disease taking hold, the marriage faltered and she too left. Back in New York Marjorie cared for him until he had to be hospitalised and he spent the last 10 years of his life in institutions, with few visitors apart from his family and Bob Dylan. Bob used to go and sing his own songs to him even though Guthrie berated him for it as often as not.

It was a sad end but he left a treasure trove behind. Marjorie kept and archived the thousands of lyric he wrote in Mermaid Avenue. His daughter Nora has been placing them with performers like Billy Bragg, Wilco, Yim Yames and Will Johnson. They are heirs to his creative legacy as much as his own children, carrying his work into a century he wouldn’t live to see.



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Greg McAteer

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