Woody guthrie autobiography bound for glory

Streets were paved, highways expanded, and water and sewer systems developed. Some communities even held festivals in order to celebrate the oil deposits that surrounded them. Because of oil discoveries, many communities in Oklahoma and Texas actually experienced economic growth from tothe preliminary years of the Great Depression. In general, however, when the oil deposits dried up, these thriving communities faded as quickly as they had grown.

Throughout the s, the southern portion of the Great Plains suffered under severe weather patterns. The phrase is associated with the severe drought, wind erosion, economic depression, and subsequent migration from that area during this time. Harvests failed year after year as farmers found their crops pummeled by hail, drought, freezing temperatures, floods, and even plagues of rabbits and grasshoppers.

Rollers were huge clouds of dust that blocked out the sun, making visibility impossible. These storms dumped several feet of dust onto farms and stripped the land of its topsoil. In the town of Goodwell, Oklahoma, recorded 70 days of severe dust storms while Texhoma, Oklahoma, reported Some of the storms destroyed houses, property, and lives as well as crops.

The air grew so heavy with dust that many people died of dust pneumonia.

Woody guthrie autobiography bound for glory: Bound for Glory is the

In the Great Depression reached its severest depths. A portion of the one million homeless had by this time become a transient group that moved from place to place in search of work. Guthrie spent years living among these transients, absorbing the particulars of the lifestyle. Some of these people viewed themselves as part of a long hobo tradition that had its roots in the previous century:.

They developed an elaborate mythology and customs to make it more palatable. They told long, improbable tales around the campfire … about legendary hoboes, good towns and bad They made up songs about life on the bum: some dripping with overripe romanticism, but others with a rough honesty that cut through the myths. The average community saw them as a threat and took measures to prevent the homeless from settling in the area.

Many of them ate at soup kitchens or, like Guthrie himself, were forced to beg for food. Moving from one place to another was an essential part of transient life. Some people traveled in order to find work, while others simply considered rootlessness an integral part of the hobo tradition. Transients most often rode on freight cars and placed themselves almost anywhere on board the railway vehicles.

They rode inside cars, underneath them, on top, in the front, and on the sides. Of course, flipping trains was quite dangerous and people often died in the process. Boxcar doors opened without warning, sometimes hurling inhabitants out the door. Cargo shifted, crushing those beneath it. The most courageous transients rode the rods, propping themselves along the four-foot bar underneath the train, inches away from the tracks.

Woody guthrie autobiography bound for glory: Bound for Glory is the partially

Both the radio and phonograph industries had expanded during the s, and by the close of the decade they had begun to promote Texas cowboy songs, hobo and train tunes, and country blues to a growing nation of music consumers. As the Okies migrated into California during the s, their musical interests encouraged this turn in the entertainment industry.

Music took a prominent place in the social activities of the migrants. Guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, and banjos were a common form of entertainment at their campsites. Many Okies sought employment as musicians when their search for other types of work in California failed. In his autobiography Guthrie does not mention that his cousin Jack was a talented musician in California.

Despite the fact that he was well read, Guthrie learned to cultivate an image as a naive, poor, rural person to appeal to his audience. This image of him permeates Bound for Glory. Guthrie, however, did not gain his greatest fame in California. He left the state at the end of the decade for New Yorkwhere the folksong movement was extremely politically oriented.

Urban left-wing political activists viewed folksingers and their songs as a means of spreading ideology. The communist and other leftist movements, which had gained popularity during the s, actively sought out singers like Guthrie to spread their ideals to the middle class. Folksongs were sung at political rallies and union meetings.

The left-wing activists hailed Guthrie as an Okie troubadour who represented a class of oppressed people. He went on to spend the early s writing protest songs with Pete Seeger and the Almanacs, a musical group dedicated to raising social consciousness through song. The songs that Guthrie wrote or cowrote were often topical and dealt with issues of immediate importance.

Guthrie chronicles his boyhood in Okemah, Oklahoma, a small farming community of about a thousand inhabitants. As a toddler he lives in a big seven-room house. His father works hard to provide the family with material goods and a comfortable lifestyle, and Guthrie spends his own days the same way other boys do. He gets into many fights, even participating in gang warfare.

As he grows up, he develops a reputation as a tough kid. People place bets on his fighting abilities, encouraging the winner of any fist fight to take on Guthrie. Their beautiful, seven-room house mysteriously burns to the ground. His father meanwhile encounters financial difficulties, and then a cyclone hits town and rips the roof off the new house.

The Guthries move across town. Okemah grows into an oil boom town. Dance halls, saloons, and gambling houses spring up overnight. Life, it seems, has become good again. Yet trouble strikes once again. According to Bound for Glory, their old kerosene stove blows up while his sister, Clara, irons on it. The Guthries leave town for a while but cannot find work.

They return to Okemah exactly one year later, moving into a dirty house in the shabby part of town. Okemah is no longer a boom community. Many people have left, stores are boarded up, and both work and money appear to be scarce. Too young for a real job, Guthrie decides to plant a garden and sell the produce.

Woody guthrie autobiography bound for glory: First published in , this

One day, as he and his mother sit outside near the house, they notice smoke drifting out from between the wooden chinks. As his father enters the house to find the source of the smoke, the oil stove explodes. His mother is sent to an insane asylum, and he and his brother are left to fend for themselves. Guthrie chooses to live in the ramshackle gang fort that he helped build with his friends.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Background [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Archived from the original on 7 November Retrieved 20 September IMDb page for film. He tells of his childhood running wild in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, the tragedies that struck his family and of life on the open road during the Great Depression - hell-raising and brawling in boxcars, all while singing to raise a dime for his next meal.

But above all, this is a song for the America that Woody saw from his lonesome highway, as he travelled from one end of the country to the other with guitar in hand and the songs that made him a legend drifting out over the Dust Bowl. Adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring David Carradine, Bound for Glory is the moving true story of America's greatest folksinger.

Woody Guthriethe son of a cowboy, was born in rural Oklahoma.