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Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

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You may disagree with Woody Guthrie's politics, or you might not even know who he was, but you know his music. "This Land is Your Land," for instance, is known as "America's folk national anthem," and unlike the real national anthem, normal people can hit all the notes. It used to be taught in public schools; I wonder if it still is, since it might be a little too, well, communal for our current philosophy of carving out one's own sector for profit. Guthrie wrote the song as a response to the treacly "God Bless America," not because he wanted something secular but because he failed to see how God had blessed the sharecroppers and hoboes and Okies Guthrie lived with. "Do Re Mi," "Oklahoma Hills," and a bunch of children's tunes are part of his legacy as well, thousands of songs, mostly one-offs which no one wrote down or recorded. He would easily tear out a rhyme and a tune, and did so passionately whenever he felt for a cause. Frequently inspired, he was also unreliable, irresponsible, and grimy, a difficult man to live with. In Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (Norton), Ed Cray has given a full portrait of an influential man whose songs and stories are legendary, but has brought forth both legend and truth, and sorted between them nicely.

Guthrie, despite his claims to the contrary, had a middle-class upbringing. His father was, of all things, a successful real estate dealer, who was too busy to pay the boy much attention. His mother was distant and uninterested. He was a dedicated student only when he wanted to be; he would listen to local singers and imitate guitar records for hours. In 1937, the 25-year-old Guthrie lit out for California (leaving his wife), by freight train or hitchhiking, as did other migrants. On the road and within the state "he was among people who understood hunger" in camps and shantytowns, and the sense of unfairness to others would never leave him. He never officially joined the Communist party; he was too independent for that (or, "They wouldn't have him," according to his first wife). He did write regularly for the Daily Worker, but instead of earnest propaganda, he presented an aw-shucks column full of personal commentary. He admired Will Rogers, and much of what he wrote for newspapers shows it: "I aint a communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life." All three of his wives learned that he did exactly what he wanted, drank too much if he chose, left whenever he decided to, and chased skirts with enthusiasm and success. He had his share of selflessness, and even considerable heroism; included here are stories about his service in World War II that would make any American proud.

The most difficult part of the book, unsurprisingly, is Guthrie's descent into neurological doom by the strange affliction Huntington's chorea. It was probably the illness that sent his mother to an asylum, and it gradually took away his ability to play, walk, talk, and think. As sad as this was, it also provided opportunities for his friends and especially his second ex-wife, Marjorie, to demonstrate how deeply he was loved. Pete Seeger, who knew him well and loved his music, had put it well years before: "I can't stand him when he is around, but I miss him when he's gone." There were tributes and concerts in his honor, before and after his death, but the greatest tribute has been the influence he has had on performers like Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and the early Bob Dylan, who called himself a "Woody Guthrie jukebox." This big and comprehensive biography, itself an admiring but unfawning tribute, is just the volume to show why the tributes are deserved to this American original.

Ed Cray's new biography goes a long way toward clearing up some of the hagiographic fog that's collected around Guthrie since his long illness and death. The romantic picture of Guthrie is that he was an artistically restless drifter who threw in his lot with the farmers and laborers of the Depression era. There's some truth to that picture. Guthrie undoubtedly was a good poet and wrote some good songs and prose (although his skills as a performer were uneven), was extremely restless, and seems to have had a genuine concern for the poor. But these bare facts only scratch the surface of his complexity. He was also a self-indulgent tomcat who took little responsibility for his many children; a prima dona performer who frequently insisted doing things his way or no way; a person whose idiosyncracies and freeloading perpetually tried the patience of his friends and acquaintances (see, for example, Cray's account of Woody's refusal to carry his weight when he lived in the Almanac Singers cooperative); and a chronic mythmaker, in both his memoir and his tales, when it came to his relations with the working class. In the eyes of many (although certainly not all), there apparently was a charm to him that overrode his blemishes. But the blemishes are still there.

