Jeff Place talks about the rich musical archive of Woody Guthrie. He spoke at the conference “This Great and Crowded City: Woody Guthrie’s Los Angeles,” held at the University of Southern California on April 14, 2012, in celebration of the centennial of Woody Guthrie’s birth. Place is archivist at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

This Great and Crowded City: Woody Guthrie’s Los Angeles

Woody Guthrie’s Musical Archive (Keynote Address)

Distinguished scholars, musicians, and writers came together for a conference that explored Woody Guthrie’s rise to fame in Depression-era Los Angeles. They discussed Guthrie’s itinerant wanderings through California and the far West, the Dust Bowl culture he drew upon in his songs of commentary and protest, and the backdrop of Los Angeles at the dawn of the Second World War. Born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie on July 14, 1912, Woody Guthrie became the nation’s most recognizable and important folk singer before the folk revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. “This Great and Crowded City” was sponsored jointly by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West; Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative; and the GRAMMY Museum of Los Angeles. It took place April 14, 2012, at Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California. The event was part of year-long celebrations marking the centennial of Guthrie’s birth. For more information on national events, visit the website www.woody100.com.

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This Great and Crowded City: Woody Guthrie’s Los Angeles