Pop, Tony, and Charlie would like to thankthe Woody Guthrie Foundation

for their encouragement and support.www.woodyguthrie.org

�Baltimore to Washington, Pastures of Plenty, End of My Line,

High Floods and Low Waters, Roll On Ocean, New York Town, Government Road,Dust Bowl Refugee, and Good Night Little Darlin’ Goodnight

Words & Music Woody Guthrie © Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.& tro-Ludlow Music, Inc. (bmi)

StepstoneAdaptation by Woody Guthrie © Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. (bmi)

Take A Whiff On MeWords & Music, Huddie Ledbetter, and Alan Lomax © Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. (bmi)

Oklahoma HillsWords & Music by Woody Guthrie and Jack Guthrie

© Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & Unichappell Music, Inc. (bmi)

Jiggy Jiggy Bum Bum (Wild Hog Song)© Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. (bmi)

The Northern LineWords & Music by Pop Wagner © Horse Chorale Music, (sesac)

cover illustration: Woody Guthrie with GuitarOriginal artwork by Woody Guthrie. Courtesy of the Woody Guthrie Archives

photography: Mel Floyd, Deb Forbes design: Linda Koutsky

Pop Wagner, Tony Glover, and Charlie Maguire

WoodyReflected

Woody Reflected

W oodrow wilson guthrie(1912–1967) rambled a million

miles by foot, thumb, Liberty ship,boxcar, streetcar, “Car Car” and even air-plane. He wrote copiously along the way,with “his guitar hanging like a tire iron ona rusty rim,” as John Steinbeck describedhim. He turned out song after song andbecame, in the words of Studs Terkel, “oneof a handful of the world’s greatest all-timeballadeers.”

His output has been pegged at morethan a thousand songs. Some have refrainsthat can be sung from memory by kids asyoung as three years old (“This Land isYour Land”) and folks well over eighty(“So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”).

The Woody Guthrie Foundation andArchives continues to publish and dis-seminate Woody’s lyrics, songs, and writ-ings. Furthermore, in varying ways, musi-cians — including all three of us — haveplayed a role in continuing Woody’slegacy, by preserving books; writing let-ters, articles, and reviews; and collectingcast-off bits of audio tape, old radiobroadcasts, and dusty recorded outtakes,so that years later we could come togetherto rediscover, interpret, and present toyou the musical comings and goings of

the quintessential American folk singer asreflected in our own lives.

To commemorate the 100th birthday ofWoody Guthrie (1912–2012), we offer ourown musical reflections on disc. And weadd our own ramblings of people, places,and days with the Man — or as Lee Haysmight have put it, “With them that knows.”

TONY GLOVERBrooklyn, New York, 1962

In forty-odd years in music, as writer andperformer, I’ve met, interviewed, and

played with a lot of people who went on tobecome household names. But there wereonly two I was in awe of: Muddy Waters andWoody Guthrie. Even in 1962, Guthriealready had attained near-mythic status.Early in May that year, I took my first tripto New York City to visit my partner DaveRay, and also hooked up with formerMinnesotan Bob Dylan. One day, Bobasked if I’d like to go along with him to visitWoody at Kings County Hospital inBrooklyn. Even though I was heavy intoblues at the time, almost to the exclusion ofany other music, I jumped at the chance.We met on Bob’s doorstep on West FourthStreet in Greenwich Village and climbedinto the car of another bluesman, JohnHammond. (Hammond was still in collegethen; it would be a year before he appearedat the Newport Folk Festival and recorded

was inspired by a 1927 recording by BlindLemon Jefferson: “One Dime Blues,”which Woody had recorded for theLibrary of Congress in 1941. In his 1944recording (from a mammoth one-day, 55-song session with Cisco Houston), Woodytakes Blind Lemon’s structure and melodyand makes them into his own image of arambling man finding himself in anuncomfortable location.

11.) Government Road. The song waswritten in the Hanover House Hotel at43rd Street and 6th Avenue in nyc onFebruary 24, 1940, just one day after Woodywrote This Land Is Your Land. Woody —fresh from a trip from Texas to nyc, by busand thumb, less than two months earlier —may have still have been smarting from thefact that there were no fast and direct inter-state highways to places he wanted to go.

12.) Dust Bowl Refugee. Woody’s observa-tions of the Dust Bowl exodus have beencaptured in his better-known but lightersongs like So Long, It’s Been Good to KnowYuh. But for pure grit and realism, you can’tbeat the heat, poverty, desperation, andanger of Dust Bowl Refugee. Woody oncesaid, “I am a photographer without a cam-era,” and this song is as good a snapshotof life on the road in “the dirty ’30s” as aWalker Evans or a Dorothea Lange.

13.) The Northern Line. In 1969, Pop wrotethis song in the course of about four minutesas he was passing through the freight yardsin Ashland, Wisconsin. He must have been“channeling” Woody himself!

