Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Official name	City of Tulsa
Settlement type	City
Nickname	Oil Capital of the World, Tulsey Town, T-Town, The 918
Website	www.cityoftulsa.org
Image seal	TulsaOklahomaSeal.svg
Map caption	Location in the state of Oklahoma
Coordinates region	US-OK
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision type2	Counties
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision name1	Oklahoma
Subdivision name2	Osage, Rogers, Tulsa, Wagoner
Government type	Mayor-Council
Leader title	Mayor
Leader name	Dewey F. Bartlett, Jr. (R)
Established date	1830
Area magnitude	1 E8
Area total km2	483.8
Area total sq mi	186.8
Area land km2	473.1
Area land sq mi	182.7
Area water km2	10.9
Area water sq mi	4.2
Population as of	2010
Population total	391,906 (46th)
Population metro	937,478
Population csa	988,454
Population density sq mi	2132.6
Population density km2	823.6
Population blank1 title	Demonym
Population blank1	Tulsan
Timezone	CST
Utc offset	−6
Timezone dst	CDT
Utc offset dst	−5
Area code	539/918
Elevation m	194
Elevation ft	722
Blank name	FIPS code
Blank info	40-75000
Blank1 name	GNIS feature ID
Blank1 info	1100962
Footnotes	}}

Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 (2010) residents in the MSA and 988,454 (2010) in the CSA. Tulsa's CSA is projected to reach one million between 2010 and 2012. The city serves as the county seat of Tulsa County, the most densely populated county in Oklahoma, and extends into Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner counties.

Tulsa was first settled between 1828 and 1836 after the attack by the Lochapoka Band of Creek Native American tribe. In 1921, it was the site of the infamous Tulsa Race Riot, one of the largest and most destructive acts of racial violence in the history of the United States. For most of the 20th century, the city held the nickname "Oil Capital of the World" and played a major role as one of the most important hubs for the American oil industry. Tulsa, along with several other cities, claims to be the birthplace of U.S. Route 66 and is also known for its Western Swing music.

Once heavily dependent on the oil industry, economic downturn and subsequent diversification efforts created an economic base in the energy, finance, aviation, telecommunications and technology sectors. The Tulsa Port of Catoosa, at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, is the most inland river port in the U.S. with access to international waterways. Two institutions of higher education within the city operate at the NCAA Division I level, Oral Roberts University and the University of Tulsa.

Located in Tornado Alley, the city frequently experiences severe weather. It is situated on the Arkansas River at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in northeast Oklahoma, a region of the state known as "Green Country". Considered the cultural and arts center of Oklahoma, Tulsa houses two world-renowned art museums, full-time professional opera and ballet companies, and one of the nation's largest concentrations of art deco architecture. The city has been called one of America's most livable large cities by Partners for Livable Communities, Forbes, and Relocate America. People from Tulsa are called "Tulsans."

History

thumb|left|upright|The Meadow Gold sign has greeted Route 66 travelers in Tulsa for decades. What was ultimately to become Tulsa was originally part of Indian Territory and was first settled by the Lochapoka and Creek tribes in 1836. They established a home under a large oak tree at the present day intersection of Cheyenne Avenue and 18th Street, and named their new settlement "Tallasi", meaning "old town" in the Creek language, which later became "Tulsa". On January 18, 1898, Tulsa was officially incorporated and elected its first mayor, Edward Calkins.

A small town near the banks of the Arkansas River in 1901, Tulsa's first oil well, named Sue Bland No. 1, was established that year. By 1905, the discovery of the large Glenn Pool nearby (site of the present day town of Glenpool) prompted a rush of entrepreneurs to the area's growing number of oil fields; Tulsa's population swelled to over 140,000 between 1901 and 1930. By 1909, seven years after the discovery of oil in the area, Tulsa's population had sprouted to 18,000. Known as the "Oil Capital of the World" for most of the 20th century, the city's success in the energy industry prompted construction booms in the popular Art Deco style of the time. Profits from the oil industry continued through the Great Depression, helping the city's economy fare better than most in the United States during the 1930s. In the early 20th century, Tulsa was home to the "Black Wall Street", one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States at the time. Located in the Greenwood neighborhood, it was the site of the Tulsa Race Riot, one of the nation's costliest acts of racial violence and civil disorder. Sixteen hours of rioting on May 31 and June 1, 1921, resulted in over 800 people admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 left homeless, 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences destroyed by fire, and in property damage. Twenty-three black and 16 white citizens were reported killed, but estimates suggest as many as 300, mostly blacks, died. Efforts to obtain reparations for survivors of the violence have been unsuccessful.

In 1925, Tulsa businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the "Father of Route 66," began his campaign to create a road linking Chicago to California by establishing the U.S. Highway 66 Association in Tulsa, earning the city the nickname the "Birthplace of Route 66". Once completed, U.S. Route 66 took an important role in Tulsa's development as the city served as a popular rest stop for travelers, who were greeted by Route 66 icons such as the Meadow Gold Sign and the Blue Whale of Catoosa. During this period, Bob Wills and his group The Texas Playboys began their long performing stint at a small ballroom in downtown Tulsa. In 1935, Cain's Ballroom became the base for the group, In the 1950s, Time magazine dubbed Tulsa "America's Most Beautiful City."

A national recession greatly affected the city's economy in 1982, as areas of Texas and Oklahoma heavily dependent on oil witnessed a freefall in gas prices and a mass exodus of oil industries. Tulsa, heavily dependent on the oil industry, was one of the hardest hit cities by the fall of oil prices. By 1992, the state's economy had fully recovered, but leaders would attempt to expand into sectors unrelated to oil and energy.

In 2003, the "Vision 2025" program was approved by voters with the purpose of enhancing and revitalizing Tulsa's infrastructure and tourism industry. The keystone project of the initiative, the BOK Center, was designed to be a home for the city's minor league hockey and arena football teams, as well as a venue for major concerts and conventions. The multi-purpose arena, designed by famed architect Cesar Pelli, broke ground in 2005 and was opened on August 30, 2008.

Geography

Tulsa is located in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, northeast of Oklahoma City; situated between the edge of the Great Plains and the foot of the Ozarks in a generally forested region of rolling hills. The city touches the eastern extent of the Cross Timbers, an ecoregion of forest and prairie transitioning from the drier plains of the west to the wetter forests of the east. With a wetter climate than points westward, Tulsa serves as a gateway to "Green Country", a popular and official designation for northeast Oklahoma that stems from the region's green vegetation and relatively large number of hills and lakes compared to central and western areas of Oklahoma, which lie largely in the drier Great Plains region of the Central United States. Located near the western edge of the U.S. Interior Highlands, northeastern Oklahoma is the most topographically diverse part of the state, containing seven of Oklahoma's 11 eco-regions and more than half of its state parks. The region encompasses 30 lakes or reservoirs and borders the neighboring states of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. The geographic coordinates of the city of Tulsa are (36.131294, -95.937332), with an elevation of above sea level.

Topography

The city is split by the prominent Arkansas River, which flows in a wide, sandy-bottomed channel. Its flow through the Tulsa area is controlled by upstream flood control reservoirs, but its width and depth can vary widely throughout the year, such as during periods of high rainfall or severe drought. However, a low-water dam maintains a full channel at all times in the area adjacent to downtown Tulsa. This portion of the river is known as Zink Lake. Heavily wooded and with abundant parks and water areas, the city holds several prominent hills with names such as "Shadow Mountain" and "Turkey Mountain", which create varied terrain, especially in its southern portions. While its central and northern sections are generally flat to gently undulating, the Osage Hills extension into the northwestern part of the city further varies the landscape. Holmes Peak, in the northwest corner of the city, is the tallest point in five counties at 1030 ft (314 m). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which of it is land and of it (2.24%) is water.

Climate

Tulsa is situated near the heart of Tornado Alley and has a temperate climate of the subtropical variety with a yearly average temperature of and an average precipitation of As is typical of temperate zones, weather patterns vary by season with occasional extremes in temperature and rainfall. The highest temperature recorded in Tulsa was on August 10, 1936.

Primarily in the spring and early summer months, the city is subjected to severe thunderstorms containing large hail, damaging winds, and, occasionally, tornadoes, providing the area with a disproportionate share of its annual rainfall. Severe weather is not limited to this season, however. For instance, on December 5, 1975, and on December 24, 1982, Tulsa experienced tornadoes. Due to its potential for major flooding events, the city has developed one of the most extensive flood control systems in the nation. A comprehensive flood management plan was developed in 1984 following a severe flood caused by a stalled weather front that dropped of rain overnight, killing 14, injuring 288, and destroying 7,000 buildings totaling in damage. In the early 1990s and again in 2000, the Federal Emergency Management Agency honored Tulsa as leading the nation in flood plain management.

Triple digit temperatures (>=38 °C) are observed on average 11 days per annum, sometimes exceeding from July to early September, usually accompanied by high humidity brought in by southerly winds. Lack of air circulation due to heat and humidity during the summer months leads to higher concentrations of ozone, prompting the city to release "Ozone Alerts", encouraging all parties to do their part in complying with the Clean Air Act and United States Environmental Protection Agency standards. The autumn season is usually short, consisting of pleasant, sunny days followed by cool nights. Winter temperatures, while generally mild, occasionally experience extremes below while annual snowfall averages about .

|source 2 = The Weather Channel |date=August 2010 }}

Cityscape

Architecture

A building boom in the early 20th century gave Tulsa one of the largest concentrations of art deco architecture in the United States. Most commonly in the zigzag and streamline styles, the city's art deco is dotted throughout its older neighborhoods, primarily in downtown and midtown. A collection of large art deco structures such as the Mid-Continent Tower, the Boston Avenue Methodist Church, and the Philtower, have attracted events promoting preservation and architectural interest. In 2001, Tulsa served as the host city for the International Art Deco Congress, a semiannual event designed to promote art deco architecture internationally. Building booms in the 1970s and '80s gave the city a larger base of contemporary architectural styles. The BOK Tower, built during this period, is the tallest building in Oklahoma and the surrounding states of Missouri, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Kansas. Tulsa also has the second-, third-, and fourth-tallest buildings in the state, including the Cityplex Tower, which is located in South Tulsa across from Oral Roberts University, far from downtown. One of the area's unique architectural complexes, Oral Roberts University, is built in a Post-Modern Futuristic style, incorporating bright gold structures with sharp, jetting edges and clear geometric shapes. The BOK Center, Tulsa's new arena, incorporates many of the city's most prominent themes, including Native American, art deco, and contemporary architectural styles. Intended to be an architectural icon, the building was designed by César Pelli, the architect of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

Neighborhoods

Downtown Tulsa is an area of approximately surrounded by an inner-dispersal loop created by Interstate 244, Highway 64, and Highway 75. The area serves as Tulsa's financial and business district, and is the focus of a large initiative to draw tourism, which includes plans to capitalize on the area's historic architecture. Much of Tulsa's convention space is located in downtown, such as the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and the Tulsa Convention Center, and the BOK Center. Prominent downtown sub-districts include the Blue Dome District, the Brady Arts district, and the Greenwood Historical District, Owen Park Historical Neighborhood, the site of ONEOK Field, a baseball stadium for the Tulsa Drillers opened in 2010.

The city's historical residential core lies in an area known as Midtown, containing upscale neighborhoods built in the early 20th century with architecture ranging from art deco to Greek Revival. The University of Tulsa, the Swan Lake neighborhood, Philbrook Museum, and the upscale shopping districts of Utica Square, Cherry Street, and Brookside are located in this region. A large portion of the city's southern half has developed since the 1970s, containing low density housing and retail developments. This region, marked by secluded homes and suburban neighborhoods, contains one of the state's largest shopping malls, Woodland Hills Mall, as well as Southern Hills Country Club, and Oral Roberts University. East of Highway 169 and north of 61st street, a diverse racial makeup marks the eastern portions of the city, with large Asian and Mexican communities and much of the city's manufacturing industry.

Areas of Tulsa west of the Arkansas River are called West Tulsa, and are marked by large parks, wilderness reserves, and large oil refineries. The northern tier of the city is home to OSU-Tulsa, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa International Airport, the Tulsa Zoo, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, and the nation's third-largest municipal park, Mohawk Park.

Walkability

A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Tulsa 32nd most walkable of fifty largest U.S. cities.

Demographics

As of the census of 2006, there were 382,872 people, 165,743 households, and 99,114 families residing in the city, with a population density of . There were 179,405 housing units at an average density of 982.3 per square mile (379.2/km²). Of 165,743 households, 28.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.1% were married couples living together, 12.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.2% were non-families. Of all households, 33.9% are made up of only one person, and 9.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.3 people and the average family size was 3.0.

