Woody Guthrie

“ HOLLYWOOD SONGS DON'T LAST. Broadway songs are sprayed with hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them sprouted and going. They sprout, they burst, they bloom and they fade. Wagon loads of your good money are shoveled and scattered onto them, but they are not our true history and we don't take them deep into our heart. ”

“ I tell you how a man jumped across the ocean and I guess you know him well, his name is Adolph Hitler, we'll burn his soul in hell. This world is digging Slavery's grave and when this work is done that will be the biggest thing that man has ever done. ”

“ WELL THE WORLD HAS SEVEN WONDERS THAT THE TRAVELERS ALWAYS TELL
SOME GARDENS AND SOME FLOWERS I GUESS YOU KNOW THEM WELL
BUT NOW THE GREATEST WONDER IS IN UNCLE SAM'S FAIR LAND
IT'S THAT KING COLUMBIA RIVER AND THAT BIG GRAND COOLEE DAM! ”

“ I'll meet any living person in a public debate at high noon on the green grass of Union Square to prove that is nothing but pure unwatered goldsplated facts. Never do I stretch the facts even a smillionth of an inch. ”

“ They sing of the dignity of the work of the people and no racketeer cashes in on foney sexual fits. Workers smile and work and soldiers smile and fight, with no rattled brained mouth frothers to wreck your nerves. ”

“ I HAVE NEVER HEARD a nation of people sing on editorial out of a paper. A man sings about the little things that help him or hurt his people and he sings of what has got to be done to fix this world like it ought to be. These songs are singing history. History is being sung. I have sung them in several hundred Union Halls and not one single time have I seen them fail. People clap and yell, get hot and sweat, unloosen their collars, and sing on for hours. ”

“ This land is made for you and me.
⁠Where the wind is blowing I go a strolling
⁠The wheat field waving and the dust a rolling
⁠The fog is lifting and the wind is saying:
⁠This land is made for you and me.
⁠Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking my freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land is made for you and me. ”

“ He thought he could push other folks around or sock them in jail if they sassed him back. He had the power to make a work slave out of you just for speaking your mind in front of him. He caused hundreds of thousands of men, women, kids to worry, to wonder, to walk the long walk, to bow down their heads and cry. Red and men like him have been a part of an old wore out slave system in a lot of states, actually giving him the power of a Nazi Storm Trooper. This song will show you that East Texas Red didn't get his business fixed. ”

“ I have heard fighting men in the war zones scream and demand that the gibbery radio be shut off or it would be smashed.
SEVERAL MILLION SKULLS HAVE BEEN CRACKED WHILE OUR HUMAN RACE has worked and fought its way up to be union. ”

“ My old jackhammer runs white hot to win this war and to kill fascism, but she runs a lot hotter to build this old world back up again. Gonna be a nice old world to look at when we all get to working together on her.
BED ON YOUR FLOOR ⁠ I sing this song mainly just to make you think that I had a little run in with a man and had to lay him dead down on the floor, that the sheriff's on my trail with his big forty four, that the clock's striking midnight with daylight to go. ”

“ I can knock down more rock with my jackhammer in ten minutes than old Pecos Bill can by riding a cyclone to a dead stop. I hired out up here on this Saint Lawerence Seaway just lately and I ain't seen nobody around here that can turn out half as much work with both hands as I can with one. My name's Jackhammer John and I say we need more seaways, more shipways, more skyways, shiptrails and barge lines, more loading ports and more hands at work around here. ”

“ How can they be otherwise when they have no connection with the work and the fight of the whole human race? They are bad. They are hurtful, poisonous, complascent, distracting, full of jerky headaches and jangled nerves. ”

“ The rich ones hired airplanes full of entertainers and stars to come up to Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming and tell the people that they didn't need no Coolee Dam at all, that is, not for the next couple of centuries. Take too much work and materials and would make the wheels run entirely too nice and light up the country entirely too bright. ”

“ THE MONOPOLY ON MUSIC pays a few pet writers to go screwy trying to write and rewrite the same old notes under the same old formulas and the same old patterns. The songs have no guts. They sound sissified, timid, the spinning dreams of a bunch of neurotic screwballs. ”

“ Some day you will have a voice in how all of your money is spent and then your songs will have some meaning. The British Government and the Soviets were forced to take over all of these things and their songs, records and programs are a thousand times better, they had to milk out all traces of complascency, sissiness, cowardliness, and tendencies to run and hide, or to turn into a nation of jerks. ”

“ I GOT THEM
⁠JACKHAMMER BLUES
⁠JACKHAMMER JACKHAMMER
⁠WHERE YOU BEEN
BEEN OUTTA CHASIN THEM
⁠GALS AGAIN
HO HO HO⁠WELL I GOT THEM
⁠JACKHAMMER BLUES
SEE MY WOMAN
⁠WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN
GRAB MY HAMMER
⁠AND GO TO TOWN
YES FOLKS
⁠I GOT THEM JACKHAMMER BLUES ”

“ Cut a man like a razor.
⁠Not a bit of use in me working so hard
I got a woman in the rich folks yard
When she kills a chicken she sends me the feet
Thinks I'm working when I'm loafing in the street. ”

“ That bully of the town won't bully me no more
'Cause I laid him dead on the old bar room floor
I laid a man dead down on the floor
I laid a man dead down on the floor
So I'll rest my head in a bed on your floor. ”

“ Says my daddy works at the place where they land
So you tell your mama don't be afraid
"Cause my dad'll bring your daddy back home again
HOW'S ALL YOUR FOLKS?
LIKE TO
HEAR FROM YOU
I'M NOT LOST
I LIVE
IN THAT (illegible text)
HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE TO THE CITY LIMITS? ”