"This Land Is Your Land", Story of a Song Quiz

Answer: Irving Berlin

It is said that Guthrie wrote the song as an antidote to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", which was as surgery sweet as anyone could have hoped for. Guthrie was not afraid to put a pointed message or two into his lyrics.
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in Oklahoma on July 14th 1912 and died in New York City on October 3rd 1967. Dubbed "the dust-bowl balladeer", Guthrie wrote songs about the common man in America and was outspoken about political iniquities he spotted (although he was not reluctant to accept big commerce's dollars in return for songs about their products.) It is difficult to understate Guthrie's influence on the generations of folk singers who followed him and revered his memory.
Irving Berlin, meanwhile, was born Israel Isidore Baline in Russia in 1888. His family moved to America and changed their name. He wrote hundreds of songs and many Broadway shows. "White Christmas", "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" all came from his pen. After 9/11, Celine Dion covered "God Bless America" and it became a Number One hit.

Answer: California and New York

"This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island...
Among those to cover the song were Bob Dylan, The Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, Jay and the Americans, The New Christy Minstrels, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bruce Springsteen and The Seekers.

Answer: Redwood

"From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me."
Woody Guthrie, who wrote those lyrics, was as much of a rambler as the narrator of the song. He traveled in the footsteps of those driven off their land in Oklahoma in the dust bowl period to California, and throughout the USA.

Answer: Walking

"As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway ..."
Guthrie was a pacifist and sometimes seen as an apologist for the Soviet Union, but served in the US Merchant Marine during the Second World War.

Answer: Diamond

"I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts..."
That desert theme was picked up in many other Guthrie songs, including "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" about an actual event in 1948 when a plane carrying arrested Mexican workers crashed as there were being flown home from California.
"We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same."

Answer: The relief office

"In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?"

Woody Guthrie was, if not a literal communist, someone who sided with the ordinary working people of America. He saw them as downtrodden by big business and getting a raw deal while a minority of people got rich on their labours. Guthrie contributed a column "Woody Sez," to the Communist newspaper, "People's World."

Answer: The Carter Family

The Carter Family recorded "When the World's On Fire", which borrowed from the Baptist hymn "Oh, My Loving Brother".
Peter Seeger, a great friend and collaborator of Woody Guthrie, told of remarking to Woody that another songwriter had 'stolen' some of his work. Guthrie replied: "Oh he just stole from me, I steal from everybody". (As recalled by Seeger on a live recording with Arlo Guthrie, a son of Woody.)
(No, I have not made up "Chuck Wagon & the Wheels". They were a group with a professional wrestling ethos. As we say in Ireland: "only in America...")

Answer: God Blessed America for Me

The lyrics, as first written by Woody Guthrie in New York in 1940, had as the last line of each verse the words "God Blessed America for me". In a manuscript of those lyrics, that last line has been struck out, presumably by Guthrie. This is entirely in keeping with his idea for the song, which was an antidote to "God Bess America."
"This Is My Country", incidentally, was a similar era song. It was written in 1940 by Don Raye and Al Jacobs.

"What difference if I hail from North or South
Or from the East or West?
My heart is filled with love
For all of these.
I only know I swell with pride
And deep within my breast
I thrill to see Old Glory
Paint the breeze.

This is my country
Land of my birth
This is my country
Grandest on Earth"

Meanwhile, "My Land Is A Good Land", written by Eric Andersen, is thematically similar to Guthrie's song:
"My land is a good land
Its grass is made of rainbow blades
Its fields and its rivers were blessed by God
It's a good land so they say
It's a good land so they say"

Answer: Hanover House Hotel, New York City

Originally, the song had six verses, however Guthrie regularly dropped verses, reinstated them and added new ones over the years. He first recorded the song in 1944.
The Sunset Doheny Hotel, incidentally, is where Tom Paxton, who was greatly influenced by Guthrie, says he wrote "Bottle Of Wine."

Answer: Barack Obama

Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and Seeger's grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, sang the original lyrics at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18th, 2009.