In the city proper, the age distribution was 24.8% of the population under the age of 18, 10.9% from 18 to 24, 29.9% from 25 to 44, 21.5% from 45 to 64, and 12.9% who were 65 years of age or older, while the median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 93.5 males, while for every 100 females over the age of 17 there were 90.4 males. The median income for a household in the city was $35,316, and the median income for a family was $44,518. Males had a median income of $32,779 versus $25,587 for females, and the per capita income for the city was $21,534. About 10.9% of families and 14.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.5% of those under age 18 and 8.3% of those age 65 or over. In 2006, the racial makeup of the city was 70.1% white, 15.5% African American, 4.7% Native American, 1.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 3.5% from other races, and 4.4% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race formed at least 7.2% of the population with possibly more unregistered persons living within the city.

According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, the racial composition of Tulsa was as follows:

White: 68.5% (Non-Hispanic Whites: 61.6%)

Black or African American: 15.9%

Native American: 3.6%

Asian: 2.0%

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 0.1%

Some other race: 4.3%

Two or more races: 5.7%

Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 12.1%

Source:

Religiously, Tulsa is overwhelmingly Protestant. The city is located in a geographic strip of high church attendance and widespread beliefs in biblical Christianity often called the "Bible Belt", and its history as a hub for televangelists such as Oral Roberts along with a predominance of Christian beliefs and values often lead Tulsa to be considered the "buckle of the Bible Belt". In 2000, the metropolitan area of Tulsa had 364,533 Protestant Christians, including 166,550 Southern Baptists and 78,221 Methodists. Meanwhile, the area had 43,854 Catholics, 2,650 Jews, 2,200 Muslims, and 1,590 Unitarian-Universalists, which includes the largest Unitarian Universalist one-church congregation in the world.

Metropolitan area

The Tulsa Metropolitan Area, or the region immediately surrounding Tulsa with strong social and economic ties to the city, occupies a large portion of the state's northeastern quadrant. It is informally known as "Green Country", a name derived from the state's official tourism designation for all of northeastern Oklahoma, though its usage in relation to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area can be traced to the early part of the 20th century.

The United States Census Bureau defines the sphere of the city's influence as the Tulsa Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), spanning seven counties: Tulsa, Rogers, Osage, Wagoner, Okmulgee, Pawnee, and Creek. The 2009 U.S. Census Estimate shows the Tulsa MSA to have 929,015 residents The Tulsa-Bartlesville Combined Statistical Area (CSA) is created by adding the nearby Bartlesville, Oklahoma, micropolitan area, consisting of Washington County in Northeastern Oklahoma. In 2009, U.S. Census Estimates show the Tulsa-Bartlesville CMSA to have 979,721 residents. and is expected to reach one million residents between 2010 and 2012.

Economy

Though the oil industry has historically dominated Tulsa's economy, efforts in economic diversification have created a base in the sectors of aerospace, finance, technology, telecommunications, high tech, and manufacturing. The Tulsa International Airport (TUL) and the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, the nation's most inland seaport, connect the region with international trade and transportation. An American Airlines maintenance base at Tulsa International Airport is the city's largest employer and the largest maintenance facility in the world, serving as the airline's global maintenance and engineering headquarters, while the Tulsa Port of Catoosa and the Tulsa International Airport house extensive industrial parks.

Products from Tulsa manufacturers account for about 60% of Oklahoma's exports, and in 2001, the city's total gross product was in the top one-third of metropolitan areas, states, and countries, with more than in total goods, growing at a rate of each year. In 2006, Forbes magazine rated Tulsa as second in the nation in income growth, and one of the best cities in the country to do business with. Usually among the lowest in the nation in terms of cost of doing business, the Tulsa Metropolitan Area in 2005 was rated among the five lowest metropolitan areas in the United States for that category.

A number of large financial corporations are headquartered in Tulsa, the largest being the BOK Financial Corporation. The semi-national convenience store chain QuikTrip, the national car rental company of Dollar-Thrifty, Hilti, and Mazzio's semi-national pizza chain also call Tulsa home. Many international oil and gas-related companies have headquarters in Tulsa, including Williams Companies, SemGroup, Syntroleum, ONEOK, Samson and Excel Energy. Meanwhile, there are 30 companies in Tulsa that employ more than 1,000 people, though small businesses make up more than 80% of the city's companies.

During a national recession from 2001 to 2003, the city lost 28,000 jobs. In response, a development initiative, Vision 2025, promised to incite economic growth and recreate lost jobs. Projects spurred by the initiative promised urban revitalization, infrastructure improvement, tourism development, riverfront retail development, and further diversification of the economy. As of 2007, employment levels have surpassed pre-recession heights and the city is in a significant economic development and investment surge. This economic improvement is also seen in Tulsa’s housing trends which show an average of a 6% increase in rent in 2010.

Culture

Though Oklahoma is placed entirely in the Southern United States by the United States Census Bureau, Tulsa is influenced by the nearby Southwest, Midwest, and Southern cultural regions, as well as a historical native American presence. These influences are expressed in the city's museums, cultural centers, performing arts venues, ethnic festivals, park systems, zoos, wildlife preserves, and large and growing collections of public sculptures, monuments, and artwork.

Arts and theatre

Located in the former estate of oil pioneer Waite Phillips, Philbrook Museum is considered one of the top 50 fine art museums in the United States, and is one of only five to offer a combination of a historic home, formal gardens, and an art collection. The collections of Thomas Gilcrease are housed at the Gilcrease Museum, which also holds the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West. With remnants of the Holocaust and artifacts relevant to Judaism in Oklahoma, the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art preserves the largest collection of Judaica in the Southwest United States. Other museums, such as the Tulsa Historical Society, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, and the Tulsa Geosciences Center, document histories of the region, while the Greenwood Cultural Center preserves the culture of the city's African American heritage, housing a collection of artifacts and photography that document the history of the Black Wall Street prior to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Since 1969, public displays of artwork in Tulsa have been funded by one percent of its annual city budget. As a testament to the city's oil heritage, the Golden Driller guards the front entrance to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds.

Tulsa contains several permanent dance, theater, and concert groups, including the Tulsa Ballet, the Tulsa Opera, the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, Light Opera Oklahoma, Tulsa Signature Symphony, the Heller Theatre, American Theatre Company, which is a member of the Theatre Communications Group and Oklahoma's oldest resident professional theatre, and Theatre Tulsa, the oldest continuously operating community theatre company west of the Mississippi River. Tulsa also houses the Tulsa Spotlight Theater, which shows the longest-running play in America (The Drunkard) every Saturday night. Large performing arts complexes include the Tulsa Convention Center, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Expo Square Pavilion, the Mabee Center, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center for Education, and the River Parks Amphitheater and Tulsa's largest venue, the BOK Center. Ten miles west of the city, an outdoor amphitheater called "Discoveryland!" holds the official title of the world performance headquarters for the musical ''Oklahoma!,'' while Cain's Ballroom, considered the birthplace of Western Swing, housed the performance headquarters of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys during the 1930s. The centerpiece of the downtown Brady Arts District, the Brady Theater, is the largest of the city's five operating performing arts venues that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city's film community hosts annual festivals such as the Tulsa United Film Festival and Tulsa Overground Film and Music Festival. The Blue Dome District is home to the annual Diversafest (DFest), an annual live event that showcases independent and emerging artists. Attendance at DFest in 2008 surpassed 60,000 people for the two days. DFest takes place in the last weekend of July. Due to economic reasons the 2010 DFest was cancelled.

Outdoor recreation

The City of Tulsa manages 140 parks spread over . Most notably, Woodward Park, a tract located in midtown Tulsa, doubles as a botanical gardens featuring the Tulsa Municipal Rose Garden and more than 6,000 rose plants in 250 varieties. Tulsa River Parks is a series of parks that run adjacent to the Arkansas River for about from downtown to the Jenks bridge. Since 2007 a significant portion of the River Parks area north of I-44 has been renovated with new trails, landscaping and playground equipment.

The city's zoo, the Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum, was voted "America's Favorite Zoo" in 2005 by Microsoft Game Studios in connection with a national promotion of its Zoo Tycoon 2 computer game. Doubling as a museum that documents the cultures and history of various climates in North America, the zoo encompasses a total of with approximately 1,500 animals and 436 species. The zoo is located in Mohawk Park, the third largest municipal park in the United States.thumb|right|Tulsa's River Parks contain many monuments and attractions, such as these fountains. On the west bank of the Arkansas River in the suburb of Jenks, the Oklahoma Aquarium is the state's only freestanding aquarium, containing over 200 exhibits, including a shark tank.

The Tulsa State Fair, operating in late September and early October, attracts over one million people during its 10 day run, and the city's Oktoberfest celebration was named one of the top 10 in the world by USA Today and one of the top German food festivals in the nation by Bon Appetit magazine. The annual Mayfest arts and crafts festival entertained more than 375,000 people in its four day run in downtown during 2007. On a smaller scale, the city hosts block parties during a city-wide "Block Party Day" each year, with festivals varying in size throughout city neighborhoods. Tulsa has one major amusement park attraction, Big Splash Water Park, featuring multi-story water slides and large wave pools. Until 2006, the city also hosted Bell's Amusement Park, which closed after Tulsa County officials declined to renew its lease agreement.

Sports

Tulsa supports a wide array of sports at the professional and collegiate levels. Currently, the city hosts two teams in first-tier professional leagues, the Tulsa Talons of the Arena Football League, and the Tulsa Shock of the WNBA ; two NCAA Division I colleges; and four professional, minor league sports teams, playing in basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer. The city also contains one of the nation's top rated golf courses, Southern Hills Country Club, which is one of two courses that have hosted seven men's major championships: three U.S. Opens and four PGA Championships, the most recent in 2007. The course has held five amateur championships and from 2001 to 2008 the LPGA had a regular tour stop, most recently known as the SemGroup Championship at Cedar Ridge Country Club. The 18,000-seat BOK Center is the centerpiece of the Vision 2025 projects and was completed in August 2008. The BOK Center was in the top ten among indoor arenas worldwide in ticket sales for the first quarter of 2009. It is the home for the city's WNBA, arena football, and hockey teams. From 1978 to 1984, the city hosted the Tulsa Roughnecks, who played in the now-defunct North American Soccer League and won that league's championship in 1983. Also in 1984, the city hosted the Oklahoma Outlaws of the now-defunct United States Football League for a single season.

Tulsa has two universities that compete at the NCAA Division I level: the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane, and the Oral Roberts University Golden Eagles. The University of Tulsa's men's basketball program has reached the Sweet Sixteen three times, made an appearance in the Elite Eight in 2000, won the NIT championship in 1981 and 2001, and won the inaugural College Basketball Invitational in 2008. The Tulsa football team has played in 16 bowl games, including the Sugar Bowl (twice) and the Orange Bowl. Oral Roberts University's men's basketball team reached the Elite Eight in 1974 and won the Mid-Continent Conference title three straight years, from 2005 to 2007. At the secondary level, the Tulsa area is home to several high school athletic programs that are frequently ranked among the best nationally.

In 2008 Tulsa funded 39.2 million to build a new ballpark in the Greenwood District near downtown for its Class AA Texas League baseball team, the Tulsa Drillers. The ground breaking was held on December 19, 2008. ONEOK bought the naming rights for for the next 25 years. The first game at ONEOK Field was held on April 8, 2010. Country music star Tim McGraw threw out the first pitch.

The city's running and cycling communities support events such as the Tulsa Tough cycling race, the Route 66 Marathon, and the Tulsa Run, which features over 8000 participants annually. Gambling is supported by a community of Indian gaming venues that have been allowed to expand gambling options. In 2005, compacts between the state and various tribes allowed facilities to offer table card games and slot machines. Another popular gambling draw, Horse racing events are housed by the Fair Meadows Race Track and Will Rogers Downs in nearby Claremore.

