Songs written in the dust
Posted: 05 Oct 2012 @ 00:33
The American protest singer Woody Guthrie would have been 100
years old this year. He travelled the US, championing the poor, but
his Christian background is largely unsung, writes Simon
Jones
THE truth is, he was never a great songwriter. The folk icon
Woody Guthrie, from the United States, who would have been 100
years old this summer, sang more than 3000 of his own compositions.
But he re-used tunes like the rest of us re-use cutlery - and most
of those he picked up from balladeers and bards, who first learned
their songs in homelands that predated America.
What he did have was a way with words, and a sense that large
parts of the still-new country were unvoiced in a ...
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