1859 Jan | Feb 2018

artist in residence
He was supplied a car and a chauffeur and every day drove
along the path of the Columbia, looking out at the countryside,
the Grand Coulee Dam and the Bonneville Dam, talking with
rural farmers whose economic outlook had radically improved
because of hydroelectric power, drawing and writing songs. In
the afternoon, he’d work out his compositions on guitar and
then return to the office to record and transcribe them.
Kahn’s emergency intervention had given the tumbleweed
troubador a brief respite from his troubles, and provided
a modicum of stability for the Guthrie family in the little
apartment they had rented on Portland’s Southeast 92nd Street.
In Guthrie’s stormy life it was a month of calm and security.
The verdant land surrounding the Columbia in the gentle
warmth of spring seemed like Eden, and during this time he
wrote a song that many view as his masterpiece: “Pastures of
Plenty,” about poor migrant farm workers leaving Oklahoma to
look for work picking fruit in the Pacific Northwest.
It’s clearly drawn from Grapes of Wrath, a book Guthrie read
for the first time in Portland (Kahn had given it to him), but
the fact that he wrote it while tromping around Oregon in the
springtime reveals the masterpiece in a new light.
He’s using what he learned from his time with the migrant
workers in California,” Burke said. “In the song ‘Pastures of
Plenty,’ he’s also singing about the Pacific Northwest. He’s
singing about the part of the country that we live in. The
pastures of plenty are real, and the hope in that song springs
out of the hardships that working people endured, that brought
them here for a chance at a better life.”
Guthrie left Portland three days early thanks to vacation
days he’d earned as “information consultant.” He picked up
his check and hit the road—without his wife and family—and
his first marriage had disintegrated by the time he hitchhiked
back to New York. Back in New York he joined the Almanac
Singers, then served as a Merchant Marine in World War II.
In the ’50s he was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, a fatal
genetic brain disorder that left him without the ability to speak
for fifteen years before his death in 1967.
Years later, when Murlin found a letter from Guthrie noting
he had written twenty-six songs for the government, he set
out to find them. An article on Murlin’s discovery sparked a
nationwide search for the missing songs, which would become
known collectively as the Columbia River Songbook. Guthrie’s
original wax cylinders he’d recorded at the Portland office
were long gone, but every day Murlin unwrapped packages
sent to him from dusty New York attics, forgotten studio
archives, and the storage spaces of Guthrie’s friends and
relatives. Gradually Murlin found all the songs. The BPA, in
collaboration with The Smithsonian and The Woody Guthrie
Center in Oklahoma, released the Columbia River Collection
in 1988 with an accompanying book of music called the
Columbia River Songbook.
In 2017, Murlin released a new edition of the songbook to
honor the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Columbia River
Songs. Along with Joe Seamons, he created a new recording
containing all twenty-six songs for the first time, sung by
Northwest artists.
Wheat harvest in Eastern
Oregon, 1940. The dams
created hydroelectric
power and irrigation in the
area, which allowed for
agricultural development.
Guthrie’s task was to
communicate the benefits
of hydroelectric power for
the common good.
Bonneville Power Administration
60 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2018