Roll on Columbia: The Story of Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest; Part 1

Roll on Columbia the story of Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest part 1. This program tells the story of one month in the life of Woody Guthrie. The month of May 1941 when Woody Guthrie lived in Portland Oregon and worked for the federal government. Woody was employed by the Bonneville Power Administration as a songwriter. The 26 songs Guthrie wrote in Portland have become known as the Columbia River songs and some of his best known work is from the collection including Pastures of Plenty and Roll on Columbia. But other songs in the collection were lost for over 40 years. This program also tells the story of the songs themselves and presents 11 lost Columbia River recordings for the first time. [Guthrie] I have friends of the northwest. The day I have a feeling

of real satisfaction in witnessing the completion of another great national project and a pleasure in the fact that in its inception four years ago I had some part. [O'Rourke] In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt came to Bonneville Dam to dedicate the recently completed structure and to announce the birth of a new organization the Bonneville Power Administration. The development of the Columbia River would transform life in the Pacific Northwest in the years to come as the region enjoyed the nation's most plentiful supply of electricity. The BPH policy of selling power with preference to public power companies and at a uniform rate meant that the benefits of the cheap hydro power would be shared by all. [Music] In the same year the BPA was born an itinerant folk singer and refugee from the dust

bowls of Oklahoma and Texas named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie had become an overnight celebrity on KFBD radio in Los Angeles. Woody had left his wife and children behind in Pampa Texas a year earlier to join thousands of men on the road looking for work. Woody's family later joined him in California but his radio job didn't last. And in 1940 Woody his wife Mary and their three children traveled to New York City there when he met people like Pete Seeger and folklorist Alan Lomax. Alan Lomax still remembers the first time he saw Woody on stage. I'd say at that time Woody Woody was was one of the funniest people in the world. [Lomax] You know he could stand up in front of an audience and he never got to one song in two hours of performance. He told stories and the audience was in stitches and weeping. He was a wonderful story teller at that point in his life. just wound audiences around his little finger. [ music] [O'Rourke] When Woody Guthrie first met Alan Lomax Lomax was the director of the folk song archive at the

Library of Congress and a radio producer for CBS. As a result of Allen's connections at CBS Woody was soon appearing on two national radio programs. Woody was well paid but by the end of 1940 he'd become restless. He rankled under CBS's tight editorial control of his programs and one day he abruptly resigned from both radio shows. He left New York and headed south with Mary and the children in their new Pontiac a symbol of the prosperity of his CBS days. At about the same time the still young Bonneville Power Administration in Portland Oregon was looking for a folk singer and songwriter. Information officer Steve Kahn was in charge of producing a movie for the BPA that celebrated the development of the Columbia River and public power. Khan wanted to reach a large audience with this film. He would add to it folk music to try to broaden its appeal. BPA employee Bill Marlyn. [Merlyn] And through his movie producer Gunther von Fritch

they contacted Alan Lomax in Washington D.C. or New York and said who and Lomax said Woody Guthrie. [Lomax] I did that Woody would actually get a job writing ballads was just an inconceivable stroke. I felt like shouting over the telephone. It was a laughing conversation all the way. I could remember how [inaudible] laughter of delight and ?of myself that Woody would get a chance to do this. Cheers. Well Woody had left New York by then and was headed west by way of Texas. And Von Fritch attempted to catch up with Woody with a message saying we've got this project we'd like to talk to you about it. And the message finally caught up with Woody in northern California. Van Fritch went down and visited with them. But there were no promises made about whether or not Woody actually had a job [music]

but Woody didn't have employment at that particular time and so he packed up wife kids and belongings and into their car and almost chased von Fritch back to Portland. [Woody singing] On the plane I'm gonna pack my wife and kids, I'm gonna hit that western road, I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. I'm gonna hit hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, where the good rain falls aplenty, and the crops and orchards grow, I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. Well, my land is dry and cracklin', and my chickens they're a-cacklin', cause the dirt and dust is a-gettin' in their craw. They've been laying flint rock eggs, I had to bust em with a sledge, and I'm gonna hit

that Oregon trail this comin' fall. I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, where the good rain falls aplenty, and the crops and orchards grow, I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. Well, the hogs and pigs are squealin', they're a-rocking and a-reelin', cause there ain't no water to wallow in the drawer. I'm gonna to grab one by his tail, I'm going to take him down a western trail, and we'll hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. Now, my good ole horse is bony, yes he's dry and hungry too, you can see his ribs three-quarters of a mile. Throw my kids up on his back, and the bay horse and the black, and we'll hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, where the good rain falls aplenty, where the crops and orchards grow, I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. Well, my wife gets sort of ailin' when that mean old dust is sailing and she wishes for the days beyond recall. If the work there's in the future in that north Pacific land, so we'll hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall. I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, hit that Oregon Trail this comin' fall, where the good rain falls aplenty and the crops and orchards grow, I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this coming fall.

