September 1, 1945: Woody Guthrie Publishes "This Land Is Your Land"

September 1, 1945. 80 years ago: Woody Guthrie publishes "This Land Is Your Land." It becomes one of America's most familiar songs.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. By the 1930s, he was already known as a folksinger, and his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads was immediately hailed as a landmark of the genre. An ardent anti-Nazi, he put a sticker on his guitar, reading, "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."

Angered by the fluffy patriotism of Kate Smith's recording of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" on February 23, 1940, in his room at the Hanover House Hotel at 101 West 43rd Street, just off New York's Times Square. According to journalist Joe Klein, "He completely forgot about the song, and didn't do anything with it for another 5 years."

More like 4 years. In March 1944, he recorded it for the 1st time. But he didn't publish it until September 1, 1945 -- 18 days after V-J Day ended World War II.

Pretty much everyone knows the Chorus:

This land is your land, and this land is my land.

From California to the New York island.
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Fewer people know the verses:

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and rambled, and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me, a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.

This verse proved to be controversial, and was often dropped when the song appeared in publications, for fear of being accused of Communism:

There was a big, high wall there that tried to stop me.
A sign was painted, said "Private Property."
But on the backside, it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

After years of suffering from a neurological condition called Huntington's disease, which rendered him unable to perform live from the 1950s onward, Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967. That same year, Jack Newfield was covering Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York for the New York Post. RFK was wondering if he should run for President. Newfield wanted 2 things if he won: "End the war in Vietnam, and make 'This Land Is Your Land' the National Anthem." Bobby said, "Done." Of course, he never got the chance.

July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan Goes Electric

July 25, 1965, 60 years ago: Bob Dylan crosses a rock and roll Rubicon. He performs with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. They use electric instruments, something the festival had never allowed before, as folk music has traditionally been all-acoustic.

Dylan had been born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, but found life there dissatisfying on multiple levels. Early early rock and roll stars of the mid-1950s appealed to him, and so anyone who had studied his entire life from 1941 to 1965 should have seen this coming. But most people didn't know about that when they became fans of his in the early 1960s. 

In 1961, having dropped out of the University of Minnesota, he came to New York, renamed himself for Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and started singing folk music in the clubs of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where Thomas had lived and performed for the last few years of his life, dying there in 1953. (I have an entry for his death.)

Bob had adopted a persona like that of earlier folk singer Woody Guthrie, with scraggly clothes and a nasal twang. He combined traditional folk songs with his own new compositions, and it didn't seem to matter that he couldn't sing in the traditional sense, or that he wasn't an especially good-looking guy. People were mesmerized by his performances. Soon, men wanted to be him, and women just wanted him.

On April 16, 1962, at Gerde's Folk City at 11 West 4th Street, he first performed "Blowin' in the Wind," and it was a sensation, with its 3 short verses citing the civil rights and antiwar movements. This was less than a year after the Freedom Rides, but a year before American TV viewers saw the firehoses and police dogs of Birmingham, and most hadn't yet heard of Vietnam, let alone realized that we already had troops fighting, killing and dying there. To them, "war" still meant World War II, a "just war," or maybe the Korean War, which didn't seem worth it.

Bob's self-titled debut album had been released on Columbia Records the preceding March 19. Shortly after the Gerde's premiere, he began recording The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released on May 27, 1963, it included "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" -- the latter the first in a long line of great breakup songs he would write. 

Any 1 of those 4 songs would have been a great triumph for any writer. Dylan had all 4 on 1 album. He was 3 days past his 22nd birthday, and he was already a musical legend.

That July, he appeared at Newport for the first time, along with the biggest active legend of folksinging, Pete Seeger. Guthrie, to whom Seeger had introduced Dylan, was still alive, but sidelined by the condition that would kill him 4 years later.

Also there were Peter, Paul and Mary (Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers), the folksinging trio who recorded what remain the biggest hit versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice." So was Joan Baez, the leading female soloist of "the folk revolution," who helped make Bob famous, then became his girlfriend. Together, these and others closed the show by joining hands and singing a song Seeger, though he didn't write it, made the anthem of civil rights: "We Shall Overcome."