! Club !! Sport !! League !! Stadium
Tulsa Shock	Basketball		BOK Center
Tulsa Golden Hurricane	Various
Oral Roberts Golden Eagles	Various		Various, including Mabee Center (basketball)
Tulsa Drillers	Baseball	Texas League	ONEOK Field
Tulsa Oilers		Central Hockey League	BOK Center
Tulsa Talons	Arena Football		BOK Center
Tulsa 66ers	Basketball		Tulsa Convention Center
Tulsa Tornadoes	Basketball		Will Rogers High School
Tulsa Revolution	Soccer		Soccer City Indoor Sports Complex

Media

Tulsa's leading newspaper is the daily ''Tulsa World'', the second most widely circulated newspaper in Oklahoma with a Sunday circulation of 189,789. ''Urban Tulsa'', another large publication, is a weekly newspaper covering entertainment and cultural events. Covering primarily economic events and stocks, the Tulsa Business Journal caters to Tulsa's business sector. Other publications include the ''Oklahoma Indian Times'', the ''Tulsa Daily Commerce and Legal News'', the ''Tulsa Beacon'', and the ''Tulsa Free Press''. Until 1992, the ''Tulsa Tribune'' served as a daily major newspaper competing with the ''Tulsa World''. The paper was acquired by the ''Tulsa World'' that year. Tulsa is also home to The Oklahoma Eagle Newspaper, an African-American based paper which starting publishing in 1921 as the Tulsa Star.

Tulsa is also served by television and radio broadcasting networks. All major U.S. television networks are represented in Tulsa. Cable television service in the area is provided by Cox Communications. As in most major American cities, local radio stations in the Tulsa area are controlled by a small handful of large broadcasting companies. The late radio personality Paul Harvey was born in Tulsa and worked at local radio station KVOO in his early career.

Western Swing, a musical genre with roots in Country Music, was made popular at Tulsa's Cain's Ballroom. The Tulsa Sound, a variation of Rockabilly, Blues, and Rock 'n' Roll, was started and largely developed by local musicians J. J. Cale and Leon Russell in the 1960s and 1970s. The Tulsa Sound heavily influenced musician and songwriter Eric Clapton, among others. Musicians from Tulsa or that started their musical careers in Tulsa include Garth Brooks, The Gap Band, Hanson, Caroline's Spine, Ronnie Dunn, Gene Autry, David Gates, Jim Keltner, Bob Wills, , David Cook.

Government

A mayor-council government has been in place in Tulsa since 1989 when the city converted from a city commission government deemed wasteful and less efficient. Since the change, Tulsa mayors have been given more power in accordance with a strong mayoral system and have greater control of a more consolidated array of governmental branches. Plurality voting is used to elect mayors, who serve a term in office of four years. The present mayor of Tulsa is Republican Dewey F. Bartlett, Jr. who won the 2009 election and took office on December 7, 2009. Another Tulsa political figure, Jim Inhofe, who now represents Oklahoma in the United States Senate, served as the mayor of Tulsa early in his political career.

A city councilor from each of the city's nine council districts is elected every two years, each serving a term of two years. Councilors are elected from their own respective districts based on a plurality voting system, and serve on the Tulsa City Council. Roscoe Turner of District Three currently serves as the council chairman along with Vice Chairman John Eagleton of District Seven. As a whole, the council acts as the legislative body of city government, which aims to pass laws, approve the city budget, and manage efficiency in city government. In accordance with the mayor-council form of government, the Tulsa City Council and the office of the Mayor coordinate in city government operations. A third body of the government, the city auditor, is elected independently of the city council and mayor to ensure that the auditor can act in an objective manner. The auditor is elected for a term of two years. Phil Wood, a Democrat, held the position for 21 years before being defeated by Republican Preston Doerflinger in the 2009 election. The city serves as the seat of county government for Tulsa County, and lies mostly within Oklahoma's 1st congressional district, with its far northwestern areas in southern Osage County in Oklahoma's 3rd congressional district.

Municipal and State laws are enforced in Tulsa by the Tulsa Police Department, an organization of about 770 officers as of 2006. In 2004, Tulsa's crime rate was 7806.1 per 100,000 people, about 1.5 times the national average. There were 58 murders, 1096 robberies, and 6,592 burglaries in 2004.

Education

Public Schools

The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) established the Presbyterian Mission Day School, a one-story building at what would become 4th Street and Boston Avenue in 1884. A second story was soon added to accommodate the number of children who were to attend. This school operated until 1889. When Tulsa incorporated in 1899, it took over the school and became the first public school. James M. Hall and three other men bought the property with their own funds and held the title until the city could reimburse them.

Tulsa built its first two public schools in 1905. Construction of more schools began accelerating in 1906. In December 1907, control of the public schools passed from the city government to the Tulsa Board of Education.

Tulsa High School opened in 1906 on the same block formerly occupied by the Presbyterian mission school, which had been razed. The new school was a three-story cream colored brick building with a dome. The school was accredited by the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges in 1913. It proved too small by 1916, when Tulsa voters approved a bond issue to construct a new high school at Sixth Street and Cincinnati Avenue, which was renamed Central High School. The north half of this facility opened in 1917, while the south half opened in 1922. This building remained in this service until 1976, when it was replaced by a new building on West Edison Street. The old building was taken over by the Public Service Company of Oklahoma.

There are three primary public school districts in the city of Tulsa. Tulsa Public Schools, with nine high schools and over 41,000 students, is the second-largest school district in Oklahoma and includes Booker T. Washington High School, a magnet school judged to be the 65th best high school in the United States by Newsweek Magazine in 2008. Each with one upper high school, Jenks and Union schools are the city's two other primary districts, covering the southern portion of the city near the towns of Jenks and Broken Arrow. In 2006, there were more than 90,000 students attending Tulsa County's public schools. The Catholic Diocese of Tulsa supports a system of parochial and diocesan schools, including Bishop Kelley High School. Another Catholic high school, Cascia Hall Preparatory School, is administered by Augustinians. Most other private schools have religious affiliations with various Jewish and Protestant denominations, including Holland Hall School, affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

Public libraries

The largest library system in the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, the Tulsa City-County Library, contains over volumes in 25 library facilities. The library is active in the community, holding events and programs at most branches, including free computer classes, children's storytimes, business and job assistance, and scholarly databases with information on a variety of topics. The McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa is a federal depository library holding over three million items. Founded in 1930, the library is known for its collection of Native American works and the original works of Irish author James Joyce. The Tulsa City-County Library and the University of Tulsa's Law Library are also federal depository libraries, making Tulsa the only city in Oklahoma with more than two federal depository libraries.

Higher education

Kendall College, a Presbyterian school, moved to Tulsa from Muskogee in 1907. This became the start of higher education in Tulsa. In 1920, the school merged with a proposed Mc Farlin College to become Tulsa University. The McFarlin library of Tulsa University was named for the principal donor of the proposed college, oilman Robert M. McFarlin.

Tulsa has 15 institutions of higher education, including two private universities: the University of Tulsa, a school founded in 1894; and Oral Roberts University, a school founded by evangelist Oral Roberts in 1963. The University of Tulsa has an enrollment of 4,192 undergraduate and graduate students and is ranked 83rd among national doctoral universities in U.S. News and World Report's 2009 edition of America's Best Colleges and among the best 123 Western Colleges by the Princeton Review in 2007, which also ranks it in the top ten schools nationally for quality of life, overall happiness of students, and relationship with the community. Oral Roberts University, a charismatic Christian institution with an enrollment of 5,109 undergraduate and graduate students, was rated in 2007 by the Princeton Review one of the 123 best in the Western United States and among the West's top 50 Master's Universities by U.S. News and World Report in 2005.

Rogers State University is the Tulsa area's only public four-year university, though Tulsa Community College has a partnership allowing students to complete four-year Bachelor's degrees through OU-Tulsa, OSU-Tulsa, LU-Tulsa and NSU-Broken Arrow. The largest community college in Oklahoma, Tulsa Community College (TCC) operates four campuses spread across the area as well as a conference center in Midtown. Oklahoma State University houses three campuses in the city, the OSU Center for Health Sciences, the OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, and OSU – Tulsa, accommodating upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. The University of Oklahoma operates what is known as the OU-Tulsa Schusterman Center, offering bachelors, master's and doctoral degree programs in conjunction with the main campus in Norman and the OU Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. The OU-Tulsa Schusterman Center also houses the OU School of Community Medicine, the first medical school of its kind in the nation. Tulsa also has a Tulsa branch of Langston University, the only HBCU in the state, founded in 1897. The Spartan School of Aeronautics enrolls 1,500 students at its flight programs near Tulsa International Airport and the city's vocational education is headed by Tulsa Technology Center, the oldest and largest vocational technology institution in the state.

Infrastructure

Transportation in Tulsa is aided by Tulsa Transit's bus network of 97 vehicles and two primary airports, while the Tulsa Port of Catoosa provides transportation of goods and industry through international trade routes. Though internal transportation is largely dependent on automobiles, the city is consistently ranked in the five lowest metropolitan areas for average price of gas at the pump. As reported by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation in 2005, Tulsa's busiest freeway is U.S. 169 with about 106,000 vehicles daily between 51st and 61st Streets, and its second busiest freeway is Interstate 44 with about 88,000 vehicles between Yale and Sheridan Avenues. Currently, there are no mass transit rail lines in Tulsa, though the prospect of passenger rail lines from downtown Tulsa to the suburb of Broken Arrow is currently being studied. Freight railways bisect the city in every direction, and include BNSF, UP, SK&O;, and OSRR rail lines.

The Tulsa International Airport, home to ten commercial airlines, seven cargo carriers, and several charter airlines, serves more than three million travelers annually with almost 80 departures every day, contributing nearly to the economy. In 2007, the airport completed most of an expansion project, which included larger terminal sizes and the addition of restaurants and shops. Riverside-Jones airport, a general aviation airport in West Tulsa, saw 235,039 takeoffs and landings in 2006, making it the busiest airport in Oklahoma and seventh busiest in the nation. Its operations contribute over to the economy annually. At the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, the Tulsa Port of Catoosa is the most inland ocean-going port in the United States and connects barge traffic from Tulsa to the Mississippi River via the Verdigris and Arkansas rivers. The port is one of the largest in the United States and contributes to one of the busiest waterways in the world via its course to the Gulf of Mexico. Long distance passenger rail transportation serves Tulsa only through Greyhound bus lines, which provides bus connections to nearby cities with Amtrak stations.

The Saint Francis Health System owns several hospitals with a central location at Saint Francis Hospital in the southern part of the city. The facility contains 700 doctors and 918 beds, and with more than 3,000 employees, the network is the second largest healthcare employer in the state. The health system also operates a heart hospital, which was named by General Electric in 2004 one of the most advanced heart hospitals in the nation. St. John Medical Center, located in an 11-story midtown center, employs nearly 700 doctors. Other networks, such as Hillcrest Health System, operate a number of facilities in varying sizes. Beginning in 2007, the city elected to renew a five-year contract with EMSA for ambulance service after a period of consideration to switch to the Tulsa Fire Department for providing such services.

Sister cities

In accordance with the Tulsa Global Alliance, which operates in conjunction with Sister Cities International, an organization that began under President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Tulsa has been given eight international sister cities in an attempt to foster cross-cultural understanding:

Beihai, China Celle, Germany Amiens, France

San Luis Potosí, Mexico Tiberias, Israel Utsunomiya, Japan Zelenograd, Russia Kaohsiung, Taiwan

See also

List of people from Tulsa, Oklahoma

Tulsa (book)

Tulsa (movie)

References

External links

Official City Website

Tulsa Chamber of Commerce

Tulsa Convention & Visitors Bureau

Official Tulsa Police Website

Vision 2025

Tulsa Parks

Tulsa's River Parks

Tulsa Foundation for Architecture

Green Country Business and Events Showcase

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Woody Guthrie
background	solo_singer
birth name	Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
born	July 14, 1912Okemah, Oklahoma, United States
died	October 03, 1967New York City, New York, United States
instrument	Guitar, Vocal, Harmonica, Mandolin, Fiddle
genre	Folk, protest song
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	1930–1956
influences	Joe Hill, Will Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Lead Belly
influenced	Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Joe Strummer, Bruce Springsteen
notable instruments	Martin 000-18, Gibson Southern Jumbo, Gibson J-45 }}

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan ''This Machine Kills Fascists'' displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Woody Guthrie was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 1997.

Biography

Early life: 1912–30

Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Nora Belle Tanner and Charles Edward Guthrie. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate soon to be elected President of the United States.

Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the county. When Charles was making stump speeches, he would often be accompanied by his son. Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson. His son wrote three songs about the event and said that his father was later a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan.

Guthrie's early family life was affected by several fires, including one that caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah. His sister Clara later died in a coal-oil (used for heating) fire when Guthrie was seven, and Guthrie's father was severely burned in a subsequent coal-oil fire. The circumstances of these fires, especially that in which Charley was injured, remain unclear. It is unknown whether they were accidents or the result of actions by Guthrie's mother Nora, who was afflicted with Huntington's disease, although the family did not know this at the time. It leads to dementia as well as muscular effects.

