This song always makes me think of my dad...he picked it out for his funeral. Everyone loved it and said it was just perfect. Everyone was smiling by the end.
I never even thought of this as a Depression song. We sang it the last time we would be seeing our music teacher Miss Kullington in 1960's Center School. We were graduating up to that horrid Pine Hill School or she got a new job or something. I didn't take it seriously like we would never see her again and feel the sadness I do now over those times and her being our music teacher being gone forever.
Not Trying To Talk Shit, But It's Not A Great Depression Song, It's A Dust Bowl Song, It's About Black Sunday, The Worst Dust Storm Ever Recorded On Earth.
Good point. That was a period when the industrial revolution and industrialists took advantage of the worker and we needed some balance in work compensation and opportunity. We are starting to see the widespread disparity in wages and the corporate rich, which creates a lot of social tension and unrest. We need to have a strong middle class if we want to prosper.
there's hardly any other folk artists like this since folk now is oliver twist or whatever the hell it is, just some punk rock knockoff shit nowadays and i hate it. Woody pioneered folk, and millenials ruined it.
Most modern folk singers are wise enough not to separate the working class up by race. Just like Woody, they understand that all workers should unite. Looking at one another differently by race only helps the aristocrats maintain power.
This song takes on an entirely new meaning and relevancy in the current state of the world; I truly think Guthrie was one of the best- imagine being woke before most of us were born.
@@KurtRichterCISSP Woody Guthrie... Woke??? Woke was not a thing when Woody was about or for that matter neither was Arlo. Woke is something of the 2020's.......
@@danielbeggan8024 The dictionary defines woke as "being alert to social injustice." If you define it as something else, you're plain flat wrong and it's just that simple. A lot of conservatives use woke as a catch-all term for anything they don't like because they are ignorant, and that's how their news sources use it, because their news sources are ignorant. Further, a lot of conservative racists and bigots use the term woke because it's easier to say "I don't like that because it's woke" instead of "I don't like that because it enables minorities."
My new favourite song. I found it through The Avett brothers cover. I am not originally American but I’m married to an Okie now living in a small town in OK I has never heard about the dust bowl till last year when my husband&I watched The grapes of wrath. I fell asleep during the movie but since I’ve been listening to some of Woody’s songs I wanna watch the movie again
He died on my birthday (Oct 3rd) The decal on his gitbox read "This Machine Kills Fascists" Here's to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Canuck "Mac Paps" Long may the bells of Freedom Ring!
On this day [April 14] in 1935 a great dust storm covered the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa, inspiring Woody Guthrie to write the song "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You." Guthrie had moved to Pampa in 1929. Performing with bands at nightclubs and radio stations in the Panhandle, he found his calling as lyricist and musician and began developing skills that later gained him a reputation as a writer, cartoonist, and down-home philosopher. He married a Pampa girl, Mary Jennings, in 1933 and experienced the pain of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, sources of his many songs that appealed to his fellow sufferers. When the great storm of April 14, 1935, occurred, some Pampans thought that the end of the world was upon them and that there was just time for final goodbyes. Tired of dust and poverty, Guthrie left for Los Angeles in 1937. ~Texas State Historical Association
Thank you so much for this memory of the great Qoody Guthrie. If you like him you should search for "Alice's Restaurant" where his son Arlo Guthrie carries on. Yeah. Thank you.
Alice's Restaurant got co-opted by miserable centrists/moderates decades ago. Great song but the endless "not fascist but fascist-adjacent"s who play it on Thanksgiving, while pigging out in their "I WANT MOAR TAX CREDITS MOAR MOAR" homes as we're smack dab in the Second Gilded Age, reminds me of Ronald Reagan's cluelessness WRT Springsteen's Born In The USA.
I learned this song when a good friend who's sadly no longer with us sang it for my beloved Squeak the Cat. I came here to find it for a friend who just today lost her furry friend Pupster, a blonde hound who was 15½ years old.
I just remembered this song from when I was very young. I used to hear it on the radio. I'm very happy to find it was by Woody Guthrie, and I'm glad I got to hear it before he was blacklisted.
