Woody Guthrie

USA, 1930–1967

American folk singer and songwriter (1912-1967). Dust Bowl Ballads and songs including 'This Land Is Your Land' set plain-spoken political writing to traditional tunes, a method taken up by the post-war folk revival.

MusicRoots documents 1 artist who influenced Woody Guthrie and 13 artists Woody Guthrie influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Woody Guthrie?

• The Carter Family — Guthrie set his songs to Carter Family melodies — 'This Land Is Your Land' uses the tune of their 'When the World's on Fire'.

Which artists did Woody Guthrie influence?

• Simon & Garfunkel — Guthrie's folk tradition was the soil in which the revival — and Simon & Garfunkel — grew.
• Joan Baez — Guthrie is the foundation of the protest-song tradition that Baez continued and developed.
• Donovan — Like Dylan, Donovan drew on the Woody Guthrie folk tradition in his early work.
• The Byrds — The Byrds grew out of the Woody Guthrie folk tradition before electrifying it.
• Bob Dylan — Dylan came to New York to visit his idol Woody Guthrie.
• Ani DiFranco — The protest-song tradition she works in, and one she has marked in person — she played the opening of the Woody Guthrie Archives in 1995 alongside Springsteen and Billy Bragg.
• Lonnie Donegan — Guthrie's talking blues and folk repertoire were core skiffle sources that Donegan carried to British audiences.
• Pete Seeger — Seeger and Guthrie travelled and sang together in the Almanac Singers — Guthrie was his direct partner and teacher of the road.
• James Taylor — The American folk tradition of Woody Guthrie underlies Taylor's Appalachian-tinged songcraft.
• Rod Stewart — Guthrie's songs were part of the American folk repertoire Stewart busked with in the early 1960s, and the plainspoken storytelling stayed in his own writing.
• Ramblin' Jack Elliott — Guthrie was the overwhelming influence on Elliott, who travelled and lived with him and absorbed his repertoire so completely that Guthrie said Elliott sounded more like him than he did.
• Townes Van Zandt — Guthrie is the other half of the folk inheritance Van Zandt worked in.
• Beck — Beck came up playing Delta blues and folk in the Woody Guthrie tradition, the bedrock beneath his genre collages.