Nora Guthrie was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, where she died in 1930 from Huntington's disease. Judging from the circumstances of her father's death by drowning, researchers suspect that George Sherman suffered from the same hereditary disease.

When Nora Guthrie was institutionalized, Woody Guthrie was 14. His father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support. The 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine booth. Before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. In another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed he learned how to play harmonica from a boyhood friend, John Woods, and that his earlier story about the shoe-shining player was false.

He seemed to have a natural affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins. Guthrie easily learned old Irish ballads and traditional songs from the parents of friends. Although he did not excel as a student (he dropped out of high school in his fourth year and did not graduate), his teachers described him as bright. He was an avid reader on a wide range of topics. Friends recall his reading constantly.

Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas, but little changed for the aspiring musician. Guthrie, then 18, was reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa and spent much time learning songs by busking on the streets and reading in the library at Pampa's city hall. He was growing as a musician, gaining practice by regularly playing at dances with his father's half-brother Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. At the library, he wrote a manuscript summarizing everything he had read on the basics of psychology. A librarian in Pampa shelved this manuscript under Guthrie's name, but it was later lost in a library reorganization.

1930s: traveling

At age 19, Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children, Gwendolyn, Sue and Bill, all of whom would later die prematurely. With the advent of the Dust Bowl era, Guthrie left Texas, leaving Mary behind, and joined the thousands of Okies who were migrating to California looking for work. Many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by these working class people.

California

In the 1930s, Guthrie lived on Preston Avenue at Ewing St. in Echo Park, California; a Los Angeles, California neighborhood nicknamed "Red Hill" for the concentration of political radicals living there. During the late part of that decade, he achieved fame with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music. Guthrie was making enough money to send for his family, who were still living in Texas. While appearing on the commercial radio station KFVD, owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat Frank Burke, Guthrie began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually appear on ''Dust Bowl Ballads''.

It was at KFVD that Guthrie met newscaster Ed Robbin. Robbin was impressed with a song Guthrie wrote about Thomas Mooney, believed by many to be a wrongly convicted man who was, at the time, a leftist ''cause célèbre''. Robbin, who became Guthrie's political mentor, introduced Guthrie to socialists and communists in Southern California, including Will Geer. He remained Guthrie's lifelong friend, and helped Guthrie book benefit performances in the communist circles in Southern California. Notwithstanding Guthrie's later claim that "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party", he was never a member of the Party. He was noted as a fellow traveler—an outsider who agreed with the platform of the party while not subject to party discipline. Guthrie requested to write a column for the Communist newspaper, ''The Daily Worker''. The column, titled "Woody Sez", appeared a total of 174 times from May 1939 to January 1940. "Woody Sez" was not explicitly political, but was about current events as observed by Guthrie. He wrote the columns in an exaggerated hillbilly dialect and usually included a small comic; they were published as a collection after Guthrie's death. Steve Earle said of Guthrie, "I don't think of Woody Guthrie as a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political times".

With the outbreak of World War II and the nonaggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939, the owners of KFVD radio did not want its staff "spinning apologia" for the Soviet Union. Both Robbin and Guthrie left the station. Without the daily radio show, his prospects for employment diminished, and Guthrie and his family returned to Pampa, Texas. Although Mary Guthrie was happy to return to Texas, the wanderlusting Guthrie soon after accepted Will Geer's invitation to New York City and headed east.

1940s: building a legacy

New York City

Arriving in New York, Guthrie, known as "the Oklahoma cowboy", was embraced by its leftist folk music community. For a time, he slept on a couch in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie made what were his first recordings—several hours of conversation and songs recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress—as well as an album, ''Dust Bowl Ballads'', for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey.

Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for "God Bless America", he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", in February 1940; it was subtitled "God Blessed America for Me." The melody is adapted from an old gospel song, "Oh My Loving Brother." This was best known as "When The World's On Fire", sung by the country group The Carter Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment, "All you can write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.". He protested against class inequality in the fourth and sixth verses:

:''As I went walking, I saw a sign there,'' :''And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing."'' [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"] :''But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!'' :''That side was made for you and me.''

:''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?''

These verses were often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie. Although the song was written in 1940, it was four years before he recorded it for Moses Asch in April 1944., Sheet music was not produced and given to schools by Howie Richmond until later.

In March 1940, Guthrie was invited to play at a benefit hosted by The John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers, to raise money for migrant workers. There he met the folksinger Pete Seeger, and the two men became good friends. Later, Seeger accompanied Guthrie back to Texas to meet other members of the Guthrie family. He recalled an awkward conversation with Mary Guthrie's mother, in which she asked for Seeger's help to persuade Guthrie to treat her daughter better.

Guthrie had some success in New York at this time as a guest on CBS's radio program ''Back Where I Come From'' and used his influence to get a spot on the show for his friend Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. Ledbetter's Tenth Street apartment was a gathering spot for the leftwing musician circle in New York at the time, and Guthrie and Ledbetter were good friends, as they had busked together at bars in Harlem.

In September 1940 Guthrie was invited by the Model Tobacco Company to host their radio program, ''Pipe Smoking Time''. Guthrie was paid $180 a week, an impressive salary in 1940. He was finally making enough money to send regular payments back to Mary. He also brought her and the children to New York, where the family lived briefly in an apartment on Central Park West. The reunion represented Woody's desire to be a better father and husband. He said "I have to set [''sic''] real hard to think of being a dad". Guthrie quit after the seventh broadcast, claiming he had begun to feel the show was too restrictive when he was told what to sing. Disgruntled with New York, Guthrie packed up Mary and his children in a new car and headed west to California.

Pacific Northwest

In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family north to Washington state on the promise of a job. Gunther von Fritsch was directing a documentary about the Bonneville Power Administration's construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, and needed a narrator. Alan Lomax had recommended Guthrie to narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was expected to take 12 months, but as filmmakers became worried about casting such a political figure, they minimized Guthrie's role. The Department of the Interior hired him for one month to write songs about the Columbia River and the construction of the federal dams for the documentary's soundtrack. Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest. Guthrie said he "couldn't believe it, it's a paradise", which appeared to inspire him creatively. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including three of his most famous: "Roll On Columbia", "Pastures of Plenty", and "Grand Coulee Dam". The surviving songs were released as ''Columbia River Songs''. The film was never completed and was released only in a limited form.

At the conclusion of the month in Oregon and Washington, Guthrie wanted to return to New York. Tired of the continual uprooting, Mary Guthrie told him to go without her and the children. Although Guthrie would see Mary again, once on a tour through Los Angeles with the Almanac Singers, it was essentially the end of their marriage. Divorce was difficult, since Mary was a member of the Catholic Church, but she reluctantly agreed in December 1943.

Almanac Singers

Following the conclusion of his work in Washington State, Guthrie corresponded with Pete Seeger about Seeger's newly formed folk-protest group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to tour the country as a member of the group. The singers originally worked out of a loft in New York City hosting regular concerts called "hootenannys", a word Pete and Woody had picked up in their cross-country travels. The singers eventually outgrew the space and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was that World War II was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the group wrote anti-fascist songs. The members of the Almanac Singers and residents of the Almanac House were a loosely defined group of musicians, though the 'core' members included Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell and Lee Hays. In keeping with common socialist ideals, meals, chores and rent at the Almanac House were shared. The Sunday hootenannys were good opportunities to collect donation money for rent. Songs written in the Almanac House had shared songwriting credits among all the members, although in the case of "Union Maid", members would later state that Guthrie wrote the song, ensuring that his children would receive residuals.

In the Almanac House, Guthrie added authenticity to their work, since he was a "real" working-class Oklahoman. "There was the heart of America personified in Woody....And for a New York Left that was primarily Jewish, first or second generation American, and was desperately trying to get Americanized, I think a figure like Woody was of great, great importance", a friend of the group, Irwin Silber, would say. Woody routinely emphasized his working-class image, rejected songs he felt were not in the country blues vein he was familiar with, and rarely contributed to household chores. House member Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, another Okie, would later recall that Woody, "loved people to think of him as a real working class person and not an intellectual". Guthrie contributed songwriting and authenticity in much the same capacity for Pete Seeger's post-Almanac Singers project ''People's Songs'', a newsletter and booking organization for labor singers, founded in 1945.

''Bound for Glory''

Guthrie was a prolific writer, penning thousands of pages of unpublished poems and prose, many written while living in New York City. After a recording session with Alan Lomax, Lomax suggested Guthrie write an autobiography. Lomax thought Guthrie's descriptions of growing up were some of the best accounts he had read of American childhood. During this time Guthrie met Marjorie Mazia, a dancer in New York who would become his second wife. Mazia was an instructor at the prestigious Martha Graham Dance School, where she was assisting Sophie Maslow with her piece ''Folksay''. Based on the folklore and poetry collected by Carl Sandburg, ''Folksay'' included the adaptation of some of Guthrie's ''Dust Bowl Ballads'' for the dance. Guthrie continued to write songs and began work on his autobiography. The end product, ''Bound For Glory'' was completed due to the patient editing assistance of Mazia and was first published by E.P. Dutton in 1943. It is vividly told in the artist's down-home dialect, with the flair and imagery of a true storyteller. ''Library Journal'' complained about the "Too careful reproduction of illiterate speech." But Clifton Fadiman, reviewing the book in the ''New York Times'', paid the author a fine tribute: "Some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession like Yellowstone and Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world." A film adaptation of ''Bound for Glory'' was released in 1976.

The Asch recordings

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land". Over the next few years, he recorded "Worried Man Blues", along with hundreds of other songs. These recordings would later be released by Folkways and Stinson Records, which had joint distribution rights. The Folkways recordings are available (through the Smithsonian Institute online shop); the most complete series of these sessions, culled from dates with Asch, is titled ''The Asch Recordings''.

World War II years

Guthrie believed performing his anti-fascist songs and poems at home was the best use of his talents; Guthrie lobbied the United States Army to accept him as a USO performer instead of conscripting him as a soldier in the draft. When Guthrie's attempts failed, his friends Cisco Houston and Jim Longhi pressured Guthrie to join the U.S. Merchant Marine. Guthrie followed their advice: he served as a mess man and dishwasher, and frequently sang for the crew and troops to buoy their spirits on transatlantic voyages. Guthrie made attempts to write about his experience in the Merchant Marine, but was never satisfied with the results. Longhi later wrote about these experiences in his book ''Woody, Cisco and Me''. The book offers a rare first-hand account of Guthrie during his Merchant Marine service. In 1945, Guthrie's association with communism made him ineligible for further service in the Merchant Marine, and he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

While he was on furlough from the Army, Guthrie and Marjorie were married. After his discharge, they moved into a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, and over time had four children. One of their children, Cathy, died as a result of a fire at age four, sending Guthrie into a serious depression. Their other children were Joady, Nora and Arlo. Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a singer-songwriter. During this period, Guthrie wrote and recorded, ''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child'', a collection of children's music, which includes the song "Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin')", written when Arlo was about nine years old.

A 1948 crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland, California in deportation back to Mexico inspired Woody to write "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)".

Mermaid Avenue

The years living on Mermaid Avenue were among Guthrie's most productive periods as a writer. His extensive writings from this time were archived and maintained by Marjorie and later his estate, mostly handled by Guthrie's daughter, Nora. Several of the manuscripts contain scribblings by a young Arlo and the other Guthrie offspring.

During this time Ramblin' Jack Elliott studied extensively under Guthrie, visiting his home and observing how he wrote and performed. Elliott, like Bob Dylan later, idolized Guthrie and was inspired by his idiomatic performance style and repertoire. Due to Guthrie's suffering Huntington's disease, Dylan and Guthrie's son Arlo later claimed they learned much of Guthrie's performance style from Elliott. When asked about Arlo's claim, Elliott said, "I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, If you want to learn something, just steal it—that's the way I learned from Lead Belly."

1950s and 1960s

Deteriorating health

By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was declining, and his behavior was becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952, it was finally determined that he was suffering from Huntington's disease, a genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie suggested he return to California without her; they eventually divorced.

Upon his return to California, Guthrie lived in a compound owned by Will Geer; with blacklisted singers and actors, he waited out the anti-communist political climate. As his health worsened, he met and married his third wife, Anneke Van Kirk. They had a child, Lorinna Lynn. The couple moved to Fruit Cove, Florida briefly. They lived in a bus on land called Beluthahatchee, owned by his friend Stetson Kennedy. Guthrie's arm was hurt in a campfire accident when gasoline used to start the campfire exploded. Although he regained movement in the arm, he was never able to play the guitar again. In 1954, the couple returned to New York. Shortly after, Anneke filed for divorce, a result of the strain of caring for Guthrie. Anneke left New York and allowed friends to adopt Lorina Lynn. Lorinna had no further contact with her birth parents and died in 1973 at the age of nineteen in a car accident in California. After the divorce, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, re-entered his life; it was Marjorie who cared for him and assisted him until his death.

Guthrie, increasingly unable to control his muscles, was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961, at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966, and finally at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center until his death. Marjorie and the children visited Guthrie at Greystone every Sunday. They answered fan mail and played on the hospital grounds. Eventually a longtime fan of Guthrie invited the family to his nearby home for the Sunday visits. This lasted until Guthrie was moved to the Brooklyn State Hospital, which was closer to where Marjorie lived.

When Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie and whose early folk career was deeply inspired by him, learned that Guthrie was hospitalized in Brooklyn, he was determined to meet his idol. By this time, Guthrie was said to have his "good days" and "bad days". On the good days, Dylan would sing songs to him, and at the beginning Guthrie seemed to warm to Dylan. When the bad days came, Guthrie would berate Dylan. Reportedly on Dylan's last visit, Guthrie didn't recognize him. Dylan said that he made his trek to New York City primarily to seek out his idol. At the end of his life, Guthrie was largely alone except for family. Due to the progression of Huntington's, he was difficult to be around. Guthrie's illness was essentially untreated, due to a lack of information about the disease. His death helped raise awareness of the disease and led Marjorie to help found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America. None of Guthrie's three remaining children with Marjorie has developed symptoms of Huntington's. Two of Mary Guthrie's children (Gwendolyn and Sue) suffered from the disease. (Her son Bill died in an auto-train accident in Pomona, California, at age 23.) Both died at 41 years of age.

Folk revival and Guthrie's death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These "folk revivalists" became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie's visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie's repertoire: "The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them." After learning of Guthrie's whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington's disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Family

Married: Mary Esta Jennings (1933–1943), Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia (1945–1953), Anneke van Kirk (1953–1954)

Children (8): Gwendolyn Gail (1935–1976), Sue (1937–1978), Bill (1939–1962), Cathy Ann (1943–1947), Arlo Davy (1947-), Joady Ben (1948-), Nora (1950-), Lorinna Lynn (1954–1973)

Musical legacy

Foundation and archives

The Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. The archive houses the largest collection of Guthrie material in the world. Guthrie's unrecorded written lyrics housed at the Archives have been the starting point of several albums including the Wilco and Billy Bragg albums ''Mermaid Avenue'' and ''Mermaid Avenue Vol. II'', created in 1998 sessions at the invitation of Guthrie's daughter Nora. The Native American (Diné) trio Blackfire also interpreted previously unreleased Guthrie lyrics at Nora's invitation. Jonatha Brooke's 2008 album, "The Works" (RELEASE: August 26, 2008, LABEL: Bad Dog Records) includes lyrics from the Woody Guthrie Archives set to music by Jonatha Brooke.

Folk Festival

The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to commemorate Guthrie's life and music. The festival is held on the weekend closest to Guthrie's birth date (July 14) in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. Planned and implemented annually by the Woody Guthrie Coalition, a non-profit corporation, the goal is simply to ensure Guthrie's musical legacy. The Woody Guthrie Coalition commissioned a local Creek Indian sculptor to cast a full-body bronze statue of Guthrie and his guitar, complete with the guitar's well-known inscription: "This machine kills fascists". The statue, sculpted by artist Dan Brook, stands along Okemah's main street in the heart of downtown and was unveiled in 1998, the inaugural year of the festival.

Jewish songs

Marjorie Mazia was born Marjorie Greenblatt and her mother, Aliza Greenblatt, was a well-known Yiddish poet. With her, Guthrie wrote numerous Jewish lyrics. Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Guthrie (the Oklahoma troubadour) and Greenblatt (the Jewish wordsmith) often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor, classic socialist activism. Guthrie was inspired to write songs that came directly out of this unlikely relationship, both personal and political; he identified the problems of Jews with those of his fellow Okies and other oppressed peoples.

These lyrics were rediscovered by Nora Guthrie and were set to music by the Jewish Klezmer group The Klezmatics with the release of ''Happy Joyous Hanukkah'' on JMG Records in 2007. The Klezmatics also released ''Wonder Wheel — Lyrics by Woody Guthrie'', an album of spiritual lyrics put to music composed by the band. The album, produced by Danny Blume, was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.

Tributes

Since his death, artists have paid tribute to Guthrie by covering his songs or by dedicating songs to him. One of the first artists to do so was Scottish folk artist Donovan, who covered Guthrie's "Car, Car (Riding in My Car)" on his 1965 debut album ''What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid''. On January 20, 1968, three months following Guthrie's death, Harold Leventhal produced ''A Tribute to Woody Guthrie'' at New York City's Carnegie Hall. Performers included Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Odetta, and others. Leventhal repeated the tribute on September 12, 1970 at the Hollywood Bowl. Recordings of the two concerts were eventually compiled as an album. The legendary Irish folk singer, Christy Moore, was also strongly influenced by Woody in his seminal 1970 album ''Prosperous'', giving renditions of "The Ludlow Massacre" and Bob Dylan's "Song to Woody". Bob Dylan also penned, ''Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie'' as a later tribute song to Guthrie. Bruce Springsteen also performed a cover of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" on his live album ''Live 1975-1985''. In the introduction to the song, Springsteen referred to it as "just about one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

In September 1996 Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Case Western Reserve University cohosted ''Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie'', a 10-day conference of panel sessions, lectures, and concerts. The conference became the first in what would become the museum's annual American Music Masters Series conference. Highlights included Arlo Guthrie's keynote address, a Saturday night musical jamboree at Cleveland's Odeon Theater, and a Sunday night concert at Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. Musicians performing over the course of the conference included Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the Indigo Girls, Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave, Ani DiFranco, and others. In 1999, Wesleyan University Press published a collection of essays from the conference and DiFranco's record label, Righteous Babe, released a compilation of the Severance Hall concert, '''Til We Outnumber 'Em'', in 2000.

From 1999 to 2002 the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service presented the traveling exhibit, ''This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie''. In collaboration with Nora Guthrie, the Smithsonian exhibition draws from rarely seen objects, illustrations, film footage, and recorded performances to reveal a complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist, itinerant hobo, and folk legend.

In 2003, Jimmy LaFave produced a Woody Guthrie tribute show called ''Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway''. The ensemble show toured around the country and included a rotating cast of singer-songwriters individually performing Guthrie's songs. Interspersed between songs were Guthrie's philosophical writings read by a narrator. In addition to LaFave, members of the rotating cast included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Joel Rafael, husband-wife duo Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's granddaughter) and Johnny Irion, Michael Fracasso, and The Burns Sisters. Oklahoma songwriter Bob Childers, sometimes called "the Dylan of the Dust", served as narrator. When word spread about the tour, performers began contacting LaFave, whose only prerequisite was to have an inspirational connection to Guthrie. Each artist chose the Guthrie songs that he or she would perform as part of the tribute. LaFave said, "It works because all the performers are Guthrie enthusiasts in some form". The inaugural performance of the Ribbon of Highway tour took place on February 5, 2003 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The abbreviated show was a featured segment of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', yet another tribute concert to commemorate the music of Woody Guthrie held during the Folk Alliance Conference. The cast of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', a benefit for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, also included Arlo Guthrie, Marty Stuart, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Janis Ian, and others.

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie were honored at a musical celebration featuring Billy Bragg and the band Brad on October 17, 2007 at Webster Hall in New York City. Steve Earle also performed. The event was hosted by actor/activist Tim Robbins to benefit the Huntington¹s Disease Society of America to commemorate the organization's 40th Anniversary.

Copyright controversy

In his recordings in the early 1940s Woody Guthrie included the following “Copyright Warning”:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” Currently the copyright in much of Woody's songs is claimed by a number of different organizations.

When JibJab published a parody of Woody's song This Land Is Your Land to comment on the US 2004 Presidential election, Ludlow Music attempted to have this parody taken down, claiming it breached their copyright. JibJab then sued to affirm their parody was Fair Use, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acting for them. As part of their research on the case they found that the song had actually been first published by Woody Guthrie in 1945, although the copyright was not registered until 1956. This meant that when Ludlow applied to renew the copyright in 1984 they were 11 years too late, and the song had in fact been in the public domain since 1973 (28 years from first publication). Ludlow agreed that JibJab were free to distribute their parody. In an interview on NPR Arlo Guthrie said that he thought the parody was hilarious and he thought Woody would have loved it too. Ludlow still claims copyright in this song; however, it is not clear what the basis of this claim is.

Posthumous honors

Pete Seeger had the Sloop ''Woody Guthrie'' built for an organization he founded, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. It was launched in 1978. Now operated by the Beacon Sloop Club, it serves to educate people about sailing and the history and environs of the Hudson River.

Although Guthrie's catalogue never brought him many awards while he was alive, in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the same year Bob Dylan was inducted (much of Dylan's initial folk music work was heavily influenced by Guthrie), and in 2000 he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1987 "Roll On Columbia" was chosen as the official Washington State Folk Song, and in 2001 Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" was chosen to be the official state folk song of Oklahoma.

On September 26, 1992, The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center located in Sherborn, Massachusetts, awarded Guthrie their Courage of Conscience Award for his social activism and artistry in song which conveyed the plight of the common person.

On June 26, 1998, as part of its Legends of American Music series, the United States Postal Service issued 45 million 32-cent stamps honoring folk musicians Huddie Ledbetter, Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Josh White. The four musicians were represented on sheets of 20 stamps.

In July 2001, CB's Gallery in New York City began hosting an annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash concert featuring multiple performers. This event moved to the Bowery Poetry Club in 2007 after CB's Gallery and CBGB, its parent club, closed.

In 2005, the Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys recorded "I'm Shipping Up to Boston". The song's lyrics are from a poem written by Guthrie, and the music was composed by the band. The song was released in 2005 on the album ''The Warrior's Code'' and gained fame when it was used as part of the soundtrack for the 2006 movie ''The Departed''.

In 2006, The Klezmatics set Jewish lyrics written by Guthrie to music. The resulting album, ''Wonder Wheel'', won the Grammy award for best contemporary world music album.

On April 27, 2007, Guthrie was one of four Okemah natives inducted into Okemah's Hall of Fame during the town's Pioneer Day weekend of festivities.

On February 10, 2008, ''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949'', a rare live recording released in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie Foundation, was the recipient of a Grammy Award in the category Best Historical Album. Less than two years later, Guthrie was again nominated for a Grammy in the same category with the 2009 release of ''My Dusty Road'' on Rounder Records.

Selected discography

Many Guthrie tracks have been repeatedly repackaged and reordered. Items here are listed in order of the most recent published date, not original recording date.

!Year	!Title	!Record Label
1940	''Dust Bowl Ballads''	Folkways Records
1972	''Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie''
1987	''Columbia River Collection''	Rounder Records
1988	''Folkways: The Original Vision'' (Woody and Leadbelly)	Smithsonian Folkways
1988	''Library of Congress Recordings''	Rounder Records
1989	''Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs''	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	''Struggle''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Cowboy Songs on Folkways''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child''	Smithsonian Folkways
1992	''Nursery Days''	Smithsonian Folkways
1994	''Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944–1949''	Smithsonian Folkways
1996	''Almanac Singers''	UNI/MCA
1996	''Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti''	Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1998		Smithsonian Folkways
1999		Smithsonian Folkways
2007	''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949''	Woody Guthrie Publications
2009	''My Dusty Road''	Rounder Records

See also

Arlo Guthrie

List of songs by Woody Guthrie

List of albums by Woody Guthrie

Lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson

Pete Seeger

References

Citations

Printed sources

Further reading/listening

Hogeland, William (March 14, 2004), Emulating the Real and Vital Guthrie, Not St. Woody, New York Times.

Down Home Radio Show. LeadBelly & Woody Guthrie live on WNYC Radio, Dec. 1940. Audio re-broadcast of a 1940 radio show. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Earle, Steve. Woody Guthrie. ''The Nation'', July 21, 2003. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Scanned images of some of Woody Guthrie's original works. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Jackson, Mark Allen. ''Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie''. University Press of Mississippi, January, 2007. ISBN 978-1-60473-102-6

La Chapelle, Peter. Is Country Music Inherently Conservative? History News Network. Nov. 12, 2007. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

La Chapelle, Peter. ''Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California''. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-520-24888-5 (hb); ISBN 978-0-520-24889-2 (pb)

Library of Congress. Timeline of Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Marroquin, Danny. Walking the Long Road. PopMatters.com. Aug. 4, 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Public Broadcasting Service. ''Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home''. Documentary from PBS' American Masters series, July 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Oregon. ''Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration''. Video documentary. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Virginia. Guthrie singing "This Land Is Your Land". MP3 recording. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Symphony Silicon Valley Concert Recordings. David Amram's ''Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie'' Recorded September 30, 2007. Audio recording. Retrieved on January 11, 2008.