14.) Good Night Little Darling Good-night. From the Woody tapes Tony col-lected came an outtake from late January/early February 1947, featuring not onlyWoody, but also his second wife, MarjorieMazia Guthrie. They were at the Asch stu-dio at 117 West 42nd Street to record thenew song as a birthday present for theirdaughter Cathy Ann. You can clearly hearthem both, especially Woody cooing intothe microphone. Soon after, four-year-oldCathy died as a result of burns suffered in ahouse fire the day following her birthday,February 6th. It’s not clear if she ever heardher record.

We dedicate our album to her.

�Pop Wagner

www. popwagner.com

Tony Gloverwww.mwt.net/~koerner/tonyglover.html

Charlie Maguirewww.charliemaguire.com

3.) End of My Line. From the Bonneville/Department of Interior commission May–June 1941, for which Woody was paid a totalof $266.67. The traveling from the DustBowl to the Pacific Northwest in the songmirrors Woody’s own travels during themonth he applied for and won the job inPortland, Oregon. The trip was rough. Toget gas money and feed the kids, Woodyhad to borrow money against the familyradio on the drive up from Los Angeles.

4.) Stepstone. This nineteenth-centuryparlor ballad has received many interpreta-tions over the years. Woody’s version is ourfavorite. There may not be a more lonelysong: The singer not only looks back to thehome of his youth, but also faces a futurealone, with winter coming soon.

5.) High Floods and Low Waters. Fromthe tapes Tony collected and shared with usfor the first time in 1980, the original songis a live recording from Oscar Brand’s radioshow on wnyc. Written by Woody duringa drought in nyc in 1947, it’s not a song thathas been sung a lot. John Cohen remem-bered singing it in the 1950s. The wayWoody sang it was more in his CarterFamily style. Charlie put a little more driveon it this time around.

6.) Oklahoma Hills. Woody Guthrie andhis cousin Jack share the copyright of thissong, but according to Woody’s biographer

Joe Klein, it was written by Woody in 1937in Glendale, California, when Woody andMaxine Crissman had a daily radio showfor the newly arrived Okie audience onkfvd in Los Angeles. It was Jack, however,who ultimately made it a popular song dur-ing World War ii.

7.) Jiggy Jiggy Bum Bum (Wild HogSong). Pop first heard this song at afriend’s house in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in1969. It was on one of those 10-inch LPs.He learned it on the spot and has beensinging it ever since.

8.) Take A Whiff On Me. “Whiff ” was asong popular in both white and black cul-tures, about then-legal cocaine. Woodyprobably also heard it from Leadbelly, whoperformed it at his 1935 nyc debut, pre-sented by Alan Lomax.

9.) Roll on Ocean. This song was recordedat about the same time as Good Night LittleDarlin’ Goodnight — in January or earlyFebruary of 1947, with Cathy Ann Guthriein mind. Woody mentions the MississippiRiver and Duluth. This storybook gem of akids’ song — with a mention for Minnesota— has not been sung all that much. Thanksto the tapes that Tony collected, it sees thelight of day once again.

10.) New York Town. Woody had big earsand he caught songs everywhere. This one

the first of twenty-nine albums of classicblues tunes.) Bob couldn’t find the hospi-tal’s address, but we headed for the wilds ofBrooklyn anyhow; after making severalwrong turns and receiving heavily accented,misguided directions, we wound up at agray stone three- or four-story building. Itwas set back from the street, the windowscovered with heavy wire mesh.

Bob led us in, since his name was on thevisitor’s list. An attendant escorted usthrough a couple of sets of heavy, lockeddoors to a second-floor dayroom. Woody’sname was called, and eventually, down thehallway shuffled a short, wiry guy wearingpajamas open to the waist, and worn cow-boy boots cracked with age. His hair was ashock of gray Brillo; his skin, weather-beaten and chiseled. His arms jerked spas-modically, and occasionally tics contortedhis shoulders. It was a struggle for him totalk, but despite his strangled words as Bobintroduced us, his eyes were piercingly alert.

Woody led us down the hall to his room.He sat on his bed, and we sat on the other.Bob asked how Woody liked the record he’ddropped off on a previous visit (his debutColumbia album, Bob Dylan, containing“Song to Woody”). “It’s a good’un,” Woodyreplied. Bob borrowed John’s guitar and weall sang a couple of Woody’s songs for him.

After “Hard Travelin’,” Woody said,“Should be faster.” I pulled out a harp and

played along on a couple more. During“Pretty Boy Floyd,” Woody tried to singalong, but his pitch was wavering. He reachedin his boot and pulled out a pack of cigarettes,and after much difficulty got one in hismouth. John and I reached for our lighters,but Bob shook his head at us, so we watchedfor several minutes as Woody fought to con-trol his arms long enough to get a match litand get the fire up to the cigarette. He finallydid. He took a deep drag, with a lightning-bolt look of triumph in his eyes.

Altogether, we stayed about an hour,and as we left, Bob promised to be back.We did not talk much in the car on thelong drive back to the Village. The force ofWoody’s presence still hung in the air, andit said more than words could.

