ABSTRACT
Th ere was a nothing new about singer-songwriters before Woody Guthrie came along, although the scholarly defi nition of a folk song was that it had ancient roots with no known author. By the early decades of the twentieth century, however, American folk songs encompassed a large category of not only traditional Anglo-Saxon ballads (i.e., story songs) and African American songs, but also recently composed labor songs, country and cowboy tunes, blues ballads, even nineteenth-century pop tunes, and so much more. Woody’s contribution was to be incredibly prolifi c, composing clever words and phrases while depending on more traditional tunes to get his music across. He was not a professional writer, such as those on Tin Pan Alley in New York who wrote for a commercial market, but also not exactly an amateur. He had not always worked alone, judging from his collaborative work with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and the other members of the Almanac Singers.
