General Discussion

HuckleB

(35,773 posts) Mon May 9, 2016, 06:59 PM May 2016

Visiting Woody Guthrie's small Portland apartment 75 years later

http://www.oregonlive.com/history/2016/05/woody_guthries_tiny_portland_a.html#incart_2box

"...

At a time when skyrocketing rents are pushing low-income residents to the city's edges, ROSE's multifamily Woody Guthrie Apartments will actually go up a few blocks from the address where the guitar-strumming Bernie Sanders of his day lived in May of 1941.

The old four-plex at 6111 S.E. 92nd Ave., located on the cusp of Interstate 205, still stands. Ironically, nothing outside the building acknowledges that one of America's greatest songwriters created some of his greatest work with three children at his feet in a cramped apartment on the second floor.

...

Guthrie had been hired by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs promoting the building of new dams along the Columbia. In 30 frantic days, he wrote 26 songs and recorded nine of them, earning $266.66 — or $10 a song.

...

Greg Vandy, a Seattle radio host and author of the new book "26 songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest," said Guthrie worked on some of his most iconic songs in the apartment.

...

In January, when the apartment on 92nd Avenue was between tenants, the manager let me in to snoop around. I brought a portable record player and the "Columbia River Collection" on vinyl.

In the middle of the living room, I dropped the needle on "Pastures of Plenty," a subversive ballad about migrant farm workers in America's bread basket. The ghostly echo of Woody's rambling, chant-like drawl bounced off the plaster walls, throwing out lyrics that still speak truth to power.

..."

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It's nice to see such a memory acknowledged...