Dylan then began recording his next album, finishing it before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but not released until afterward, on January 13, 1964: The Times They Are A-Changin'. It included the title track, "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "With God On Our Side," "Only a Pawn In Their Game," "When the Ship Comes In," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." His previous burst of creativity was thus proven to be no fluke.

Just 25 days after that album's release, The Beatles arrived in America. They and Dylan each influenced the other tremendously, and it may have been The Beatles who influenced Dylan to switch to electric instruments.

Before he did though, he recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan. Released on August 8, 1964, he told Nat Hentoff, the music critic of The Village Voice, New York's underground weekly newspaper, "There ain't no finger-pointing songs." There was "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "It Ain't Me, Babe," and "My Back Pages," on which the 23-year old Dylan closed each of 6 verses by singing, "Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now." 

The Byrds, who would record several of Bob's songs, recorded "My Back Pages," but, to cut it to single length, dropped the 3rd and 4th verses. Both they and Cher would have a hit with "All I Really Want to Do"; while "It Ain't Me, Babe" would be a hit on the pop chart for The Turtles (their first hit), and on the country chart for Johnny Cash.

Fame and the expectation of his peers were getting to Dylan. Until now, except for a couple of songs on the latest album where he had played piano, it had been just him, his guitar, and the harmonica he wore in a neck harness; with no other musicians. (The harmonica in the neck harness would be copied by many performers, most notably Neil Young and Billy Joel.) For his next album, he went electric, and it was titled Bringing It All Back Home.

Released on March 22, 1965, this was a revelation. It was a reminder of his rock and roll roots, about which his "folkie" fans seemed to know nothing. It began with "Subterranean Homesick Blues," with its angry declaration that, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." (This would inspire a radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society to call themselves the Weathermen, and later the Weather Underground.)

It included "Maggie's Farm," whose lyrics certainly suggested folk roots, but the electricity behind it give it a bigger punch. It included "Mr. Tambourine Man," which he recorded in 3/4 time, but The Byrds would later switch it to 4/4 time, and give him his 1st Number 1 hit as a writer. (The song has 4 verses, but Byrds lead singer Roger McGuinn sang only the 2nd between the choruses.)

It included "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," with its declaration, "He not busy being born is busy dying." If that wasn't a message to the people who wanted him to remain the 22-year-old golden boy of the Greenwich Village clubs forever -- just as there were others who got upset when The Beatles moved beyond being "The Lovable Mop Tops" -- then the last song on the album certainly was: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." 

And on July 20, he released a standalone single, a 6-minute reminder of how their delusions of him, not himself, had let them down: "Like a Rolling Stone." (Rolling Stone magazine was named for this song, not the new British band of the same name.)

So when Dylan, backed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, took the stage at Newport on July 25, nobody knew what to expect. Here's what he gave them: "Maggie's Farm," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," each electric.

There was booing, but there's dispute over why. Some have said it wasn't because the electric instruments were blasphemy to the folkies, it was because the sound system was bad, and Bob and the band couldn't be heard properly. The surviving film suggests that this is true, because the songs don't sound much like they did on the records. 

Another legend, that Pete Seeger yelled at show producer George Wein to turn the amps off, and that, having been refused, the "purist" Seeger tried to chop the cord with an ax, were denied by Seeger himself. He admitted that the problem was the sound system, not Dylan's audacity. If any folkies felt betrayed that night, Seeger was not one of them.

Dylan played 2 more songs, just him, his guitar, and his harmonica: "Mr. Tambourine Man" and, providing a definitive last word for them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." He soon wrote one of the nastiest songs ever written in the English language: "Positively 4th Street," opening with, "You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend," and going on to really let them have it.

By this point, he had further enraged the folk music community by breaking up with Joan Baez, and marrying someone else, Sara Lowndes, for whom he wrote some of his more interesting songs thereafter.

Dylan would go through many more changes to his career, and did not appear at the Newport Folk Festival again until 2002. As of July 25, 2022, he is 81 years old, and still performing. Few people now doubt that going electric was good for him, and good for music.

Also, not counting individuals implied as being part of a group, like the Beatles and the performers at Woodstock, Bob Dylan is 1 of 4 people mentioned in Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire" who are still alive. The others are Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker, and 1984 New York "subway vigilante" Bernhard Goetz.

