Woody Guthrie
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Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was a famous folk music composer. He was born on July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma and died on October 3, 1967 due to a disease passed down by his mother called Huntington's Chorea (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Though many people describe Guthrie as a bookworm in his earlier years, he had had little academic education and no musical training at all. It was when he became a traveling hobo with several other Oklahoma musicians that Woody really learned to perform and write folk music (Encyclopedia of World Biography).
Woody Guthrie played various instruments, his "main ones being the guitar/banjo, the fiddle, and the mandolin" (Hindin). He wrote around one thousand different songs (Encyclopedia of World Biography), including "I Ain't Got No Home," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Roll On Columbia," "Deportees," and the famous "This Land Is Your Land" (Hindin). Guthrie's devotion created a huge influence in music. He "opened the door for folk music and popularized it more so than any other artist. Guthrie became a great inspiration to famous, later-day musicians" (Hindin).
Like any other composer, Guthrie lived in a particular music time period...