woody lives!

WOW - an unheard live album by Woody Guthrie comes out in a few days, and here's a great NYT article to boot, focusing on Woody's ever-growing legacy. The article judiciously quotes Guthrie's daughter Nora, who is responsible for the estate (and some 2,400 lyrics that were never set to music):

"...I could put these lyrics behind glass cases, but I think it’s truer to Woody’s spirit to bring them to life as new songs.

“Some people thought it was blasphemous to have other people write music to these lyrics. I said it would be blasphemous to have the lyrics sit there where no one would hear them.

“I’m trying to bring the most unusual suspects into these projects,” she said. “I’m not doing it to be cute but because these people write to me or get word to me that they’ve always loved Woody’s songs. Pete Seeger sings an old gospel song called ‘Twelve Gates to the City,’ and I’ve always thought of the city as a place of great art. Some purists will tell you that there’s only one way into that city, but I don’t believe it. My job is to keep the gates open.”

I don't know what it is with folk singers lately, but it's been kind of an obsession for me. I like the radical kind, the kind that actually live the way they talk about in their music, which pretty much limits it to Guthrie, Leadbelly, Bob Dylan and a few others. I never could understand why the hard-core folkies in the '60s could be so ready for revolutionary change in just about every other aspect of society, but they couldn't see that Dylan was about to bring a radical and much-needed change to popular music, far from selling out to become a rock star.

I like to think that Woody Guthrie would have done the same thing. He had, after all, a knack for speaking in the vernacular of his own time. There was really nothing traditional or conservative about him - he's been called the first real punk musician, the first alternative musician, etc. So it's fitting that, in these copyright-crazy times, his lyrics are being made available to artists who will further extend that legacy and spread his message.