Chapter 21: Folk Revival and Folk Rock
To understand the roots of the 1960s folk revival, it's essential to examine the earlier music that revivalists sought to reclaim. Much of this revival looked back to the work of Woody Guthrie, a singer-songwriter who became a towering figure in American folk music during the 1930s and 1940s. Guthrie helped define the idea of folk music as a vehicle for political resistance and working-class solidarity.
Born in 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, Guthrie came from a middle-class family, but his early life was shaped by personal and economic instability. His father’s financial struggles and his mother’s progressive deterioration from Huntington’s disease led Guthrie to leave home as a teenager. He wandered through Texas and Louisiana, eventually traveling across the western United States during the Great Depression. Living as a hobo, Guthrie rode freight trains, hitchhiked, and immersed himself in the lives and music of people displaced by the Dust Bowl and economic collapse.
These experiences inspired Guthrie to write songs that captured the resilience and spirit of working-class Americans. He began performing in local groups, hosting radio shows in Los Angeles, and collaborating with like-minded musicians. Many of Guthrie’s early compositions, including “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore,” “Dust Bowl Blues,” and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You,” gave voice to those suffering from poverty, injustice, and displacement.
Guthrie's most famous composition, “This Land Is Your Land,” was written in February 1940 while he was living in New York City. At the time, Guthrie was growing increasingly frustrated with the saccharine patriotism of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which had become a popular anthem on the radio, especially through singer Kate Smith’s widely broadcast rendition. To Guthrie, the song ignored the economic suffering and inequality facing many Americans in the wake of the Great Depression. In response, he penned what he originally titled “God Blessed America for Me,” intending it as both a parody and a people’s alternative.
Musically, the melody of “This Land Is Your Land” was borrowed from a Baptist gospel hymn called “Oh, My Loving Brother,” which had been adapted and popularized by the Carter Family in the 1930s as “When the World’s on Fire.” This folk lineage underscores Guthrie’s belief in shared musical traditions and the reworking of existing forms to meet the needs of the present.
Lyrically, the song starts out with seemingly celebratory lines—“This land is your land, this land is my land”—but moves toward a more critical reflection on American society in its lesser-known verses. Guthrie uses accessible, plainspoken language to voice his concerns about economic inequality, homelessness, and land ownership. In one of the most powerful stanzas, omitted from many schoolbook versions of the song, he writes:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.
This verse reflects Guthrie’s deep unease with the idea that land and wealth could be owned or hoarded by the few, while ordinary people were shut out. It captures his populist ethos and his belief that the country’s resources should belong to everyone, not just the privileged. Another verse, also often omitted, reads:
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office I saw my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering
If this land was made for you and me.
Here, Guthrie undercuts the patriotic chorus by drawing attention to the lines of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression, standing outside government aid offices. This juxtaposition of idealistic imagery with stark economic reality gives the song its critical edge. Rather than simply affirming America’s greatness, “This Land Is Your Land” questions whether the nation lives up to its own democratic ideals.
Over time, the song has been widely embraced, repurposed, and sanitized. The more radical verses are rarely included in official renditions or public performances, which tend to emphasize unity and national pride over protest. Yet for Guthrie, the song was never meant to be a feel-good anthem—it was a challenge to the American conscience, a folk protest in the guise of a patriotic tune.
These words reflected Guthrie’s conviction that patriotic music should speak honestly about the nation's contradictions. He believed that true patriotism demanded a willingness to confront injustice, not hide behind platitudes. Guthrie often aligned himself with left-wing politics, contributing columns to the Daily Worker (the newspaper of the Communist Party USA), performing at labor rallies, and supporting striking workers through both song and activism. During World War II, he famously affixed a sign to his guitar reading, “This machine kills fascists,” a bold declaration that music could be wielded as a tool of resistance. That same spirit animated songs like “Tear the Fascists Down,” in which Guthrie called for vigilance against authoritarianism, racism, and economic exploitation. Though aimed at Axis leaders, the song served as a broader condemnation of fascist ideologies wherever they appeared, including within the United States.
In 1940, Guthrie moved to New York and quickly became central to the city’s vibrant folk music scene. He collaborated with folklorist Alan Lomax, who recorded his songs and promoted his work through radio and albums like Dust Bowl Ballads. He also connected with fellow musicians such as Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Burl Ives, Josh White, and Aunt Molly Jackson. With Seeger, he co-founded the Almanac Singers in 1941. This group frequently rewrote the lyrics of traditional songs to serve antiwar, pro-labor, and antifascist causes, setting a precedent for politically engaged folk music.
After the war, Guthrie’s performance schedule slowed, but his songwriting continued. He married modern dancer Marjorie Mazia and raised four children, including Arlo Guthrie, who would later become a noted folk musician himself. Guthrie became involved in People’s Songs, an activist musical organization founded by Pete Seeger, and supported Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign with the Progressive Party.
