Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Court of Robert Evans Bastard Guy podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right, got a gabble. See take that our engineers,
Speaker 2: they're not gonna be happy.
Speaker 3: Who let you get a gap?
Speaker 2: I got sent this by the judge again. It works
Speaker 2: exactly like vampires made me. And it's lovely. It's a
Speaker 2: beautiful gabble, look at it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can also buy that from like toy z r
Speaker 1: Us or whatever children's store has survived.
Speaker 2: It would mean nothing at all in your hands, Sophie,
Speaker 2: you haven't gone through the extensive training and preparation to
Speaker 2: become a United States municipal judge like.
Speaker 3: I have cool.
Speaker 2: Cool, Welcome back to behind the bast I.
Speaker 1: Really hate that you have power of any kind.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, tremendous power, unaccountable power. I'm now
Speaker 2: eligible for the Supreme Court. Although I think technically anyone
Speaker 2: is fun.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: I actually think you would be a no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be a great.
Speaker 3: Supremacurt you'd be better than one Supreme Court like ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the time and then ten percent of the time.
Speaker 3: You would be like I think that every one should
Speaker 3: have a personal nuke. You be k canster, but here's
Speaker 3: the thing. I think you'd be better going to.
Speaker 2: Be any more home invasions.
Speaker 1: Margaret, You're better than the nine we have.
Speaker 2: You know, that's very true?
Speaker 3: Quite true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, speaking of someone who would have been better
Speaker 2: on the Supreme Court, Woody Guthrie, that's who we're talking
Speaker 2: about in part two of these episodes, yep, Margaret dad,
Speaker 2: though not his clansman of father.
Speaker 1: Before we jump into this, though, I want to plug
Speaker 1: something really fast, if that's okay.
Speaker 2: Uh oh.
Speaker 1: I just want to plug a series that our colleague
Speaker 1: and my dear friend, Jimmie lost Fist has been doing
Speaker 1: on her podcast, sixteenth Minute of Fame. Ever heard of
Speaker 1: it about the Manosphere? I think they and the Bastard's
Speaker 1: audience would really enjoy it. Jimmy has worked very hard
Speaker 1: on the writing is incredible, So check that out on
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute of Fame.
Speaker 2: The Manisphere, if you're not aware, is the kind of
Speaker 2: colloquial term for this network of far right generally like
Speaker 2: masculinity influencers. All all of them have fed into the
Speaker 2: trumpest movement in groups like the Proud Boys. It's a
Speaker 2: very important like social phenomenon that explains a lot of
Speaker 2: why we are where we are right now, and Jamie
Speaker 2: does a great job of breaking it down, so check
Speaker 2: that out. On sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1: Robert is interviewed on one of the parts.
Speaker 3: Ooh, sure, I've only heard part one so far.
Speaker 2: I am. I am well speaking of part two, Let's
Speaker 2: do the part two of these episodes.
Speaker 3: Huh, yes, No, I also haven't talked to this one yet.
Speaker 2: Let's kill it. Let's murder it. Let's bury it in
Speaker 2: the woods in a tree stump, under a tree stump
Speaker 2: so that nobody finds it, and then cash in at
Speaker 2: Social Security for you. I don't know what I'm doing here, Margaret,
Speaker 2: Part two, So what do you go? Thrie had weed
Speaker 2: Mary in nineteen thirty three, and by nineteen thirty six
Speaker 2: when he quit Texas for California, which is what you
Speaker 2: have to legally call it when you're talking about the
Speaker 2: night teen thirties, she'd had one child with him and
Speaker 2: was pregnant with another, and he kind of abandons her,
Speaker 2: like not entirely, like he doesn't like break up with her,
Speaker 2: and like she eventually moves to California with him, but
Speaker 2: he does just kind of bounce to go try and
Speaker 2: find a living you know, in the West, and this
Speaker 2: is a thing a lot of guys are doing and
Speaker 2: a lot of people have to do. It's also not
Speaker 2: a thing that the family's thrilled with. The specific project
Speaker 2: that he left for was a dam that was being
Speaker 2: built outside of Redding, California, in a place called Happy Valley.
Speaker 2: I have lived in and around there. I can assure
Speaker 2: you it is not a particularly happy valley now, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't one then either. In fact, the name was
Speaker 2: kind of like ironic like because it was a shanty
Speaker 2: town that was miserable, so like Greenland, like Greenland. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's a I guess probably a better place now, although
Speaker 2: I can't really in good conscious recommend anyone go to Redding.
Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, that's where Woody heads up to and
Speaker 2: he's there for a little while. It's in this shanty
Speaker 2: town with like about five thousand other work seekers who
Speaker 2: are all like you know, showing up to try and
Speaker 2: q in lines and get jobs every day. Right, And
Speaker 2: there were a lot of spaces like this around the country,
Speaker 2: you know, there were a lot of these government work
Speaker 2: camps basically right which is where Woody is, And there
Speaker 2: were also in areas like Sacramento, and Seattle. These things
Speaker 2: called Hooverville's and Hooverville's were essentially large camp sites built
Speaker 2: by homeless workers and their families as they migrated around
Speaker 2: searching for work during the Great Depression.
Speaker 3: Well, it's actually in the US they're called vacuum towns, vacuumville.
Speaker 2: That was good. That was good, Margaret, Thank you, it
Speaker 2: was good.
Speaker 3: Thanks, I'll be here all day.
Speaker 2: Electro lux cities, I don't know. I just think it's
Speaker 2: funny because the old catchphrase was nothing sucks like an
Speaker 2: electro lux And I've never heard an advertisement that was
Speaker 2: more clearly made before the Internet. You couldn't get away
Speaker 2: with that today, or you could, but it would be
Speaker 2: a different.
Speaker 3: Pro Although in England they had the we put the
Speaker 3: d and Bread campaign only a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: That pretty funny, Yes.
Speaker 4: Not bad.
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna get over that, oh Man. So hoovervill
Speaker 2: were named kind of it was an attack on President
Speaker 2: Herbert Hoover, right, Like that's why they get their to
Speaker 2: him because he was this this will not sound familiar
Speaker 2: to anything that's about to happen. He was this corrupt
Speaker 2: Republican president whose policies which benefited the incredibly wealthy, fed
Speaker 2: into the Great Depression, and like allowed for the kind
Speaker 2: of deregulation that made it much worse. And we're seen
Speaker 2: as having largely led the country into economic calamity. And
Speaker 2: so they named these massive homeless camps for like homeless families. Basically,
Speaker 2: Hooverville's the largest and longest lasting. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: it was absolutely the largest, but it was the longest
Speaker 2: lasting and among the largest. Hoovervilles was outside of Seattle,
Speaker 2: and it stood from nineteen thirty one to nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: As an interesting side note, it was operated on land
Speaker 2: next to Elliott Bay South, which I believe is where
Speaker 2: Fraser's condo was meant to be located in the TV series.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean anything. I just thought it was interesting.
Speaker 2: So Wood he missed out on the big West coast Hooverville's,
Speaker 2: but he was in and round. You know, reading is
Speaker 2: people who are heading up to Seattle or coming back
Speaker 2: down from Seattley's talking to them. There's a big one
Speaker 2: in Sacramento. He's talking to them, and he's in this
Speaker 2: work camp and Happy Valley that's kind of similar Hooverville, right,
Speaker 2: And he's supposed to be up there working on this
Speaker 2: big damn project. But he does a lot better and
Speaker 2: it's a lot more stable for him to just busk
Speaker 2: for music, right, and so that's what he actually spends
Speaker 2: most of his time doing. Now, I say he's better
Speaker 2: at this than he is at laboring, he's not great
Speaker 2: at it, and he's only able to send the occasional
Speaker 2: very small money order back home to his wife and
Speaker 2: two kids. So he is not The idea is I'm
Speaker 2: coming out here to support my family, but he's not
Speaker 2: able to support Mary. She and her now two kids
Speaker 2: are utterly dependent on her parents, which was a very
Speaker 2: embarrassing situation for her. Mary later said, I know it
Speaker 2: upset my dad a lot, my mother too. Wood he
Speaker 2: wasn't doing the manly thing, And I think it's both
Speaker 2: worth like saying that that's her impression and the family's
Speaker 2: impression of this. This is not an uncommon position for
Speaker 2: people to be in, and I don't know that Woody
Speaker 2: was doing very well back in Texas, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of unclear to me, you know, what the right thing
Speaker 2: to do here was. Ultimately, Woody, like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: was put in a very difficult situation of trying to
Speaker 2: do something he hoped would allow him to support his family,
Speaker 2: and it didn't work very well for a while, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it was the Great Depression.
Speaker 2: It was like a Great Depression.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We see a lot of this now, where like
Speaker 3: people are like, oh, I'm failing under capitalism, I must
Speaker 3: personally be a failure and you're like, yeah, no, times
Speaker 3: are really hard right now.
Speaker 2: Well, and we also on this show, like we've had
Speaker 2: like guys like Steven Segall who as a guest yes yes, uh,
Speaker 2: friend of the pod, like absolutely abandoned his family to
Speaker 2: start his Hollywood career. That is a story we've told
Speaker 2: a few times. Woody is his family feels like he's
Speaker 2: doing that at the start. That's not actually what he
Speaker 2: does here, right, because he's not actually like cutting ties
Speaker 2: with them. But they're not.
