“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a

song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose.

No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too

young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs

that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard

travelling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air & my last

drop of blood…”

—Woody Guthrie, who succumbed to Huntington’s Disease in New York on this date in 1967, at age 55.

“Cause sometimes you hear’em when the night times comes creeping

& you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping

& you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin’

& you can’t remember for the best of yer thinking

If that was you in the dream that was screaming

& you know that it’s something special you’re needin’

& you know that there’s no drug that’ll do for the healin’

& no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding…

—Bob Dylan, “Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie”