The main thing that calls songs written by Woody Guthrie into question as to their being "folk songs" is that we know who wrote them. But mitigating against this is that fact that when Guthrie wrote a song, he often took an already existing song and modified it to fit the story he wanted to tell.

Also, a good lesson for the current crop of singer-songwriters is that Woody figured that if he wrote enough songs (and I understand that he wrote over 1,000), at least a few of them might turn out to be pretty good just by accident if nothing else. And—if he sang a song for a bit and it didn't go over all that well, or if he eventually decided that it really wasn't all that good, he had no hesitation about tossing it into the round-file.

I had a good friend years back, an artist, who once remarked that "The most valuable tool that any artist has is his waste basket. And knowing when to use it!"

Don Firth