In a curious way, the people who come across as the real heroes of this biography are the less celebrated types such as Pete Seeger and Will Geer, both victims of the McCarthy witchhunt, and Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia, Arlo's mom and Guthrie's second wife, who nursed Woody during the final years, long after they were divorced. Compared to them, Woody both lived a pretty comfortable life and was less committed to the farmers and laborers he sang about. Touchingly, it was these same people whose loyalty to Guthrie helped make him into one of America's folk heroes after his death.

This is an excellent and well-researched book. It provides many new insights and much new information about Guthrie. Also, "Ramblin' Man" makes a perfect companion piece with Joe Klein's book "Woody Guthrie; A Life" (which came out over 20 years ago) Woody Guthrie was America's greatest songwriter, with a heart of gold and an indestructible spirit. "Ramblin' Man" is a lovely and inspiring biography of Guthrie.

Ed Cray's biography of Woody Guthrie gives us as complete a picture of the folk-song legend as we are ever likely to get; he had the cooperation of all surviving members of the Guthrie family and full access to Guthrie's personal papers. Cray also does a marvelous job giving us a sense of Guthrie's work, liberally sprinkling his text with lyrics from familiar and unfamiliar songs. The result is not only complete and comprehensive but very sympathetic, despite details (wandering, neglecting his children, womanizing, drinking, fighting, etc.) that bring Guthrie down a peg from the sainthood that some might want to give him.

Guthrie himself seems a knotty reflection of the troubled times in which his music first arose: the struggles of the working poor during the Great Depression, followed by the paranoia of McCarthyism in the late 40s and beyond. Both Guthrie and his music showed a kind of restless, kinetic energy until this second period set in, but then dissolve in a kind of undisciplined confusion.

We know now of course that this change in Guthrie was caused by his disease, Huntington's chorea, which hospitalized him for the last decade or more of his life. Cray does an exceptionally good job of showing the gradual increase of the disease from the point where its earlier symptoms just seemed like a quirky part of Guthrie's personality to the point where his internal fight against it made him violent, and finally to the point where he was rendered speechless and immobile. Guthrie's second wife Marjorie (Arlo's mother) comes off fairly saintly, visiting Guthrie with their kids weekly in the hospital for years even after their divorce.

In sum, the book is inspirational, informative, and poignant as well. The only thing that keeps me from giving it five stars is its length, which fans of Guthrie will not find daunting but which may be more than you are looking for it you are only a casual reader.

Mr. Cray does a nice job on this one indeed! Not only do we get a very well researched biography of a very interesting life, but we get a very good picture of the times he lived. We are now being flooded with works addressing this era of American History, rightfully so, and this work gives us another "slant," one we may find missing in other works. I must admit to being one of those who knew only one side of the Guthrie story, the musical, and was certainly ignorant of what made, what caused that wonderful music to exist. It is good to be able to put the music and the man into proper prespective. I do think we have to take care and not be overly judgemental of the Gutheries of this world and their chosen life styles and politics. Most sucessful men and women in our history have certainly had their dark side. We have to be able to take the good with the bad and I feel this biography has done a woderful job in pointing this out. I found the text to be easy on the eye, facts well presented and foot notes to be wonderful (almost as helpful and interesting as the bulk of the book itself). I highy recommend this one.

Mr. Cray does a very nice job on this one indeed! Not only do we get a very well researched biography of a very interesting life, but we get a very good picture of the times he lived. We are now being flooded with works addressing the era of American History, rightfully so, and this work gives us another "slant," one we may find missing in other works. I must admit to being one of those who knew only one side of the Guthrie story, the musical, and was certainly ignorant of what made, what caused that wonderful music to exsist. It is good to be able to put the music and the man in proper prespective. I do think we have to take care and not be overly judgemental of Gutherie and his chosen life style. Most sucessful men and women in our history have certainly had their dark side. We have to be able to take the good with the bad and I feel this biography has done a wonderful job in pointing this out. I found the text to be easy on the eye, facts well presented and foot notes to be wonderful (almost as helpful and interesting as the book itself). I highly recommend.