POP WAGNERAshland, Wisconsin, 1967

W oody’s songs have been ringingthrough my traveling life from my ear-

liest memories. My father would sing “CarCar” to us as we traveled the back roads ofsouthwest Ohio to visit our grandparents.

In the fall of 1967, my freshman year ofcollege in Ashland, Wisconsin, there camethe sad but not unexpected news ofWoody’s passing. Off campus, where Ilived with three other students (who werealso folk singers), we hatched the idea tohold an outdoor folk festival the following

May in Woody’s honor, to raise funds tohelp fight the disease that took him. Itseemed like a fitting tribute to Woody; hisspirit and songs were with us five monthslater on stage, with the snow barely gone.The funds were so sparse that first yearthat we barely covered expenses, and noth-ing but good wishes went to theCommittee to Combat Huntington’sDisease that time around. Later, as part ofthe June Apple Musicians’ Co-op, I helpedto organize a similar event at theUniversity of Minnesota in Minneapolisthat was 200 miles farther south, indoors,and more successful.

While on a busking tour in Europe withmy friend Bob Bovee, we ran into DerrollAdams, who wanted us to carry a messageback to his old pal Ramblin’ Jack Elliott inCalifornia. We did just that, hitchhikingand riding freight trains once we got backto the u.s. That unlikely oral-traditionmessenger service across an ocean and acontinent began a lasting friendship withJack, who rewarded us with his own first-hand accounts of running with Woody.

When I was given a guitar at the age offourteen, Woody and his cannon of workhelped show me the way and supplied amajor part of my performance repertoire. Italso inspired a career of traveling, singing,and organizing, on behalf of all kinds ofpeople. It still does.

CHARLIE MAGUIRECroton-on-Hudson, New York 1972

Lee Hays was a singer and songwriterwith considerable show-business acu-

men, which he used to mentor young peo-ple — this may have been his true calling— whether they were destined for the stageor not. He knew absolutely everybody; hisRolodex in those days ran from Steve Allento Joan Baez to Olympic gold medalistMark Spitz. Lee and I used to practice“constructive loafing,” as he liked to call it,from cushy chairs at his cottage in Croton-on-Hudson, about thirty miles north ofNew York City. I was with him the day theups man delivered a package that con-tained an award for One Million (for-profit) Performances of “If I Had aHammer,” which he co-wrote with PeteSeeger during his days on America’s HitParade with the Weavers.

Lee had paid his dues, and he knewWoody intimately. Because Guthrie liter-ally wrote the book about being a travelingsongwriter, I felt the need as one of“Woody’s Children” (as Lee would laterdub me and many others) to check in withhim from time to time on the status of my“education.” You see, learning the folksinger/songwriter trade is a lot like learningto be a plumber, except that it pays a wholelot less. You start off as an apprentice, thena journeyman, all the while learning from

the masters on the way to becoming oneyourself . . . maybe. That is what it meansto live a life in the “folk tradition.”

When Lee told his Woody stories, hewould look straight ahead and take youback with him. He always added a warningthough, like the kind of labels you see oncigarette packages. Recalling Woody’s per-formances, he’d tell how the man “rodeherd on an audience. He never let them gettoo far away. He’d cajole them, laugh withthem, or insult them, but he never let themstray too much.” On the virtues of being agood houseguest, he recalled the time“Woody stayed at my apartment and readthrough my entire library in about twoweeks. He’d write a little review of eachbook and stick them between the pages; Ifound them for years afterward.” Then thedownside: “One day during that same visithe paid me back by passing out drunk onmy new sofa and wetting himself duringthe night.”

In describing happier incidents — likethe times he, Woody, and folk singer CiscoHouston had a square meal and a full bot-tle to contemplate — Lee would turn andlook at me with a grin: “And do you thinkWoody and Cisco would just drink a littleand save the rest for another day? Hell no!It was the Depression and nobody savedanything. They’d drink it all up in one sit-ting, all the time singing the same song

over and over.” Then came the warning:“Now that’s the way Woody was, but don’tlet me hear about you behaving like that!”

(Portions of the above notes originallyappeared in the article “Rambling Men,”The Rake, April 2004.)

The Songs

Following in the wake of these stories,here are a few recollections regarding

the songs on Woody Reflected.

1.) Baltimore to Washington. From theAsch sessions of April 1944, with Cisco,Woody, and Sonny Terry. Cisco Houstonwas not only Woody’s stalwart friend fromadventures on the S.S. Sea Porpoise, butaccording to historians, Moe Asch couldcount on Cisco to help Woody keep therhythm and remember the verses they hadsung before.

2.) Pastures of Plenty. One of the fewWoody songs in a minor key. Migrantworkers and their working conditionsplayed a major role in Woody’s writing, andthis is one of his most enduring songs onthe topic, written during the time ofhis work with the Bonneville PowerAdministration. Since Woody and his firstfamily were fairly migratory too, maybe itwas an easy place “to go” in his mind.