Behind the history of "This Land is Your Land" and how it has inspired Americans

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[00:00:00]Our series USA disease celebrates 250 years of American history and culture.

[00:00:05]Today is T for This Land Is Your Land.

[00:00:08]While you probably know the words, you might not know Woody Guthrie's intention when he wrote it. Anthony Mason, who also hosts the YouTube show Alchemy with Anthony Mason, shares the backstory.

[00:00:22]>> Folk singer Jesse Wells first learned about Woody Guthrie as a teenager in Arkansas.

[00:00:28]>> This land is [singing] your land, [music] this land is my land, from California to the New York Island.

[00:00:39]>> [music] >> Of course, everybody learned This Land Is Your Land as soon as you got into the public school system, you know. And you didn't even know that was Woody. [music] >> As I went walking >> What did you hear in those songs?

[00:00:53]>> It was just like if America was a person it sounded like anyone in my town in Ozark. That's what Woody sounded like.

[00:01:02]>> I ain't got no home, I'm just a roaming round.

[00:01:06]>> Born in Oklahoma, Guthrie lived through the Dust Bowl in Texas and the Great Depression.

[00:01:12]But This Land, as Philip Palmer of the Morgan Library and Museum told CBS Sunday Morning was actually written in a New York hotel in 1940.

[00:01:22]>> This land is your land and this land is my land and the California >> He wrote the song in some ways as a satirical response to a very popular song at the time, God Bless America by Irving Berlin, especially the Kate Smith performance of that song.

[00:01:38]>> [singing] [music] [singing] >> It bothered him that the song was so unapologetically patriotic and uncritical of the problems he saw in the country firsthand as he was traveling around.

[00:01:58]>> Originally, it included two verses often left out.

[00:02:02]>> There was a big [music] high wall there that tried to stop me.

[00:02:07]The sign was [music] painted said private property.

[00:02:12]>> There's an irony to the song This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land. What land and how on earth do I afford it?

[00:02:20]>> As I went [music and singing] walking a ribbon of highway >> Its popularity spread in the '60s folk revival when Bob Dylan, the Kingston Trio, >> I saw [music] above me that endless skyway.

[00:02:39]>> and Peter, Paul and Mary all performed >> a golden valley.

[00:02:45]>> [music] >> Bruce Springsteen, who played it on tour in 1985, called it the greatest song written about America.

[00:02:53]>> It gets right to the heart >> [music] >> of the promise of what our country was supposed to be about.

[00:03:00]>> As I went walking >> Springsteen and Pete Seeger played This Land in 2009 at a celebration of President Obama's inaugural at the Lincoln Memorial.

[00:03:12]>> [music] >> A friend of Guthrie's, Seeger told me for Sunday morning in 2009 that the slogan on his banjo, This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender, was an idea he got from Guthrie.

[00:03:26]>> He had a sign on his guitar saying This Machine Kills Fascists. I wanted to have [music] something a little more peaceful.

[00:03:34]>> This land was made for you and me.

[00:03:37]>> But Woody Guthrie, who died in 1967, understood the power of song.

[00:03:44]>> It is interesting cuz it's very durable as a song.

[00:03:47]>> Durable, that's great.

[00:03:48]>> This land is [music and singing] my land.

[00:03:50]>> Songs are written in time and they belong to a time and a place. I do think that.

[00:03:55]But sometimes the time and place that they were written in never goes away.

[00:04:01]And that's [music] what makes them timeless.

[00:04:03]>> This land was made for you and me.

[00:04:10]>> Our thanks to Jackie Wells whose new album Masks Off is out June 12th and he's kicking off his headlining tour on June 21st at the Hudson River Festival, which incidentally was founded by Pete Seeger.