Woody Guthrie's NYC years come alive in new recording

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — When Nora Guthrie conceives a publication or recording about the life of her father, Woody, she always likes to include at least one fact that will be news to her folksinger brother, Arlo.

She delivers in My Name Is New York, the latest recording released by Woody Guthrie Publications, which details all the places Woody lived in New York, from 1940 until his death in 1967, including a couple of apartments he shared with a young folksinger named Pete Seeger, and actor Will Geer's swanky Fifth Avenue abode.

"I always include something for Arlo," says Nora on a November afternoon in the Woody Guthrie Foundation's office in Mount Kisco. "I like messing with my big brother."

Nora and her daughter, Anna Canoni, operations director of Woody Guthrie Publications, were working on the project during the Woody Guthrie Centennial in 2012, when he was celebrated with all-star concerts coast-to-coast, with hundreds of educational programs developed for schools around each of the performances.

"I'm constantly learning about his truths," Canoni says.

The three-CD set chronicles Woody's prolific years in New York, delves into his heart for the struggles of the common man, and details his debilitating decline from the ravages of Huntington's disease.

Two of the CDs are narrated by Nora Guthrie, 64, who over the past 20 years has revived her father's legacy by finding popular artists, like Billy Bragg and Jackson Browne, to record some of the 3,000 songs he wrote.

Those two CDs, recorded with Guthrie's music in the background, tell the story of Woody's time in New York — from Times Square to Greenwich Village, and then out to Brooklyn and Queens where Nora and Arlo were raised. It's a tale of Woody's commitment to social justice, his proclivity for falling in and out of love, and his development as a lyricist whose songs continue to be relevant 70 years after they were written.

You hear about Guthrie's songs during World War II that were part of the national effort to root out fascism. And you also learn of an incident in the South, where he stormed out of a venue after he was told that African-American guitarist Brownie McGee wouldn't be served in the same room.

Then there was Guthrie's creative process, which was intricately tied to the news. In the morning, he'd read the newspaper, write down 10 possible song titles, and then proceed to write the lyrics to 10 new songs.

The narration brings you into the apartments of Seeger and Lead Belly and other young folks singers in the 1940s and 50s. It takes you to Mermaid Avenue on Coney Island where Woody and his family lived for many years. And it takes you to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to the site of Woody's greatest tragedy — the death of his 4-year-old daughter Cathy in a freak electrical fire.

Nora Guthrie tells the story of his most popular anthem, "This Land is Your Land," which Woody wrote one night in a boarding house on 43rd Street in Times Square, just two weeks after hitchhiking across the country. He had literally just traveled "from California to the New York Island."

"That song was really more like a journal at the end of a long trip," she says. "You can look at his lyrics as diary entries."

There are archived interviews with Seeger and Woody's second wife, Marjorie, as well as reminiscences by Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie. Dylan recounts his legendary pilgrimage to Brooklyn to sing to Woody, from Guthrie's extensive songbook, while the Dust Bowl balladeer's health deteriorated in a Brooklyn psychiatric center. You hear Woody, too, in his Midwestern twang, talking about dancing on Hitler's grave, or revealing his tough New York persona, as recorded on a raw home tape, in the title track, "My Name is New York."

The collection's third CD is all music, with historic recordings of Woody singing classics like "This Land Is Your Land," "Tom Joad" and "Jesus Christ." It also includes New York recording artists adapting Guthrie's lyrics to new tunes that resonate with the promise of America's future, such as Lowry Hamner's take on "Union Air in Union Square."

You learn about a newcomer's excitement about the city's subway system — and the need for plenty of cash — in Del McCrory's rendition of "New York Trains." Mike & Ruthy sing Guthrie's sweet love song to the city, "My New York City." The Demolition String Band create a new anthem for Brooklyn's waterfront in "GoConey Island, Roll on the Sand." And Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, which came to the forefront during the Occupy movement, give Guthrie's "Beatitudes"the feel of a spirited revival on some summer night under a gospel tent.