DARRYL HOLTER and WILLIAM DEVERELL discuss their book Woody GUTHRIE LA: 1937-1941

Guthrie LA: 1937-1941 (Angel City Press)

“What happens when we push beyond Woody’s iconic image to try to understand how an unemployed hillbilly singer in the late 1930s transformed himself into something else?” writes co-editor Darryl Holter in the book’s first essay. “We learn that transformation started in, and started because of, Los Angeles, a place key to Woody’s evolution."

The book’s twelve essays, richly illustrated by photographs from the era, explore such themes as Guthrie’s early radio success in Los Angeles with the Woody and Lefty Lou Show; his first recordings made on old Presto disks; and the important friendship he forged with the actor and leftist radical Will Geer (later of “Grandpa Walton” fame). Other pieces cover Guthrie’s racial egalitarianism, as he threw off the worst of his Oklahoma and Texas roots and pushed past a notorious lynching in which his father may have participated; his ability to mold evangelical perspectives into politically savvy folk songs; and the impact he still exerts in his songs about migrants and workers looking for their main chance in California. 

“Because Woody Guthrie came to Los Angeles when he did, his music stridently addresses inequities and inequalities amplified by the Depression. In Los Angeles, the ever-observant Dust Bowl troubadour became the urban folksinger,” says co-editor William Deverell. “His time in L.A. created the Woody that—eighty years later—bears witness to America’s promise and its problems.”

In addition to Woody Guthrie L.A. 1937 to 1941, Darryl Holter has written books and scholarly articles on labor history and urban revitalization. He has a Ph.D in History from the University of Wisconsin and taught for several years in the History Department at UCLA. Holter manages several family businesses in Los Angeles and is an Adjunct Professor in History at the University of Southern California. He is also a singer-songwriter and a member of Professional Musicians Local 47. His album, Radio Songs: Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles, 1937-1941, was released to critical acclaim in 2015. 

Woody Guthrie L.A. 1937 to 1941 is the latest of several books by William Deverell, a professor of history and the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West at the University of Southern California. With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth century American West, Deverell has authored works on political, social, ethnic, and environmental history, including Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past. InWoody Guthrie L.A. 1937 to 1941, he brings together his overlapping passions for the history of American folk music, the Great Depression, and Los Angeles.