There was a stretch of time where Woody Guthrie hosted a radio show on a radio station called WN-E-W in New York City.

And he would sing songs and tell stories, and he invited the listeners

to send in questions or comments, and he would address them. I'd like to start out this show

with a quote that he read on the air. Part of a much larger piece, but this particular quote

has become somewhat famous in Woody Guthrie CIRCIRC. And I think it does a really good job of

explaining who he was. I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song

that makes you think that you're just born to lose, bound to lose, no good to nobody, no good for nothing.

Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or 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'm out to

fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I'm out to sing songs that

will prove to you that this is your world,

and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops,

no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built,

I'm out to 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 a week just to quit

singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones

that poke fun at you even more,

and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all.

But I decided a long time ago that I'd 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. Hi, friends, this is Otis Gibbs, and you're listening to Thanks for Giving a Damn.

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