‘This Land is Your Land’ ‘When the World’s on Fire’

          ‘This Land is Your Land’ is certainly Woody Guthrie’s best known lyric.  Lyric, not song, for the melody is one copyrighted by the legendary A.P. Carter in 1930, ten years before Guthrie wrote his anthem.

            I learnt this while cleaning the stifling garage Saturday when my iPod shuffled to the Carter Family’s ‘When the World’s on Fire’.  This is not news to the cognoscenti: just to me.

           Guthrie wrote ‘This Land’ in answer to Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’, a song Guthrie – and I – despised.  His socialist anthem he set to the tune of an apocalyptic gospel song A.P. Carter had collected, possibly from African Americans.  Here are its first and last verses: 

Oh my loving Mother, when the world’s on fire
Don’t you want God’s bosom to be your pillow
Hide thee over in the rock of ages
Rock of ages cleft for me

****

Don’t you want to go to heaven when the world’s on fire
Don’t you want God’s bosom to be your pillow
Hide me over in the rock of ages
Rock of ages cleft for me

There’s no question which song has the more complex lyrics.

           But, give ‘When the World’ a listen.  It’s one of the rare Carter sides on which A.P. takes the lead.  Over the years, I’ve come to regard his vocal contributions more and more highly. Without him, Sara and Maybelle are only extraordinary.

           A.P.’s raspy, vibrating voice makes ‘when the world’s on fire’ seem imminent.  That together with the driving tempo and the harmony illustrate why the Carters will always be in the topmost rank of any list of the important American musical figures.

           Looking at the Rutland Herald’s pink and red US weather maps day after day gives the two songs an ironic juxtaposition even the sly Guthrie could not have dreamt of.