Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie was an American singer, songwriter and composer of folk music whose work dealt with American socialism and anti-fascism; his guitar often carried the words "This machine kills fascists". Raised in Okemah, Oklahoma, he joined the migrants who left the Dust Bowl for California and worked on Los Angeles radio before moving to New York, where in 1940 he recorded the album Dust Bowl Ballads and wrote "This Land Is Your Land" in answer to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". He sang with the Almanac Singers, joined the Merchant Marine in 1943 and wrote the autobiography Bound for Glory. Huntington's disease, diagnosed in 1952, kept him in hospitals from 1956 until his death in 1967.