American Songbook

#8 "This Land Is Your Land" Lyrics: Woody Guthrie 1940; Melody: Baptist hymn recorded by Carter family 1930

Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a response to Kate Smith's rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" that he thought was  unrealistic. Guthrie put his words to an old Baptist gospel song he had heard from the famous Carter Family. This free borrowing was typical of the folk singer style and was revived again in the 1960s folk movement with Bob Dylan visiting Guthrie when he was terminal from a congenital disease known as Huntington's Disease.

Woody Guthrie had been part of the WPA projects in the Depression and had traveled the Dust Bowl refuges and visited work camps for the various huge dam projects in the American West. Guthrie wrote hundreds of protest songs, but "This Land Is Your Land" became his most famous. With WWII looming he did not record the song until 1944 and it wasn't published until 1956. It has been covered by many performers since such as Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

 Original 1944 Lyrics

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While All around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.
The sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting, A voice was chanting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

This verse is the second that was in doubt for a time,[citation needed] it was referred to as the "relief office" verse.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?