Ep #3 Woody Guthrie & the Columbia River Songs

Hear in the Gorge

When folksinger Woody Guthrie strolled into the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941, he played a song or two on his guitar, filled out some paperwork, and was hired by the federal government to write songs about dams on the Columbia River. And then, just as abruptly as it began, this odd-couple story came to an end. The folk singer’s 30 days at BPA is considered one of the single most productive bursts in his fruitful songwriting career. We track down the man who rediscovered this complicated history and get to the heart of what caused the federal government to hire a “scruffy radical folksinger” and why he chose to come to the Pacific Northwest. Music and archival audio: Woody Guthrie - Library of Congress Recording Sessions, March 1940 with Alan Lomax. Woody Guthrie, Columbia River Collection - released 1988 by Smithsonian Folkways.