Guthrie
Archives
Research
Application
Research
Policy
Licensing
Internships
Finding
Aids
Archives
Newsletters
History
of Archives
Staff
Welcome back to the busiest time of year at the Woody Guthrie Archives! The Woody Guthrie Archives is extremely busy working to expand our educational and public programs. Our growing “laundry list” of program offerings will enable educators, schools, and other cultural organizations and institutional programmers to bring Woody Guthrie’s life and work to your area’s audiences. Visit our web site soon when we will have a complete list of available programs. It is our goal to make our staff available for presentations, lecture demonstrations and collaborative projects, such as the forthcoming exhibition at the Experience Music Project (see Projects below). Even Nora Guthrie, our Director, will be “on the road” this Fall season bringing film programs and speaking at several West Coast events. On a professional note, I can tell you that in my own college teaching, Woody Guthrie most certainly figures prominently in the American Musical Traditions class. On a personal note, it was wonderful to participate recently at the Eisteddfod Festival of Traditional Music and Dance, organized by the New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club. The program at this event included biographer Ed Cray and myself discussing the role the WGA played in the writing of Ramblin’ Man, a biography of Woody Guthrie (Norton 2004). We look forward to developing closer ties with such wonderful people and organizations and presenters, even as we continue to meet your research needs. Hope to see you at Carnegie Hall this year! And finally, before signing off, I’d like to share with you an essay written by Hillel Arnold, one of our outstanding interns this past summer. Jorge Arévalo Woody
and Me: A Summer at the Woody Guthrie Archives They have been difficult weeks. I had to transcribe every word, pause and finger-snap of this recording, trying to capture as accurately as possible what took place at that concert in Newark, New Jersey fifty-five years ago. I’ve listened to the same eighty minutes of that CD, transferred from a delicate wire filament, so many times that I swear it will still be playing on my internal sound system the day that I die. There were days I thought I was going to explode with excitement, when every subatomic particle of my body was screaming in affirmation; there were days when I felt my heart had been ripped from atrium to ventricle, when the frailty and compromise of human life and its endeavors flowed all too easily through the headphones. But the hardest thing I have done yet is writing about the experience. There aren’t words, no matter how cleverly arranged, that can do justice to the depth and the breadth of what I’ve encountered during the last six weeks. Bob Dylan tried to write about Woody, and he ended up with over seventeen hundred, and most of them don’t make any sense. I’m not Bob Dylan, but try this: Woody didn’t just write songs. He wrote his life. His life was a song, and his songs were his life. He was a prophet, a poet, a teacher, a father, a gambler, a drunkard, a rambling man. A hero, a victim, a martyr, a criminal. And yet somehow, like the broken glass-barbed-wire version of 1913 Massacre that I’ve been listening to for the past six weeks, it not only works, it’s spectacular. Not in spite of the fingers that can’t quite move fast enough, the voice that cracks at all the wrong times, the forgotten lyrics, but because of them. In Woody’s life and music, the lack is the gain. And that, I suppose, is what I’ll carry with me as I return to the world of academia. Our failures and deficits, though painful, ugly and embarrassing, are what make us human, and we live not to catch the night train out of this shattered, dusty and beautiful world that we live in, but to take the road that leads straight to the heart of it, and to go down it singing. Archives
Projects The Woody Guthrie Archives is also working with the Experience Music Project (Seattle, Washington) on a Bob Dylan exhibition entitled “Bob Dylan’s American Journey: 1956-1966.” Curated by EMP’s Jasen Emmons, Guthrie’s profound influence on Dylan’s life is one of the exhibit themes. Original material from the Woody Guthrie Archives is naturally featured in this exhibition, which is scheduled to open on November 20, 2004. For more information, visit the EMP. In an important step toward letting more people know about the Woody Guthrie Archives, Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) records were recently added to the Excelsior: New York State Library/Archives/Museum Catalog. Excelsior enables researchers to locate the Woody Guthrie Archives and view collection information online. For collection information, go to the New York State Library's web site. You will find a link to the repository description there as well. Educational outreach programs have also been very successful. Group visits to the Woody Guthrie Archives have included children from the Columbia School (affiliated with Columbia University, New York) and students from Randolph-Macon Women’s College (Virginia), where they met with archives staff for special presentations about Woody Guthrie and the Collection. Recent
