GUTHRIE, Woody.

£2,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Bound for Glory. First edition, first printing, of the author's partially fictionalized autobiography. Guthrie (1912-1967) was one of the most significant figures in American folk music. Bob Dylan read Bound for Glory and quickly envisioned himself on the same path as the almost mythical "Dust Bowl Troubadour". At his New York stage debut, at Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village, Dylan told the crowd "I been travellin' around the country, followin' in Woody Guthrie's footsteps" (quoted in Smith). Guthrie's politically motivated and impassioned music (his guitar had a sticker that read: "This machine kills fascists") inspired much of Dylan's early work. He wrote "Song to Woody", which met with his hero's approval, and was one of only two original compositions on Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut album.In his review of Bound for Glory for the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman commented: "some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world" (quoted in Londré, p. 105).

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