Was Woody Guthrie Henpecked?
I'm trying to imagine music history if there were no video footage of Elvis on TV in the 1950s. What would it mean if I, born in 1970, never had a chance to look back at the old reels and see just what it was (in addition to the shackle-busting music) that drove a nation of kids crazy with excitement and parents idiotic with fear?
It's not that I can't understand what was happening without seeing the TV appearances. Still, without actually witnessing the curled lip and shaking hips, my experience of Elvis in the ‘50s is somewhat incomplete.
Just like my experience of Woody Guthrie has been.
It's hard to believe that, to this point, there's been no concert recording of Woody Guthrie. He is, after all, the quintessential American folk singer, a man who spent much of his life performing in public, in concert halls and taverns, on street corners and at union rallies, in railroad cars and on merchant ships.
But now there's The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie In Performance 1949, a complete concert that enriches our understanding of Guthrie exponentially. The disc--paired with a 72-page book detailing the songs, Guthrie's life then, and the amazing feat of salvaging these sounds from the obscure medium of wires the diameter of human hair--is available only online, from the Woody Guthrie Foundation (http://www.woodyguthrie.org).
The gig was a show with his wife, Marjorie, at the Young Men's Hebrew Association in Newark, NJ. In the late ‘40s, the leftist Woody landed few performances, a result of McCarthy-era blacklisting, as well as his own legal troubles and alcohol use. But the resourceful Marjorie found work for them together presenting music lectures. As host, she would interview Woody, while he told stories and played songs.
As much goes on between songs as during them. Marjorie asks Woody to talk about the American dust storms of the 1930s and why he began chronicling the period in his music. The rambling singer sums it up wryly: "Since I was there, and the dust was there, I thought I'd write a little song about it." As he says it, you realize you've heard his spoken rhythms and comedic timing before---they're copied exactly by his son Arlo in the younger Guthrie's meandering "Alice's Restaurant."
You also hear discord between Woody and Marjorie. It surfaces as tension between their performing styles (Marjorie's precise, Woody's sprawling), but we know from the notes that marital stress lurks just beneath. At one point, Marjorie suggests her husband not play his guitar too loud because, "It is the words that are so terribly important." Woody starts restlessly strumming, as if to drown out her admonishment, her organized nature, even her support of his own work.
While such elements of his story have been hinted at in the biographies, it's fascinating to hear them played out, spontaneously, in Woody's own voice and hands. With The Live Wire, we can witness Woody for ourselves, and the life and music we already know are a little more complete.
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