My brother, an archivist, sent me the following news release, which I thought I'd pass along to you:

The American Folklife Center's Woody Guthrie Manuscript Collection is
now available online through the Library of Congress American Memory Web
site at the following URL:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/.


The Woody Guthrie Manuscript Collection includes correspondence between
Woody Guthrie and staff of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the
Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) at the Library of
Congress, written primarily in the early 1940s, shortly after Guthrie
had moved to New York City and met the Archive's Assistant in Charge,
Alan Lomax. Although Guthrie pursued broadcasting and recording careers,
meeting a cadre of artists and activists and gaining a reputation as a
talented and influential songwriter and performer, this collection
highlights his talents as a writer of prose. These occasionally,
illustrated reflections on his past, his art, his life in New York City,
and the looming Second World War provide unique insight into the artist
best-known for his role as "Dust Bowl balladeer."


The online presentation contains fifty-three items (eighty-four pages)
of manuscript material by, about, and to Woody Guthrie, 1940-50, and
includes a biographical essay by Guthrie scholar Mark Jackson; a
timeline of Guthrie's life; and an encoded finding aid of archival
materials featuring Woody Guthrie at the Library of Congress.


Other folklife-related online collections, selected publications of the
American Folklife Center, and information about products and services
are available from the Center's home page:

http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife.


American Memory is a project of the National Digital Library Program of
the Library of Congress, which, in collaboration with other
institutions, is bringing important American historical materials to
citizens around the world. Through American Memory, over 100 multimedia
collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, motion
pictures, and text are now available online, free to the public for
educational purposes. This collection is the twelfth collection from the
American Folklife Center to be added on the American Memory Web site.
All American Memory collections can be accessed through:

http://memory.loc.gov.

Thanks for the web page lauralee.

While I don't know if it is on the web page, one of my favorite quotes of Woody's is from a September 1940 letter to Alan Lomax (excuse the gender specific):

Music is some kind of electricity
and it makes a radio out of a man
and the dial is in his head
and he just sings according to how he's
feeling...

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by rjr on Oct 08, 2001 ---</FONT></center>