Folk Singers

"In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …"

"... And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well."

"One blue sky above us One ocean lapping all our shore One earth so green and round Who could ask for more And because I love you I'll give it one more try To show my rainbow race It's too soon to die."

"Every time I read the paper those old feelings come on. We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on."

"If I've got a talent, it's for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always seem to get people to sing with me."

"A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung. I hope to be able to continue singing these songs for all who want to listen, Republicans, Democrats, and independents."

"I have been singing folksongs of America and other lands to people everywhere. I am proud that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn’t like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for."

"Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, every one. Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?"

"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing? Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago? Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them every one. Oh, when will they ever learn?"

"Joni, what fucking chords were you playing on Court and Spark? I could never figure them out."

"If you're looking to wade into Joni [Mitchell's] musical waters, open D is an essential first step. Often, you see the same Joni songs transcribed in open E, as it's the same tuning one step down, and just requires different capo placement."

"That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed"."

"Joni Mitchell said in an interview, Everything I am,/I'm not."

"She is of course well past the stage of having to prove herself artistically. She is in possession of one of the most extraordinary song catalogs of the past half-century. Her chords break harmonic rules, have no technical names and defy Western musical theory. Her voice is an instrument that has grown sublimely heavier and huskier over the decades. . . .Once you get past the security gates, Ms. Mitchell's house feels like a pocket of middle-class comfort in the midst of zillionaire Beverly Hills. In some ways life is still as it was in 1974, when she bought the house: She has no computer, no voice mail, no cellphone and no e-mail. At one point, when we tried to remember one of her lyrics, we scrolled through my iPod. She said it was the first time she had listened to one."

"[Guthrie's songs] made my head spin[,] made me want to gasp. ... He was so poetic and tough and rhythmic. ... The songs themselves, his repertoire, were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them. ... For me it was an epiphany... I could sing all these songs, every single one of them and they were all that I wanted to sing. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor."

"As I drove across the New Mexico Painted Desert, I found myself singing softly, "This land is your land, this land is my land...," the Woody Guthrie alternative anthem that was enjoying a revived popularity. It made me think, no, this is not your land. I was driving through the Navajo Nation as a guest, not an owner. I wondered how the Navajos or other Indians would feel about that song."

"Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit."

"We must look beyond the songs to find the full importance of Woody Guthrie. As a song-maker, he has earned the stature he deserves. But his reputation as a writer, poet and philosopher is still underground and must he brought into the light. When his songs, poems, and essays are studied in our American literature classes, this omission may be righted."

"I remember the night he wrote the song "Tom Joad." He said, "Pete, do you know where I can get a typewriter?" I said, "I'm staying with someone who has one." "Well, I got to write a ballad," he said. "I don't usually write ballads to order, but Victor wants me to do a whole album of Dust Bowl songs, and they say they want one about Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath." … Woody had a half-gallon jug of wine with him, sat down and started typing away. He would stand up every few seconds and test out a verse on his guitar and sit down and type some more. About one o'clock my friend and I got so sleepy we couldn't stay awake. In the morning we found Woody curled up on the floor under the table; the half gallon of wine was almost empty and the completed ballad was sitting near the typewriter. And it is one of his masterpieces."

"Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore, But so few remember what he was fightin' for. Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim, He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same? And now he's bound for a glory all his own, And now he's bound for glory."

"Of course I remember when I was a little kid, I started writing my songs, my dad took me aside one time, and said "Arlo, you know if you can't be great, it's better to belong." I'm still thinking about that."

"Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly. Admittedly, the intersection of space and time at the corner of July 14, 1912, and Okemah, Oklahoma, was a long shot to produce anything like a national treasure. Woody was born in one of the most desolate places in America, just in time to come of age in the worst period in our history. … He became the living embodiment of everything a people's revolution is supposed to be about: that working people have dignity, intelligence and value above and beyond the market's demand for their labor. … For me personally, Woody is my hero of heroes and the only person on earth that I will go to my grave regretting that I never met."

"Guthrie, he had a particular sound. And besides that, he said something to go along with his sound. That was highly unusual to my ears. He was a radical, his songs had a radical slant. I thought, "Ooh", you know, like... "That's what I want to sing. I want to sing that." I couldn't believe that I'd never heard of this man. You could listen to his songs, and actually learn how to live."

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

"Ever'body might be just one big soul, Well it looks that a-way to me. Everywhere that you look, in the day or night, That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma, That's where I'm a-gonna be.Wherever little children are hungry and cry, Wherever people ain't free. Wherever men are fightin' for their rights, That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma. That's where I'm a-gonna be."

"One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple By the Relief Office I saw my people — As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me."

"All you can write is what you see."

"THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."

