Tag: Woody Guthrie

Songs About Homelessness

Homeless Songs

Music can address societal issues in different ways. Sometimes a song will tackle a big issue head on.  But more often than not, issues are addressed through personal stories or observations. One important societal issue that occasionally appears in popular song is the problem that so many of our fellow humans live without a home. Below are some examples of some songs that address homelessness to varying degrees.

In 2011, singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran released ‘The A Team’ as the lead single of his first album +. Sheeran wrote the song about a prostitute addicted to crack cocaine after he visited a homeless shelter.

“Ain’t Got No Home” is a folk song that was made popular by Woody Guthrie: “Just a wandrin’ worker, I go from town to town. / And the police make it hard wherever I may go / And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.”

Among others, Rosanne Cash has also performed “I Ain’t Got No Home”.

Greg Trooper’s “They Call Me Hank” is about a homeless man named Bill. The song appeared on Trooper’s album Upside-Down Town.

Here Trooper performs the song at Music City Roots live from the Loveless Cafe in June 2014.

One of the more famous songs about homelessness is “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins. The song appeared on his 1989 hit album But Seriously, where the singer sees a man avoiding a homeless person.

Collins asks us to think twice about living another day in paradise, but a lot of critics thought that the song seemed disingenuous coming from someone as rich as Collins.

The great songwriter Guy Clark recorded a song called “Homeless.” The song appears on Clark’s 2006 album The Dark.

Like several other songs by Clark, he talks us through much of the story with a memorable chorus.

Finally, another famous song that is about a homeless person is the Christmas song “Pretty Paper,” which was a hit in an excellent recording by Roy Orbison. The song about a person who in the midst of holiday shopping sees a homeless person was written by a young songwriter who would later go on to have a pretty successful career himself.

So here is that songwriter, Willie Nelson, singing his version of the song he wrote.

Other songs with homelessness themes include Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung,” Ralph McTell’s “Streets of London,” and “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” by Crystal Waters.

Music, of course, cannot solve problems but it can help educate us. More than 60,000 people sleep in homeless shelters each night in New York City alone. Homelessness continues to be a problem across the U.S., and in particular, the number of homeless LGBT youth on the streets continues to rise due to a lack of support for them.

A number of organizations around the country work to help the homeless, and this website lists a number of ways that you can help the homeless (besides writing a song).

What other songs are there about homelessness? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The Cowboy Philosopher Will Rogers

    Oklahoma Philosopher On November 4, 1879, William Penn Adair Rogers was born on a ranch in Cherokee Indian territory.  His birthplace was near what is now Oologah, Oklahoma.  The family called the young boy by the name “Will,” and he would grow up to be beloved by the country as Will Rogers.

    In 1898, the young man left home to work as a cowboy, and in 1902 began his show business career when he joined Texas Jack‘s Wild West show as a trick roper and rider. Before long, Rogers realized that audiences loved his humor and cowboy philosophy, eventually becoming a national celebrity through movie roles, magazine and newspaper articles, and in-person and radio appearances.

    Bacon, Beans, and Limousines

    Rogers’s honest humor struck a chord with America as it went into the Great Depression. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover’s Organization on Unemployment Relief asked him to address the nation. Rogers delivered what became known as his “Bacon, Beans, and Limousines” speech, where he addressed unemployment and the causes of the Depression.

    Check out this video of the October 18, 1931 speech from the Will Rogers Memorial Museums.

    Death

    Will Rogers, however, did not get to see the end of the Depression, as he passed away on August 15, 1935. Rogers was an advocate for the early aviation industry, and he died in a plane crash while traveling in Alaska with renowned aviator Wiley Post. Many mourned the passing of one of the most beloved Americans whose life overlapped with another rising Oklahoma philosopher, Woody Guthrie (1912-1967).

    TV and Film

    The weekly television show Man of the Year paid tribute to Will Rogers when it looked back on the year 1935. The interesting episode featured a lot of video footage of Rogers. The show covereed the life of Will Rogers, and he host introduced humorists Steve Allen and Fred Allen to discuss the importance of the cowboy philosopher.  [2024 Update: Unfortunately, this video is no longer available.]

    Several actors have portrayed Rogers in movies, including Keith Carradine (who also played Woody Guthrie in a film). I recall first learning about Will Rogers from the 1952 film called The Story of Will Rogers, where Will Rogers, Jr. portrayed his father.

    Many today may not know much about Will Rogers, but he was significantly influential in his time and worth remembering on this anniversary of his birth.

    Public domain photo via Library of Congress. What is your favorite Will Rogers story? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Where Woody Guthrie Wrote “This Land Is Your Land”

    Where Guthrie wrote This Land

    Reading My Name is New York: Ramblin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town by Nora Guthrie and the Woody Guthrie Archives, I was surprised to discover that I often walk past where Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land.” The picture above shows the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan where he wrote the song, although the building where he lived is no longer there.