Speaker 3: Migrant laborers do this all the time today, Like my
Speaker 3: grand labors come to the United States. They're not abandoning
Speaker 3: their family to try and but.
Speaker 2: They're usually not going out there to play guitar.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's kind of part of why, because
Speaker 2: he's not really doing the work that you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of these other guys were you know, he's doing
Speaker 2: some of that, but that's not how he really makes
Speaker 2: most of his bread. Yeah, So in short order, Wood
Speaker 2: he left Reading for Glendale, which I've also done, and
Speaker 2: I can tell you good call, much better place to
Speaker 2: be than reading. He vaguely knew that he had an
Speaker 2: aunt in the area, and as was often the case,
Speaker 2: he just sort of they're not like sending letters usually
Speaker 2: back and forth. They certainly don't have phones or whatever
Speaker 2: you usually just like I was told once by a
Speaker 2: relative that I have an aunt in Glendale. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna show up and figure out where she is and
Speaker 2: hopefully she'll take me in. And social ties were such
Speaker 2: that when he shows up on her doorstep, she's like,
Speaker 2: all right. He is twenty five years old when he
Speaker 2: makes it to the Los Angeles area after several months
Speaker 2: of stress and internal recriminations because what, he's not thrilled
Speaker 2: with himself either. He had wanted to be doing better.
Speaker 2: He knows how little he's sending back to his family.
Speaker 2: He's not happy about this. He gets a lucky break
Speaker 2: courtesy of his cousin Leon, who everyone else either called
Speaker 2: Jack or Oki Guthrie, and Ok is like a it's
Speaker 2: kind of a pejorative term for someone from Oklahoma. Both
Speaker 2: was used as an insult and also is like a
Speaker 2: term of pride by people from Oklahoma. Right, the Guthries
Speaker 2: are all Oakie's right, so calling him ok Guthrie must
Speaker 2: have been a little bit confusing to like Woody, who
Speaker 2: is also an Okie.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Jack and his family had left home back at the
Speaker 2: start of the Depression and moved to Sacramento. Like many Guthries,
Speaker 2: he was musically talented, and so was his wife, and
Speaker 2: they'd built a reputation for themselves as good musicians and performers.
Speaker 2: He suggested teaming up with Woody to try and start
Speaker 2: and act in Los Angeles. This was not the obviously
Speaker 2: good idea that it would later seem, as Ed Gray
Speaker 2: explains in the book ramblin Man. Jack was a Western singer.
Speaker 2: His songs were heavily influenced by popular music. Wood he
Speaker 2: was a country singer, his music born of an older
Speaker 2: oral tradition. In practice, they could neither sing nor play
Speaker 2: guitar together. Indeed, would he privately despise the treakly sentiment
Speaker 2: of jack sagebrush serenades. Jack the guitarist used the jazz
Speaker 2: influenced chords of popular music and played up the neck
Speaker 2: of the instrument. Would he disdained chords beyond the minimal tonic,
Speaker 2: subdominant and dominant. So this is not a great pairing
Speaker 2: and Wood he's a little bit like he's a little
Speaker 2: bit of a snob. Right, It's like, Oh, your music's
Speaker 2: all popular and jazzy. You're not doing the cool punks.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not really punk. But that's it's very
Speaker 2: similar in attitude to that kind of guy.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean he's doing folk punk before, it's.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, at least he's about to be starting to
Speaker 2: do folk punk.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because the country western eye had never occurred
Speaker 3: to me that those were separate categories.
Speaker 2: Yes, because I mean it's this mix of these songs
Speaker 2: that are like folk songs that are we would call
Speaker 2: western because they're like songs about the West and about
Speaker 2: you know, being a cowboy or whatever, and songs that
Speaker 2: are like Western songs that are made for like the
Speaker 2: different kinds of like floor shows and entertainment, you know,
Speaker 2: radio and whatever that's popular at the time. Like those
Speaker 2: are kind of different beasts. So in better times, these
Speaker 2: guys probably would never have worked together. But desperation made,
Speaker 2: you know, some kind of collaboration necessary, and they developed
Speaker 2: a fairly successful act and we're able to book recurring
Speaker 2: gigs on the radio through a station called kf VD.
Speaker 2: Woody found himself increasingly drawing the folk music with a
Speaker 2: sense of class consciousness, like Goebel Reeves nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 2: Tune Hobo's Lullaby, And here's Woody Guthrie singing a portion
Speaker 2: of Hobo's Lullaby, which is again a song by another guy.
Speaker 2: And this is a folk song, it's also kind of punk,
Speaker 2: as you'll catch from this section.
Speaker 3: Oh, I used to listen to it while riding trains.
Speaker 3: Oh well, the guitar.
Speaker 4: I know. The police calls you trouble. They call trouble
Speaker 4: every but when you die and go to heaven, you
Speaker 4: find policeman.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good. That's a good little bar. So I
Speaker 2: would also be remiss because that's pretty cool if I
Speaker 2: didn't expound on the fact that racism too was a
Speaker 2: recurrent part of wood He's act and often on his
Speaker 2: mind while living in Echo Park and fighting on behalf
Speaker 2: of poor white people, because he's like an activist, you know,
Speaker 2: helping like rent strike type stuff right, Like he is
Speaker 2: an advocate for like poor downtrodden white people living in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. He also is drawing cartoons of people he
Speaker 2: called jungle blacks and monkeys, and like that's bad. He
Speaker 2: wrote poems so racist that I don't even feel like
Speaker 2: I should describe them on the air to you, They're bad.
Speaker 2: Oh god, Yeah, found a good LA Weekly article on
Speaker 2: the subject by an author named Johnny Whiteside, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read a quote from it now. Broadcasting on
Speaker 2: Pasadena's Kaffidi, Guthrie often indulged in on air employee of
Speaker 2: a Bonix, and was stunned when a black listener characterized
Speaker 2: the singer as unintelligent after hearing Guthrie performed songs with
Speaker 2: titles like Run, Inward Run, and Inward Blues. Fortunately for Guthrie,
Speaker 2: recordings of these tunes do not survive. Later, Guthrie said,
Speaker 2: a young negro in Los Angeles wrote me a nice
Speaker 2: letter one day telling me the meaning of that word,
Speaker 2: the inWORD, and that I shouldn't say it anymore on
Speaker 2: the air, so I apologized. He next tore all the
Speaker 2: Inward songs out of his songbook. Huh, so you can
Speaker 2: take that however you want. Right, the fact that he
Speaker 2: is singing that kind of stuff on the air and
Speaker 2: like just writing poems about it not great. But he's
Speaker 2: also not unable to change or immune to criticism. So
Speaker 2: he's willing to like listen to this criticism that a
Speaker 2: black man gives him and be like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 2: that is kind of fucked up and that ain't nothing
Speaker 2: for the son of a klansman, right when you're yeah,
Speaker 2: you know again, that's kind of up to your personal take.
Speaker 2: When we talk about like how do you judge people,
Speaker 2: you know, to what extent do you judge them based
Speaker 2: on their time or based on some sort of concept
Speaker 2: of objective morality, one thing that always matters to me
Speaker 2: is where did they start versus where did they end up? Right,
Speaker 2: Because someone who was raised in a slaveholding household and
Speaker 2: becomes an abolitionist but is still racist is a lot
Speaker 2: more impressive to me than a guy who just like
Speaker 2: isn't outwardly racist because he grew up in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: but like crosses the street when he sees a.
Speaker 3: Black guy, right, totally.
Speaker 2: Because one of those is a person who like went
Speaker 2: on a journey recognized a bad thing about themselves and
Speaker 2: made changes.
Speaker 3: You know, there's people that like will never get my
Speaker 3: pronouns right, who I suspect would kill someone who tried
Speaker 3: to hurt me. And there's other people who would absolutely
Speaker 3: always get my pronouns right and be super respectful and
Speaker 3: would be like, oh no, a bad thing is happening
Speaker 3: if they watch me get murdered for them.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to be like, it's therefore okay, Like
Speaker 3: I'm not trying.
Speaker 2: The reason I included this because it's pretty bad and
Speaker 2: you should know that about the guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not trying to Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: This is not a part of his entire life or
Speaker 2: his whole creative life. He writes anti racist songs later
Speaker 2: in life, Like, it does seem like he makes a change,
Speaker 2: And I do think it's worth noting like this is
Speaker 2: a guy who was raised by a klansman in like
Speaker 2: the thirties, twenties and thirties, you know, so you know, again,
Speaker 2: you can figure out morally wherever you want to figure
Speaker 2: that out. But I don't think it's worth kind of
Speaker 2: looking at the whole sweep of the personal journey the
Speaker 2: man went on there in nineteen thirty seven, Woody's wife,
Speaker 2: Mary and two children moved to Los Angeles to be
Speaker 2: with him. Jack wound up leaving the act and show
Speaker 2: business for a while, but Woody paired up with Maxine Chrisman,
Speaker 2: whose family was friends with his cousin and had taken
Speaker 2: Woody in too. He dubbed Maxine Lefty Lou. The Tube
Speaker 2: played songs by other artists that spoke to the poor
Speaker 2: and downtrodden, like Hobo's Lullaby, but they also started playing
Speaker 2: Woody's original compositions, like the Talking dust Bowl Blues. This
Speaker 2: song really embodies what people were starting to love about Woody.
