Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie - Softcover

Ed Cray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393327361 ISBN 13: 9780393327366

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006

Synopsis

Winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award for Best Folk, Pop, or Jazz Biography

"A beautiful job...In exploring the nuances of Guthrie's work, Cray's exacting style is pitch-perfect." ―Los Angeles Times Book Review

A patriot and a political radical, Woody Guthrie captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs. He was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the fatal fires that stalked his family and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At forty-two, he was cruelly silenced by Huntington’s disease. Ed Cray, the first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, has created a haunting portrait of an American who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself.

8 pages of illustrations

About this title

About the Author

Ed Cray (1933―2019), "a meticulous craftsman of American biography" (Douglas Brinkley), was a professor at the University of Southern California.

Born in 1912, Studs Terkel is the bestselling author of twelve books of oral history, including Working, Hard Times, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning “The Good War” (all available from The New Press). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Presidential National Humanities Medal and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

From Publishers Weekly

The biographer of Gen. George C. Marshall (General of the Army) turns his prodigious skills to view another complex American hero with an equally complex story-folk singer and political activist Woody Guthrie. Cray's access to thousands of pages from the Woody Guthrie Archives (including previously unpublished letters, diaries and journals) allows him to present a comprehensive picture, although sometimes the detail keeps Cray from moving the story along. However, this is the definitive biography of a songwriter whose legendary image for the past half-century has been "the banty, brilliant songwriter who had stood up for the underdog and downtrodden." Cray provides a superb look at Guthrie's background as a real estate agent's son. He carefully details how Guthrie moved from a fairly conventional career in country music to a recreation of his image through remarkable songs, like his "Dust Bowl Ballads,'' and gained a whole new Depression-era audience: "The Okies and Arkies, the Texicans and Jayhawkers, had become Woody's people." Cray also expertly observes how the "writerly discipline" of these works was missing in his post-WWII songs. While Guthrie's folk hero status is a given today, Cray shows just how much effort it actually took for a new generation of folk singers such as Bob Dylan to raise awareness of Guthrie's importance as the man himself fell victim to Huntington's disease. Finally, Cray fully explores one of the real heroes in this story, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, who stuck with the singer during and after their stormy marriage.
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0393327361
• ISBN 13: 9780393327366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512