Woody Guthrie (born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie) was an American folk singer/songwriter who is considered one of the first and most important protest musicians. Born in Oklahoma in 1912, he endured a rocky childhood that eventually saw him and his siblings essentially raising themselves by the time Guthrie was 14. After spending some time in Texas in his late teens, he joined thousands of migrant workers who were traveling to California to find work during the start of the Dust Bowl era. It was this journey that ingrained traditional folk and workman songs in Guthrie, who quickly became an empowered musician capable of raising political awareness, rallying public opinion and tackling fascism with nothing more than his voice and an acoustic guitar. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he would move his family all over the US, absorbing stories and struggles of the common man and relaying them in song to an ever-increasing audience. His most popular and well-known songs, including "This Land is Your Land," have become part of America's cultural fabric, capturing the essence of the country's early idealistic phases in sparse and simple fashion. In addition to his political material, Guthrie also penned everything from love ballads to children's songs, some of which were captured when Billy Bragg and Wilco, two of the many artists who were inspired by Guthrie, posthumously put music to a number of his unfinished lyrics on the 1998 Mermaid Avenue series.