So he came to Portland without full knowledge that he had a job when he got here. But there was nothing else going on at the time for him. Bill Merlin came to work for the BPA in 1979. He has extensively researched Woody Guthrie's time with Bonneville, and in 1983 discovered many lost songs and recordings from the Columbia River collection. So he arrives, out on the street in front of the headquarters building, in a battered-up but relatively new automobile, looking scraggly with a long beard, blonde wife and three blonde children in the car. Woody shows up in the office looking for Kahn and von Fritsch. Where's the job? There wasn't a job. And there was no way that they could get him a job in a short period of time, and Kahn knew that the only way that he was going to be able to seize this opportunity would be to get an emergency declaration

made by the administrator of the agency that this job was necessary. So Kahn took Guthrie into administrator Paul Raver's office, sat him down and said, Here, do this interview. Guthrie sang songs and talked and charmed Raver out of a 30-day job. [Music] Woody Guthrie now had a job with the BPA, but he also had real financial difficulties. When he arrived in Portland, he was flat broke. Steve Khan: He didn't have any money, as I remember; I had to loan him some money. And we discovered his car was missing. I said, Is it paid for, Woody? He says, Well, I made a down payment on it. I said, Well, did you tell the finance company you were up here? He said, Yes, I told them I had a job with Bonneville. And I said, But we might be able to get your car back. I'll try. I'll go down with you to the finance company. So we went down there and the fellow

when we looked at the papers says, You can have the car back for 10 hundred and 32 dollars and 46 cents. I said, You got that much on you, Woody? He says, No. I said, Well, you don't want that car, do you, Woody? And he says, no, I guess not. So we walked out of the finance company office. [Music] [Music]

[Music] From Woody's first day at work, his supervisor Steve Kahn was a strict boss. He wanted to make sure the BPA got its money's worth. I was over him with a whip. Like in Hollywood they require a scriptwriter to turn out three pages a day, or something like that, you know, no matter how bad or good it is, he has to turn out three pages.

He had a great tendency to throw in some songs he'd written before and just change a few lines. I didn't mind that, if they were appropriate, but I wanted something that would be usable in a film. And Kahn practically required -- -- forced Woody to produce something each day. Woody would dip back into his bag of existing songs, make some modifications to them, and turn them in. Whether it was knuckling under to pressure, or being inspired by what he saw in the Pacific Northwest, whatever it was -- we got 26 songs in 30 days out of him. I can't remember what the annual salary was, but it worked out to 200 and 60 dollars and 60 cents for 30 days of work, which ends up being about a ten spot per song. Pretty cheap. [Music] [Music]

Many of the songs Guthrie wrote for the BPA were entirely new, based on what he saw and experienced in the Northwest. Woody took many field trips around the region, down the Willamette Valley and out into the Columbia Gorge to Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams. He visited many Northwest cities including Seattle and Spokane. He travelled. Usually with a Bonneville driver in a Bonneville car, sitting in the backseat, thumping away on his guitar or writing notes in a notepad and not responding at all to questions being asked by the driver who wanted to be friendly and conversational. The man was not -- was not a conversationalist. I mean, he was thinking about knocking out these songs. Elmer Bueller was one of the BPA employees who drove Woody around. Because I was driving the car and he was always in the back seat, and I would point out certain things, and he'd say Well, let's stop. [Music] [Music]

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] For him it was just a heavenly experience, a

godsend. Alan Lomax: Everything about the situation was just right for him. You know, he came from the dry Southwest, like I did. And I can remember the first time I ever saw the Columbia River Valley. It was... I felt like I got to heaven. [Laughs] Green, clear water, soft air, and that was the way the Columbia River hit Woody. They first came on the heights of the dam, he looked down, and communed with the salmon -- oh, God. [Music] Well I pulled out my pencil I scribbled this song. Figured all them salmon just couldn't be wrong. Them salmon fish is pretty shrewd you know they got senators and politicians too. Just nod like a president, run every four years. You just watch this river though pretty soon everybody is going to be changing their tune. Big Graham Coolie on the Barneville Dam. Gonna need a lot more of them scattered all over the land. Just a drop

in the bucket. Need dams and human tiller rapids down foster creek an For. and [inaudible] bedrooms and plastic trimmings, and everything ought to be plastic. Well, the folks need houses and stuff to eat and the folks need the metals and the folks need wheat Folks need water and power dams, and folks need the people and the people need the land. People and people. I think know nothing you're out of the Iraq. Thing like that without a gun rack on. The only clothes I ever saw him wear was a sun tan shirt and sun tan pants I took him places where I was scheduled to be, I never went out of the

way I didn't make a special trip just for him but I took him down to Yamhill County and on over to Prattem near Salem there was large hop yards there. He had never seen hops before and he asked a great many questions about hops. Well he's got hops mentioned in "Pastures of Plenty". He's got our other crops in the Northwest mentioned in a number of his songs: peaches, prunes, apples, cherries, beets. [Music] [Music]

[Music] [Music] [Music]. Woodie would return home from his travels each day and tell Mary and his children what he'd seen. He did much of his songwriting at home. Woodie sang and played all the time Mary Guthrie: Yeah, I've heard him sit down and whip out two or three different songs maybe while I was getting dinner. [Music] [Music]. I think, probably, he did as much writing at night as he ever did by day.

