Woody Guthrie, American Radical

Reviewing the massive collected works of [Woody Guthrie], published and unpublished songs, poetry, political commentaries, personal letters, radio talks and interviews alongside the reminiscences of close musical compadres [William Kaufman] provides a clearer insight into an artist politically committed, thoughtful, outspoken, often frustrated and angry with those who did not share his passion. Kaufman's criticism of former biographies is that Guthrie's politics have too often been lost in the intimate details of his personal idiosyncrasies, the effects of his later affliction of Huntington's disease, personal family tragedies, his sexual meandering and infidelities. Ed Cray's biography (Ramblin' Man, 2004) makes much of Guthrie's non-proletarian class background and stresses that the singer was not one of the Oklahoman thirties farmers Dust Bowl refugee. Guthrie's father was a landowner, a real estate agent and vociferously anti-socialist. While Kaufman acknowledges this he places this in a broader historical context noting that Oklahoma was no conservative political backwater. The state had a substantial and lasting tradition of left-wing ferment including a vibrant Debsian Socialist Party that rivalled the party centres of the east, the Social Gospel tradition, prairie socialism and farm-labour movements, and the Industrial Workers of the World which would have a notable effect in the way Guthrie constructed and presented his political message. To Guthrie music and song had to have meaning for his vision of new world awakening. Even his children's songs, so beloved by parents to this day, were meant to serve to awaken the spirit of self-creativity and resistance to capitalism. Kaufman recognizes that Guthrie was part of a collective body of musicians who saw value in the preservation of American folk music forms and passionately believed in the intrinsic links between art and radical politics. Left-wing artists strove to create a body of "proletarian art" and "people's songs" at a time when the very nature of the songwriter was transformed with the commodification of song. This was the era of the professional singer-songwriter who made his or her living as a cultural worker and that meant a livelihood increasingly dependent upon the industry. Guthrie was often frustrated by the limitations imposed by media executives who hoped they could censor the political message within his music in order to advertise products from soap to tobacco. In order to guard