Arlo Guthrie

At 77 years old, Arlo Guthrie has this physical status:

Arlo Davy Guthrie (born July 10, 1947) is an American folk singer-songwriter.

Arlo performs songs of protest against social injustice and storytelling; instead, he has a generally paleoconservative and libertarian political philosophy.

Guthrie's best-known work is "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," a satirical talking blues song that has since become a Thanksgiving anthem.

Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans" was his only top-40 hit.

His album "Massachusetts" was named as the official folk song of the state in which he has lived the majority of his adult life.

Guthrie has appeared on stage and in several television roles.

He is the father of four children, all of whom have worked as musicians.

Early life

Guthrie was born in Brooklyn's Coney Island neighborhood, the son of folk singer and composer Woody Guthrie and dancer Marjorie Mazia Guthrie. He is the fifth and oldest of Woody Guthrie's eight children; two older half-sisters died of Huntington's disease (of which Woody also died in 1967), and a fourth sister died in childhood. Nora Guthrie, a record producer, is his sister. His mother, Martha Graham Company, was a professional dancer and the founder of what is now the Huntington's Disease Society of America. Arlo's father was from a Protestant family, and his mother was Jewish. Arlo's cousin was once removed from his maternal grandmother, Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, and country/western singer Jack Guthrie, who died when Arlo was an infant.

Guthrie received religious instruction from Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League, for his bar mitzvah. "Rabbi Kahane was a really kind, patient tutor," Guthrie later remembered, "but right after he started giving me my lessons, he went haywire." "Maybe I was negligent." In 1977, Guthrie converted to Catholicism, before adopting interfaitism later in his life. "I firmly believe that various religious traditions can live in a single person, one nation, or even all around the world," Guthrie said in 2015. Guthrie expressed a philosophical affinity for gospel music in 2020, quoting: "Gospel music to me is the most popular genre of protest music." If this world isn't doing it for you and your hopes for the upcoming one, there will not be more resistance than that."

Guthrie attended Woodward School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, from first to eighth grade and then graduated from the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1965. He spent the summer of 1965 in London, eventually meeting Karl Dallas, who ties Guthrie with London's folk rock scene and became a lifelong friend of his. In Billings, Montana, he briefly attended Rocky Mountain College. He received an honorary doctorate from Siena College in 1981 and 2008 from Westfield State College.

Guthrie, a singer, songwriter, and lifelong political activist, continues to carry on his father's legacy. On September 26, 1992, he was a recipient of the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award.

Personal life

Guthrie has owned a home in Washington, Massachusetts, where he and Jackie Hyde, his wife for 43 years, were longtime residents. Jackie died on October 14, 2012, just days after being diagnosed with liver cancer. Marti Laddd, his second wife, and the summer and winter splits are split between Washington and Micco, Florida.

Abe Guthrie and his children Annie, Sarah Lee Guthrie, and Cathy Guthrie are all musicians. Abe Guthrie appeared in the folk-rock band Xavier and has performed with his father. Annie Guthrie writes songs, appears, and takes care of family tour arrangements. Sarah Lee appears on stage and in music with her partner Johnny Irion. Cathy is a member of Folk Uke, a group she formed with Amy Nelson, Willie Nelson's niece. The "Guthrie Girls," a country music duo, Cathy and Sarah Lee also perform as the "Guthrie Girls."

Guthrie announced on October 23, 2020, he was off touring and stage shows due to health problems, including a stroke on Thanksgiving Day 2019, which necessitated brief hospitalization and physical therapy. "A people's shelf life may be a lot longer than that of a dancer or an actress," he wrote on his official website and on social media, but at some point, if you're lucky or not, hang up the 'Gone Fishing' sign. Being able to move from town to town and performing stage shows, staying on the road is no longer an option.

Guthrie announced on October 23, 2021, he was engaged to Marti Laddd, with whom he had been in a relationship since shortly after Jackie's death in 2012. The couple wed on December 8, 2021. This is each of their second marriages. When Guthrie and his partner Jackie went to Woodstock, New York, to film, he remembered him 20 years ago. They were taken to The Wild Rose Inn, where Ladd was the proprietor/operator. In September 2016, Laddd sold the Inn and joined Guthrie.

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Musical career and critical reception

The "Alice's Restaurant" song was one of a few very long songs to become popular just when albums began replacing hit singles as young people's main music listening. But in 1972 Guthrie had a highly successful single too, Steve Goodman's song "City of New Orleans", a wistful paean to long-distance passenger rail travel. Guthrie's first trip on that train was in December 2005 (when his family joined other musicians on a train trip across the country to raise money for musicians financially devastated by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, in the South of the United States). He also had a minor hit with his song "Coming into Los Angeles", which was played at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, but did not get much radio airplay because of its plot (involving the smuggling of drugs from London by airplane), and success with a live version of "The Motorcycle Song" (one of the songs on the B-side of the Alice's Restaurant album). A cover of the folk song "Gypsy Davy" was a hit on the easy listening charts.

In the fall of 1975 during a benefit concert in Massachusetts, Guthrie performed with his band, Shenandoah, in public for the first time. They continued to tour and record throughout the 1970s until the early 1990s. Although the band received good reviews, it never gained the popularity that Guthrie did while playing solo. Shenandoah consisted of (after 1976) David Grover, Steve Ide, Carol Ide, Terry A La Berry and Dan Velika and is not to be confused with the country music group Shenandoah. The Ides, along with Terry a la Berry, reunited with Guthrie for a 2018 tour. Guthrie has performed a concert almost every Thanksgiving weekend since he became famous at Carnegie Hall, a tradition he announced would come to an end after the 2019 concert.

Guthrie's 1976 album Amigo received a five-star (highest rating) from Rolling Stone, and may be his best-received work. However, that album, like Guthrie's earlier Warner Bros. Records albums, is rarely heard today, even though each contains strong folk and folk rock music accompanied by widely regarded musicians such as Ry Cooder.

A number of musicians from a variety of genres have joined Guthrie onstage, including Pete Seeger, David Bromberg, Cyril Neville, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Judy Collins, John Prine, Wesley Gray, Josh Ritter, and others. A video from a concert with Seeger at Wolf Trap in 1993 has been a staple of YouTube, with Guthrie's story-telling showcased in a performance of Can't Help Falling in Love. In 2020, Guthrie collaborated with Jim Wilson on a cover of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More."

On October 23, 2020, Guthrie announced via Facebook that he had "reached the difficult decision that touring and stage shows are no longer possible," due to a series of strokes that had impaired his ability to walk and perform. All of his scheduled tour appearances for 2020 were cancelled, and Guthrie said he will not accept any new bookings offered. His final performance at Carnegie Hall was on November 29, 2019. His final live touring concert was on March 7, 2020, at The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee. He had attempted to record some private concerts in the summer of 2020 but concluded his playing was no longer up to his standards.

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