Speaker 2: His music had a wartz end all description of life
Speaker 2: during the Depression and the struggles of the hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people who were forced to move west during
Speaker 2: the dust Bowl. He sung about relatable nuts and bolts
Speaker 2: issues that are still familiar to a lot of people today.
Speaker 2: If you were a poor punk kid who lived on
Speaker 2: a semi permanent road trip for a while basically and
Speaker 2: had the experience of trying to coast by turning your
Speaker 2: car off on downhill runs because you can't afford gasoline,
Speaker 2: here's Woody Gathrie singing about the same thing.
Speaker 4: Way up yonder on the mountain curve. It's a way
Speaker 4: up yonder in the pine, he would. And I give
Speaker 4: that rolling forward to shove and eyes going to coast
Speaker 4: as fur as it could come in coasting pigging up
Speaker 4: speed was a half in turn. I didn't make it, man,
Speaker 4: I'm telling you. The fiddles and the guitars really flew.
Speaker 4: That Ford took off like a b lime squirrel, and
Speaker 4: it flew halfway around the world, scattered wives and children's
Speaker 4: all over the side of that mountain.
Speaker 2: Man, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I love his talking blues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love his talking. I love the way he
Speaker 2: says children like. It just tickles the hell out of me.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of the good parts of Live in a
Speaker 2: fucking middle of Nowhere, Oklahoma. Like I do like that
Speaker 2: about him. And you know what I like.
Speaker 3: Even more, Margaret, is it the sponsors of the show. Yes,
Speaker 3: they're all great.
Speaker 2: They're all great, and they've all had the experience of
Speaker 2: having the coast in their Ford truck to save gas
Speaker 2: money too. Look, it's hard times for everyone, even large brands.
Speaker 3: They've probably driven stuff off of the road before.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, we could talk about what truck drivers are
Speaker 2: forced to do in order to make their times. Anyway,
Speaker 2: whatever we're done, Margaret, Yes, I do find it fun.
Speaker 2: How much of like his dust Bowl songs are very
Speaker 2: relatable to like punk life today. Yeah, totally hate the
Speaker 2: cops fucking coasting in my car, you know, camping out
Speaker 2: on the woods and shit like did.
Speaker 3: He do Big Rock Candy Mountains as this someone else.
Speaker 2: In my head? He did Big Rock Candy Mountains, but
Speaker 2: I didn't double check on that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he might have just sung it.
Speaker 2: I'm fairly certain I've heard a version of the song
Speaker 2: by him. Harry McClintock was the guy who I first
Speaker 2: recorded and wrote it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the first people I ever rode trains with.
Speaker 3: I haven't written trains nearly as much as going to
Speaker 3: make it sound like when I do these episodes, But
Speaker 3: was this focusing on him Ryan Harvey, And so that's
Speaker 3: why I have a lot of these associations with riding
Speaker 3: trains in particular. But we used to sit around and
Speaker 3: sing Big Rock Candy Mountains, but change the words very
Speaker 3: slightly to be like modern anarchy, and you didn't have
Speaker 3: to change much. And my favorite was and the Hens
Speaker 3: lay Vegan Eggs was my favorite clan.
Speaker 2: Ah that's good. Oh man, that's funny. Wait a second, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, police dogs can't sniff your weed. Yeah, totally
Speaker 2: so Wood. He had attained a degree of local fame
Speaker 2: by thirty eight thirty nine. Right nineteen thirty eight to
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine, he's doing reasonably well. In fact, he
Speaker 2: and Lefty Loo were so beloved that the radio station
Speaker 2: where they played received thousands of fan letters over the
Speaker 2: course of just a few months. They were doing okay
Speaker 2: in terms of money, but not great because again, he
Speaker 2: has a lot of fans, but they're broke ass dust
Speaker 2: bowl refugees, So he's not getting rich off these people, right,
Speaker 2: And he's also not very interested in getting rich. He
Speaker 2: seemed to feel like he had a responsibility to reach
Speaker 2: and provide relief for his people suffering in government work
Speaker 2: camps and embarrassed by their situation. From a write up
Speaker 2: by the Library of Congress quote he also sang at
Speaker 2: government camps that gave these people some measure of dignity, health,
Speaker 2: and safety. Joining him was Will Gear, an actor and
Speaker 2: ernest leftwinger, who helped would he better understand the injustice
Speaker 2: of an economic system that would allow Americans to live
Speaker 2: in such pa And this is where he starts getting
Speaker 2: pilled on socialism, right, and eventually becomes a communist. He
Speaker 2: will call himself a card carrying communist, as we'll talk
Speaker 2: about he never actually has a card, and he could.
Speaker 3: Have gotten one.
Speaker 2: But Wood, he's a little bit of a fabulous right
Speaker 2: He lies a little bit, not in a way that
Speaker 2: is massively meaningful, because he was a communist and very committed,
Speaker 2: but you know, he also he's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a tall tale spinner. So yeah, and you know it's
Speaker 2: to his credit that he's again, rather than focusing on
Speaker 2: making money off of this growing fame, he's giving a
Speaker 2: lot of free shows to provide relief for his people.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: He is very dedicated to his people in a way
Speaker 2: that I think is pretty admirable. Wood. He's popularity and
Speaker 2: by now fairly mature class consciousness started to make him
Speaker 2: more connections with the radical political set, including various left
Speaker 2: wing writers, journalists and socialists and communist activists. He began
Speaker 2: writing songs that spoke not just of left wing politics,
Speaker 2: but of the rage of the working and increasingly his
Speaker 2: own hatred of the people that maintained the system that
Speaker 2: kept his people down trodden. In nineteen thirty nine, he
Speaker 2: wrote one of his most famous songs, The Ballad of
Speaker 2: Pretty Boy Floyd, about an Oklahoma outlaw active in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen thirties who regular listeners will know was my cousin. Now.
Speaker 2: My great grandmother knew him as a girl. I grew
Speaker 2: up here in songs about him from her and my family. They,
Speaker 2: as I talk about, often very conservative people. But my
Speaker 2: great grandma particularly would always tell us, you know, you
Speaker 2: got outlaw blood in you, right, like it was something
Speaker 2: she was very proud of. In a way that's a
Speaker 2: little weird if you heard the way these people tended
Speaker 2: to talk about other like urban crime, right. Outlaw crime
Speaker 2: was very different to them. And I'm talking particularly my
Speaker 2: relatives who were survivors of the Great Depression. Outlaws are
Speaker 2: very different than modern criminals in their eyes. Right. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that's actually a fair, but their conception of
Speaker 2: these people is extremely different. And a big part of
Speaker 2: why is not just Woody, but songs like this that
Speaker 2: would he made. Who turned these guys who were bank
Speaker 2: robbers and gangsters into Robin hood figures, right, and Floyd
Speaker 2: was a fairly easy one to turn into a Robinhood character,
Speaker 2: because he kind of was at least a little bit
Speaker 2: that guy. There's a debateis to like how much of
Speaker 2: that sort of character was real and how much of
Speaker 2: it is kind of myth making that Floyd did, but
Speaker 2: some of it's certainly true. Floyd was born in Georgia,
Speaker 2: but had moved with his family to Aiken's, Oklahoma, in
Speaker 2: nineteen eleven, and his career as a criminal had started
Speaker 2: early when he was arrested at age eighteen for stealing
Speaker 2: three dollars and fifty cents worth of I think stamps
Speaker 2: from a post office. A few years later, he robbed
Speaker 2: a payroll in Saint Louis. So he goes from like
Speaker 2: stamp theft to armed robbery fairly quickly, and he does
Speaker 2: three years or so in prison for that. After he's released,
Speaker 2: he becomes a Kansas City area bank robber. One thing
Speaker 2: you get about Floyd is he that doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: have ever considered not being a criminal. Yeah, just immediately.
Speaker 3: Like, no, you know, he found this thing that sort
Speaker 3: of works. Yeah, well, because it didn't really work. That's
Speaker 3: the other weird thing about it. Huh.
Speaker 2: No, but he never really thinks about doing anything but
Speaker 2: being an outlaw, and he quickly gains He starts Robin
Speaker 2: Banks in Kansas City, and he earns the nickname pretty Boy,
Speaker 2: which eventually becomes pretty Boy Floyd because people thought he
Speaker 2: was very good looking. He hated this nickname. So he's
Speaker 2: gonna pull up a picture of the man. You can
Speaker 2: decide yourself how good looking he was.
Speaker 3: Is this a picture of Luigi?
Speaker 2: Americans do love their sexy criminals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, huh, not my type, but you know, the
Speaker 3: standards were not as high back. He's got like a
Speaker 3: soft gaze that nice, you know.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, prominent nose, good jaw line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not bad looking.
Speaker 2: Certainly, not nice hair. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's better looking at what he got. Three if
Speaker 3: we go to ab real quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is a hardened criminal. He killed at least
Speaker 2: one federal agent. He also killed the sheriff of Macintosh County.
