Woody Wilson Guthrie - The Man Who Took Oklahoma with him.

We have a new baby boy in our family, named Reed Michael Hill. He was born on June 14th, Flag Day, at 9:52 and weighed 8lbs 2 ounces. Reed had a tough start. His mother, Jill, would have to receive a grade of A+ on handling the delivery. I drove back home, which I can no longer do. My back is so painful, it is easy for me to get disoriented. I never could get the cruise control to work right. To be honest with you, this was the first time I drove Marcella's SuperCharged Mazda S6. I ended up exiting the tournpike at the wrong place and ended up driving the long way home. Forgot that they have a new cut-off that takes you straight from the tournpike to the University of Oklahoma.

One time, Nathan was stranded on that road, after he picked up a friend who had been in a psychiatric unit to get her medications re-adjusted. Their car stopped, so we jumped it and followed them home. My back is such, that I really cannot even open the hood and look under it. My days of tearing lawn mowers up and fixing them are over. Too hard on my lower back.

When I got home, Sassie, the greatest Blues Dog in the World, was waiting for me on the sofa. We went to bed, but, even with strong, Rush Limbaugh, pain killers, I couldn't sleep. Those things are like candy to my back. So, Sassie is sleeping beside me, while I am at the computer. I need to pull myself away from this computer for several days to give my back a vacation.

I think we are making inroads, on getting Jesse "Eddie" Davis, ready to smash the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, the next time the committee meets. I need to go up and talk to Byron Berline, one of the world's greatest fiddlers, who lives in Guthrie. He has played with "The Roling Stones," and bunches of other recording artists. He helps sponsor a music "shindig" (get together) in October. We have not gone there, but maybe this time. I'm not much on sitting and listening to artists play. I would rather find a group of musicians playing under the trees and sit in. A violin and fiddle are the same thing, except, when it is played in the orchestra, it's called a violin; when it's played with Bluegrass bands and Country bands, it is called a fiddle. I had to make that distinction quite emphatic, in one of my graduate level courses. The fiddle is tuned the same way as a mandolin, only it is played with the end, pressed against your neck or ribs and is played with a "horsehair bow."

Anyway, the meanest Prof wised-off about me and a violin, because he knew, ... well everyone knew, I played the guitar, and no one else could. He got a laugh, so at the break, I went over and sat down with him, back in the days I was drinking coffee by the gallon, and killing my guts.

"So, what did you think of my comment about you and the violin?" None of the other students would dare sit with him and was blown away that I would.

"Well, Prof," I laughed. "I could tell right off that you don't know a darn thing about music, either Country, Bluegrass, and roots music. You're an obvious orchestra man. You see, Prof, Country musicians and Bluegrassers never call a violin, a violin. They call it a fiddle." He laughed and didn't lower my grade.

Bob Dylan is a leach but won't admit it. He hung around Woody in New York in his final year or so of life. So did another musician named Jack Scott. Of the two, Jack will admit that he borrowed heavily from Woody. They called, Scott, "Rambling Jack Scott" because he hitched rides and hoboed with Woody for years. Woody had a profound influence on Pete Seeger as well. Guthrie took up causes, for the people and would write lots of music, many of them to tunes that wre already in Publica Domain. I'm wondering if any of Guthrie's music is Copyrighted. And don't forget, "You Can Get Anything You Want, at Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie.

In his final years, Guthrie was dying Huntington's disease, and his singing ability morphed into droning and elongation of final consonents. Dylan picked his style up from those Guthrie years. His chorea, caused him lots of problems, and he even spent a couple of years in a psychiatric hospital. Incredulous as it may be, Woody's mother had a mental break down and was hospitalized for the duration of her life.

Born in Okemah, Okfuskee County, many counties in Oklahoma have Indian names, in 1912. He was born into a hard life and his songs tell of the trials and tribulations during those dust bowl years. He left his first wife, and then married a gal in Texas. The marriage failed, and his Texas wife, is still bitter over it. In his final years, he hitched up with another gal, who really helped him in his schedules.

Now, we're going to do some stuff of Jack Scott. He was named a "National Treasure" in the Clinton administration, which he was very proud. Kris Kristofferson said this about Scott, "He'd get up on stage and piddle with his guitar by tuning the thing for 10 minutes. Good God, get the hell out there and sing a song."

Scott was a son of a doctor, whose name wasn't even close to Scott, and when his parents attended one of his concerts in Europe, his fans were blown away, that a person in the US could actually chose their own life style. Scott was a better guitar player than Guthrie and Dylan. He was an accomplished musician, who could yodel, do the Merle Travis pick, the thumb as the melody pick, or simply, open picking of flat picking, where he used a pick to play the chords or pick out the melody. I choose the later, thank you.

Enough said about Scott, because we will cover him in depth later. As far as I know, he is still alive. Ya' wanna read Woody's biography. Well, here it is. Click on it and see what you get, while I pull up a picture of ol' Woody. And, by the way, I will be adding more to this as I find pertinent (important) discoveries as I split the atoms in cyberspace. Hee, Haw!



By the way, Woody never was "bought and paid for by any music company." Once he had enough of the New York "big wigs" in music, he and Jack would head off to some other cause. If they ran out of money, they would simply find a full house of eaters, and get up and sing for 30 minuts and then pass the hat around. In their "lingo" that was and is called buskin. Bonnie Raitt lived that way for years. Now, that gal is a killer. Slide guitar will blast you up against the wall, and straddle ya' on a carpenter's horse. She is an artist.

MORE TO COME.