[Rarebooks] FS: Woody Guthrie AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED on the Current Folk Music Scene and Championing Pete Seeger

Tue Apr 10 10:21:24 EDT 2012

We will have this with us in our booth A-21 at the 52nd Annual New York 
Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street, April 12 
- 15.

GUTHRIE, Woody . AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS). [Brooklyn], 1955. First 
Edition. Interesting AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, three pages on adjoining 
panels of an off-white folding paper towel (7-1/2" x 9-1/2"), dated “On 
top of old April,” 1955 and sent to SING OUT, the influential folk music 
magazine still publishing today. Using several colors of ink, Guthrie 
writes what seems to be an overview of the current folk music scene 
concentrating on and comparing the young and upcoming Pete Seeger and 
Ewan MacColl, folk singer and partner of Peggy Seeger. In part 
[Guthrie’s spellings and grammar retained]: “Artists … do sing up and 
out with the pure old truth in bigger bunches and at better lower & 
cheaper price than I hear it sung around any other … old printin shop or 
office…. I sure do believe that Petey Seeger is a real champion at more 
jobs then floggin his wire stringy banjo ... singing his ever better & 
better & better and better … songs. He sounds honester to my poor old 
exploited ear than Ewan Macall’s [Ewan MacColl]. I don’t rekon that 
Macall has ever walked his land from end to end like Pete has…. Macall 
ever try to make his grat country’s own poverty and misery and deep … 
hunger and wories and fears … and hopes all rhyme … beat to time of a 
ballad song on any musicyial instrument like Pete has and habitually 
does…. I guess Ewan is a fine … honest hard workin’ man like England and 
Scotland … so full of by the uncounted millions and to me Ewan does the 
best job of singing exactly what his pappa and his mama and all his 
ancestors and all of his back generations of dead miners have told Ewan 
and had sung to him all his life about. He sounds too muchly slick & 
polished and rehearsed and thin to me—because he sings not about what 
his own life sees around him but what his ancestors lived thru and heard 
and sang out about. They made up their ballads to tell how hard … every 
minute and every hour … and every nite…. When I sit and just read those 
printed words in my … lp album here I get this terrible feeling again 
that I’m living in the place and scenery where it all takened place and 
where it all happened at but Ewan’s records fail to live quite up in 
their feelings when I play them.” Guthrie closes, “Every word you folks 
print up there is printed on a high high hard hittin’ hard fightin’ 
level and all your printed words needs is just a…jillion people to sing 
em up and out in your high militante spirit.” Folds and light 
show-through to text resulting from the nature of the material, 
otherwise clean, bright, and Fine .

At the time of writing, Guthrie was a patient at the Brooklyn State 
Hospital (whose name he adds below his signature), where he spent a 
number of years in treatment for a number of maladies. After a number of 
diagnoses, including alcoholism and schizophrenia, it was finally 
determined that Guthrie’s suffered from Huntington’s disease, a genetic 
condition that had earlier claimed his mother’s life. (#016459) $15,000.00

See images here:

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/016459.jpeg

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/016459a.jpeg

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