June 16, 1965: Bob Dylan Records "Like a Rolling Stone"

June 16, 1965: A planned anti-war protest at The Pentagon becomes a "teach-in," with demonstrators distributing 50,000 leaflets in and around the building.

On the same day, Bob Dylan records the familiar version of "Like a Rolling Stone," at Studio A at Columbia Records, at 799 7th Avenue at 52nd Street in New York. He does not one take like the legend says, but 15 takes, in addition to one done the day before. The 4th take is the one we all know.

He had already written and recorded these songs: "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "The Times They Are a-Changin'," "With God On Our Side," "When the Ship Comes In," "My Back Pages," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." All of those were done before his 24th birthday, on May 24, 1965. Now, he had written and recorded "Like a Rolling Stone."

Like some of Bob's other songs from around the same time -- especially "Maggie's Farm" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and the subsequent "Ballad of a Thin Man" -- it was a message to the people who were upset with him for "going electric," seemingly "betraying folk music" and its "movement." They never understood that he was a rocker at heart, loving Elvis Presley and Little Richard as much as he did Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

In spite of being a full 6 minutes long, the song reached Number 2 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. Keeping it out of the Number 1 slot: "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher. Cher made it up to Bob by making his song "All I Really Want to Do" her 1st solo hit single.

In 1967, the magazine Rolling Stone was founded, named for this song. The band The Rolling Stones was named after the Muddy Waters song "Rollin' Stone," which Dylan may have named his song after. There was, of course, the previous proverb: "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

In 2004, Rolling Stone put "Like a Rolling Stone" at Number 1 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. They occasionally revive the list. In 2010, they kept it at Number 1. In 2021, they put it at Number 4, behind Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's "Respect," Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Bass guitarist Joe Macho (who also recorded under the name Joe Mack) died in 1977, producer Tom Wilson in 1978, guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1981, pianist Paul Griffin in 2000, drummer Bobby Gregg in 2014, guitarist and tambourine player Bruce Langhorne in 2017, and pianist Frank Owens in 2023.

The other musicians on this recording are still alive: Organist Al Kooper, guitarist Al Gorgoni, and, of course, guitarist, harmonica player and singer Bob Dylan. There were no backup singers.

April 30, 1900: The Legend of Casey Jones

April 30, 1900, 125 years ago: Casey Jones saves the people on his train, at the cost of his own life, and becomes an American legend. That's the legend, and that's also the truth. There is more to the truth, however. He was... complicated.

John Luther Jones was born on March 14, 1863 in Cayce, Kentucky. The town's pronunciation, KAY-see, led to his nickname, "Casey." (Just as Charles Dillon Stengel was from Kansas City, and that got shortened to "K.C.," ultimately becoming "Casey.") He had a wife and 3 children, and was believed to have never touched a drop of alcohol.

He worked for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and became a brakeman on their route from Columbus, Kentucky to Jackson, Tennessee, outside Memphis. Jackson became his home for the rest of his life. He was promoted to fireman (shoveling coal to put in the fire to power the locomotive) on their route from Jackson to Mobile, Alabama. In 1887, a yellow fever epidemic hit the Illinois Central Railroad hard, opening opportunities, and in 1888, Casey was hired as a fireman on their freight line from Jackson to Water Valley, Mississippi, finally being promoted to engineer in 1891. He was 28, and becoming an engineer so young was unusual.

He was noted for his exceptionally punctual schedules, often saying he would "get here there on the advertised," meaning on schedule. People were known to set their watches by his arrival. But this sometimes had a degree of risk, including those of derailing, crashing into another train, or hitting a person on the track before they could get out of the way of the oncoming train. But from 1891 to 1899, there were no incidents.

Well, one, a heroic incident. In 1895, he was approaching Michigan City, Mississippi. He had left the cab in charge of fellow engineer Bob Stevenson, who had reduced speed sufficiently for Casey to walk safely out on the running board to oil the relief valves. He advanced from the running board to the steam chest and then to the pilot beam to adjust the spark screen.

