Patrick O'Sullivan sings Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre
My second contribution to the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar 2025, Day 20, December 20...
Patrick O'Sullivan sings Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre
Video link
https://youtu.be/r9YGsW2zZyI
My first contribution went out on December 4...Christmas Stuff Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan
Video link
https://youtu.be/mZPEgtLczQc
1.
The tradition is that I be asked for a second song, if there is a gap in the schedule. And then I look to my song exploration, and at our song heritages - and I try out a song I have been working on. Ideally a song with some sort of Christmas theme...
My second song is Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre.
There is an enormous amount of information online about this song - I do not want to simply try to repeat all that information here. Can I just give the basic information - and come back to this Blog, if it needs rewriting?
Wood Guthrie's song does have a Christmas setting.
2.
UK Autoharps Member Barbara Parkinson has already given us a starting point, on the 2025 Advent Calendar Day 13, when she gave us the Coventry Carol... about the Massacre of the Innocents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Carol
3.
Ella Reeve Bloor, Mother Bloor, political activist, published her autobiography in 1940.
Ella Reeve Bloor. (1940). We Are Many, International Publishers.
Woody Guthrie read the book...
...and we can all now read the same book, free to download on the Internet Archive,,,
https://archive.org/details/BloorAutobio
The book has been republished by International Publishers - still in existence, still plodding on...
https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/we-are-many/
Ella Reeves Bloor Chapter 8 is called 'Calumet and Ludlow - Massacre of the Innocents'.
Events at Calumet are described page 122 onwards.
So, two dreadful incidents in which children died.
Calumet was the 1913 Massacre, and Ludlow was the 1914 Massacre.
4.
And Woody Guthrie wrote two songs, one about Calumet, one about Ludlow...
There are Wikipedia entries about the two songs...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre_(song)
and about the background...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
The lyrics are available on the Woody Guthrie Center web site...
https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Nineteen_Thirteen_Massacre.htm
...and there is a background video on YouTube...
The Story Behind "1913 Massacre"
Woody Guthrie Center
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RODyPFmoJc
5.
We can see that Woody Guthrie has followed the narrative of Ella Reeves Bloor in the construction of his lyric - details like 'less than a dollar a day...', 'a man pushed the door...', a little girl playing the piano...
The two songs become part of Woody Guthrie's contributions to the 1945 Moses Asch's Folkways project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Asch
As I say, I will return to this Blog, if we feel it needs more detail. I maybe need to explain my approach to the song - I follow Christy Moore. And in our arrangement we reference the little girl's piano...
And I need to explain my approach to the creation of the video - I look away from the distressing images, pick up the detail of the Christmas Tree, and look at other 1913 Christmas Trees. It turns out that 1913 was, in many places, the start of the tradition of putting up large Christmas Trees in public places.
I was not in good voice on the day of the recording, and my autoharps were not in good voice. In the deep midwinter...
Patrick O'Sullivan
December 20 2025
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