Woody Guthire on Immigration

[Sequoia]

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps2;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
CHORUS:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

He was writing as many songs as ever, but few of any consequence. His children's songs continued to be charming... and his other songs remained perfunctory, with the notable exception of "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportees)," which he composed after reading, early in 1948, that a plane deporting migrant farm workers back to Mexico had crashed. It was the last great song he would write, a memorial to the nameless migrants "all scattered like dry leaves" in Los Gatos Canyon, where the plane crashed.... The song, as he wrote it, was virtually without music -- Woody chanted the words -- and wasn't performed publicly until a decade later when a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman1 added a beautiful melody and Pete Seeger began singing it in concerts....
Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life, London, 1981, pp. 349-350.

http://www.geocities.com/nashville/3448/deportee.html

[DeepModem Mom]

1. Thank you, Sequoia! K&R.

[texastoast]

2. I really wish this country

would progress. We still just tread water. Barely.

[dipsydoodle]

3. So come back Woody Guthrie

Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow

Courtesy of Steve Earle

[annabanana]

4. I remember this...

The melody is haunting and stays with you.

[Maestro]

5. Wow!

Fitting in today's atomsphere.

[WarNoMore]

6. I'm too young to remember this incident but

it brings to mind how my family were Ozark strawberry pickers and my aunt went to California to pick the fields during the depression.


It also reminds me of a great made-for-tv. "The Migrant", I believe, starring Cloris Leachman

[countryjake]

7. Kick and Recommend!

This should be our answer to every blasted bigoted post on this board! More than fifty years and conditions for many have barely changed, except for those that have fought to unionize. Hard-working people, denied the respect they deserve, with no recognition for the labor they contribute to our society.

[H2O Man]

8. I had quoted Woody

on a thread about the homeless in America earlier this week. I still think "This Land Is Your Land" should be the National Anthem.

[Ufomammut]

9. My favorite Woody tune:

Airline To Heaven - it was performed by Wilco and used in the movie soundtrack "Jesus' Son."

There’s an airline plane
Flies to Heaven every day
Past them pearly gates
If you want to ride this train
Have your ticket in your hand
Before it is too late.

If the world looks wrong
And your money’s spent and gone
And your friend has turned away
You can get away to Heaven
On this aeroplane
Just bow your head and pray.

Them’s got ears let them hear
Them’s got eyes let them see
Turn Your Eyes to the Lord of the skies
Take that airline Plane
It will Take You Home again.
Yes, to your home beyond the skies.

Well, a lot of people guess
Some say no and some say Yes
Will it take some and leave some behind?
But you will surely know
When to the airport go
To leave this world behind

Oh, a lot of speakers speak
And a lot of preachers preach
When you lay their salary on the line
But to bow your head and pray
Is the only earthly way
That you can fly to Heaven on time.
That you can reach Heaven on time.

Your ticket you obtain
On this heavenly airline plane
You leave your sins behind
You have got to take this flight
Might be daytime, might be night,
But you can’t see your way if you’re blind.

[Sequoia]

10. And another great one by Woody: Pastures of Plenty

PASTURES OF PLENTY
by Woody Guthrie

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if need be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

if you can get a recording of Odette singing this, do. It's haunting and just beautifuly wonderful. The best cover ever.

[radio4progressives]

11. One of the all time greatest of Woody's songs..

It's too bad that the current generation of activists know nothing about our history on immigration, big ag business, the whole entire system ..

so much of it depicted in The Grapes of Wrath..