Woodie was an American socialist. An indigenous form of socialism, adopted by a patriot. The "commies", looked to, and allegedly took their marching orders from Moscow. Woodie, knew and socialized with the New York commie set. He thought their subservience to Moscow was wrong and stupid [my word], and made fun of that to their faces.
Sounds too good for Lomax's recordings, circa 1929.... I could be wrong... but in 1929, he was using a transcription disc recorder powered from his car generator. The discs are usually a bit noisy from the 20's, also they had a time limit of about 3 minutes. This sounds to be 50s or so.
In 1952, when I was 5 years old, an air force neighbor sang this song to me as he went in and out of the house, packing his belongings. He was headed to Korea. He never returned, and I can't remember his name, but I'll never forget him singing that song.
In my preschool class back in the late 90s, we used to have "goodbye parties" for students who were leaving, whether to start kindergarten or just get taken out of the program. Whenever we had these parties, the leaving student would sit at the front of the class with the teacher, who would lead us in singing the chorus of this song, and then transition into Make New Friends But Keep The Old.
Parts of the song are being sung to me because of currents events, personally. Yet, Guthrie's lyrics, overall, bring it back to reality of his times....😢
My family lived on a farm in North Dakota during the dust bowl. My grandfather died at the beginning and my grandmother was left with five kids. They nearly starved.
This is when we got to be called Okies. It was meant as a slur but my family took it and run with it. 'Why, yes, I am a Okie. You have a problem with that? Well, then, you got a problem…' Somethin in my eye, dust?
Dad was a teenager during the dust bowl. I remember him sayin' "to be called an "Okie" was fightin' words!" He would have disagreed with you. He hated that word.
Truly inspiring. Woody Guthrie, and all his songs is what people should think of when they think about the USA. And not just things like baseball, hot dogs, etc. No, no. When people really think deep, think into the goodness and love within they will think of Woody Guthrie. He truly encaptures the spirit of our country and hopefully will till the end of time.
@mkworkman yes, but... later on it became metaphoric for being on the road. I saw one of those dust storms when I was traveling in Australia. It's an awesome sight. flying topsoil. Woodie began 2be a regular traveler; it's like the dust taught him 2fly. I saw a picture of him with his Gibson guitar and no guitar case out on the road somewhere sitting next to Burl Ives, reading a copy of "The Hobo News".
The song's about the end of friendships, neighbourly, connections and tight knit communities brought on by the dust bowl atmosphere of the dirty 30's. This era left it's mark on an entire generation and psychologically made people very cautious when it came to their expenditures unlike today's folk determined to have it all without recognising the risks ...
Earl Christensen That all sounds good and everything but Sir where is the proof from what you say? Can you cite even a soupçon of sources for your rather bold assertions? If so I'd very much fancy perusing them.
I love this song. This song is so great. I hate country but I don't consider this country, this is folk singing at it's finest. You know, I feel that he was the original Bob Dylan. He didn't have as much crazy stuff to write about in his time, but he had the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. I love his music. And he had the best sticker ever on his guitar: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS!!! Talk about bad ass...
Like anything else, 99% of the stuff played on the radio is crap, including country. The stuff that lasts is what's great. I don't listen to country radio so I don't know how often they play stuff I do like, such as Dwight Yoakum covering The Clash, or Gram Parsons, or Emmylou Harris...but I'm guessing they don't play it much.
"Why do you think TV is called "programming"?" This is one of the funniest lines I've heard about TV, did you find it yourself or heard it somewhere? If you did, can I steal it?
in one of his lasst interviwes h was tlking about this song and how it had ment so much to him. so brian where ever you are ether you sailing or traveling i hope that this song will help get you there as safe a possible. Good luck Brian Jacques have along rest now its good to take a brake and thankks for the fun
true, i've made the silly mistake of thinking when you make a mistake you actually learn from it. i have not figured into the fact that what i view as a mistake, i.e. starting wars that always end badly with millions dead and nothing gained, or letting robber barons steal the public till, or 30 years of a failed drug war... what i have failed to realize is the people who fund and believe in these things don't view them as mistakes, they believe society benefits from their greed and hatred.
in one of his lasst interviwes h was tlking about this song and how it had ment so much to him. so brian where ever you are ether you sailing or traveling i hope that this song will help get you there as safe a possible. Good luck Brian Jacques have along rest now its good to take a brake
Thanks brother-a great tune from a great man,but what impressed me most was the vid-wonderful selection of pictures thoughtfully put together..respect!
