John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.
Less than a year after the novel’s publication, 20th Century Fox released John Ford’s vision of The Grapes of Wrath in January 1940. The film starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine, and it contained some differences from the book, and in particular the ending.
While the book was written as an indictment of the greed that led to the Great Depression, the conservative Ford maintained some elements of that vision while also giving the story a somewhat more optimistic ending. The Grapes of Wrath thus became one of those instances where a novel and its movie version both attained greatness even with some significant differences.
The film would go on to inspire others. In particular, the speech by Tom Joad (Fonda) would inspire both Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen to write songs. Check out our post about the story behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song written at the request of a record company during an all-night session after Pete Seeger helped Guthrie find a typewriter.
Bruce Springsteen used his stark “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as the title track of his somber 1995 album. In 2014, though, he released a new version of the song on High Hopes that features the raging angry guitar of Tom Morello, highlighting the defiance in Tom Joad’s speech. While Springsteen’s original acoustic version captures the sadness of the novel, his rock version of the song might be more comparable to John Ford’s vision. Check out this performance featuring Springsteen, Morello, and the E Street Band from Allphones Area in Sydney, Australia from March 2013.
What is your favorite version of “The Grapes of Wrath”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Mumford & Sons recently collaborated with Elvis Costello to record Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” They made the recording for Bono’s One campaign to get world leaders to focus on poverty issues as the leader meet in Northern Ireland at the G8 summit.
In this video, Elvis Costello and Mumford & Sons talk about the song before playing it. Check it out.
The new recording of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” is part of a collection of protest songs that you can listen to for free and learn more about on the One website, including songs by Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, The Cranberries, and may others. The collection is listed as “songs that changed the world.”
What do you think of the new version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On August 23, 1927, Massachusetts executed Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolemeo Vanzetti. The two admitted anarchists were Italian immigrants executed for the 1921 murder of a person during an armed robbery of a shoe company paymaster.
The Trial and Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
The fish-peddler and shoemaker had no prior criminal record when they were arrested for the murder. But they were prosecuted during a period of anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment, and many aspects of their trial were unfair.
The judge overseeing the proceedings saw the two men as “anarchist bastards,” but others rallied in support of the accused. At the time of their execution, protests were held at many places around the U.S.
Many still believe to this day that the two men were innocent of the crime. Also, there have been recent arguments that only Vanzetti was innocent. There is a Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society that works to keep the case in the public eye, and there is an exhibit about the case at the courthouse in Massachusetts.
Woody Guthrie and “Two Good Men”
Many years after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, folk-singer Woody Guthrie found some kinship in the plight of the two men. In the mid-1940s, he worked on a project of several songs about Sacco and Vanzetti to tell their story.
One of the songs in the cycle is “Two Good Men.”
Like Guthrie’s song about “Tom Joad,” which we discussed previously, “Two Good Men” is a story song. “Two Good Men” focuses on the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the song is not as complete and detailed as “Tom Joad,” it contains many details.
Some of the details in the song include the names of the judge (Webster Thayer) and the people who prosecuted the two men: “I’ll tell you the prosecutors’ names,/ Katsman, Adams, Williams, Kane.”
In addition to the details of the case, in “Two God Men” Guthrie also focuses on connecting the execution to the labor movement of his day: All you people ought to be like me, And work like Sacco and Vanzetti; And every day find some ways to fight On the union side for workers’ rights.
Supposedly, Guthrie was unsatisfied with his cycle of songs about Sacco and Vanzetti. Eventually, he gave up on the project.
Fortunately Guthrie’s songs about Sacco and Vanzetti were not lost. The founder of Folkway Records Moe Asch, who had commissioned the songs, went ahead and released the unfinished product.
Guthrie was probably right that “Two Good Men” and the other songs did not live up to his best work. I prefer folksinger Charlie King’s song about Sacco and Vanzetti with a similar name, “Two Good Arms.” But Guthrie also was right that we should continue to remember and fight against injustices.
