Woody Guthrie

Weathered, lean, and kindly, Woody Guthrie's face is the face of American folk music. Born in 1912, this astonishingly prolific composer is to the gritty, acoustic story-song what Louis Armstrong is to jazz and Little Richard and Elvis are to rock & roll -- the clearest, deepest source. Writing, according to his friend Pete Seeger, a thousand songs in the years between 1936 and 1954, he recorded with absolute fidelity, wit, and grace the struggles and celebrations of the working class. An Okie leftist (his guitar bore the legend "This machine kills fascists"), he was an activist whose politics were the furthest thing from theoretical -- he'd suffered the wrongs he strove so passionately to correct. Outlaws from Jesus Christ to Pretty Boy Floyd, from debtors and prisoners to hobos, formed the misfit pantheon from which he took inspiration -- and his hard but ecstatic life was an act of protest and of prayer, of anger and of healing.

Influenced by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, Guthrie also absorbed the strains of cowboy music, country blues, and the music-hall pop of his day; from that tangled yarn he wove his own bardic, simple music, with each song featuring only a few chords, but containing entire condensed volumes of wisdom. His voice was flat, clear, somewhat trebly, and unerringly direct: He sang like a casually chatting prophet. So profound was his effect on not only American music, but on the American character, that it's not just Dylan, Springsteen, and every single folk musician who owes him a debt, but writers like Kerouac and the rest of the Beats, as well as naturalist filmmakers, vernacular poets, and populist politicians. Alongside Walt Whitman, Guthrie remains a national poet laureate.

While all of his records are worth owning, the best place to start is with any of the Asch recordings, or, better yet, the entire four volume set: Its jewels, "This Land Is Your Land," "So Long, It's Been Good to Known Yuh," "Deportee," "Hard Travelin'," and so many more, form the basis of American folk. Library of Congress Recordings is an epic three-record set featuring a good handful of Guthrie's dust-bowl ballads and laconically witty spoken intros to the songs. Folk Songs pairs him with his friends Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Bess Lomax Hawes; Struggle concentrates on the political work. Columbia River Collection is an excellent round of songs from 1941 that had been lost for 40 years; The Early Years is a good one-CD intro. Also essential for full appreciation of the man is his 1943 autobiography, Bound for Glory. (PAUL EVANS)

From the 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide