{"id":3088,"date":"2017-09-09T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3088"},"modified":"2017-09-10T11:01:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T15:01:34","slug":"mail-myself-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mail-myself-to-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Mail Myself to You (Woody Guthrie)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mail Myself to You\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_3R_tnmNIX0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is one of my favorite Woody Guthrie songs, and also one of the mysteries of my life on the folk scene, because&#8230; why do people keep saying it&#8217;s a kids&#8217; song? Haven&#8217;t they read Woody&#8217;s books and looked at his drawings? Don&#8217;t they know a love song when they hear it?<\/p>\n<p>I must have first heard this on Pete Seeger&#8217;s <em>We Shall Overcome<\/em> LP, since that was the first recording of it. That album came out in 1963, and Pete published it in <em>Sing Out! <\/em>magazine <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3089 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pete-seeger-little-boxes-cbs-5.jpg?resize=275%2C274\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"274\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pete-seeger-little-boxes-cbs-5.jpg?w=275&amp;ssl=1 275w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pete-seeger-little-boxes-cbs-5.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px\" \/>around the same time, along with five other previously unknown compositions from Woody&#8217;s huge horde of unpublished tapes and jottings.\u00a0 As Pete explained in the accompanying article, a New York publisher had gotten excited when the Weavers got a hit with &#8220;So Long, It&#8217;s Been Good to Know Yuh&#8221; (the romantic revision of Woody&#8217;s old dust bowl ballad, rewritten by Woody himself in hopes of getting a hit), and asked Woody if he had any more songs. Woody said yes, the publisher gave him a tape machine, Woody spent a few weeks singing into it, and when Pete heard the tapes he recalled being &#8220;thunderstruck to find sixty or seventy songs among them that I had never seen before in my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This was one of them, and Pete introduced it at Carnegie Hall as a song Woody had written for his kids &#8212; which I suppose I have to believe, since Pete knew Woody and Woody&#8217;s quirks a hell of a lot better than I do&#8230; but on the other hand, Pete was an enthusiastic father and a one-woman man, while Woody was an enthusiastic father with a lot of other enthusiasms, including pretty much every pretty woman who crossed his path. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3091 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/woody-drawing-300x248.jpg?resize=300%2C248\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/woody-drawing.jpg?resize=300%2C248&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/woody-drawing.jpg?w=341&amp;ssl=1 341w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Which is not to say Woody wouldn&#8217;t have sung this song for kids &#8212; I&#8217;m sure he did, and I&#8217;m sure they loved it. I&#8217;m just guessing he sang it in some other situations as well, with equal success.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I recorded this on my LP back in the 1980s, with the result that a local record company asked if I wanted to do a children&#8217;s album&#8230; which I didn&#8217;t, because when I was a kid I liked cowboy songs, sea shanties, and murder ballads, and that wasn&#8217;t what he had in mind. He was thinking of other songs like this &#8212; and as far as I&#8217;m concerned, there aren&#8217;t any. It&#8217;s unique, and one of Woody&#8217;s masterpieces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is one of my favorite Woody Guthrie songs, and also one of the mysteries of my life on the folk scene, because&#8230; why do people keep saying it&#8217;s a kids&#8217; song? Haven&#8217;t they read Woody&#8217;s books and looked at his drawings? Don&#8217;t they know a love song when they hear it? I must have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mail-myself-to-you\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mail Myself to You (Woody Guthrie)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mail Myself to You (Woody Guthrie) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mail-myself-to-you\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mail Myself to You (Woody Guthrie) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is one of my favorite Woody Guthrie songs, and also one of the mysteries of my life on the folk scene, because&#8230; why do people keep saying it&#8217;s a kids&#8217; song? Haven&#8217;t they read Woody&#8217;s books and looked at his drawings? Don&#8217;t they know a love song when they hear it? 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Song about a man that has rode the flat wheelers, kicked up cinders, dumped the red hot slag...","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"guthrie-bound-for-glory-cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/guthrie-bound-for-glory-cover-213x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":641,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/going-down-the-road\/","url_meta":{"origin":3088,"position":2},"title":"Going Down the Road Feeling Bad (Samantha Bumgarner\/proto-blues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the oldest proto-blues songs, sung all across the South. I got it from Woody Guthrie, but everyone had a version of it.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Samantha Bumgarner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Samantha-Bumgarner-189x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cannonball-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":3088,"position":3},"title":"Cannonball Blues (Woody, Carters, Leslie Riddle)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As I explain in the clip, I've known this since I was a kid, though back then I would have played it with a flatpick. My first musical heroes were Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston, with Pete Seeger running a close third. In my twenties it occurred to me that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/FW31010.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6009,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pastures-of-plenty\/","url_meta":{"origin":3088,"position":4},"title":"Pastures of Plenty (Woody Guthrie)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 27, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another in the long list of Woody Guthrie songs I've known since my elementary school years, and stands out for me in part because Dave Van Ronk recorded it on his second Philo album, in a period when we were spending a lot of time together. I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Van-Ronk-Somebody-Else.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":234,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/slipknot\/","url_meta":{"origin":3088,"position":5},"title":"Slipknot (Woody Guthrie)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is one of Woody's less familiar songs, but I always thought it was one of his most powerful, because it's so simple. Like \"Vigilante Man,\" it's just a string of questions, a decent man asking what this thing is, and why.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"woody slipknot drawing","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/woody-slipknot-drawing.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3125,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions\/3125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}