The music of folk singer Woody Guthrie's works lives on in Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man: a biography which charts his coming of age, his many associations with influential musicians of the times, and his shows and stage presentations. Unlike other biographies, Ramblin' Man takes a personal approach and presents a 'you are there' feel to discussions of notable moments in Guthrie's life, offers from booking agents, and stage appearances. Ramblin Man reads with all the passion and drama of the novel but is a solid factual review of Woody Guthrie's inherently fascinating life and times.

"Only thing that is higher than that dust is your debts", wrote Woody Guthrie from Texas in 1934, about the giant windstorms that flattened farms and hopes, driving a million poor farmers, "dust bowl" refugees, from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, away from drought and rapacious landlords and bankers.

Born in 1912 in Oklahoma, Woody attempted to "find himself" through the "superstition business" of faith-healing, fortune-telling, Rosicrucian tracts, Eastern mysticism and the Baptist Church, finally ended with socialism as the response to the existence of private plenty amidst mass poverty during the Great Depression.

Cray is unable to resolve whether Woody ever joined the US Communist Party, but he favours the majority opinion that Woody was too eclectic (he melded primitive Christianity with communism, Jesus with Lenin), and too independent, to have been useful, or happy, as a member ("he was not an organisation guy", said an editor of the Daily Worker, for which Woody wrote almost 300 columns). Nevertheless, Woody was proudly loyal to the Party for better and, occasionally, worse.

Woody brought his special gift of song to his new-found cause, dedication to the poor. Tastes of commercial musical success were the exceptions to an otherwise frigid reception by the cultural arm of capitalism (his Department of the Interior minder edited out "the bad stuff" from his 1940 government-commissioned album on the building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River because "he was in the class struggle pretty deep").

Woody survived submarines and mines during the war but he did not survive the FBI which blacklisted the pro-Soviet and anti-racist balladeer from the Merchant Marine. Music continued to consume Woody, and his 1947 songs on Sacco and Vanzetti (the two Italian-American anarchists framed and executed for a payroll murder in 1927) often reached the poetic heights of his creative peak (roughly 1937 to 1947), despite lapses into "political speeches in verse".

Signs of Woody's eventual fate, however, began to appear with the onset of the rare, genetic, incurable nervous system disease, Huntington's chorea. As energy and creativity drained from him, he produced "no new songs of real note" from this time. Alcohol was Woody's solution to his developing psychosis but this only made everything worse.

Despite the curse of Huntington's, the attentions of the FBI continued (they didn't drop Woody from their `watchlist' until 1955) and the blacklist stayed in place (RCA and Decca dumped him, and Hollywood ditched a movie deal for his autobiography). The last thirteen of Woody's 55 years were spent in state psychiatric hospitals, dying slowly until the end came in 1967.

Woody was no saint. Cray doesn't soft-pedal on Woody's personal failings, not all of which were entirely reducible to the effects of Huntington's. Woody could be ill-mannered, self-engrossed, irresponsible, undisciplined and immature. However, he was, more often, supportive and generous. An eternal child in many respects, Woody was, despite his faults, impossible to hate and easy to love.

Woody left generations of musicians in his debt which was marked by a lyrical grace and melodic simplicity, sung with a voice which "bit at the heart" and which drew its moral verve from, as Pete Seeger put it, Woody's "strong sense of right and wrong".

Barrage of facts without any digestion made me fall asleep on my first try. Book rambles in a way that it should not. Just the facts and nothing but. And if you are writing about Woody Guthrie, you have to know something about music.

With a forward by Studs Terkel, Ramblin' Man: The Life And Times Of Woody Guthrie is an in-depth biography of patriot, political radical, and musician Woody Guthrie, as told by Ed Cray, the first biographer granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive. An independent-minded and influential figure, marked as a subversive by the FBI and haunted by the mental illness that affected his mother, Guthrie continued his influential work in both politics and music until Huntington's disease ended his efforts at the all too young age of forty-two. A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this extensively researched and highly immersive life story.