"I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes I slept on the ground in the light of the moon On the edge of the city you'll see us and then We come with the dust and we go with the wind"

"I'm blowing, and just as wild and whirling as you are, and lots of times I've been picked up, throwed down, and picked up; but my eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls..."

"I'm gonna tell all you fascists, you may be surprised People all over this world are getting organized You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose Race hatred cannot stop us, this one thing I know Poll tax and Jim Crow and greed have got to go You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose ... People of every color marching side by side Marching across these fields where a million fascists died You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose ... I'm going into this battle, take my union gun Gonna end this world of slavery before this war is won You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose"

"I have hoped as many hopes and dreamed so many dreams, seen them swept aside by weather, and blown away by men, washed away in my own mistakes, that — I use to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to haul off and quit hoping. Just protect my own inner brain, my own mind and heart, by drawing it up into a hard knot, and not having any more hopes or dreams at all. Pull in my feelings, and call back all of my sentiments — and not let any earthly event move me in either direction, either cause me to hate, to fear, to love, to care, to take sides, to argue the matter at all — and, yet … there are certain good times, and pleasures that I never can forget, no matter how much I want to, because the pleasures, and the displeasures, the good times and the bad, are really all there is to me. And these pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again, and it gets in your thoughts again, and in your eyes again, and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one."

"No matter how bad the wicked world has hurt you, in the long run, there is something gained, and it is all for the best … The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine, a working machine, and any song that says, the pleasures I have seen in all of my trouble, are the things I never can get — don't worry — the human race will sing this way as long as there is a human to race. The human race is a pretty old place."

"Let me be known as just the man that told you something you already knew."

"Okemah was one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns."

"I ain't a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life."

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."

"This land is your land, this land is my land From California to the New York Island From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land is made for you and me."

"As I go walking this ribbon of highway I see above me the endless skyway And all around me the wind keeps saying: This land is made for you and me."

"When the sun came shining as I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice come chanting: This land was made for you and me."

"Nobody living can ever stop me As I go walking my freedom highway Nobody living can make me turn back This land was made for you and me."

"This Land is My Land (1993), a picture book written and illustrated by the Canadian Cree artist George Littlechild, ... refers to Woody Guthrie's Depression-era song, "This Land Is Your Land," which is far from an unproblematic expression of patriotic love for country but (especially in its seldom-sung fourth and sixth verses) ironizes the line "This land was made for you and me" by pointing to distinctions between those who have access to the bounty of the land and those who do not. Through his intertextual reference to Woody Guthrie's song, Littlechild acknowledges traditions of resistance in white culture, even as he draws attention to the effects of colonization upon Native Americans."

"I'm just a lonesome traveler, The Great Historical Bum. Highly educated from history I have come. I built the Rock of Ages, 'twas in the Year of One And that was about the biggest thing that man had ever done. I worked in the Garden of Eden, that was the year of two, Joined the apple pickers union, I always paid my due; I'm the man that signed the contract to raise the rising sun, And that was about the biggest thing that man had ever done"

"I'd better quit my talking, 'cause I told you all I know, But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go, The people are building a peaceful world, and when the job is done That'll be the biggest thing that man has ever done."

"I better quit my talking now; I told you all I know, But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go, I'm older than your old folks, and I'm younger than the young, And I'm about the biggest thing that man has ever done."

"Instead of thinking in terms of chords, I think of voice-leading; that is, melody line and bass line, and where the bass line goes. If you do that, you'll have the right chord. [These voices] will give you some alternatives, and you can play those different alternatives to hear which one suits your ear... Keep the bass line moving so you don't stay in one spot: if you have an interesting bass line and you roll it against the melody, the chords are going to come out right."

"There was always some kind of strain, but it was workable. The bigger you get, the more of a strain it is, because in your everyday life, you're less used to compromising. As you get bigger, you have your own way. But in a partnership you always have to compromise. … When you get into a partnership, you're not the boss. There's no boss. That makes it hard."

"I wanted to sing other types of songs that Simon and Garfunkel wouldn't do. "Mother and Child Reunion" for example, is not a song that you would have normally thought that Simon and Garfunkel would have done. It's possible that they might have. But it wouldn't have been the same, and I don't know if I would have been so inclined in that direction. So for me it was a chance to break out and gamble a little bit … The breakup had to do with a natural drifting apart as we got older and the separate lives that were more individual. We weren't so consumed with recording and performing. We had other activities … there was no great pressure to stay together other than money, which exerted very little influence upon us. … We didn't need the money."

"I like them all. … They're all pictures of me when I wrote them. … I have no favorite songs."

"And the war rages on in a land called somewhere And Generals order their men to kill And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten While a little cloud weeps on the side of a hill."