WOODY GUTHRIE - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED - HFSID 284929

WOODY GUTHRIE
Royalty agreement with Pete Seeger's music publisher, People's Songs, signed twice by the folk singer, who has also handwritten the song title, "Build a House."
Document Signed Twice: "Woody Guthrie", 4 pages, 8½x11. No place, No date, but circa 1946. Guthrie has handwritten the title of the song "Build a House", which he attests was composed exclusively by him. He transfers all rights to the song to People's Songs, in exchange for stipulated royalty payments of 3 cents per copy sold wholesale and 50% of sums received for its inclusion in folio or composite works. Guthrie alone has signed this copy of the agreement. The most important American folk singer and songwriter of the first half of the 20th Century, Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) wrote more than 1,000 songs, many of them standards such as "This Land Is Your Land" (1940), "Grand Coulee Dam" (1941), "Talking Dust Bowl" (1950), and numerous others, many of which are still covered by folk, country, rock, and even pop musicians. Guthrie left home at 15 to ride the rails as a hobo, andhis songs are fed by his many experiences in hobo and migrant worker camps and among the dispossessed of the Great Depression. Guthrie'ssongs are strongly left-leaning, with great sympathy for labor unions and farmer groups; he even wrote for Communist newspapers in the 1940s. Guthrie was especially popular as a recording artist in the 1940s, with many live performances as a member of the political folk group the Almanac Singers. Folk singers like Bob Dylan rediscovered his recordings in the 1950s and 1960s and revived his popularity. By this time, Guthrie was suffering from the effects of Huntington's disease, the illness that eventually caused his demise. People's Songs was a music cooperative founded on December 31, 1946 by folk singer Pete Seeger and others to popularize "songs of labor and the American people" It published a quarterly bulletin until 1950. Staple and staple rust at upper left corner. ¼ tear at center top margin of all pages. Ink notations on pages 1 & 2. Evenly toned. Otherwise, fine condition.