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Woody Guthrie

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:4,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Woody Guthrie

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Auction Date:2019 Oct 10 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:15th Floor WeWork, Boston, Massachusetts, 02108, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Beautifully penned ALS signed “Woody,” six pages, 8 x 10.5, February 21, 1945. Lengthy, touching letter from Guthrie to frequent correspondent Charlotte Strauss, written from the Las Vegas Army Air Force base mere weeks before his discharge, in part: "They called us into the Orderly Room last night and told us to watch the Shipping Board. Said a big list of names are about to come out. Said we might be on it. Said they hoped so anyhow. They said to be sure and drop around the office nice and early in the morning. They said if our name is not on the go home list, well, it's better luck next time. All of us have walked through this office several times. We had heard all of this before, but it never sounded so sure and so hot as this time. We had read long sheets of names, read them down again, had not seen the sound of our name. We had gone a little blind, and overlooked the list there a few inches away, tacked onto the same board, ‘Following EM report in mass for a detail to duty' as mess hall workers, fire guards, prisoner chasers, area policers, butt can carriers, rakers and hoers, paper spearers, dust sweepers, rag slingers, mop washers, and as every earthly title and name except Home goers…

You say you got 4 pages from me dated on the Tenth of December. Well by now you ought to have the 18 page one I issued to you on the 16 or 18 of December. I refer to this one, the 18 page number, as the 'Molasses Issue' because you had said that you were more or less fond of molasses, I believe you used the term, straight’…

You did say that the joy busted through you with a kind of pain. I suppose you have just about caught my feelings here, and lots of other people. You know, it is this funny way it seems you've got to feel before your lines take on the drum beats of poems. These feelings give your words the swing and the sway, the hurt limp, the crawl and the jump. the slow walk that shows you your clearest feelings. And when you set down your own you are setting down a record and a history of mine, everybody’s, it is because you can write from almost an equal move of pain and joy that I feel so much like answering you with any old stick I can smoke up and char, any old rhythm, any old story, or any subject. Lots of folks have jarred a couple of these kinds of letters out of me before, but you, I want you to know, are one out of several thousand. You make feel like you understand these grounds around here, these deepest, maybe highest, emotions. Most of my letters are heavy on politics, theories of a lot of sorts, business of all kinds, but it feels very nice to get letters so in love with naked poetry, so in love with naked beauty, so alive and warm, so young, in naked life. You see, Charlotte, I have always loved love…

This is what you have done for me, Charlotte. You have helped to prove to me that somewhere there is the radio and television station called by your name. You made me recall my trips all back through my self, my people, all of my funny ins and outs, my ups and my downs, You have made me feel a very deep love for you, not as you fear, a blaze that flares up in me and then dies down low again. I had to answer, had to hear, had to offer you all of this love, had to tell you to take all you need, and to return all you take. I had no sayso in the matter. The love across my desert says these words to all of your snows. Give. Take. I did not invent love. It was here when I got here.” In fine condition.