The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #22016   Message #236569
Posted By: katlaughing
31-May-00 - 07:01 PM
Thread Name: Woody Guthrie Traveling Exhibit Story
Subject: RE: Woody Guthrie Traveling Exhibit Story
Sure, Rick.

Jacob, I found teh Smithsonian site which lists where it will be, but it is given by region and is extensive, so if you go to this page, then you can click on their map & it will list places which have booked it. It goes through 2002, so some bookings haven't been made, yet. I've included more below, but first this from the official website for the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival:

Pete Seeger, June 1967:
When Woody Guthrie was singing hillbilly songs on a little Los Angeles radio station in the late 1930s, he used to mail out a small mimeographed songbook to listeners who wanted the words to his songs, On the bottom of one page appeared the following: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." W.G.

THIS IS FROM THE NOTES FOR THE EXHIBITION:

One single life can sometimes be a mirror for the lives of many, for the soul of a nation. This life is Woody Guthrie's. This nation is America in his time.

- from the exhibition script

This Land is Your Land explores the life and work of one of America's greatest folk heroes, Woody Guthrie. Poet, singer, artist, and humorist, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie fled Dust-Bowl poverty to commence a life of music and adventure that never lost ties to the less-advantaged in American society. His deep empathy for the common man infused his music with purpose and sparked a life-long dedication to social activism. Woody was a traveling folklorist, collecting cowboy songs, mountain ballads, religious music, blues, and work chants and then blending these styles into more than 1,000 original songs, each revealing an aspect of the American soul.

Woody's times were ripe for songs of the people. His prodigious output spanned only 17 years, during which he churned out poems, two novels, and hundreds of letters, essays, and newspaper columns, in addition to the innumerable songs. He drew and painted prolifically and recorded hundreds of songs, both traditional tunes and his own compositions. He sang about love, war, children at play, natural disasters, unionism, and fascism. Literary critics have called him the Walt Whitman of the 20th century--others say he was the workingman's James Joyce. Woody Guthrie's "ballads" echo in the music of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and many of today's emerging songwriters, such as Billy Bragg, continue to look to his work. As folk artist and diarist, his immense Ĺ“uvre of drawings and autobiographical musings illustrate the world as he saw it.

For the first time, Guthrie's personal archive of drawings, song lyrics, notebooks, manuscripts, diaries, and photographs will be available to the public. SITES and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with Nora Guthrie, executive director of the Woody Guthrie Archives, has created an exhibition that draws from rarely seen objects, illustrations, film footage, and unreleased performances to reveal a complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist, itinerant hobo, and folk legend.

http://www.si.edu/sites/schedule/schedule.htm