WoodyGuthrie.de. Woody Guthrie Related Audio. Miscellaneous Real Audio files featuring Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

External links

The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives

''Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950'', Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. American Memory presentation of archival correspondence written by Woody Guthrie to the staff of the Archive of American Folk Song. Retrieved August 31, 2009

Woody Guthrie in NYC, 1943 - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Woody Guthrie's Discography on Smithsonian Folkways

Songfacts interview with Anna Canoni (Guthrie's granddaughter)

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Guthrie, Woody

Voices of Oklahoma interview with Nora Guthrie. First person interview conducted with Nora Guthrie speaking about her father, Woody Guthrie, on October 7, 2010. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.

Category:1912 births Category:1967 deaths Category:American autobiographers Category:American buskers Category:American folk singers Category:American folk-song collectors Category:American male singers Category:American sailors Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American socialists Category:Cub Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Woody Category:Industrial Workers of the World members Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Echo Park, Los Angeles Category:People from Okemah, Oklahoma Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Shack dwellers Category:Squatters Category:Songster musicians Category:Songwriters from Oklahoma Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Vanguard Records artists Category:Anti-fascists Category:American folk guitarists Category:American harmonica players Category:American mandolinists Category:American violinists Category:Rounder Records artists

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Jackson Browne
background	solo_singer
birth name	Clyde Jackson Browne
born	October 09, 1948Heidelberg, Germany
alias	Jackson Browne
genre	Rock, folk, country
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, political activist
Years active	1966–present
Label	Elektra RecordsAdrenaline Music GroupInside RecordingsAsylum Records
Associated acts	Warren Zevon, Eagles, David Lindley, Waddy Wachtel, Bonnie Raitt, Clarence Clemons, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Neil Young , Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bruce Springsteen, Little Steven
Website	jacksonbrowne.com}}

Jackson Browne (born Clyde Jackson Browne; October 9, 1948) is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone.

Coming to prominence in the 1970s, Browne's political interests and personal angst have been central to his career, resulting in popular songs such as "Somebody's Baby", "These Days", "The Pretender", "Lawyers in Love" and "Running On Empty". In 2004, Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by his friend Bruce Springsteen. The same year, Browne received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Los Angeles' Occidental College for "a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social change and justice".

Biography

Early life

Browne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda (née Dahl), was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne who was born in 1946 in Nuernberg, Germany (Nuernberg) and Edward Severin Browne who was born in 1949 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His younger sister, Gracie Browne, was born a number of years later. Browne moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles, California, at the age of 3 and in his teens began singing folk music in local venues like the Ash Grove and The Troubador Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, graduating in 1966.

Songwriter for others

After moving to Greenwich Village, New York, in early 1966 Jackson Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, performing at The Golden Bear (Huntington Beach, CA) where they opened for The Lovin' Spoonful. The band later recorded a number of Jackson's songs including "These Days," "Melissa," "Holding," and "Shadow Dream Song". Jackson also spent a short amount of time in his friend Pamela Polland's band Gentle Soul. Before Jackson's eighteenth birthday, he became a staff writer for Elektra Records' publishing company, Nina Music, reporting on musical events in New York City with his friends Greg Copeland and Adam Saylor. He spent the remainder of 1967 and 1968 in Greenwich Village, New York, where he backed Tim Buckley and German singer Nico, of the Velvet Underground. In 1967 Browne and Nico were romantically linked and he became a significant contributor to her debut album, ''Chelsea Girl'', writing and playing guitar on several of the songs (including "These Days"). After leaving New York City, Browne formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce, and settled in Southern California.

Browne's first songs such as "Shadow Dream Song" and "These Days" were recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Nico, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, and others. Browne didn't release his own version of many of these early songs himself until years later.

Classic period

In 1971, Browne signed with Asylum Records and released ''Jackson Browne'' (1972), which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", which entered the Top Ten in the US singles chart. "Rock Me on the Water", from the same album, also gained considerable radio airplay, while "Jamaica Say You Will" and "Song for Adam" helped establish Browne's reputation. Touring to promote the album, he shared the bill with Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell.

His next album, ''For Everyman'' (1973) — while considered of high quality — was less successful than his debut album, although it still sold a million copies. The upbeat "Take It Easy", co-written with The Eagles' Glenn Frey, had already been a major success for that group, while his own recording of "These Days" reflected a sound representing Browne's angst.

''Late for the Sky'' (1974) consolidated Browne's fan base. Browne's work began to demonstrate a reputation for memorable melody, insightful (and often very personal) lyrics, and a talent for his arrangements in composition. It featured a Magritte-inspired cover. Highlights included the title song, the elegiac "For a Dancer," "Before the Deluge" and the often-covered "Fountain of Sorrow." The arrangements featured the violin and guitar of David Lindley, Jai Winding's piano, and the harmonies of Doug Haywood. The title track was also featured in Martin Scorsese's film ''Taxi Driver''. During this period, Browne began his fractious but lifelong professional relationship with singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, mentoring Zevon's first two Asylum albums through the studio as a producer (working closely with Waddy Wachtel and Jorge Calderón).

Browne's character was even more apparent in his next album, ''The Pretender''. It was released during 1976, after the suicide of his first wife, Phyllis Major. The album features production by Jon Landau and a mixture of styles, ranging from the Mariachi-inspired "Linda Paloma" to the country-driven "Your Bright Baby Blues" to the downbeat "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate". "Here Come Those Tears Again" was cowritten with Nancy Farnsworth, the mother of Browne's wife, after the untimely death of her daughter.

Browne began recording his next LP while on tour, and ''Running on Empty'' (1977) became his biggest commercial success. Breaking the usual conventions for a live album, Browne used new material and combined live concert performances with recordings made on buses, in hotel rooms, and back stage. ''Running on Empty'' contains many of his most popular songs, such as the title track, "The Road" (written and recorded in 1972 by Danny O'Keefe), "Rosie", and "The Load-Out/Stay" (Browne's send-off to his concert audiences and roadies) although none had been recorded previously.

Eighties activism & music

Soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident during March 1979, Browne joined with several musician-friends to found the anti-nuclear organization Musicians United for Safe Energy. He was arrested protesting the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. His next album, ''Hold Out'' (1980), was commercially successful — his only number 1 record on the U.S. pop albums chart. The next year he released the single "Somebody's Baby" from the ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High'' soundtrack, which became his biggest hit, peaking at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1983 ''Lawyers in Love'' followed, signaling a discernible change from the personal to the political in his lyrics.

Political protest came to the fore in Browne's music in the 1986 album, ''Lives in the Balance'', an explicit condemnation of Reaganism and U.S. policy in Central America. Flavored with new instrumental textures, it was a huge success with many Browne fans, though not with mainstream audiences. The title track, "Lives in the Balance", with its Andean pan pipes — and lines like, "There's a shadow on the faces / Of the men who fan the flames / Of the wars that are fought in places / Where we can't even say the names" — was an outcry against U.S.-backed wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The song was used at several points in the award-winning 1987 PBS documentary, ''The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis,'' by journalist Bill Moyers, and was part of the soundtrack of ''Stone's War'', a 1986 ''Miami Vice'' episode focusing on American involvement in Central America.

During the 1980s, Browne performed frequently at benefit concerts for leftist causes he believed in, including Farm Aid; Amnesty International (making several appearances on the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope Tour); post-Somoza, revolutionary Nicaragua; and the Christic Institute. The album ''World in Motion'', released during 1989, contains a cover of Steve Van Zandt's "I am a Patriot," a song which he has performed at numerous concerts.

Browne also performed alongside Roy Orbison in Black & White Night in 1988 along with Bruce Springsteen, k.d.lang and many others. Audio and video recordings were made of the event, and released many years later.

The 1990s

In 1993, four years after his previous album, Browne returned with ''I'm Alive'', a critically acclaimed album with a more personal style that did not have any successful singles but still sold respectably — indeed, the ninth track from the album, ''Sky Blue and Black'', was used during the pilot episode of the situation comedy ''Friends''. In 1994, Browne collaborated with Kathy Mattea to contribute "Rock Me on the Water" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization.

During 1995, he performed in ''The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True'' a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996. He sang a duet with Jann Arden, "Unloved", on her 1995 album ''Living Under June''. Browne's own album, ''Looking East'' (1996), was released soon after, but was not as successful commercially.

2000 to the present

Browne released his album ''The Naked Ride Home'' in 2002, with a performance on ''Austin City Limits'', featuring the recording with older, familiar songs.

During 2003, Browne guest-starred as himself in ''The Simpsons'' episode "Brake My Wife, Please", performing a parody of his song "Rosie" with lyrics altered to reference the plot involving Homer and Marge.

In 2004, Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bruce Springsteen gave the induction speech, commenting to Browne that although the Eagles were inducted first, he said, "You wrote the songs they wished they had written". Browne had written an uncounted number of hit songs that many artists, including the Eagles, and Springsteen himself had recorded over the span of his career. The previous year, three of Browne's albums — ''For Everyman'', ''Late for the Sky'', and ''The Pretender'' — had been selected by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine as among its choices for the 500 best albums of all time.

Although a liberal Democrat, Browne appeared in several rallies for presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, singing "I Am a Patriot" and other songs. He participated in the Vote for Change tour during October 2004, playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org to mobilize people to vote for John Kerry in the presidential election. Browne appeared with Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo', and once with Bruce Springsteen. During late 2006, Browne performed with Michael Stanley and J. D. Souther at a fundraiser for Democratic candidates in Ohio. For the 2008 Presidential Election, he endorsed John Edwards for the Democratic Presidential Nomination and performed at some of Edwards' appearances. After Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, Browne endorsed Obama.

''Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1'', was released in 2005 on Inside Recordings. The album consists of live recordings of eleven previously released tracks and "The Birds of St. Marks", a song that does not appear on any of Browne's studio albums. This album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2007 in the category of Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. A live followup album, ''Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2'', was released on March 4, 2008.

Browne is part of the No Nukes group which is against the expansion of nuclear power. During 2007, the group recorded a music video of a new version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth".

Browne cameoed in the 2007 film, ''Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story''.

Browne's studio album, ''Time the Conqueror'', was released September 23, 2008 via Inside Recordings. The album reached the Billboard 200 album chart at #20, which was his first top 20 record since releasing ''Lawyers in Love'' in 1983. In addition, the album peaked at #2 on the Billboard Independent Album chart.

During August 2008, Browne sued John McCain, the Ohio Republican Party, and the Republican National Committee for using his 1977 hit, "Running on Empty", in an attack advertisement against Barack Obama without his permission. In July 2009, the matter was settled under an undisclosed financial agreement with an apology from the McCain campaign and other parties.

During August 2008, he appeared on the ALMA Awards in a taped interview honoring Trailblazer Award recipient and long time friend, Linda Ronstadt.

On 31 May 2008, Jackson Browne performed at the Artist for the Arts Foundation benefit at Barnum Hall, Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica, CA. Performing live, along side Heart, Venice (Crazy On You) and over 70 members of the Santa Monica High School (SaMoHi) Orchestra and Girls Choir (Bohemian Rhapsody),[24] the benefit helped to provide funds for the continuation of Music Education in public schools. The event was filmed and recorded by Touring Video and Post by On the WAVE Productions. Browne again performed there with Heart and other musician guest stars in 2009

In January 2011, Jackson Browne won The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in the Best Live Performance Album category for ''Love is Strange'' performed by himself and David Lindley.

Browne has recently contributed a cover of Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways" for the upcoming tribute album, Listen to Me: Buddy Holly to be released on September 6th, 2011.

Personal life

Browne has been married twice and has two children. His first wife was actress/model Phyllis Major (1946–1976). The two began their relationship around 1971, and married in late 1975, as memorialized in the song "Ready or Not". Their son, model/actor Ethan Zane Browne was born in 1973 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and grew up in Los Angeles, CA. Jackson and six month old Ethan appeared together on the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine in May 1974. Ethan Browne has worked as a model and had small parts in two movies: ''Raising Helen'' and ''Hackers''. Browne was devastated when Major committed suicide by consuming an overdose of sleeping pills just a few months after they married, in March 1976, at the age of 30.