{Woody at 100 is our continuing series celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie on July 14, 1912. Check out our other posts on Guthrie and the Woody Guthrie Centennial too. }
In 1940 after John Ford made John Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath into a popular film, Woody Guthrie was finding some fame while living with various friends in New York. In the biography Woody Guthrie: A Life, Joe Klein explained that as Victor Records worked to produce a set of Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads, the company asked Guthrie to write a song that would capitalize on Grapes of Wrath‘s popularity. (p. 163.)
It was a good fit to have the balladeer who had first-hand experience with the Dust Bowl write a song about a fictional character who experienced it. In the clip below, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott discusses the film.
Writing “Tom Joad”
So, Guthrie went to work on his song. One night Guthrie asked his friend the young Pete Seeger where he could get a typewriter to use to compose the song related to the film. Seeger took Guthrie to the lower East Side to see an artist friend with a typewriter.
Guthrie sat down at the machine with a half gallon of wine and began writing, periodically going to his guitar to test out what he was writing. When Seeger woke up the next morning, he found the song written on the typewriter next to an empty wine bottle and Guthrie passed out on the floor.
The seventeen-verse song summarized Tom Joad’s story. Despite the length, the record company recorded the entire song on May 3, 1940 in its New Jersey studios. Then, the record company had to use both sides of a record to get it to fit.
Guthrie was usually dissatisfied with his songs. But he was proud of this song, saying, “I think the ballad of the Joads is the best thing I’ve done so far.”
The Music from “John Hardy”
Guthrie took the music for “Tom Joad” from an outlaw ballad he had been playing, “John Hardy.” In the clip below, Roscoe Holcomb sings “John Hardy,” where you can hear the music behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad.”
Holcomb, who grew up in Daisy, Kentucky, recorded a number of traditional songs in the 1960s after John Cohen and Smithsonian Folkways discovered the authentic voice in the Appalachian Mountains.
Guthrie’s Lyrics
While the music of “John Hardy” helped inspire Guthrie to write “Tom Joad,” Guthrie’s lyrics captured Steinbeck’s book and Henry Fonda’s portrayal of Joad in Ford’s film. At the end of all the book, the film, and the song, Tom Joad makes an impassioned speech to his mother. And Guthrie included that key scene in his lyrics.
Wherever little children are hungry and cry, Wherever people ain’t free. Wherever men are fightin’ for their rights, That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma. That’s where I’m a-gonna be.”
How “Tom Joad” Inspired Others
While several sources influenced Guthrie, he of course influenced others. In particular, “Tom Joad” influenced Bruce Springsteen making an album about troubled men and women.
Consistent with recent Springsteen comments that he found “fatalism tempered by a practical idealism” in Guthrie’s works, the title track of Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) follows Guthrie’s song in capturing Joad’s conversation with his mom.
Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy, Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries, Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, Look for me mom I’ll be there; Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand, Or a decent job or a helpin’ hand, Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free, Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”
It is somewhat amazing that one conversation from Steinbeck’s book has resonated so much for other artists. But the words are timeless.
As long as there are economic inequalities, the words about fighting for the common people will resonate in society. Steinbeck’s version passed on to John Ford who then connected to Woody Guthrie who then connected to Bruce Springsteen. And the line will continue.
Already, Springsteen has passed the Joad mantle onto Tom Morello, who performed a Guthrie song during a May Day protest, and his band Rage Against the Machine.
We do not know who will take it next. But as long as somebody’s strugglin’ to be free, Joad’s words will be there.
Rage Against the Machine’s version of the Bruce Springsteen song sounds a long way from Woody Guthrie’s guitar. But I suspect that if Woody were around today and heard the song’s critique of society’s treatment of the poor, he would be on stage with them. “That’s where I’m a-gonna be.”
{Woody at 100 is our continuing series celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie in 1912. Check out our other posts on Guthrie too. }
John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.
, Joe Klein explained that as Victor Records worked to produce a set of Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads, the company asked Guthrie to write a song that would capitalize on Grapes of Wrath‘s popularity. (p. 163.)
