Singer-songwriter (1912–1967) best known for such iconic folk songs as “This Land Is Your Land,” which glories in the spirit of the American landscape and its people. Lengthy handwritten manuscript, signed “Pvt. Woody W. Guthrie #42234634,” one page both sides, 7.25 x 10.5, August 12, 1945. At the time, Guthrie was preparing to make a series of records titled American Documentary. It is believed that only one record, Struggle: American Documentary (Asch Records #360), later rereleased by Sony Folkways and Stentson Records, was ever completed. The only album notes included with Struggle were those of Moe Asch. The present manuscript evidently comprises notes Guthrie intended to use for the series, which never made it to print. In part: “I met a soldier out on a rifle range down in Texas that was telling a gang of men, ‘There’s good and bad in every church and every race. They just got to be put in their place and made to stay in it. I say give every color his part of town and make him stay in it. My home town had a fight or a killing just about every few days. I’m as good a trade union man as the next one, but I just can’t go in for this mixture of every kind and every color! They’ll always have hell in the unions as long as they try to break the laws of mama nature!’… I told them, ‘Well, I think you’re both wrong because it just so happens that I make my living making up trade union songs and singing around picket lines, at meetings, rallies, stuff like that. And I’d really like you to see you try to run your town with everybody in a hole of his own color’…. We had to line up, march to our rifles and face our targets out across the field. I didn’t have time right then and there to answer that man. We fired our carbines, our submachine M3’s, drove away singing in our buses…. We remembered a few days ago in a lecture hall a Captain, a psychiatrist, has said, ‘You hear the negro out sing, you see him out march all of the other squadrons because he feels looked down on, and he shows you more friendly spirit out of unity than the other’…. The Captain answered the racial expert pretty well, but of course on the subject of the fighting history of our trade union, the pregnant woman, the thirteen children, he did not have the time nor the authority to tell us about…. I know that this album of Records, ‘American Documentary Number One’ is just a little answer to that soldier out there on that rifle range. It takes all night to sing the whole answer. But it can be sung….” In fine condition, with light mailing folds and creases, and a bit of mild toning. A fascinating document of an important unrealized project and Guthrie’s days as a reluctant soldier. JSA/John Reznikoff Auction LOA and RRAuction COA