Even in his later years, Guthrie maintained his critical edge. In the 1950s, while living in a segregated apartment complex built by Fred Trump in Brooklyn, Guthrie grew increasingly disillusioned with the racist housing practices of his landlord. He responded by writing scathing, satirical lyrics—never officially recorded—condemning Fred Trump, father of President Donald Trump, by name for discriminating against Black tenants. In one of his verses, Guthrie imagined a new, more inclusive America:
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial hate
He stirred up
In that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project…
As political tides turned against the left in the postwar Red Scare, Guthrie’s brand of radical protest music fell out of favor. His health also began to decline as symptoms of Huntington’s disease—an inherited neurological disorder that had also afflicted his mother—worsened. By the early 1950s, Guthrie was increasingly dependent on friends and family, including activist Will Geer and the young musician Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who became one of his most dedicated protégés and helped spread Guthrie’s music abroad. In 1956, Guthrie entered into the care of hospitals, where he would remain until his death in 1967.
Despite his declining visibility during the 1950s, Guthrie’s influence only grew. By the 1960s, his music and legacy had become central to the folk revival. Young performers like Bob Dylan not only admired Guthrie but modeled themselves after him—viewing him as a bridge between traditional American music and a progressive vision of political engagement. Guthrie's belief that songs could serve as tools for social change laid the foundation for a generation of folk musicians who would carry that torch forward into a new era of protest.
While Woody Guthrie laid the foundation for the left-wing folk movement, Pete Seeger brought it to national prominence. Born into a highly educated and musically gifted family—his father Charles Seeger was a musicologist and his stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger a pioneering modernist composer—Seeger grew up immersed in American folk traditions and progressive politics. He briefly attended Harvard but left in 1938 to pursue music and activism, soon finding work with folklorist Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song. There he met key figures such as Lead Belly and Guthrie, launching a lifelong dedication to using music as a tool for social change.
In 1940, Seeger co-founded the Almanac Singers with Guthrie and others, a group known for rewriting familiar tunes with lyrics supporting labor unions, antiwar efforts, and other progressive causes. In 1948, he helped form the Weavers, a more commercially oriented group that nonetheless popularized folk songs like “Goodnight, Irene” and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh.”
Despite their popularity and commercial success—including a number one hit with “Goodnight, Irene”—the Weavers were blacklisted during the height of the Red Scare. In 1955, Pete Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was investigating alleged communist influence in American institutions, particularly the entertainment industry. Seeger, who had previously been associated with left-wing causes and the Communist Party in the 1940s, refused to answer questions about his political beliefs or name other individuals. Instead of invoking the Fifth Amendment, as many others had done, Seeger cited the First Amendment, arguing that Congress had no right to question his personal associations or beliefs. This stance was seen as especially defiant and courageous, but it came at a high cost. He was cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in prison (though the conviction was eventually overturned in 1962). In the meantime, Seeger and the Weavers were blacklisted from radio and television appearances, and many concert venues refused to book them. The group disbanded in 1952 under increasing pressure, and Seeger’s solo career was forced underground for nearly a decade. During this time, he performed at schools, union halls, summer camps, and churches—venues far from the mainstream, but which allowed him to continue spreading folk music and social messages at a grassroots level.
Despite—or perhaps because of—this censorship, Seeger emerged in the 1960s as a symbol of artistic integrity and political resistance. He became a central figure in the American folk revival, inspiring countless musicians while continuing to support civil rights, environmental justice, and antiwar efforts. He played a major role in founding the Newport Folk Festival and contributed regularly to Sing Out! magazine, helping to keep protest music alive in print and performance.
As a songwriter, Seeger excelled at adapting poetry and political texts into enduring folk anthems. He set verses from Ecclesiastes to music in “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” helped popularize the Cuban poem “Guantanamera,” and collaborated with Lee Hays on classics like “If I Had a Hammer.” His original compositions, including “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” and “Last Train to Nuremberg,” captured the anxieties of Cold War America and became staples of protest song repertoires. In 1963, his We Shall Overcome album—recorded live at Carnegie Hall—cemented his role as a voice of conscience for a turbulent generation. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Seeger avoided major record labels and resisted incorporating rock instrumentation, maintaining a purist approach rooted in folk tradition.
Seeger played a key role in popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome,” which became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. Though the song’s origins trace back to African American gospel and labor traditions—specifically Charles Tindley’s 1901 hymn “I’ll Overcome Someday”—it was adapted in the 1940s by striking tobacco workers in South Carolina and then reshaped by labor activist Zilphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Seeger first encountered the song through Horton and helped modify its lyrics and melody into the now-familiar version. His performances of “We Shall Overcome” at rallies, marches, and concerts helped the song gain national prominence as a unifying expression of resilience, hope, and peaceful resistance. The phrase "We Shall Overcome" became a motto of the movement, and the song was sung at key moments including the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. Seeger’s role in elevating the song not only demonstrated the power of folk music in social struggle but also underscored his commitment to collective action and civil rights.
Until his death in 2014, Seeger remained an indefatigable activist, performing at rallies, writing songs, and advocating for causes from civil rights to environmental sustainability. His banjo famously bore the inscription: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” a quiet but powerful echo of Guthrie’s own anti-fascist motto—and a testament to the enduring belief that music could help change the world.