Speaker 2: Other members of his gang killed several police officers and
Speaker 2: other criminals as well. There are multiple police officer murders
Speaker 2: that he is also a suspect in that we don't
Speaker 2: fully know did he kill all those cops, but he
Speaker 2: killed a number of cops you know, like he shoots
Speaker 2: a lot of police. In the early depression years, he
Speaker 2: took to robbing banks in Oklahoma, where in addition to
Speaker 2: taking money for himself, he would destroy mortgage documents in
Speaker 2: order to free poor farmers from debt.
Speaker 3: Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we don't fully know if this happened, right,
Speaker 2: It's not the kind of thing how would you prove it?
Speaker 2: For one thing, right, people told stories about it. I
Speaker 2: will tell you that everyone I knew in the towns
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma like where he had been active, and again
Speaker 2: including my family members who knew him, would tell you
Speaker 2: that this is what he did. I don't know. It's
Speaker 2: not provable. It's one of those things where it would
Speaker 2: make sense for him to do it, even if he
Speaker 2: was not really morally a Robin ho character, because if
Speaker 2: you're destroying people's mortgages, they will hide you from the cops. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, I could tie this back to Italy. In the
Speaker 3: eighteen seventies, Mala Testa and all these other anarchists in
Speaker 3: Italy in Benevento Province would go and their idea of
Speaker 3: how to do propaganda of the deed was to go
Speaker 3: and they'd march on these small towns and they would
Speaker 3: destroy the tax and ownership records and they were like
Speaker 3: and then everyone would come out and be like, you
Speaker 3: have freed us. The priest was like came out of
Speaker 3: the church and was like, these people have been sent
Speaker 3: by God to free us. And then they all got arrested.
Speaker 3: But then they actually only spent like a year in
Speaker 3: jail because everyone was going so crazy in Italy at
Speaker 3: that point that they were like, you know, we better
Speaker 3: just let these people out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't go too hard on these people. Everyone
Speaker 2: really likes them for so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that's like there is a specific point
Speaker 3: and if you're going to be a criminal, if you
Speaker 3: go hard enough and make everyone like you, there's a
Speaker 3: certain safety in that.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite Floyd's stories is that he had
Speaker 2: a gang and his gang decided they wanted to rob
Speaker 2: a bunch of people on like Black Wall Street at
Speaker 2: one point, which was very well armed, and Floyd was like, well,
Speaker 2: you guys can go do that. I'm not fucking with that,
Speaker 2: that seems like And sure enough they got fucking like
Speaker 2: shot to pieces. Yeah. So he was a smart man.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My other favorite story about him I mentioned in my
Speaker 2: high school ap English class that he was a cousin
Speaker 2: of mine, and my teacher, who was, you know, in
Speaker 2: her fifties or something, he said, he shot my grandfather
Speaker 2: in the leg.
Speaker 3: Oh did you get in that class, buddy.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: No, she was like, it's okay. Again, because she was
Speaker 2: raised in this same culture, she was like, it's okay.
Speaker 2: Like pretty boy said, no move, and my grandpa moved.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't kill him, he just shot him
Speaker 2: in the leg a little. Again, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: tolerance for these specific sorts of outlaws in that part
Speaker 2: of the South.
Speaker 3: Like it's that you probably wouldn't find today. Just to
Speaker 3: be clear, anyone listening that you probably wouldn't find today,
Speaker 3: you will not find today.
Speaker 2: So again, fascinating character. And yeah, I can't say how
Speaker 2: much of the whole robin Hood thing is true, but
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the robin Hood image that
Speaker 2: he has comes from Woody. Although it's also worth noting
Speaker 2: he is part of why it takes so long for
Speaker 2: him to get caught, because he's like one of the
Speaker 2: last gangsters to get caught and killed by the government.
Speaker 2: His death is generally agreed to have heralded the end
Speaker 2: of the gangster era. Huh, yeah, because I think thirty
Speaker 2: four is when he's gunned down, and like there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stories of him like hiding with little old
Speaker 2: ladies and lying to the cops. And then when he
Speaker 2: like leaves, there's one hundred dollars bill under the plate
Speaker 2: where she'd fed him dinner or something like that. So
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty nine, you know, about five years after
Speaker 2: his death, when memories of this guy are still very strong,
Speaker 2: Woody writes the song that is very much responsible for
Speaker 2: crystallizing this image of pretty Boy Floyd as this kind
Speaker 2: of like banded outlaw king of the American South. And
Speaker 2: we're just going to listen to that song because it's
Speaker 2: Christmas and it's a song about my cousin.
Speaker 5: Hell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you'll gather around me, children, a story I
Speaker 4: will tell about perty Boy Floyd and Outlaw Oklahoma and
Speaker 4: you him. Well. It was in the town of Shawnee
Speaker 4: Saturday afternoon, his wife beside him in his wagon as
Speaker 4: into town may road. Baron Deputy Shirt approached him in
Speaker 4: a manner rather rude, vulgar words of anger, and his wife,
Speaker 4: she overheard pretty Boy grabbed a log chain and the
Speaker 4: deputy grabbed his gun. In the fight that followed, he
Speaker 4: laid that deputy down. Then he took to the tree
Speaker 4: and timber to live alive. Of shame. Every crime in
Speaker 4: Oklahoma was added to his name. But a mini a
Speaker 4: starving farmer. The same old story told how the outlaw
Speaker 4: paid their mortgage and saved their little holes. Others tell
Speaker 4: you about a stranger that comes to bag a meal.
Speaker 4: Underneath his napkin left a thousand dollars bills. It was
Speaker 4: in Oakland, a hord city. It was on a Christmas day.
Speaker 4: There was a whole car load of groceries come with
Speaker 4: a note to see. Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
Speaker 4: you say that I'm a thief. Here's a Christmas dinner
Speaker 4: for the family's on relief. Yes, it is through this
Speaker 4: world I've wondered. I've seen lots of money men. Some
Speaker 4: will rob you with a six gun and some with
Speaker 4: a fountain pen. And is through your life if you travel, Yes,
Speaker 4: it's through your life you roll. You will never see
Speaker 4: an outlaw drive family frumler hole.
Speaker 2: I love the way that song ends. Yeah, and some
Speaker 2: will rob you with a six gun and some with
Speaker 2: a fountain pen.
Speaker 3: That's a lot I hear all over the place.
Speaker 2: It's it's a great fuck. I mean, this is one
Speaker 2: of his more famous songs. Yeah, but it's a damn
Speaker 2: good line.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that thorough.
Speaker 2: I also like that. Look, I've seen a lot of outlaws.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I'm not defending the things they've done,
Speaker 2: But it's not the outlaws I see forcing people to
Speaker 2: be homeless, you know, that's the bands. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So I disagree with my family about a lot, but
Speaker 2: our shared pride in our cop killing ancestor is not
Speaker 2: one of those things.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, as is often the case for people who come
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles for the music industry, would he wound
Speaker 2: up having to take his family back home to Texas
Speaker 2: and then lee them again to move to New York
Speaker 2: City in nineteen forty, chasing what had become for him
Speaker 2: a dream of folk stardom. By this point, he'd become
Speaker 2: a little bit of a legend, enough that the Library
Speaker 2: of Congress had him sit down and record his dust
Speaker 2: Bowl songs for posterity. He laid down tracks with Pete
Speaker 2: Seeger and became an influential part of the urban folk
Speaker 2: revival of the time. In a letter to Alan Lomax,
Speaker 2: another influential pillar of the urban folk revival. He described
Speaker 2: his thoughts on what folk music ought to be. And
Speaker 2: I'm interested for your thoughts on this, Margaret Ken. A
Speaker 2: folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it.
Speaker 2: Or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is,
Speaker 2: or who's out of work and where the job is,
Speaker 2: or who's broke and where the money is, or who's
Speaker 2: carrying a gun and where the piece is. That's folklore,
Speaker 2: and folks made it up because they've seen that the
Speaker 2: politicians couldn't find nothing to fix or nobody to feed
Speaker 2: or give a job a work.
Speaker 3: That's good. That's It's so interesting to me because I
Speaker 3: if you'd say folk music in different places, you mean
Speaker 3: something so completely different. Right, American folk music is this
Speaker 3: like Woody Guthrie kind of vibe thing, whereasn't almost any
Speaker 3: other country. You're looking at stuff that's a little bit
Speaker 3: more like technically interesting, like musically yes, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of thoughts about like folk and
Speaker 3: folk instrumentation and music and all that, but I think
Speaker 3: what he's describing is great and specifically that thing that
Speaker 3: it's just like this is the stuff that people make up,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not fancy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also how poor people without really any
Speaker 2: other idea of how to have a voice, talk about
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, the kind of issues that
Speaker 2: today we ascribe to, like the job of journalists, right,
Speaker 2: who was hungry and where their mouth is? Who's carrying
Speaker 2: a gun and where the piece is?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally it's gossip.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's gossip and its agitation.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: You look at a lot of folk songs and a
Speaker 2: lot of folks stories, and that's the first safe place
Speaker 2: to attack the wealthy and the powerful, right, totally a
Speaker 2: little bit, you know, totally oftentimes. You know, there's also
Speaker 2: plenty of folk stuff that reinforces some of those things,
Speaker 2: but it is where you see a lot of subversive stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's the thing about like populist and
Speaker 3: popular stuff, as it can really go either way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's like yeah, still on some fundamental level. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, it's worth spending some time on just how
Speaker 2: radically folk music changes, as you noted, in other countries,
Speaker 2: it's very different. And part of why it's different in
Speaker 2: the US is Woody Guthrie. He changes what folk music
Speaker 2: is in the United States in a fundamental way. In
Speaker 2: an article for The New Yorker, David Hajdou writes, quote,
Speaker 2: folk music, including country, blues and other vernacular styles, was
Speaker 2: supposed to be anonymous, a collective art passed along Worley,
Speaker 2: from singer to singer, generation to generation, sometimes culture to culture.
