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Woody Guthrie Biography

Born in Oklahoma in 1912, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American songwriter folk singer. Author of hundreds of songs, "This Land Is Your Land" may be his best known. He began his music career during the Great Depression. As catastrophic dust storms pummeled the southern Great Plains, Guthrie like so many other "Okies" took to Route 66 and headed west to California. There he wrote and sang many songs about the hard times in the Dust Bowl and became a minstrel for the common man. His songs about working class people and their struggles to reclaim America, the "land made for you and me," later resulted in Guthrie being regarded as a dangerous radical during the oppression of the post-World War II Red Scare. Though he lived until 1967, Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntington's disease in 1952 and was institutionalized for most of the rest of his life.

The sticker on the guitar reads: "This machine kills fascists." Go to the Woody Guthrie Foundation Website for more information.