The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118268   Message #4088959
Posted By: Jack Campin
20-Jan-21 - 01:27 PM
Thread Name: Woody Guthrie In London
Subject: RE: Woody Guthrie In London
Just posted in the Lost Glasgow FB group:

Hearing 'This Land is Your Land' sung at the inauguration, strange to think that its author, Woody Guthrie, and his sidekick, Cisco Houston, probably sang the same song in Betty's Bar, on the Clydeside, on Woody's sole visit to the city in 1944.

Woody and Cisco's ship, the troop transport SS Sea Porpoise, had been torpedoed off Utah beach, on the night of July 5, 1944, with Woody rescuing Cisco, hauling him from his smoke filled cabin, up to the deck through pitch black passages

Incredibly, after landing back in the UK, Woody turned up, unannounced, at the BBC, in Portland Place, saying he was a top US folk singer.

The staff, not knowing what to with him, stuck him, live, on that day's `Children's Hour' program and told to sing a couple of songs.

When the broadcast ended, Woody and Cisco bade their farewells and continued on to Glasgow, to wait for a ship back to the States.

When Cisco Houston returned to Glasgow, in 1960, he asked local folk legend Hamish Imlach to take him back to Betty's.

Remarkably, that Children's Hour recording still exists. Take it away, Woody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86e90MwKRAQ