    On February 22, 1940, Guthrie moved into Hanover House at 101 W. 43rd Street when he was 27 years old. The boarding house where he stayed for about a month sat above a pawn shop. The day after he moved in, Guthrie began writing down the words to the song that would eventually become “This Land is Your Land.”

    Even then, the New York City street corner was busy, and the “New York Island” must have brought inspiration. But Guthrie also had been developing the song since he had hitchhiked to New York across the country from Los Angeles.

    In a previous post, Chimesfreedom explained the background of the song and how it was originally called “God Blessed America” before Guthrie edited the song. It would be about a decade from Guthrie’s time in the cheap boarding house until “This Land is Your Land” became popular. It’s popularity was boosted by a 1950 songbook used by school teachers and after Pete Seeger began performing it every where he went.

    In the video below, Seeger performs the song with others in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the “We Are One” Presidential Inaugural Concert on January 19, 2009.

    Guthrie wrote other songs at Hanover House, including another one of my favorites, “Jesus Christ.” Using the music from the folk ballad “Jesse James,” Guthrie imagined Christ as a rebel who spoke on behalf of the poor. And, looking out from the boarding house, he included a line about where he wrote the song as he imagined how Jesus Christ would be treated were he to return today.

    This song was written in New York City
    Of rich man, preacher, and slave
    If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
    They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

    In the video below, you may hear U2’s version of Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ.”

    Speaking of Woody Guthrie in New York, a recent three-CD audio book set compiles stories about Guthrie in New York along with songs Guthrie wrote about New York City, My Name Is New York (2014). The title track from the set, “My Name Is New York,” was never released in Guthrie’s lifetime.

    Guthrie’s daughter Nora Guthrie recently explained that after she found the tape of the song “My Name Is New York” and heard the lyrics, she knew she had to release it. Below, you may hear the song.

    Regarding the corner where Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” Bob Egan has some photos of the above street corner around the time that Guthrie lived there on PopSpots.

    Guthrie only spent a short time living on this corner in Manhattan before he would go on to live in other places in the city. But the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue will always be able to claim a connection to some great American songs, including what may be the country’s best.

    Photo by Chimesfreedom. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Anniversary of “The Grapes of Wrath”

    Grapes Wrath 75 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.

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    No Longer Just “Deportees”

    Woody Guthrie Bio Joel Klein The nameless “deportees” of Woody Guthrie‘s “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” were recently remembered by name on a monument unveiled in Fresno, California. The song and the memorial commemorate a plane crash on January 28, 1948 after a plane chartered by the U.S. Immigration Services flew out of Oakland and crashed near Coalinga.

    Thirty-two people died in the crash, but newspapers originally only reported the four names of the pilot, the first officer, the flight attendant, and an immigration officer. The media merely referred to the 28 others as “deportees.” Many of the 28 Mexicans were part of a government work program who the government was flying home, while some of them had entered the country illegally.

    Woody Guthrie knew about the importance of names, as he showed in his earlier song about the 1941 sinking of the Reuben James. After the California plane crash, he read about the nameless deaths and created his own protest by writing a poem about the event, noting the way the media dehumanized the people from south of the border.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
    You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
    All they will call you will be “deportees.”

    Guthrie biographer Joe Klein called the “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” lyrics “the last great song [Woody Guthrie] would write” (Woody Guthrie: A Life, p. 362). Guthrie, however, chanted the words of the poem, as it was without music.

    “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” would not be performed publicly as a song for more than a decade, after a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman added the music and Pete Seeger began performing the song. In the video below, Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie performs the song at Farm Aid in 2000.

    The song ends with a question, asking “Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?/ To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil/ And be called by no name except ‘deportees’?” The memorial evokes Guthrie’s imagery, as it features a stone etched with names on 32 leaves, commemorating all who died in the plane crash.

    The recent news coverage of the memorial has tried to make up for the original reporting on the crash. The Los Angeles Times published an article listing the names of everyone who died in the crash. You may also order a cool print that commemorates the memorial and lists the names.

    There are several nice covers of “Deportee,” including one by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the mid-1970s (thanks to Dylan scholar Michael Gray for pointing me to the Baez-Dylan version).

    Also, check out this cool video of Lance Canales & The Flood singing “Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)” that also features the memorial. Canales lives in Fresno, and he and his band wanted to highlight the names of those killed. At around the 3:25 mark, you see people holding up signs with the names. So this video of a powerful rendition of the song finally answers Guthrie’s question, “What were their names?”


    What is your favorite Woody Guthrie song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Woody Guthrie’s “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You”
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