Speaker 2: From the vantage point of today, when kids with their
Speaker 2: first guitar start writing songs before they learn to play
Speaker 2: other tunes, it is difficult to process how exceptional it
Speaker 2: was for a folk artist such as Woody Guthrie to
Speaker 2: have created a vast repertoire of deeply idiosyncratic works. Many Tenpanaley,
Speaker 2: Broadway and Hollywood songwriters of the thirties and earlier were
Speaker 2: as skilled and prolific as Guthrie, but they were working
Speaker 2: in a different vein writing to order for professional singers.
Speaker 2: Guthrie brought the authorial imperative to vernacular music in America.
Speaker 2: And I think that's also very interesting.
Speaker 3: Just to keep going with all the weird family connections,
Speaker 3: My great grandfather was a ten panale songwriter, and yeah,
Speaker 3: he just wrote. He wrote music that he didn't own
Speaker 3: the copyright to. He wrote the b sides for more
Speaker 3: popular musicians.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. I'm not surprised
Speaker 2: that that's your family connection. Yeah. So, by this point
Speaker 2: in time, Woody was what you would call a left
Speaker 2: wing radical, although not again a card carrying one. He
Speaker 2: played benefits for and was associated with the American Communist Party,
Speaker 2: but he never got around adjoining and you'll find several
Speaker 2: different theories as to why. The leading one that you'll
Speaker 2: hear is that he liked his independence a little too
Speaker 2: much to be a joiner. Now this sounds good, especially
Speaker 2: to people like you and me, but it leaves out
Speaker 2: a crucial fact, which is that wood He was his
Speaker 2: era's equivalent of like a Tanky right totally. I mean,
Speaker 2: it also leaves out the fact that he vocally took
Speaker 2: claim to have a card like claimed to be a
Speaker 2: member of the party right, and that it was the
Speaker 2: best thing he'd done, which he hadn't. Again, he wasn't
Speaker 2: immune to the worst impulses if the American left. During
Speaker 2: this period. He had been enthusiastic about FDR early on,
Speaker 2: but once the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was signed and the
Speaker 2: USSR locked into a treaty with the Nazis, he attacked
Speaker 2: Roosevelt as Quote Churchill's lapdog for his anti Nazi stance
Speaker 2: in support of Great Britain during the early months of
Speaker 2: the war. He argued that the developing World War was
Speaker 2: a capitalist fraud. When Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: invaded Poland together, Guthrie supported Stalin to an extent and
Speaker 2: with such vociferousness that biographer Will Kaufman called it shocking.
Speaker 2: In ramblin Man, Ed Craig goes into more detail about
Speaker 2: a left wing anti war song he wrote called why
Speaker 2: do You Stand There in the Rain, based on the
Speaker 2: title of a New York Post article, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to read from that section from ramblin Man here. Just
Speaker 2: days before, some six thousand delegates of the American Youth
Speaker 2: Congress had gathered in Washington to advocate jobs in peace.
Speaker 2: At the invitation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the delegates
Speaker 2: gathered in front of the south portico of the White
Speaker 2: House and a cold drizzle to listen to a half
Speaker 2: hour speech by the President. Fdr threw down the gauntlet,
Speaker 2: aware that the Young Communist League had taken firm grip
Speaker 2: on the once broadly based Popular Front ayc. The Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: as everyone who has the courage to face the fact knows,
Speaker 2: is run by a dictatorship, and as absolute as any
Speaker 2: dictatorship in the world. It has allied itself with another dictatorship,
Speaker 2: and has invaded a neighbor, Finland, so infinitesimally small that
Speaker 2: it could do no conceivable harm to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: a neighbor which seeks only to live in peace as
Speaker 2: a democracy, and a liberal, forward looking democracy. At that
Speaker 2: Roosevelt heard the booze and hisses through the cold rain.
Speaker 2: People's World columnist, would he Gothrie knew where he stood?
Speaker 2: He chided the president and song. Now the guns in
Speaker 2: Europe roar as they have so oft before, and the
Speaker 2: warlords play the same old game again. They butcher and
Speaker 2: they kill. Uncle Sam foots the bill with his own
Speaker 2: dear children, standing in the rain? Why do you stand
Speaker 2: there in the rain? Why do you stand there in
Speaker 2: the rain. He's a strange carrying on the White House
Speaker 2: Capital lawn. Tell me, why do you stand there in
Speaker 2: the rain? Then the President's voice did ring. Why this
Speaker 2: is the silliest thing I have heard in all my
Speaker 2: fifty eight years of life. But it just stands to reason,
Speaker 2: as he passes another season, he'll be smarter by the
Speaker 2: time he's fifty nine. So he's being like real shitty
Speaker 2: to Roosevelt there, specifically about his support of England in
Speaker 2: the war that is developing, and very defensive of the
Speaker 2: USSR and invading a much smaller neighbor in invading Poland.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things where this is both
Speaker 2: like horrifying given what we know happens, you have to
Speaker 2: to extent while still saying he was wrong, look at
Speaker 2: his level of knowledge and what had actually happened previously.
Speaker 2: World War One was the touchstone here. And in World
Speaker 2: War One the US did enable further butchering right, like
Speaker 2: we were arming and profiting off of a hideous war
Speaker 2: that we had no business sticking our noses into. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's pissed about that. It's also there's a lot
Speaker 2: less information about what was going on in the Soviet
Speaker 2: you now, I will also say more than enough that
Speaker 2: he should have known, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the internationalist newspaper stuff was pretty Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they were better at knowing what was going on
Speaker 3: around the world than like a modern leftist today. But
Speaker 3: he's holding the party line. They got told very specifically, like,
Speaker 3: I mean, is the problem with the common tern in
Speaker 3: the communist international, Yes, is that someone in the American
Speaker 3: Communist Party during this era is literally taking orders from Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's like one of the parts that we don't
Speaker 3: want to talk about with the Red scare, because the
Speaker 3: Red scare is bad, right, Yeah, But when they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: these foreign agents acting under a foreign national they were.
Speaker 2: There was literally like they were taking direct like propaganda,
Speaker 2: direct orders like from Moscow, well not from Moscow, but
Speaker 2: like from the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. And
Speaker 2: they were really wrong on some things as a result
Speaker 2: of that, because it turns out Hitler's not an ally
Speaker 2: of international communism. It turns out now yeah, no, no,
Speaker 2: that goes very badly, very quickly. Yeah, And ye know
Speaker 2: what he had been had been describing himself as an
Speaker 2: anti fascist at this point. But also I think he
Speaker 2: probably would have said that like, well, you know, the
Speaker 2: Communist Party knows its business if they think that's what
Speaker 2: they've got to do to secure themselves with matters is
Speaker 2: you know, the survival of communism, which you know, at
Speaker 2: that point had weathered a number of attacks from the
Speaker 2: international capitalist community, like during the Russian Civil War. And
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that because I think that's a good argument.
Speaker 2: I'm saying I think that's he would have made. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty firmly on the stance of Stalin Bat and the
Speaker 2: Malotov Ribbentrop packed inexcusable. Yeah, But also I always emphasize
Speaker 2: inexcusable on behalf of the Soviet leadership. You know, I've
Speaker 2: got nothing but respect for the guys who wound up
Speaker 2: dying by the millions to stop the Nazis, absolutely totally
Speaker 2: and the right those guys, yeah, and ladies. So it
Speaker 2: is impossible to look at this situation without saying commonalities
Speaker 2: between more modern failures of the left to condemn dictators
Speaker 2: seen as anti imperialist for very flawed reasons. I might
Speaker 2: suggest that we also not forget at the time one
Speaker 2: of the complicating factors here is how the US government
Speaker 2: deals with what it considers communism and what things it
Speaker 2: considers communism, right, because that's important too. What he had
Speaker 2: an extensive FBI file, And in nineteen forty one, after
Speaker 2: he joined the Merchant Marine, one of his shipmates was
Speaker 2: cited as saying, would he quote followed the Communist Party
Speaker 2: line and that they were very pro Russian and advocated
Speaker 2: racial intermarriage. So again that is what the guy who
Speaker 2: informs on him and the FBI considers evidence of his
Speaker 2: Communist sympathies is he thinks that black people and white
Speaker 2: people should be able to get married. So keep that
Speaker 2: in mind too.
