Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie


"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you

think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing.

Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs

that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to

fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs

that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked

you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to

sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing

are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the

other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own

kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at

\you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a

long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves

and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running

over with such no good songs as that anyhow."

- Woody Guthrie.