Do Re Mi (I)

DESCRIPTION: "Lots of folks back east, they say, Is leaving home every day Beating the hot old dusty way To the California line" -- but there are so many others they get no welcome unless they have the "Do Re Mi." If they don't, they should go home
AUTHOR: Woody Guthrie
EARLIEST DATE: 1961 (copyright)
KEYWORDS: hardtimes dustbowl travel home money rejection
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 569-570, "Do Re Mi" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, DOREMI
Roud #16376
NOTES [115 words]: This is, of course, a lived account of what it was like for Okies to head for California. Including the part about the "police at the port of entry" turning back the destitute. According to John Shaw, This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems, Public Affairs, 2013, p. 113, "In 1936, the Los Angeles Police Department set up what was dubbed the 'Bum Blockade' at the state border on the major roads and rails coming into [California] from Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon. There they turned away people who had 'no visible means of support' -- people who didn't have 'the Do Re Me.'" Unfortunately, the endnotes do not document this statement. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: LDC569

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