Speaker 3: The Communist Party was absolutely right about racial politics in
Speaker 3: the United States, Yes, one hundred percent, And they were
Speaker 3: one of the only non black organization, it was actually
Speaker 3: heavily black, but one of the only not majority black
Speaker 3: organizations that was right about this.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And so like when we talk about like
Speaker 2: criticizing him, don't leave out the fact that he's he's
Speaker 2: also very much correct about this right totally. After the war,
Speaker 2: he would be accused by the California State Senate's far
Speaker 2: right Committee on un American Activities for being Joe Stalin's
Speaker 2: California mouthpiece, which wasn't one point true, but also for
Speaker 2: being a member of a factionalist sabotage group, which was absurd.
Speaker 2: What he never sought or attempted to do anything but
Speaker 2: sing songs and write articles for socialist papers. He was
Speaker 2: not sabotaging anything.
Speaker 3: I'm a feeling the reason he didn't get a card
Speaker 3: is he was like, I don't want to be on
Speaker 3: that list.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe, yeah, I mean that may have been at
Speaker 2: I think he also just might have been too lazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't want to pay the thiees whatever.
Speaker 2: He's an artist, he's not good at signing papers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Marjorie Guthrie, who is his second wife, he starts a
Speaker 2: family with her after he divorces his first wife Mary
Speaker 2: and moves to Coney Island, sums things up this way.
Speaker 2: I don't know what happened prior to my time, but
Speaker 2: from my time in Coney Island he was not welcomed
Speaker 2: by the party because he didn't want to follow a
Speaker 2: party line. You couldn't tell Woody what to think, and
Speaker 2: so we were not members of the party in Coney Island.
Speaker 2: And again I include that because she was his wife,
Speaker 2: she knew him. But also that isn't entirely true, because
Speaker 2: he certainly followed the party line on some very fucked
Speaker 2: up things.
Speaker 3: But actually that's still like even when we talk about
Speaker 3: the way that people have arcs, right, one of the
Speaker 3: things I've read a lot. I've read a lot about
Speaker 3: the UK Communists at this era where a lot of
Speaker 3: the Communists left the Communist Party once they realized that
Speaker 3: they were just being mouthpieces for Stalin.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, I mean, and again, there is
Speaker 2: a degree to which the fact that there's so much
Speaker 2: disinformation being pumped out about the Soviet and there's so
Speaker 2: much bad like its certainly more reasonable then for someone
Speaker 2: to doubt a lot of the official narratives coming out
Speaker 2: and to doubt a lot of the information that makes
Speaker 2: Stalin look bad from their position in the United States.
Speaker 2: Right again, I think enough that a man is obviously intelligent,
Speaker 2: as Woody should have been better informed. But he's not
Speaker 2: the only one who makes this mistake and it's a
Speaker 2: more understandable mistake then than it is now. As what
Speaker 2: I'll say, that's without forgiving it, you know. So, yeah, however,
Speaker 2: you want to mark this down morally for Woody, his
Speaker 2: U the US shouldn't be getting into this capitalist war.
Speaker 2: They're all cooking this World War two thing up. That
Speaker 2: attitude ends for Woody. On June twenty second, nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: when Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union, this is Operation Barbarossa.
Speaker 2: Would he ran to his friend Pete Seeger after this
Speaker 2: like breaks and told him, well, I guess we're not
Speaker 2: going to be singing any more of them peace songs.
Speaker 2: Woody was not the only man forced to change his
Speaker 2: tune rapidly due to world events.
Speaker 3: Winston Churchill anyway, yeah, yeah, well done, well done.
Speaker 2: Winston Churchill, who was one of the world's loudest anti communists,
Speaker 2: was forced by sheer necessity to make temporary amends and
Speaker 2: even express support for the cause of Soviet soldiers. When
Speaker 2: Woody heard this, he told a friend Churchill's flip flopped.
Speaker 2: We got a flip flop too. You know who doesn't
Speaker 2: flip flop though, Margaret.
Speaker 3: The consistency with which our sponsors, yes, high quality goods
Speaker 3: and services.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Our sponsors have never once changed
Speaker 2: their opinion, which is why today, tomorrow and forever they
Speaker 2: advise you to vote Millard Fillmore for president. We're back.
Speaker 2: Our sponsors are all old hair tonics from the eighteen hundreds. Anyway,
Speaker 2: vote Fillmore. Much of the Woody that we know, the
Speaker 2: famous Woody Guthrie. You know, you brought up as soon
Speaker 2: as I said what do you know of him? That
Speaker 2: the picture of him with a guitar, that has a
Speaker 2: this machine kills fascist sticker slapped across it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the way, that sticker was like put out by
Speaker 2: the US government.
Speaker 3: Huh that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a proper game, strange bedfilm and piece
Speaker 2: of prop. There were a lot of machines we were
Speaker 2: using to kill fascists, perfectly and reasonable to put some
Speaker 2: stickers on.
Speaker 3: Wait did they Oh that was like a the government
Speaker 3: was putting that on machines to raise morale. And he
Speaker 3: took one of those and was like, I'm putting this
Speaker 3: on my guitar.
Speaker 2: I think it's something like that. I read it in
Speaker 2: that article and I think La Weekly by the fellow
Speaker 2: who was writing about like Woody's history with racism, was
Speaker 2: like this, you know, this thing was like a product
Speaker 2: of the government that he has.
Speaker 3: That makes so much sense. I never quite understood that.
Speaker 3: I always really liked though, when people carve into their ak's,
Speaker 3: wouldn't stock this machine makes folk music?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been some good ones of that coming out
Speaker 2: of Syria.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he changes his opinion very rapidly, and once the
Speaker 2: Nazis invade the USSR, he starts getting much more patriotic.
Speaker 2: And again he had been making anti Nazi music and
Speaker 2: been anti Nazi prior to this. And if you're saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's incoherent for him to be against the war, and
Speaker 2: you know whatnot, Yes, lots of people have incoherent politics,
Speaker 2: but his politics get a lot more cohesive after Operation Barbarossa.
Speaker 2: An article for Oklahoma History dot Org notes in New York,
Speaker 2: he appeared on numerous popular radio shows before joining the
Speaker 2: Merchant Marines with Cisco Houston. During World War Two, Guthrie
Speaker 2: was on three torpedoed ships and the day Germany surrendered,
Speaker 2: he was drafted into the US Army.
Speaker 3: Like he was on ships that were hit by torpedes three.
Speaker 2: Is and the Merchant Marine is effectively a part of
Speaker 2: the military during a war. Right, he is a combat veteran. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's like he's on three ships that
Speaker 2: get hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now he's not in the army very long. It basically
Speaker 2: immediately gets out because the war ends. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: does like his bit, you know, he is not when
Speaker 2: we play songs of his where he's talking about wanting
Speaker 2: to fight the fascists, he goes and does it. You know,
Speaker 2: he is doing an important, dangerous job where he gets
Speaker 2: shot at so you cannot. Yeah, he's very willing to
Speaker 2: put his skin in the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one blown up ship. If you quit after one
Speaker 3: blown up ship, no one's mad you did.
Speaker 2: Nobody will call you a coward. Yeah, I don't know that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so, from late nineteen forty one to the end
Speaker 2: of the war, Woody Guthrie wrote several iconic anti fascist anthems,
Speaker 2: including Ruben James, about a US destroyer that was torpedoed
Speaker 2: and sunk by the Nazis in nineteen forty one. As
Speaker 2: you might expect from Woody and the kind of songs
Speaker 2: he wrote, this song focused on the lives and deaths
Speaker 2: of normal men at war. The refrain went, tell me
Speaker 2: what was their names? Tell me what was their names?
Speaker 2: Did you have a friend on that? Good Ruben James.
Speaker 2: It's a good song. But if you want my personal
Speaker 2: favorite war years Woody Guthrie song, nothing beats this particular banger,
Speaker 2: soph He's gonna put it up now for the very boil.
Speaker 4: We'll show these fascist what a couple of hill billies
Speaker 4: can do. Wow.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm gonna tell you, fascist, you may be surprised
Speaker 6: people in this world are getting organized.
Speaker 4: You're bound to lose you Fascist, Found.
Speaker 5: To lose WHOA all you Fascist? Last, all you Fascist? Yes,
Speaker 5: all fascist? Bound you fascist. There's people of every nation marchings.
Speaker 6: Find the side marching across the hills where a many
Speaker 6: of fascists died.
Speaker 4: You're bound to lose you Fascist. Bound to.
Speaker 7: Ah banger music.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 2: It's a real banger.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that immensely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of my favorites. So near the end of
Speaker 2: Woody's wartime experiences, he would record the first official version
Speaker 2: of a song that he'd been working on since nineteen
Speaker 2: forty This Land Is Your Land, which would go on
Speaker 2: to be undoubtedly his most famous work of music. It
Speaker 2: is definitely the one Woody Guthrie song everyone's fucking heard like.
Speaker 2: You can't get through school without hearing this Land is
Speaker 2: Your Land.
