Here’s an interesting article about the same musician: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-21/why-woody-guthries-guitar-was-a-fascist-killer.html
Relevant paragraph:
Woody Guthrie’s guitar didn’t kill fascists because it fired bullets. It killed by neutralizing the fascists. Music, like culture, has the power to defeat right-wing extremists and their antidemocratic ideas rooted in xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism. Guthrie fought using ideas, language, music and the shared desire to build a better future together.
Interesting story. Dropkick Murphys (Boston-Irish punk band) got their first national hit by doing a punk version of “Shipping Out to Boston,” which was a Woody Guthrie taperoom-floor forgotten song. They also just lost one of their lead singer/songwriters last year.
They were trying to figure out what direction to go in, when Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter called them up to say she had found a bunch of other scraps and notes, wondering if they had any interest in putting together an album.
They said “fuck it, sure” and made an album called “This Machine Still Kills Fascists.” It’s not quite my cup of tea, but it resonated with a lot of people. If you’re interested in Guthrie’s music it’s definitely worth a listen. Modernized medium-talent version of his b-sides, basically.
Shipping out to Boston is not even forgotten in the taperoom - in all likelihood Guthrie never recorded it.
There’s a bunch of songs Guthrie wrote but never recorded. His estate keeps track of all of them, recorded or not, on woodyguthrie.org.
Wilco teamed up with singer Billy Bragg to release three volumes of previously unreleased Guthrie songs under the title Mermaid Avenue. They’re amazing albums.
One of the most interesting songs, and related to this post, is titled “All You Fascists”. After the release of the Wilco version in 2000, they discovered a wartime Guthrie recording from the BBC, so we now have access to the original as well. But the cover version was released first.
The whole Mermaid Avenue series is worth a spin. Lots of fun upbeat stuff as well, not only about defeating fascism.
You take that back
I fucking love Murphys, but they even admit that they’re not super talented. Ken Casey once said he didn’t even learn to play bass until their second album.
I play bass. You mean to tell me there are folk who actually know how to play?
Pretty much just Matt Freeman.
That is a really interesting story! I’m sure if he were still alive he’d be very happy to hear some of his works completed.
— Woody Guthrie on copyright
Is that real? I looked around the website and couldn’t find this text.
Yes.
It’s also quoted by Cory Doctorow at the end of his (Creative Commons licensed) podcasts…and Cory always checks his sources.
Wikipedia cites the book Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein as a source, but a bit via via. Seems legit though.
Do you have a source to cite?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Machine_Still_Kills_Fascists?wprov=sfla1