Woody went through hell at the end. It’s now my time to face the same curse, due to carrying the mutant gene. I’ve always wondered why I was such a outcast from the beginning.
[LEMON] We'll know each other a while yet, but I want you to finish the playlist, buddy. Today was your show, but now it's your turn to "direct." It took us a while to get here, but it's time to finish the job. If you love me, you won't let anyone die anymore. Don't blame yourself if somebody does, though. It won't be your fault. I'll keep living for our sake. I don't think I could stand knowing that I wouldn't see the face you choose.
My father just died yesterday, he chose this as his funeral song ... I don't understand all the political comments and mud-slinging, it's offensive and does not belong here and has nothing to do with the original sentiment and lyrics
I'm sorry for your loss. This is also one of my favorite songs of Woody's, and I think it serves well as a farewell. We'll all have to go sometime, and if you can say this at the end, well, you could do a lot worse.
🌿@Charlotte Stasio Maybe Will Rogers wrote a book about that time. Wasn't he a popular figure then? I'm sure he would have commented on Woody if he did. One thing is pretty sure. He must have been a good father, judging by the way Arlo turned out with that sense of humor and desire to follow in Woody's footsteps, fitting in so well with giants like Pete Seeger. I hope Woody was around long enough to realize what a talented son he had raised.
Tell that to the people who are working themselves to death and struggling to make it and get by while trying to hold on to what little bit of sanity they have left. Myself included. It FEELS like a fkn depression even if some call it a recession.Recession is just a fancy word for "WE'RE ALL SCREWED".
My father looks so much like him, he sang songs, road the trains all o er USA with he’s guitar smoked cigarettes, he left us at home, some thing as woody, he even looked like him, But my was Mexican, did the same as woody, but never was
This song was inspired by Woody being in one of the worst dust storms in like 1936 in Texas. He became political due to the treatment of migrant works from the Dust Bowl by folks in California. He was not a communist in the sense of Stalin, but given the disparity between rich and poor and the treatment of workers in the 1930's/1940's he would appear to be very left asking for the things we take for granted.
People want to listen to pop because its popular, makes them feel like they belong somewhere. Humans dont like being alone, and since no1 is bothering to look up old things because of this reason, it does out. Majority=popular(doesnt mean the song is good). Its people who keep things alive,not docs or paper. We talked about this in my eng class, except it was about how people keep democracy alive...
i know what you mean, it's the same way with my family and me. they think reagan is the messiah, when in fact it's his economic policies that are ruining this country.
And AOCs ..those unwilling to work are No Better…Thats always been the problem…Parasites…on Top and on the Bottom…….MERITOCRACY NOW!….No More Promoting the Connected and the Favored Groups….Bush and Obama are prime examples…
@@kilroyishere6190 5% of congress has worked a blue collar job, aoc is one of them. over 50% of congress are millionaires, aoc is not one of them... you're barking up the wrong tree comrade. getting money out of politics, totally agree, it's a cancer on democracy.
It's because we have a socialdemocratic ideology. A mix of state-controlled economy and marketing economy, which we call mixed market economy. The last 200 years our governments have had a very important issue of focus, the welfare system.
you are so right, i don't care how rich people are, but i do care if people are so poor that they can't live a decent live, and with the richness in USA, this should not be a problem, USA needs a little socialism
When I went to Eastern Montana State in Billings, MT, I learned this song because they had a huge collection of Woody's recordings. I guess Arlo went there briefly before flunking out.
this calls for the communist manifesto: "you are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. but in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence is in the hands of those nine-tenths... from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, you say, individuality vanishes... your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois property."
@vaibanez17 oh, his music was country, Vai. It's just that it wasn't "cry baby country" like the money-grubbing stuff they crank out today where it's all the same stick-with-the-winner melody. Woody's stuff was Country Protest. But it's as country as u'll ever get. He was Dylan's mentor. who do u think taught Bob 2 play the harmonica that way! Yep. Woodie was in their face with reality and got busted up quite a lot 4 it, too. he said, "I hate a song that tells you that you're no good."
