Blues
'If it was up to me music history would have been very different...' How did Woody Guthrie's daughter almost prevent his friendship with Bob Dylan?
Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora Guthrie has revealed how she almost stopped Bob Dylan from meeting his folk music hero and nearly changed the course of music history.
Nora Guthrie has recalled Bob Dylan's first attempt to meet her father, Woody Guthrie, revealing that she slammed the front door on him because she wanted to learn the Watusi dance while watching it on TV.
It is well documented that, in January 1961, Dylan travelled to New York City to meet Woody and subsequently spent time with the folk music legend while he was being treated for Huntington's disease at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. Dylan's early songs were heavily influenced by Woody, whom he described as "the true voice of the American spirit", while describing himself as "Guthrie's greatest disciple".
Woody Guthrie in 1943 / Credit: Getty
Now, Woody's daughter Nora, 76, has revealed that Dylan first visited her family home in Howard Beach, New York, where she lived with her siblings and her mother Marjorie, Woody's second wife, who cared for him up until his death, aged 55, on October 3, 1967.
Nora remembers that she was watching television and trying to master the Watusi dance craze that swept across America in the early '60s. After answering the door to Bob, she told him her father was not there and shut the door as quickly as she had opened it.
Had Dylan not been persistent and knocked again, the world may have lost his influence on music over the past seven decades.
In an interview with BANG Showbiz, she revealed: "I'm not going to make a speech about Dylan. I'm going to say what I know, what I lived through.
"He came to our house in 1961 when he was 19. I was watching TV. All I wanted to do was learn how to do the Watusi, The Locomotion, great songs. I'm a Brooklyn girl, I love rock and roll. So I'm doing the Watusi, I'm learning the dance because the kids on TV are like 14 and I'm 11, so they are so cool. I'm at home with my brothers and a teenage babysitter. My mother was working.
"There's a knock on the door. I go to answer the door, there's a guy standing there. He goes, 'I'm here to see Woody Guthrie.' I say, 'He's not home,' and I slam the door and run back to get to the Watusi.
"This is Bob Dylan. He knocks again and I go back to the door and go, 'He's not home.' Then the babysitter comes and says, 'I'm sorry, but we're not allowed to let in strangers. Mrs. Guthrie isn't here.'
"My brother Arlo, who is probably about 14, comes down the stairs. He's older than I am. He sees the guy has a guitar. Arlo plays the guitar. Seeing a guy with a guitar, Arlo can relate. He says, 'Hey man, want to come in?' The two of them went, 'Hey man, hey man, hey man,' for a while.
"The babysitter called my mother and found out if it was cool that he came in and hung out with us and had dinner. That was when the meeting was. If it was up to me, music history would have been very different."
Nora Guthrie at SiriusXM studios in 2020 / Credit: Getty
Nora also shared details of the "beautiful" relationship her father and Bob shared, revealing that the Blowin' in the Wind singer would bring him cigarettes and play Woody's own songs to him as he lay in his hospital bed.
She said: "I want to make a serious point. Once Bob became a friend of the family, my father was already in the hospital. He became very close with my mother and my mother was always recruiting people to help out at the hospital because my father was on the psychiatric ward because they didn't know what else to do with Huntington's patients. He was in a ward with 40 other people who had problems and it was very hard for us. We would visit him every weekend, or we would bring him home every weekend. Bob volunteered to help out. So he would ask my mother, 'Does Woody need anything?' And she would say, 'Yes, cigarettes.' So he would bring my dad cartons of cigarettes and paper and pencils and some friends he would bring along, like John Hammond, and his other peers.
"I want to say in a heartfelt way that he was very important and very beautiful to my father in those years.
"The most important thing he said was that he never played his own songs to my father. He would ask my father, 'What do you want to hear?' And my father would say, 'I want to hear my songs.' That's because he knew he was going, he wanted to ensure that other people would sing his songs. Bob called himself a Woody Guthrie jukebox. Bob said he would go to the hospital and play any song Woody wanted to hear. You know how beautiful that is. A young upstart who wants to play his songs and ask, 'Do you like this one? Do you think this one is good?' And he subdued himself enough not to do that. When he wrote Gotta Serve Somebody, I always think of Bob, the way he served my father."
Nora was speaking in a joint interview with David Lutken ahead of the opening of the critically acclaimed musical Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie at Underbelly Boulevard Soho in London.
Created and performed by Lutken alongside three actor-musicians playing more than 20 instruments, the show draws directly from Guthrie’s own words, letters and songs to trace the life of the American folk icon through the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and the political movements that shaped 20th-century America.
Maintaining a long-standing relationship with Woody Guthrie Publications, Lutken has worked closely with Woody’s family for decades, and Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie is created and performed with the support of the Guthrie estate, continuing to introduce new audiences to his timeless songs while preserving the communal spirit and live musicianship at the heart of the American folk tradition.
The show runs until September 19 and tickets and information are available HERE
