On Tue, 4 Dec 2018,
[email protected] wrote:
On Monday, August 26, 1996 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, MordecaiSp wrote:
It was suggested that I post my request to this group. Y'all know your
music, I'm told
I'm looking for information on Woody Guthrie's mother, who was a
Jewish/Yiddish songwriter. I believe that she wrote a famous Yiddish song. >> What was is her name/what is the song?
You may respond to me directly.
Shalom,
Mordecai Specktor
Staff Writer, The American Jewish World, Minneapolis
[email protected]
You're probably thinking of his MOTHER-IN-LAW, Aliza Greenblatt, a
well-known Yiddish POET. Woody raised his kids Jewish and wrote some
Chanukah songs (mostly just the lyrics). When his widow, Nora, found
them, she gave many of them to the Klezmatics to record (though you can
find Woody singing a couple himself if you look hard enough). The
Klezmatics put out an album called "Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous
Chanukah," for which they wrote the music for several Chanukah songs
that Woody only wrote lyrics for.
The poster won't see this, the message is from 1996, right around the
time I got full internet access, though I can't remember exactly when I came to this newsgroup.
Arlo was still posting here, and in the Guthrie newsgroup.
Woody's wife Marjorie, at least this one, was of course with the Martha
Graham dance company, I don't think it was in Klein's biography but the more recent one went into detail about their first meetings, Martha going with
a friend to meet him, the friend wanting him to perform live music to some dance pieces. And it didn't work out, Woody never playing the same song
the same way, so it threw off the dancers.
And of course Nora is one of his daughter's, Arlo's sister, and in more
recent decades she has stepped out and become visible in her own way,
keeper of the archives, going through all those songs Woody wrote but
never set to music, and finding artists to complete the songs and record
them. Started with Wilco.
In other Guthrie news, Arlo has on his website that after touring next
year, there won't be anymore big tours (which sounds like he won't stop performing, just not doing it as much). Everyone's packing it in, Joan
Baez is either finished or still working on her last tour.
All those songs and artists dredged up in the sixties, out of print and
not performing but then brought back by the newer artists, the newer
mustic kept in print all these decades. Fifty years ago it was 1968,
fifty years before that 1918, which seems so much further back in time.
But instead of disappearing, the artists from fifty years ago stayed in
print, kept performing (unless they died), and were on oldies radio for a
long time, though that seems to have faded. Now they are getting old, and since they didn't die before they got old, they are slowing down or
retiring, and odd situation after all these decades, for them to seemingly
go silent.
Michael
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