This Land is Your Land

DESCRIPTION: Singer, a wanderer, describes beauty of American (or other) land, sometimes with verses lamenting poverty. "As I went walking that ribbon of highway/I saw above me that endless skyway/I saw below me that golden valley/This land was made for you and me"
AUTHOR: Woody Guthrie
EARLIEST DATE: 1940 (composed; Woody's original copy is dated "N.Y., N.Y., N.Y. / Feb 23, 1940 / 43rd St & 6th Ave., / Hanover House)
KEYWORDS: patriotic nonballad rambling beauty America
FOUND IN: US(All)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Seeger-AmericanFavoriteBallads, p. 30 "This Land is Your Land" (1 text, 1 tune)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 196, "This Land Is Your Land" (notes only)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 81, "This Land Is Your Land" (1 text)
DT, THISLAND*
ADDITIONAL: Pete Seeger, _Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography_, A SIng Out Publication, 1993, 1997, pp. 142-146, "This Land Is Your Land" (many verses, both English and Spanish, 1 tune, plus a copy of Guthrie's original manuscript, with many corrections)
Roud #16378
RECORDINGS:
Putnam Ridge Residents, "This Land Is Your Land" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #219, recorded 08/26/2022)
Pete Seeger, "This Land is Your Land" (on PeteSeeger41)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Lovin' Father (When the World's On Fire)" (tune)
cf. "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" (tune)
SAME TUNE:
Is This Land Your Land? (Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 315)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
God Blessed America (Guthrie's original title)
Esta Es Mi Tierra
NOTES [580 words]: I include this composed song (originally an "answer song" to Irving Berlin's jingoistic "God Bless America") because it has entered into oral and aural tradition within my lifetime; it's taught in schools and camps, often as a traditional song, and is in oral currency among most of America's children.
More important, there have been dozens or hundreds of variants collected in the last forty years, in many nations and languages. These include an American Indian version: "This land is your land/But it once was my land..." Heck, my eight-year-old student wrote a couple of verses. - PJS
To me, there is no doubt that this is now a folk song. It is interesting to note, however, that unlike most folk songs, the establishment has largely managed to circulate "cleaned up" versions, so it no longer attacks the faults of the American political system....
The extent to which it is a response to "God Bless America" is shown by Woody's first draft of the song, which has been preserved. The first few verses are very close to what eventually became the published song, but instead of the final line "This land was made for you and me," Woody originally wrote, "God blessed America for me," though this line is crossed off on the original manuscript -- one of only four changes marked on that copy. A second of the changes was a change of title: "God Blessed America" became "This Land Was Made for You and Me." (A photograph of the page is on p. 153 of Shaw. Shaw, pp. 211-218 has an appendix on the textual history of the song, showing Woody's changes and some of the changes after it left his hands.
Cray, pp. 165-167, seems to say that he composed the song on a guitar which he borrowed and never returned.
The tune is a slight modification of "When the World's On Fire," perhaps learned from the Carter Family's recording (Victor V-40293). - RBW
No perhaps about it: Guthrie was a devoted admirer of the Carter Family. There's also a strong resemblance to another Carter Family song, "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" (Victor 21638, 1928). - PJS]
Woody does not seem to have realized when he wrote it that he had his most important song on his hands. Woody did not record the song until 1944, and Moe Asch did not release the song on LP until 1951, according to Cray, p. 278n.
Seeger, p. 142, also reprints Woody's original manuscript copy, and says on p. 143 that, not too long after Woody was hospitalized, he was able to visit his son Arlo and teach him three verses that are not often sung, including the verse most of us have discreetly heard about private property. I read somewhere (perhaps in Shaw) that it was the only song Woody was able to teach to Arlo. Seeger feels that, without those additional verses (or some of the others Woody tried out over the years), the song misses its original message. Which is surely true, but I doubt it will make any difference.
There are a number of books wholly or partly about the song:
* Robert Santelli, This Land Is Your Land: Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song, Running Press, 2012
* John Shaw, This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems, Public Affairs, 2013. This book, cited here, obviously reflects on the relationship between the Berlin and Guthrie songs.
There are also a lot of books which borrow or riff on the title, a long series of books (travel books, I think) about states of the United States with the series title "This Land Is Your Land." - RBW
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