Woody Guthrie: Hanson From a Bygone Era?
"I hate a song that makes you think you aren't any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. bound to lose, no good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too young or too old or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or to this or to that songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and if it has hit you pretty hard and thrown you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, no matter what size, no matter how you are built.
I am out to make you sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.
I could hire out to the other side, the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down and the ones that poke fun at you even more and make you think you've not got any sense at all.
But I decided a long time ago that I'd rather starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."
Woody Guthrie