1930's The Arts | Guthrie, Woody 1912-1967

FOLK SINGER

The Voice of the Forgotten American.

Described by folksinger Pete Seeger as "a national folk poet," Woody Guthrie crisscrossed America throughout the Depression years—walking, hitchhiking, and riding the rails along with the hoboes and migrant laborers during the 1930s. Between 1936 and 1954, when he was hospitalized for Huntington's chorea, of which he would die, he wrote more than one thousand songs chronicling the experience of the common American. Among his best-known songs are "Roll On, Columbia," "This Train Is Bound For Glory," "Hard Traveling," "Union Maid," and "Dust Bowl Refugee."

Early Years.

Like so many of the westward migrants during the Depression, Guthrie was an "Okie"—an Oklahoman who found himself forced out of the life he knew by the coming of the Dust Bowl. The soil erosion and resulting dust storms that drove so many Okla'homans from their farms were, however, not the...