His music-scathingly funny songs and poignant folk ballads-made heard the unsung life of field hands, migrant workers, and union organizers, and showed it worthy of tribute. Singer, songwriter, and political activist, Guthrie drew a lifetime of inspiration from his roots on the Oklahoma frontier in the years before the Great Depression. A biography of the influential American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, who lived a life on the edge of tragedy but inspired a generation of songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.įew artists have captured the American experience of their time as wholly as folk legend Woody Guthrie. always shockingly immediate and real, as if Woody was telling it out loud. 'Even readers who never heard Woody or his songs will understand the current esteem in which he's held after reading just a few pages. 'One of the patron saints of American rebelliousness' – Joe Klein 'Wild as a train whistle in the mountains, a scrumptious picture of fighting, carousing, singing, laughing migratory across America' – The New York Times He became a folksinger, guitarist, actor, artist and broadcaster, and is best remembered for songs including 'This Land is Your Land', 'Roll On, Columbia, Roll On' and 'Worried Man Blues'.

When the Depression arrived, Woody hit the road and travelled round America. Woody Guthrie (1912-67), the son of a cowboy, was born in rural Oklahoma. Adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring David Carradine, Bound for Glory is the moving true story of America's greatest folksinger. But above all, this is a song for the America that Woody saw from his lonesome highway, as he travelled from one end of the country to the other with guitar in hand and the songs that made him a legend drifting out over the Dust Bowl. He tells of his childhood running wild in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, the tragedies that struck his family and of life on the open road during the Great Depression - hell-raising and brawling in boxcars, all while singing to raise a dime for his next meal. 'Now I been here an' I been there, Rambled aroun' most everywhere' Bound for Glory is the funny, cynical and earthy autobiography of Woody Guthrie, the father of modern American folk music.

Chronicling some from the point of view of one of the twentieth century's most influential musicians, Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory includes an introduction by Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors, in Penguin Modern Classics.

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