G is for Woody Guthrie

One of the great 20th century folkies whose influence continues and who epitomised the rural singer/writer highlighting the poverty and deprivation he encountered as he travelled around the USA in the 1920s and ‘30s, across dust bowls and dereliction, with perhaps his most famous an arrangement of the traditional (but also claimed as Carter family tune),This Land Is Your Land.

By the time he died from Huntingdon’s Chorea in 1967, he had seen his son Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald, Rambli’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan take up the folk/protest torch.

G is also for Guitar

The ultimate instrument of American folk. In fact, without an acoustic guitar in evidence, most would say, it’s not folk, though unaccompanied singing is part of the tradition.

Watch: Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo sings his dad’s classic, This Land Is Your Land