Browne was married in January 1981 to Australian model Lynne Sweeney with whom he had a second son, Ryan Browne, born on January 28, 1982, who has been a bass player/singer in the band Sonny and the Sunsets since 2007. Browne and Sweeney were divorced in 1983, when he began dating actress Daryl Hannah. The relationship with Hannah ended in 1992 amidst allegations of domestic violence by Browne. He has been with artist and environmental activist Dianna Cohen, and a co-founding member of the Plastics Pollution Coalition, since the mid 1990s.

Environmental activism

Browne was one of the leaders of the anti-nuclear movement and founded Musicians United for Safe Energy with Bonnie Raitt in 1979, and was an active member of the Abalone Alliance and Alliance for Survival. According to environmental activist, Ed Begley, Jr., “He’s got this big wind turbine, and his ranch is completely off the [power] grid,” Begley said. “He’s done all of it himself”.

Browne campaigns against the unnecessary use of water in plastic bottles and takes steps to reduce usage on his tours. He is part of the movement "Plastic Free Backstage".

In April 2008, SIMA (The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association) gave Jackson Browne the honor of "Environmentalist of the Year."

Jackson Browne received the Duke LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts in 2010 for his environmental activism and efforts to make his tours more 'green'.

Save Our Shores (SOS), the leading ocean advocacy group in California, honored Browne with their Ocean Hero Award on February 23, 2011. SOS and Santa Cruz Mayor, Ryan Coonerty, proclaimed the date Jackson Browne Day in the City of Santa Cruz to honor Browne's social, environmental and anti-plastic activism, and as a founding member of the Plastic Pollution and an initiator of the REFUSE Disposable Plastics Campaign.

Charity

In 2008, Browne contributed to the album ''Songs for Tibet'', an initiative to support Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, and to publicize the human rights situation in Tibet. The album was issued on August 5 via iTunes and on August 19 in music stores around the world.

Browne covered John Lennon's "Oh My Love" to benefit Amnesty International's campaign to alleviate the crisis in Darfur. The song appears on the album ''Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur'', which was released on June 12, 2007 and features many other prominent artists performing other John Lennon covers, such as R.E.M., Jack Johnson, U2, Avril Lavigne, Green Day, and The Black Eyed Peas.

Browne performed live and recorded The Beatles song medley "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight" in 1991 with Jennifer Warnes for the charity album "For Our Children"to benefit the Pediatrics AIDS Foundation. Browne and Wanres again performed it live for the Tucson, AZ benefit concert

Browne performed and sang the role of the Scarecrow in ''The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True'', a 1995 musical performance for charity alongside Roger Daltrey, Natalie Cole, Tim Allen, and other stars. The celebrity cast performed a reader's theatre and songs styled performance of the MGM film "The Wizard of Oz" at the Lincoln Center as a benefit for the Children's Defense Fund. A VHS and cd were released of the concert in 1996 by Rhino Records.

Browne covered Lowen & Navarro's "Weight of the World" on ''Keep The Light Alive: Celebrating The Music of Lowen & Navarro''. The proceeds of the album benefit The Eric Lowen Trust, ALS Association Greater Los Angeles, and Augie's Quest.

Browne also held a benefit concert for the Rory David Deutsch Foundation which is dedicated to providing funding for brain tumor research and treatment.

In October 2010 Browne performed at both days of the 24th Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert, a yearly fundraiser established by Neil Young benefiting the The Bridge School. The Bridge School assists children with severe physical impairments and complex communication needs. Browne also appeared at the 2010 NAMM Conference in Anaheim, California with Yoko Ono and Quincy Jones in support of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus.

On March 10, 2011 Jackson Browne with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Alice Cooper, and others performed a benefit concert in Tucson, Arizona benefiting The Fund For Civility, Respect, and Understanding, a foundation that raises awareness about and provides medical prevention and treatment services to people with mental disorders. The concert also benefited victims of the January 8, 2011 shootings in Tucson, AZ.

Browne has continued to provide exclusive music tracks for various charity and benefit albums including "Safety Harbor Kids Holiday Collection" ( where he sang the Johnny Marks holiday song "Silver and Gold" with longtime friend Lowell George's daughter, Inara George). Browne provided a live version of "Drums of War" for "The People Speak Soundtrack". Other charity albums he has contributed to include: "Acordes Con Leonard Cohen" (song: "A Thousand Kisses Deep"), "From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks Soundtrack" (song: "Step By Step"), "the Shrink, a (the Kevin Spacey film Soundtrack" (song: "Here"), "Keep the Light Alive: Celebrating the Music of Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro" (song: "Weight of the World"), and "1% For The Planet: The Music, Vol. 1" (a live version of "About My Imagination"), as well as many benefit concert and other appearances.

Awards

On March 14, 2004, Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen., and on June 7, 2007 Jackson Browne was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2004, Jackson was named an honorary Doctorate of Music by Occidental College in Los Angeles, for "a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social justice." For "promoting peace and justice through his music and his unrelenting support for that which promotes nonviolent solutions to problems both nationally and internationally", Browne received the Courage of Conscience Awards from The Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts. In 2007, he was awarded the Chapin-World Hunger Year Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award.

In 2008, Browne received the NARM Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award.

In 2002, Browne was given the John Steinbeck Award, given to artists who are an example of the environmental and social values that Steinbeck believed in.

Discography

References

Bibliography

External links

Official website

All Music Guide Overview of Jackson Browne, including album reviews

Category:1948 births Category:American activists Category:American male singers Category:American pop singers Category:American rock guitarists Category:American rock pianists Category:Songwriters from California Category:Living people Category:American musicians of Norwegian descent Category:People from Heidelberg Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Asylum Records artists Category:Elektra Records artists Category:The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band members Category:Slide guitarists

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Neil Young
landscape	yes
background	solo_singer
birth name	Neil Percival Young
alias	Bernard Shakey, Phil Perspective, Shakey Deal, Clyde Coil, Joe Yankee, Marc Lynch, Pinecone Young
birth date	November 12, 1945
birth place	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
origin	Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
genre	Rock, folk rock, country rock, experimental rock, hard rock, proto-grunge
occupation	Musician, songwriter, producer, director, screenwriter
instrument	Guitar, vocals, harmonica, piano, keyboards, banjo, ukelele
years active	1960–present
label	Reprise, Motown, Geffen
associated acts	The Squires, The Mynah Birds, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Crazy Horse, The Stray Gators, The Stills-Young Band, The Ducks, Northern Lights, Pearl Jam, Booker T. Jones, Leon Russell, Elton John
url
notable instruments	"Old Black"Martin D-45"Hank" }}

Neil Percival Young, OC, OM (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation. Young began performing as a solo artist in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield along with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash as a fourth member in 1969. He then forged a successful and acclaimed solo career, releasing his first album in 1968; his career has since spanned over 40 years and 34 studio albums, with a continual and uncompromising exploration of musical styles. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website describes Young as "one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers". He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame twice: first as a solo artist in 1995, and second as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997.

Young's work is characterized by his distinctive guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature falsetto/tenor singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments, including piano and harmonica, his idiosyncratic electric and clawhammer acoustic guitar playing are the defining characteristics of a varyingly ragged and melodic sound. While Young has experimented with differing music styles, including swing and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into two primary styles: acoustic folk and country rock, or amplified hard rock in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse. Young has also adopted elements from newer styles such as alternative rock and grunge. His influence on the latter caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".

Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including ''Journey Through the Past'' (1973), ''Rust Never Sleeps'' (1979), ''Human Highway'' (1982), ''Greendale'' (2003), and ''CSNY/Déjà Vu'' (2008). He is currently working on a documentary about electric car technology, tentatively titled ''Linc/Volt''. The project involves a 1959 Lincoln Continental converted to hybrid technology, which Young plans to drive to Washington, D.C. as an environmentalist example to lawmakers there.

Young is an outspoken advocate for environmental issues and the welfare of small farmers, having co-founded in 1985 the benefit concert Farm Aid. In 1986, Young helped found The Bridge School, an educational organization for children with severe verbal and physical disabilities, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his wife Pegi Young (née Morton). Young has three children: sons Zeke (born during his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress) and Ben, who were diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and daughter Amber Jean who, like Young himself, has epilepsy. Young lives on his ranch in La Honda, California. Although he has lived in northern California since the 1970s and sings as frequently about U.S. themes and subjects as he does about his native country, he retains Canadian citizenship, having no desire to relinquish it. On July 14, 2006, Young was awarded the Order of Manitoba, and on December 30, 2009, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Life and career

Early years: 1945–1966

Neil Percival Young was born in Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, Ontario at 6:45 AM on 12 November 1945. His father, Scott Young (1918–2005), was a journalist, and sportswriter who would later rise to prominence in Canada for his work. His mother, Edna "Rassy" Young (1918–1990), was of American, French, and Irish ancestry. They married in 1940 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with their first son, Robert 'Bob' Young, being born in 1942.

Shortly after Neil's birth in 1945, the family decided to move to the rural town of Omemee, Ontario, which Neil would later fondly describe as a "Sleepy little place." Omemee later established the Youngtown Museum in tribute to Young. Young was diagnosed with diabetes as a child, and also suffered from a bout of polio in 1951, in what was the last major outbreak of the disease in Ontario. This was in fact the same epidemic in which singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, then aged nine, also contracted the virus.

Following his recovery, the Young family went on holiday to Florida in the United States in 1952, and upon returning to Canada soon decided to move away from Omemee and into the city of Toronto, before relocating to Pickering, which was just east of Toronto, and then again to north Toronto soon afterward. It was during this period that Young began to take an interest in popular music that he heard on the radio, and also began to rear chickens in order to sell their eggs.

When Neil was twelve, his father, who had been having a number of extra-marital affairs, left his mother, and she subsequently asked for, and received, a divorce some years later, in 1960. Due to the breakup of the family, Neil went to live with his mother, who moved back to Winnipeg, Manitoba, while his brother Bob stayed with his father in Toronto. During the mid-fifties, at around the age of ten or eleven, Young was drawn to a variety of musical genres including rock and roll, rockabilly, doo-wop, R&B;, country, and western pop. He would listen to pop music broadcast on the CHUM radio station via his transistor radio. Young has stated in interviews that growing up he idolized Elvis Presley and strived to be just like him, later referencing him in a number of his lyrics. Other early musical influences included Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Chantels, The Monotones, Ronnie Self, The Fleetwoods, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Gogi Grant. He first began to play music himself on a plastic ukulele, before, as he would later relate, going on to "a better ukulele to a banjo ukulele to a baritone ukulele – everything but a guitar."

Neil and his mother settled into the working class area of Fort Rouge, Winnipeg where the shy, dry-humoured youth enrolled at Earl Grey Junior High School. It was there that he formed his first band, The Jades, and met Ken Koblun, later to join him in The Squires. While attending Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, he played in several instrumental rock bands. Young's first stable band was called The Squires, with Ken Koblun, Jeff Wuckert and Bill Edmondson on drums, who had a local hit called "The Sultan." Young dropped out of high school and also played in Fort William (now part of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario), where they recorded a series of demos produced by a local producer named Ray Dee, whom Young called "the original Briggs." While there, Young first encountered Stephen Stills. In the 2006 film ''Heart of Gold'', Young relates how he used to spend time as a teenager at Falcon Lake, Manitoba where he would endlessly plug coins into the jukebox to hear Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds".

After leaving the Squires, Neil worked folk clubs in Winnipeg, where he first met Joni Mitchell. Mitchell recalls Young as having been highly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time. Here he wrote some of his earliest and most enduring folk songs such as "Sugar Mountain", about lost youth. Mitchell wrote "The Circle Game" in response. Winnipeg band The Guess Who (Randy Bachman being their lead guitarist) had a Top 40 Canadian hit with Young's "Flying on the Ground is Wrong," which was Young's first major hit as a songwriter.

In 1965 Young toured Canada as a solo artist. In 1966, while in Toronto, he joined the Rick James-fronted Mynah Birds. The band managed to secure a record deal with the Motown label, but as their first album was being recorded, James was arrested for being AWOL from the Naval Reserve. After the Mynah Birds disbanded, Young and bass player Bruce Palmer relocated to Los Angeles. Young admitted in a 2009 interview that he was in the United States illegally until receiving a green card in 1970.

Buffalo Springfield (1966–1968)

Once they reached Los Angeles, Young and Palmer met up with Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Dewey Martin to form Buffalo Springfield. A mixture of folk, country, psychedelia, and rock lent a hard edge by the twin lead guitars of Stills and Young made Buffalo Springfield a critical success, and their first record ''Buffalo Springfield'' (1966) sold well after Stills' topical song "For What It's Worth" became a hit, aided by Young's melodic harmonics played on electric guitar.