Speaker 3: So easily recuperated.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in the decades since nineteen forty four, it's
Speaker 2: also been criticized for what many people interpret as an
Speaker 2: air of imperialism and support for manifest destiny, which is
Speaker 2: definitely present in the version of the song that is
Speaker 2: commonly sung. Given this, I think it's interesting to actually
Speaker 2: look into why wood he wrote the song and what
Speaker 2: its original lyrics were This Land is Your Land was
Speaker 2: initially something of a folk music dis track. It was
Speaker 2: a response to Irving Berlin's God Bless America. This is
Speaker 2: a song Berlin wrote in nineteen eighteen, after being drafted
Speaker 2: and re released in nineteen forty one, is something of
Speaker 2: a cash grap The lyrics if you aren't familiar, go
Speaker 2: like this, God bless America, Land that I love, Stand
Speaker 2: beside her and guide her through the night with a
Speaker 2: light from above. Woody fucking hated this song, and it's
Speaker 2: good he did because it's a fucking dogshit song. He
Speaker 2: considered it far too sweet, a hymn for a nation
Speaker 2: that had just sent millions of its citizen and do
Speaker 2: a depression. This Land is Your Land was meant to
Speaker 2: be a retort discussing the real America that Irving had
Speaker 2: tried to conceal. The original title was God Bless America
Speaker 2: for Me. Joe Riley writes of this first version of
Speaker 2: the song, quote, it was more of a question than affirmation.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was a sarcastic retort. Woody later changed
Speaker 2: the refrain to this land was made for you and me,
Speaker 2: and the song to this Land is Your Land the
Speaker 2: verses he ultimately emitted from the final draft of the
Speaker 2: song include this banger there was a big high wall
Speaker 2: there that tried to stop me. The sign was painted
Speaker 2: said private property, but on the backside it didn't say nothing.
Speaker 2: This land was made for you and me, and the
Speaker 2: squares of the city and the shadow of the steeple
Speaker 2: near the relief office. I see my people, and some
Speaker 2: are a grumblin and some are wondering if this land
Speaker 2: still made for you and me. And that's a banger
Speaker 2: that's very much not an imperialist song. That's more him
Speaker 2: talking about like this, the people that this country to
Speaker 2: be four are the ones being harmed by the system
Speaker 2: that governs it, right, Like that's the original point of
Speaker 2: the song, that said, this is not a case of
Speaker 2: it being recuperated by someone else who changes the lyrics
Speaker 2: because they'd think that they can tweak it. They don't
Speaker 2: like Woody's original version. Woody changes it right, and he
Speaker 2: changes it. He removes that verse about the relief office
Speaker 2: because late in the war he decided it was too pessimistic,
Speaker 2: and he replaces it with lines like from the redwood
Speaker 2: forest to the Gulf stream waters, this land was made
Speaker 2: for you and me, which is not all that different
Speaker 2: from like some of the stuff Irving had been. Totally right,
Speaker 2: The song becomes a massive hit. It is practically a
Speaker 2: new national anthem, and Woody does not initially bother to
Speaker 2: copyright it because this is you know, that's not uncommon
Speaker 2: for him, right, He generally neglected to do that. Alas
Speaker 2: for Woody, the post war optimism faded quickly, I mean,
Speaker 2: and it so the first horrible thing that happens to
Speaker 2: Woody after the war, because things go downhill for him quickly.
Speaker 2: In February of nineteen four, there is an electrical fire
Speaker 2: in his home and his little girl, Kathy Ann dies.
Speaker 2: Oh god, he has bad luck with fire, Like I said,
Speaker 2: he a horrible luck with fire. Now he and Marjorie
Speaker 2: have three other kids. But yeah, like that's obviously really
Speaker 2: fucks him up. And like that same year forty seven,
Speaker 2: and then in forty eight he gets repeatedly attacked as
Speaker 2: a communist, both in the State Committee of un American
Speaker 2: Activities in California and in the House of Representatives Committee
Speaker 2: on American Activities. Now they were attacking him for being
Speaker 2: a communist, and he was, but he was not an American.
Speaker 2: No one was more American than Wood. He fucking Guthrie right.
Speaker 2: He suffers as a result of this, he gets blacklisted.
Speaker 2: He had written an autobiographical novel at this point called
Speaker 2: Bound for Glory that had been set to be turned
Speaker 2: into a major Hollywood production, but that deal and others
Speaker 2: like it, fell apart as unions were forced to take
Speaker 2: anti communist stances in this new, more paranoid era. Wood
Speaker 2: he stopped getting hired to play the events that had
Speaker 2: largely supplemented his income, rather than fold as many did
Speaker 2: ounce the things that he believed would. He spoke out
Speaker 2: constantly against j Edgar Hoover, writing at one point quote
Speaker 2: the roaches crawl across my page tonight and make a
Speaker 2: noise that makes more sense than all that. Hoover writes,
Speaker 2: He's a good bar. He became less dogmatic on the
Speaker 2: Moscow line as well, although he never stops being a communist.
Speaker 2: He starts writing that his goal was to quote get
Speaker 2: this thing called socialism nailed and hammered up just as
Speaker 2: quickly as he can, and praises Eugene V. Debs, former
Speaker 2: chairman of the Socialist Party, as quote a peer cross
Speaker 2: between Jesus Christ and Abe Lincoln, which again is not
Speaker 2: really something that the Moscow Party once, you say. Despite
Speaker 2: the consequences to his career, he continues to seek and
Speaker 2: sing his mind. Quote. Fascism is being afraid. Fascism is
Speaker 2: fear bossing you. Fascism is worse than all of these things.
Speaker 2: And fascism is more closer to you than I can
Speaker 2: make you. See, I'm trying to wake you up and
Speaker 2: tell you that you're sleeping with something ten times more
Speaker 2: dangerous thing and a poison fang snake in your bed.
Speaker 2: If fascism does come, and if it does kill me,
Speaker 2: well then you add me alone onto the hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions which fascism has already dusted under. And it don't
Speaker 2: scare me so very much.
Speaker 3: That rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like good line.
Speaker 3: All right, it might kill me, it's killed millions of
Speaker 3: people before, so it will be in good company.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's hard. I like that.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's hard. And this is, unfortunately, Margaret, where the
Speaker 2: story gets awkward again.
Speaker 3: No, is he gonna heel turn again? He keeps dancing.
Speaker 2: It's more complicated than a heel turn. He's about to
Speaker 2: do a bad thing. There's a mitigating factor that's pretty significant. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: but it's a pretty bad thing. Woody is at this
Speaker 2: point and always on the verge of being broke, but
Speaker 2: also a famous and influential musician. And we know what
Speaker 2: comes with that, right, which is the temptation to be
Speaker 2: a sex pest.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know Woody does not commit like rape,
Speaker 2: but he does sexually harass someone very badly. And this
Speaker 2: is a very ugly story. The gist of it is
Speaker 2: that things with his second wife, Marjorie go downhill as
Speaker 2: his career does. She is the family money maker. She
Speaker 2: actually makes a very good living teaching dancing. She's an
Speaker 2: extremely accomplished dancer, and his career is not doing well.
Speaker 2: This leads to fighting, and Woody eventually moves out in
Speaker 2: Rinse a room for himself. He starts writing letters to
Speaker 2: his old music partner, Lefty Loo's sister. She is twenty
Speaker 2: eight years old he is thirty six, so they're not
Speaker 2: like crazy far apart. But the bigger issue is she
Speaker 2: had never insinuated that she was into him, right, he
Speaker 2: is just writing her letters about wanting to fuck her
Speaker 2: apropos of nothing.
Speaker 3: Oh fuck uh huh.
Speaker 2: Now, wood he had just kind of assumed that because
Speaker 2: she like they knew each other, right, they were like friendly,
Speaker 2: But she gets divorced, and he just kind of assumes,
Speaker 2: while I'm getting divorced too, that must mean she wants
Speaker 2: to fuck, right, and his letters to her take on
Speaker 2: an air of obsession. He writes at least twelve long
Speaker 2: letters suggesting they move out together, hit the road, and
Speaker 2: start having sex. These letters include long, rambling descriptions of
Speaker 2: the kinds of sex, what he wanted to have, and more.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote from ramblin Man here. Into
Speaker 2: the envelopes Guthrie stuffed pages torn from New York's tabloids
Speaker 2: with muddy magenta circle slathered around stories of grisly murders.
Speaker 2: The packets, sometimes two or three a week, frightened Mary
Speaker 2: Ruth by their intensity, the sexual proposals, and the suggestion
Speaker 2: of violence. She drove to Los Angeles to show them
Speaker 2: to her sister, who knew Guthrie best of all. You
Speaker 2: have no idea how horrible it was, her older sister,
Speaker 2: Maxine said. She in turn called the police. Now the
Speaker 2: police get involved because they think Woody might be a
Speaker 2: budding serial killer, and given the kind of stuff he's
Speaker 2: sending not an unreasonable thing to be afraid of, and
Speaker 2: given the fact that the FEDS are hounding him, I
Speaker 2: get why Woody is like, this is them going after
Speaker 2: me for my politics, but it really isn't. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: writing very upsetting things. Now there's another part to this
Speaker 2: story which does not make the things he's writing less
Speaker 2: fuck up or upsetting. But he is losing his mind. Okay,
Speaker 2: he is losing his mind in a degree that is
Speaker 2: very soon to be clinically diagnosed. Right in episode one,
Speaker 2: I mentioned that Woody's mother went insane when he was
Speaker 2: quite young and was institutionalized.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This traumatized him and at the time we didn't have
Speaker 2: an explanation for what she was going for. They just
Speaker 2: said madness. Right, we now know what she had because
Speaker 2: Woody has it, and it's diagnosable by the time he
Speaker 2: gets it, and it's called Huntington's disease. Yeah, his mom
Speaker 2: and Woody gets it, and he is starting to suffer
Speaker 2: the effects of Huntington's by the late forties. This is
Speaker 2: a neurodegenerative disorder that Huntington's Disease News describes as characterized
Speaker 2: by uncontrolled movements, loss of cognitive ability and psychiatric problems.
