Like every good, card-carrying leftist, I know who Woody Guthrie is and what he stood for. I’m sure pretty much everyone in the U.S. has heard at least part of “This Land is Your Land.” They’ve mostly heard it in white-washed settings where it’s usually been severed from its political roots.
I didn’t know about the additional verses to the song, though. I found them on Wikipedia. Here:
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
The Wikipedia site is actually pretty interesting. It talks about how the above lyrics were restored at Obama’s inaugural (more proof that he’s a socialist). It also includes a note Guthrie made about his copyright of the song:
“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.”
What prompted my interest in Guthrie is Rolling Stone’s review of the latest release of his songs. The review includes a picture, which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen before. When I saw it, I just went “wow.”
