page_title: Woody Guthrie
section_title: Early life: 1912–31
hierarchical_section_title: Woody Guthrie / Biography / Early life: 1912–31
caption_attribution_description: Woody Guthrie's birthplace, Okfuskee County, OK
context_page_description: Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, who is considered one of the most significant figures in American western folk music. His music, including songs such as "This Land Is Your Land", has inspired several generations both politically and musically.
  Guthrie wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works. His album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, Dust Bowl Ballads, was included on Mojo magazine's list of 100 Records That Changed The World, and many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Tom Paxton, Brian Fallon, and Sixto Rodríguez have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence on their work. He frequently performed with the slogan "This machine kills fascists" displayed on his guitar.
context_section_description: Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, the son of Nora Belle (née Sherman) and Charles Edward Guthrie. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate who was elected as President of the United States in fall 1912. Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a conservative Democratic candidate for office in the county. Charles Guthrie was reportedly involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson. (Woody Guthrie wrote three songs about the event in the 1960s. He said that his father, Charles, became a member of the Ku Klux Klan during its revived beginning in 1915.)
  Three significant fires occurred during Guthrie's early life. There was one in 1909 that caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah, a month after the house was completed. When Guthrie was seven, his sister Clara died after setting her clothes on fire during an argument with her mother, and, later, in 1927, their father was severely burned in a fire at home. Guthrie's mother, Nora, was afflicted with Huntington's disease, although the family did not know this at the time. What they could see was dementia and muscular degeneration.
  When Woody was 14, Nora was committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. At the time his father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas, to repay debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support. The 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends.
  Guthrie had a natural affinity for music, learning old ballads and traditional English and Scottish songs from the parents of friends. Guthrie befriended an African-American shoeshine boy named George, who played blues on his harmonica. After listening to George play, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. He used to busk for money and food. Although Guthrie did not do well as a student and dropped out of high school in his senior year before graduation, his teachers described him as bright. He was an avid reader on a wide range of topics.
  In 1929, Guthrie's father sent for Woody to join him in Texas, but little changed for the aspiring musician. Guthrie, then 18, was reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa; he spent most of his time learning songs by busking on the streets and reading in the library at Pampa's city hall. He regularly played at dances with his father's half-brother Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. His mother died in 1930 of complications of Huntington's disease while still in the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane.
caption: Woody Guthrie's Okfuskee County, Oklahoma childhood home as it appeared in 1979
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