FILE- In this undated photo Oklahoma folk singer Woody Guthrie plays his guitar. The Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa announced Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019, that there will be a 80th anniversary concert of Guthrie's classic song, "This Land Is Your Land." at The Town Hall in New York. The venue is near where Guthrie is believed to have written the song on Feb. 23, 1940. (AP Photo, file)

Once, a long time ago, I read in some obscure music publication that Bob Dylan once said that had there been no Woody Guthrie, there never would have been a Bob Dylan. Lofty praise, indeed, coming from a Nobel laureate, and the poet of his times. The enigmatic Dylan’s public admiration for the Oklahoma-born folk singer speaks volumes about who the man Guthrie was during his short life. It also shines a warm and flattering light on the influence of Woody Guthrie as a folk music icon. Even today, when I think of him, there remains an indelible image of a rough-edged dustbowl balladeer from the plains of Oklahoma.

Across his career, he wrote and sang songs that reflected his undying love for people, his lifelong outrage against injustice and unfairness, and his bedrock belief in the decency of the common man. In his way, Woody Gutherie became the voice of struggling dirt farmers, unappreciated blue collar workers, and the forgotten poor by using his music to chronicle his times. His songs were an outcropping of the things that he saw happening around him.

Woody Gutherie, the father of Arlo Guthrie, left this world in October of 1967 at the age of 56; a victim of Huntington’s Chorea, a hereditary disease that was passed on to him from his mother. As he lay dying in a hospital bed in New York, icons and luminaries from across many different musical genres came to sit at his bedside just to be with him just one last time; to hold his hand and tell him what he meant to them. Dylan was among those luminaries, as was Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and many other iconic voices of America’s folk music elite.

Fifty three years have now passed by since he died. The musical lament that he sang for America in a scratchy-voiced Oklahoma twang, has not been altered or improved to any significant degree. Today, in the fast paced, tech-driven and socially-challenged 21st century, America appears to still be a nation that is increasingly comprised of, and divided by, a society that has the haves and the have-nots pitted against each other in a war. The haves are still winning the war, while for all intents and purposes, the have-nots, and their plight, still remain somewhat invisible.

Across the decades, Gutherie’s broad catalogue of songs have been a rallying cry for anti-war protesters, the homeless, and those who protested rampant and insatiable corporate greed through occupation. Today, his most famous song, the melodic and somewhat elusive sing-along “This Land is Your Land,” is still a social anthem that remains as poignant and inspiring as it was when he first wrote it in 1940. Ironically, it took until 1951 for the song to be released publically. It’s been covered by many, however, the version that seems to stick in the collective mind of people across the decades was the early 60’s version by the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. In 1972, presidential candidate George McGovern pressed it into service as his campaign song. Across the years, it has become a uniquely American classic.

As I say, the inspiration for Guthrie’s songs and poems came from what he saw as he traveled across this country. In song, he expressed what his eyes and his heart took in as he trekked across the terrain of America’s natural beauty, and saw the undying spirit of her citizenry.

“This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,

This land was made for you and me. ”

His deep love of this country, and the friends that he made along his journey, are reflected in the timeless musical legacy that he left behind. The truth is that Woody Guthrie has never really left us, for he lives on forever in two autobiographical books that include “Bound For Glory,” where he describes his days wandering through the dustbowl of the 1930’s, his many essays and articles, and more than a thousand songs.

Before he finally settled in New York, his rambling and restless nomadic travels across the United States was a constant theme in his life. It would make him more famous than he had ever dared to even dream about. Sadly, across a span of years, as his fame grew, so did the severity of his disease until it reduced him to a silent bedridden shell of who he had once been. However, before he was ravaged by terminal illness, Woody Guthrie crafted songs that made him so much more than a wandering dustbowl troubadour; they made him a legend.

He was a man who never lost his love of country, and of people and life. On a battered and beat up six string acoustic guitar, he preached a gospel of love, and of treating everyone with fairness and equality. So many of the songs that he left behind reflect the deep personal convictions that he carried with him throughout his life. His eyes recorded the social injustice that he saw on his travels across America. He preserved that vision it in songs that transcend generational boundaries and the bonds of time.

Lately, in the late night safe harbor of my private moments, I sometimes think about who we are as a people. A fractured and divided America is heading toward a divisive election, and the answer to who we are eludes me. Sometimes, in such moments, Woody Guthrie’s songs will whisper in my inner ear. Through my crowded thoughts they reinforce to me his artistic purity and his lasting influence on America. In this tumultuous time of social unrest that sees the levers of power still being controlled by powerful corporations, there is, for me, a small measure of comfort in letting Guthrie’s lyrics and tunes wash over me. I find myself humming them, and thinking of his words that still ring true today. “This land is your land – this land is my land – this land was made for you and me.”

Paul Collins is a freelance writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.

Newsletter