Speaker 2: The middle stages of the illness are associated with psychosis.
Speaker 2: Some patients experienced delusions which they tend to be convinced
Speaker 2: are accurate. And it also comes with these like sort
Speaker 2: of obsessive delusions, right, which might explain the whole him
Speaker 2: thinking that this was something that was reciprocated.
Speaker 3: Right, So this isn't a heel turn. This is just
Speaker 3: a degeneration.
Speaker 2: This is just a this is a very tragic degeneration, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know how again you want to
Speaker 2: parse it up morally, but like he is diagnosed, like
Speaker 2: he is losing his mind. He is going to spend
Speaker 2: most of the rest of his life in an institution.
Speaker 2: So this is not just a case of like a
Speaker 2: powerful man in music being a sex pest, right, totally
Speaker 2: a man who was not like this before so far
Speaker 2: as we know, absolutely declining in becoming like increasingly delusional.
Speaker 3: And like Famous Man's sex pesting is fans say, famous
Speaker 3: Man's sex pestiing is like or everyone in your orbit
Speaker 3: you just assume they want to fuck you, which I
Speaker 3: guess he's like doing to this. No, Yeah, the degeneration thing,
Speaker 3: that just makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, he'd probably always had a crush on her,
Speaker 2: and then this, like he becomes convinced that there is
Speaker 2: something going on there that there's not right.
Speaker 3: But the fact that it was out of the blue
Speaker 3: to her means that he probably kept his fucking mouth
Speaker 3: shut about the fact that he a crush on her.
Speaker 2: One would assume, right, So it's not great. He has
Speaker 2: ultimately charged in nineteen forty nine with sending him scene
Speaker 2: material through the mail. He avoids prison time, but is
Speaker 2: sentenced to therapy, and he and his therapist do not
Speaker 2: have a good relationship. His therapist does not like him,
Speaker 2: but he's not diagnosed with anything quite yet, so his
Speaker 2: therapist is just like, he's kind of an asshole, which
Speaker 2: I can't blame the therapist for because he's being an
Speaker 2: asshole if you don't know the mitigating factor of the
Speaker 2: family mental illness that destroyed his mother and is destroying
Speaker 2: him Wood. He eventually refuses court mandated therapy, and his
Speaker 2: lawyer manages to narrowly get him out of a six
Speaker 2: month sentence. His lawyer who is at one of his shipmates. Right,
Speaker 2: he and this guy are torpedo together, and this lawyer,
Speaker 2: who's a very good friend who was like, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to let my war buddy go to a fucking jail. Wood,
Speaker 2: he was mostly angry when his sentence gets like cut off.
Speaker 2: He's kind of pissed because he had been planning a
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve show for the inmates that he doesn't get
Speaker 2: to do now, So there's still that piece of him
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: By the mid nineteen fifties, Wood, he was disabled with
Speaker 2: Huntington's badly enough that his second wife, Marjorie, who again
Speaker 2: he has separated from, had to take charge of his affairs.
Speaker 2: And it does say something that this person who he
Speaker 2: was not nice to at the end, had enough affection
Speaker 2: for him still that she makes sure he's taken care of, right,
Speaker 2: which included she registers a copyright for this Land is
Speaker 2: Your Land for the first time, right, and for a
Speaker 2: number of his other songs. And she's doing that because like,
Speaker 2: we're going to need some way of taking care of him,
Speaker 2: you know, And this makes sense, right. One of the
Speaker 2: fun side effects of this is that his family is
Speaker 2: going to wind up in a lawsuit with Donald Trump
Speaker 2: about this Land is Your Land because Trump kept trying
Speaker 2: to play it. It is now in the public domain
Speaker 2: but it wasn't for a while. So that same year,
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six, he was involuntarily committed to Greystone Park,
Speaker 2: a New Jersey mental institution. Over the next five years,
Speaker 2: he lost the ability to play music or even to type.
Speaker 2: But and again this really says something about the amount
Speaker 2: of love there was still for him. He is not
Speaker 2: cut off or alone. His family visits him regularly. They
Speaker 2: take him out and he stays with them for weekends
Speaker 2: and holidays. He's taken out and you know, taken to
Speaker 2: shows and trips by his friends and by fellow artists.
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan, who at this point is not particularly famous,
Speaker 2: starts visiting Woody at the asylum in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 2: and Dylan starts working with other performers over the sixties.
Speaker 2: They like, they play shows. They take Woody to some
Speaker 2: of these shows where they're playing his music to this
Speaker 2: new generation of newly radicalized Americans. And Woody lives long
Speaker 2: enough to see his music honored and it's like sold
Speaker 2: out shows by some of the you know, by fucking
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan, some of the most beloved up and coming
Speaker 2: musicians of the sixties. So he does go out knowing
Speaker 2: that his music doesn't just live on, but is like
Speaker 2: influenced this new generation of people who are going to
Speaker 2: become incredibly famous and influential musicians in their own right, which,
Speaker 2: as far as being an artist goes, is about as
Speaker 2: much as you can hope for.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially for.
Speaker 3: Someone who's at the kind of beginning, not the very
Speaker 3: beginning of record music, but like pretty close to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He dies in October of nineteen sixty seven. At that
Speaker 2: point he is unable to communicate by any means besides
Speaker 2: pointing at cards that said yes or no. But he
Speaker 2: left behind again, a pretty incredible legacy, two novels, hundreds
Speaker 2: of articles, more than a thousand songs and poems, five
Speaker 2: hundred illustrations, and a central role in the folk music
Speaker 2: revival that changed American music forever. We've listened to a
Speaker 2: lot of Woody Guthrie's music in these episodes, and while
Speaker 2: I do hope you all take the opportunity to listen
Speaker 2: to more, I want to leave you with a quote
Speaker 2: of his that I think is quite relevant for our times,
Speaker 2: which Ed Cray picked out to open his two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight biography of the Man, about all a human
Speaker 2: being is anyway, is just a hoping machine, and I
Speaker 2: like that. I also like this quote from Bob Dylan,
Speaker 2: who was asked in nineteen sixty three to s up
Speaker 2: his feelings on Woody Guthrie and twenty five words for
Speaker 2: a book on the man. As history dot Com notes,
Speaker 2: Dylan quote responded instead with one hundred and ninety four
Speaker 2: line poem called Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, which took the
Speaker 2: the eternal human search for hope and where do you
Speaker 2: look for this hope you're seeking? Dylan asks in the poem,
Speaker 2: before proceeding to a kind of answer. You can either
Speaker 2: go to the church of your choice, or you can
Speaker 2: go to a Brooklyn State Hospital. You'll find God in
Speaker 2: the church of your choice. You'll find Woody Guthrie in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn State Hospital.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, that's Woody Guthrie. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I knew so little about him. I know about some
Speaker 3: of his music and it's been super influential. But that's awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, it was one of those like again, it's
Speaker 2: the messy story, but yeah, I see it was better
Speaker 2: I would have guessed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great pick for the non bastard Holiday episode.
Speaker 2: A relevant kind of guy to know about for the
Speaker 2: kind of times we're heading into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and speaking of somebody people should know about, I
Speaker 1: adopted a second dog. Hello, did This is Anderson's sister Truman.
Speaker 1: She's learning how to be a dog. But she's a
Speaker 1: good girl.
Speaker 3: She's already a good podcast dog, which is a hard
Speaker 3: level for a job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially a hurting dog. Yeah, yeah, you're a good girl. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess just to say happy holidays everyone.
Speaker 2: Happy holiday, Yes, happy holidays. And I don't know, listen
Speaker 2: to some Woody Guthrie.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in the new.
Speaker 3: Year or the first week of the year.
Speaker 1: We'll have a couple of Q and A episodes.
Speaker 2: We'll have some cues, we'll answer some a's. It will
Speaker 2: be a good time.
Speaker 1: Any final thoughts, Magpie, anything you want to.
Speaker 3: Plug well, if you want Christmas. Every week I have
Speaker 3: a podcast called Cool People Did Cool Stuff, where I
Speaker 3: talk about cool people did cool stuff. And then either
Speaker 3: this week or next week, depending on when everything gets released.
Speaker 3: I also we'll be covering the history of the song
Speaker 3: Bella Chow because I got excited by this recording last
Speaker 3: week of part one and I thought I'm gonna do
Speaker 3: a song too.
Speaker 1: It will be the week after releasing that.
Speaker 3: So next Monday you all can hear me talk about
Speaker 3: the history of Bella chow awesome, all right, Harry, Christmas
Speaker 3: and or whatever you want to have, happy happy, Well.
Speaker 1: That'll do it that, I'll do it first twenty for
Speaker 1: you're twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Wow twenty four? Yeah, yeah, more or less, more.
Speaker 1: Or less all right, yeah, be well, bye bye. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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