The New York Times offers an interesting article on Woody at 100, a three-CD boxed set from the Smithsonian Institution. The story mentions Guthrie’s best known song, This Land is Your Land (originally This Land), includes the second verse of the song that isn’t often sung. The lyrics aren’t startling by today’s standards, but the stanza isn’t clearly the patriotic crowd-pleaser of the first.
Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger sang the song–including that second verse–at President Obama’s inauguration (here it is). It’s a bit ironic. Springsteen’s Born in the USA, like This Land is Your Land, often is mistakenly thought to be a blindly patriotic ode. Both are anything but.
Here is Guthrie’s transcription of This Land, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons:
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