He had finished well before they arrived at the station, as planned, and was returning to the cab when he noticed a group of small children dart in front of the train some 60 yards ahead. All cleared the rails easily except for a little girl who suddenly froze in fear at the sight of the oncoming locomotive. Jones shouted to Stevenson to reverse the train and yelled to the girl to get off the tracks in almost the same breath. Realizing that she was still immobile, he raced to the tip of the pilot or cowcatcher and braced himself on it, reaching out as far as he could to pull the frightened but unharmed girl from the rails.

In February 1900, Casey was transferred from Jackson to Memphis, for the passenger run between there and Canton, Mississippi, the 3rd link in the 4-train Illinois Central run from Chicago to New Orleans, in the days before the City of New Orleans (leaving Chicago by morning and arriving in New Orleans at morning, and vice versa, running from 1947 to 1971) and the Panama Limited (a night train at each end, 1911 to 1971) could run the whole way (and before each could be celebrated in song: "The City of New Orleans" in 1971 and "Night Train" in 1951).

On April 29, 1900, already scheduled to make the Memphis to Canton run, he was asked to take over another service through the day, which may have deprived him of sleep. He left Memphis aboard Engine No. 382, known (like many other fast trains of the era) as "The Cannonball," at 12:50 AM on April 30, an hour and 15 minutes late.

But he drove that train hard. By the time he got to Durant, Mississippi, he was only 5 minutes behind, telling his fireman, a black man named Simeon Webb, "Sim, the old girl's got her dancing slippers on tonight!" He thought he could get to Canton "on the advertised" at 4:05 AM.

But at Vaughan -- 172 miles south of Memphis, 225 miles north of New Orleans, and just 16 miles north of his destination of Canton -- there were 3 trains in the station, and 2 were, due to their length, crossing between the passing track and the main line. An air hose broke on one, leaving 4 cars of 1 of the trains on the main line. And Jones and Webb were coming in, only 2 minutes behind schedule, on a left-hand curve that blocked Jones' view from the right side.

Webb saw the red lights ahead, meaning "Stop." He told Casey. Casey told him to jump off, which was pretty dangerous, but better than staying on. He jumped, and was knocked unconscious, but not before he heard Jones blow a long, piercing train whistle to warn anyone still on the freight train ahead.

Casey reversed the throttle and slammed the airbrakes. This could only cut his speed from 70 to 40 miles per hour, before he crashed into the freight cars ahead of him, wrecking some. There were 6 people injured, including Webb. But, between his train, the others, and the people in the station, only 1 person died, and that was Casey Jones. The impact stopped his watch at 3:52 AM -- 13 minutes before he was scheduled to arrive in Canton. Had the tracks been clear, he would have made it. He was 37 years old.

Adam Hauser, a passenger on Casey's train, told The Times-Democrat, a New Orleans newspaper, "The passengers did not suffer, and there was no panic. I was jarred a little in my bunk, but when fairly aware the train was stopped and everything was still. Engineer Jones did a wonderful as well as a heroic piece of work, at the cost of his life."

Sim Webb -- who, probably due to his race, never got the credit he deserved for seeing the stuck train and giving Casey the chance to save everyone's lives -- lived on until 1957, age 83. Casey's widow, Janie Brady Jones, died the next year, at 92, having never remarried, and having worn black nearly every day since Casey's death. She was buried next to him in Jackson (the one in Tennessee, not the State capital of Mississippi).

By 1909, there was already a song titled "The Ballad of Casey Jones." It made its way up the Illinois Central to Chicago, where it became popular in vaudeville. Poet Carl Sandburg, based in Chicago, called it "the greatest ballad ever written." Labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill challenged the traditional version and, without evidence of Casey actually having been one, wrote "Casey Jones, Union Scab." (In fact, Casey belonged to 2 unions, 1 for locomotive firemen and 1 for engineers.)

In 1969, The Grateful Dead began performing a song titled "Casey Jones," recording it for their 1970 album Workingman's Dead. It bears little resemblance to the true story, with lyricist Robert Hunter writing:

Driving that train

high on cocaine.

Casey Jones you'd better

watch your speed.

Trouble ahead

trouble behind

and you know that notion

just crossed my mind.

Hunter later said he tried rhyming "Driving that train" with something else: "I write, 'Driving that train, whipping that chain.' No. 'Lugging propane.' No. I tried any way to get away from it, and there just wasn't one. It had to go. There was no other line for that song."