Researchers and Visitors to the Archives Bobbe Navon visited the Archives with her daughter, Beth, to share stories and memories of her relationship with the Guthries in Coney Island in the 1940s. Bobbe Navon baby-sat regularly for Woody and Marjorie Guthrie's daughter Cathy Ann. Seth Archer, faculty at Northeastern University is doing research on racism in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Seth researched articles written by Woody Guthrie's father Charles Guthrie and accessed a number of articles and papers in the Wolfenstein and the newly acquired Cray Collections. Matt Sakakeeny is a researcher working with Professor John Szwed at Yale University, who is writing a biography on Alan Lomax. Matt researched letters, and manuscripts--to complement his research at the Lomax Archives--in order to learn more about the relationship between Lomax and Guthrie. Elizabeth deVeer, a novelist from Massachusetts, is working on a novel about life in the Dust Bowl during the Depression Era. Elizabeth researched Woody Guthrie's descriptions of the period in order to help place her characters in a historical and cultural context. Jim Pollard continues to transcribe a manuscript titled “My Forsaken Bible,” written by Woody Guthrie in 1956 while at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital (New Jersey). Jim is making great strides in helping us to understand the significance of this body of work. The Ribbon of Highway performance tour hits Monmouth University in February 2005. Vaune Peck, Gallery Director at Monmouth University, visited the Archives to view WGFA material for programming ideas to complement the performance. For more information visit the Ribbon of Highway web site. Carole Jansen, Woody Guthrie's first grandchild, and her husband Stephen were very special guests of the Archives this past summer. Carole is Gwen Guthrie's daughter, Woody’s first child. In addition to researching her grandfather's life's work, she provided the Archives with wonderful photographs of her family. Special
Accessions The Scott Smith Collection is a recent acquisition, which includes personal photographs of Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, and a number of acquaintances who spent time with Woody Guthrie when Bob and Sidsel Gleason would bring him to their home for weekend visits from the hospital. Original drawings of Woody by Ramblin' Jack are among the invaluable items in this collection. David Bernz donated rare photographs of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger, taken by his father Harold Bernz. Charles Banks Wilson donated a giclée print (a high quality, digital method of fine art printing) on stretched canvas of his portrait of Woody Guthrie. The original oil painting, which was recently unveiled, now hangs in the Oklahoma State Capitol’s fourth floor rotunda. Due to Woody Guthrie’s leftist leanings, there was a time when his work was not celebrated in his home state. According to writer Rob Collins, “Wilson said he considers Guthrie a true American poet... who deserves the honor of having his portrait included in the Oklahoma State Capitol” (Oklahoma Gazette, June 2, 2004). We are very grateful to have a copy of this artwork in the collection, and that Woody Guthrie has received long overdue recognition in his home state of Oklahoma! Bobbe Navon donated her personal vinyl album, “Asch Recording: Documentary #1: Struggle.” Woody wrote a note to Ms. Navon (who used to baby-sit for Woody and Marjorie’s daughter Cathy Ann) on the inside cover of the jacket: "To
Bobby from Cathy Bob Wintermute, of the The Army Heritage Center Foundation donated a CD-ROM computer program filled with fascinating history. "Defending the Long Road to Freedom: The Story of Black Soldiers in the American Army (1770-1953)" is an interactive history lesson about African American and American military history. Included in one of the chapters is the story of Isaac Woodard. Woody Guthrie’s song, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard,” and a photograph of Woody with Joe Louis are incorporated into the section. Applications
for Conducting Research at the Archives At this time, due to limited staff time we are unable to accommodate general interest visits. We hope that our ever-improving website will satisfy general interest. For further information or questions, please contact Felicia Katz Harris. Internship
Opportunities We are presently
interested in candidates with the following credentials: Other tasks may include answering general reference calls, providing administrative support, and helping out with various archives projects. Ideal candidates will have a background in archival or library science, museum studies, music history, or a related area. An interest in, and special knowledge of, Woody Guthrie and folk music is a plus, as are A/V skills. Applications and inquiries should be sent to: Archivist |