Woodie wrote so much stuff that there might be a stack of papers this high to throw out. [inaudible] what he wanted or needed. Woodie's nocturnal writing habits were not due to the pressures of his BPA job. He'd always been a prolific writer of not only songs but stories and poetry as well, prompting Guthrie biographer Joe Klein to remark that Woodie played the typewriter better than the guitar. Shortly after his BPA job was over, Woodie stayed for a couple of days with author Studs Terkel in Chicago. [Studs Terkel] And that's when I discovered about the giftedness of Woodie Guthrie I could write songs on the drop of a hat. And Woodie could write, you know he'd come in from a tavern at night and I was sleeping everybody was asleep (he'd) come in three, four in the morning and you'd hear him typing away on my portable and the next day I'd see all these sheets of paper in the waste basket: single spaced about 20 pages, it was Joycean, it was Thomas Wolfe, it was a wild kind of writing, you know. And there it was.

I never saved those sheets, I should have. [Michael O'Rourke] The 30 days Woodie Guthrie spent in Portland were the most productive of his life. He was driven not only by the discipline of his boss Steve Khan, but was also inspired by the beauty of the Northwest and by the cause of public power. Bill Merlin: one of the fellows that did take him around took him primarily to Grange meetings and other such organizations where public power issues were being discussed. Low rates for electricity. Electricity going to places that electricity had never gone before. To the individual farms and individual communities rather than being highly centralized. Woodie would either sing his songs or would just observe the activities going on. [Music] You know I think he believed in the promise that the projects brought because it opened up a new future of

potential jobs for the people that were having hard times. And you hear that in his songs. So when the New Deal promised that a lot of people would be put to work as an effort to deal with the Depression, Woody was in favor of that. So however he might have felt about big government, big business, big projects, big money, there was big employment and paychecks. Woody was in favor of putting people to work, downtrodden or otherwise. [Music]. He was looking for something he was trying to prove something. He was for the downtrod people but as far as something for himself, it didn't make that much difference. You couldn't

possibly know how Woodie was unless you knew him. He was never happy. Too long a period with any one thing. [Music] [Music]. When his time with the BPA was over Woodie left Mary and the kids behind him and hit the road hitchhiking east. His first ride was with the late Oregon judge Gus Solomon, who had met Woodie earlier

in Portland. [Solomon] As I was leaving the city and we were going down the Columbia River Highway at that time, I saw Woodie on the side of the road with his instrument on his back and a little suit..., not a suitcase but a bag. And I said, I stopped the car and I said: Woody, where are you going? And he said: I'm going to New York. And I said: Well, how are you going to get there? And he said: Well, I'm going to hitchhike. Well I told him I couldn't take him to New York but I was going to the Dalles, which was then 97 miles away I think. So, Woodie got in and we were driving down the road and I found out that Woodie had no money at all and then he told me that he was going to try to make his way across the country by playing, and so I gave him $10, I recall.

[Music]. Woody Guthrie made it back to New York in June of 1941, where he joined Pete Seeger and the Almanac singers. Mary stayed on in Portland for the rest of the summer. The time Woodie and Mary Guthrie spent together in Portland would be their last. They were divorced a few months later. Woodie's performing career lasted until the mid 50s when he was hospitalized with Huntington's Korea, the hereditary disease that ended his life in 1967. Woody Guthrie has become America's best known folk composer and many of his songs have become classics, like "This Land is Your Land" and "Roll on Columbia". World War 2 interrupted work on the Bonneville Power Administration's film and many of Guthrie's Columbia River songs were lost for over 40 years until

their discovery by Bill Merlin in 1983. Tune in for part two of this special presentation, for the story of how the lost songs were found. [Music]. "Roll on Columbia" the story of Woodie Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest is a special production of Oregon Public Broadcasting. The program was written produced and narrated by Michael O'Rourke. Production assistance was by Mary Ore. All of the music heard in this program is part of "The Columbia River Collection" created by Woody Guthrie for the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941. Archival recordings were provided courtesy of the Bonneville Power Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers. Special thanks to Bill Merlin. [Music] [Music]