Distrust of their management, as well as the arrest and deportation of Palmer, exacerbated the already strained relations among the group members and led to Buffalo Springfield's demise. A second album, ''Buffalo Springfield Again'', was released in late 1967, but two of Young’s three contributions were solo tracks recorded apart from the rest of the group.

In many ways, these three songs – "Mr. Soul," "Expecting To Fly," and "Broken Arrow" – on ''Buffalo Springfield Again'' are harbingers of much of Young's later work in that, although they all share deeply personal, almost idiosyncratic lyrics, they also present three very different musical approaches to the arrangement of what is essentially an original folk song. "Mr Soul" is the only Young song of the three that all five members of the group performed together. In contrast, "Broken Arrow" was confessional folk-rock of a kind that would characterize much of the music that emerged from the singer-songwriter movement. Young’s experimental production intersperses each verse with snippets of sound from other sources, including opening the song with a sound bite of Dewey Martin singing "Mr. Soul" and closing it with the thumping of a heartbeat. "Expecting to Fly" was a lushly produced ballad similar to the baroque pop of the mid-1960s, featured a string arrangement that Young's co-producer for the track, Jack Nitzsche, would dub "symphonic pop."

In May 1968, the band split up for good, but in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, a final album ''Last Time Around'' was released, primarily from recordings made earlier that year. Young contributed the songs "On the Way Home" and "I Am a Child", singing lead on the latter. In 1997, the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; Young did not appear at the ceremony. The three surviving members; Furay, Stills and Young appeared together as Buffalo Springfield at Young's annual Bridge School Benefit on 23–24 October 2010 and are planning a reunion tour for late 2011.

Crazy Horse & CSNY (1968–1970)

:''Main articles: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Crazy Horse'' After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his colleague and friend Joni Mitchell, with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts, who manages Young to this day. Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young's first solo record, ''Neil Young'' (November 1968), which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview, Young deprecated the album as being "overdubbed rather than played," and the quest for music that expresses the spontaneity of the moment has long been a feature of his career. Nevertheless, the album contains some songs that remain a staple of his live shows, most notably "The Loner".

For his next album, Young recruited three musicians from a band called The Rockets: Danny Whitten on guitar, Billy Talbot on bass guitar, and Ralph Molina on drums. These three took the name Crazy Horse (after the historical figure of the same name), and ''Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'' (May 1969), is credited to "Neil Young with Crazy Horse." Recorded in just two weeks, the album opens with one of Young's most familiar songs, "Cinnamon Girl," and is dominated by two more, "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River," that feature lengthy jams showcasing Young's idiosyncratic guitar soloing accompanied sympathetically by Crazy Horse. Young reportedly wrote all three songs on the same day, while nursing a high fever of in bed.

Shortly after the release of ''Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'', Young reunited with Stephen Stills by joining Crosby, Stills, & Nash, who had already released one album as a trio. Young was originally offered a position as a sideman, but agreed to join only if he received full membership, and the group – winners of the 1969 "Best New Artist" Grammy Award – was renamed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The quartet debuted in Chicago on August 16, 1969, and later performed at the famous Woodstock Festival, during which Young skipped the acoustic set and refused to be filmed during the electric set, even telling the cameramen: "One of you fuckin' guys comes near me and I'm gonna fuckin' hit you with my guitar". During the making of their first album, ''Déjà Vu'', the musicians frequently argued, particularly Young and Stills, who both fought for control. Stills continued throughout their lifelong relationship to criticize Young, saying that he "wanted to play folk music in a rock band". Despite the tension, Young's tenure with CSN&Y; coincided with the band's most creative and successful period, and greatly contributed to his subsequent success as a solo artist.

"Ohio" was written following the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970, and was a staple of anti-war rallies in the 1970s. The song was quickly recorded by CSNY and immediately released as a single, even though CSNY's "Teach Your Children" was still climbing the singles charts. In the late 1970s and for much of the 1980s, Young refrained from performing "Ohio" live, as he considered the song to be dated. In the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Young revived the song in concert, often dedicating it to the Chinese students who were killed in the massacre. Crosby, Stills & Nash, as a trio, also returned the song to their live repertoire around the same time, even though Young had provided the lead vocals on the original recording.

Also that year, Young released his third solo album, ''After the Gold Rush'' (1970), which featured, among others, a young Nils Lofgren, Stephen Stills, and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Young also recorded some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. Aided by his newfound fame with CSNY, the album was a commercial breakthrough for Young and contains some of his best known work. Notable tracks include the title track, with dream-like lyrics that run a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to environmental concerns, as well as Young’s controversial and acerbic condemnation of racism in "Southern Man", which, along with a later song entitled "Alabama," later prompted Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young by name in the lyrics to "Sweet Home Alabama". Despite appearances to the contrary, the rivalry between Young and Skynyrd front man Ronnie Van Zant was a friendly one, with Van Zant famously photographed wearing a ''Tonight's the Night'' t-shirt on the cover of the band's 1977 album ''Street Survivors''.

Fourth solo album: ''Harvest'' (1971–1972)

With CSNY splitting up and Crazy Horse having signed their own record deal, Young began the year 1971 with a solo tour entitled "Journey Through the Past." Later, he recruited a new group of country-music session musicians (including Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor), whom he christened The Stray Gators, to record much of the new material which had been premiered on the preceding tour; the result was the album ''Harvest'' (1972). ''Harvest'' was a massive hit and "Heart of Gold" became a US number one single. It remains the only No. 1 hit in his long career.

Another notable song was "The Needle and the Damage Done", a somber lament on the pain caused by heroin addiction, inspired in part by the heavy heroin use of Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who eventually died of an overdose.

The album's success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. In the handwritten liner notes to the ''Decade'' compilation, Young famously described "Heart of Gold" as the song that "put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

On September 8, 1972, the actress Carrie Snodgress, with whom he had been living, gave birth to Neil Young's first child. The boy, Zeke, was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Young fell in love with Snodgress after seeing her in a movie, ''Diary of a Mad Housewife'', on television; Young wrote about this experience in the song "A Man Needs a Maid" (from the ''Harvest'' album), featuring the lyric "I fell in love with the actress/she was playing a part that I could understand."

The Ditch Trilogy (1972–1974)

Although a new tour had been planned to follow up on the success of ''Harvest'', it became apparent during rehearsals that Danny Whitten could not function due to drug abuse. On November 18, 1972, shortly after he was fired from the tour preparations, Whitten was found dead of an overdose. Young described the incident to ''Rolling Stone''’s Cameron Crowe in 1975: "[We] were rehearsing with him and he just couldn't cut it. He couldn't remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. 'It's not happening, man. You're not together enough.' He just said, 'I've got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?' And he split. That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he'd OD'd. That blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and ... insecure."

The album made in the aftermath of this incident, ''Time Fades Away'' (1973), has often been described by Young as "[his] least favorite record," and it is, in fact, one of only two of Young’s early recordings that has yet to be officially re-released on CD (the other being the soundtrack album ''Journey Through the Past''). The album was recorded live over a tour where Young struggled with his voice and called David Crosby and Graham Nash to help perform the music. The tour featured Linda Ronstadt as the opening act. ''Time Fades Away'' occupies a unique position in Young’s discography as the first of three albums known collectively as the "Ditch Trilogy".

In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with Crazy Horse's rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar. Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, Young recorded ''Tonight's the Night''. The album's dark tone and rawness led Reprise to delay and Young had to pressure them for two years before they would release it. It received mixed reviews at the time, but is now regarded as a landmark album. In Young's own opinion, it was the closest he ever came to art.

While his record company delayed the release of ''Tonight's the Night,'' Young recorded ''On the Beach'' (1974), which dealt with themes such as the downside of fame and the Californian lifestyle. Like ''Time Fades Away'' and ''Tonight's the Night'', it sold poorly but eventually became a critical favorite, presenting some of Young's most original work. A review of the 2003 re-release on CD of ''On the Beach'' described the music as "mesmerizing, harrowing, lucid, and bleary".

Return to prominence (1975–1979)

After completing ''On the Beach'', Young reunited with ''Harvest'' producer Elliot Mazer to record another acoustic album, ''Homegrown''. Most of the songs were written after Young's breakup with Snodgress, and thus the tone of the album was somewhat dark. Though the album was entirely completed, Young decided to drop the album and release ''Tonight's the Night'' instead, at the suggestion of The Band bassist Rick Danko. Young further explained his move by saying: "It was a little too personal ... it scared me".

In 1976, Young performed with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and numerous other rock musicians in the high profile all-star concert ''The Last Waltz'', the final performance by The Band. The release of Martin Scorsese's movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese unwillingly re-edited it to obscure the lump of cocaine that was clearly visible hanging from Young's nose during his performance of "Helpless."

''American Stars 'N Bars'' (1977) contained two songs originally recorded for ''Homegrown'' album, "Homegrown" and "Star of Bethlehem," as well as newer material, including the future concert staple "Like a Hurricane". Performers included Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Young protégé Nicolette Larson along with Crazy Horse. Also in 1977, Young released ''Decade'': a personally selected career summary of material spanning every aspect of his various interests and affiliations, including a handful of unreleased songs. ''Comes a Time'' (1978) also featured Nicolette Larson and Crazy Horse and became Young's most commercially accessible album in quite some time, marked by a return to his folk roots. In 1978 much of the filming was done for Young's film ''Human Highway''. Over four years Young would spend $3,000,000 of his own money on production. This also marked the beginning of his brief collaboration with the band Devo.

Young next set out on the lengthy "Rust Never Sleeps" tour, in which each concert was divided into a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. Much of the electric set was later seen as a response to punk rock's burgeoning popularity. "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" compared the changing public perception of Johnny Rotten with that of the recently deceased Elvis Presley, who himself had once been disparaged as a dangerous influence only to later become an icon. Rotten, meanwhile, returned the favour by playing one of Young's records on a London radio show. The accompanying albums ''Rust Never Sleeps'' (new material, culled from live recordings, but featuring studio overdubs) and ''Live Rust'' (a mixture of old and new, and a genuine concert recording) captured the two sides of the concerts, with solo acoustic songs on side A, and fierce, uptempo, electric songs on side B. A movie version of the concerts, also called ''Rust Never Sleeps'' (1979), was directed by Young under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey. Young worked with rock artist Jim Evans to create the poster art for the film, using the "Star Wars" Jawas as a theme.

Young was suddenly relevant again, and the readers and critics of ''Rolling Stone'' voted him Artist of the Year for 1979 (along with The Who), selected ''Rust Never Sleeps'' as Album Of The Year, and voted him Male Vocalist of the Year as well. The Village Voice, meanwhile, honored Young as the Artist of the Decade.

Experimental years (1980s)

The 1980s were often difficult times for Young, both personally and professionally. At the start of the decade, distracted by domestic medical concerns relating to his second disabled son, Ben, Young had little time to spend on writing and recording. After providing the incidental music to a 1980 biopic of Hunter S. Thompson entitled ''Where the Buffalo Roam'', Young released ''Hawks & Doves'', a short record pieced together from sessions going back to 1974. Young did not tour in support of either album; in total, he played only one show, a set at the 1980 Bread and Roses Festival in Berkeley, between the end of his 1978 tour with Crazy Horse and the start of his tour with the Trans Band in mid-1982.

The 1982 album ''Trans'', which incorporated vocoders, synthesizers, and electronic beats, was Young's first for new label Geffen Records (distributed at the time by Warner Bros. Records, whose parent Warner Music Group owns most of Young's solo and band catalog) and represented a distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the album was the theme of technology and communication with his son Ben, who has severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak. An extensive tour preceded the release of the album, and was documented by the video ''Neil Young in Berlin'', which saw release in 1986.

Young's next album, 1983's ''Everybody's Rockin''', included several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than twenty-five minutes in length. Young was backed by the Shocking Pinks for the supporting U.S. tour. ''Trans'' had already drawn the ire of label head David Geffen for its lack of commercial appeal, and with ''Everybody's Rockin''' following only seven months later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music "unrepresentative" of himself. The album was also notable as the first for which Young made commercial music videos – Tim Pope directed the videos for "Wonderin'" and "Cry, Cry, Cry". Also premiered in 1983, though little seen, was the eclectic full-length comedy film ''Human Highway'', co-directed and co-written by Young, and starring Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper and members of Devo.

1984 was the first year without a Neil Young album since the start of Young's musical career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966. Young's lack of productivity was largely due to the ongoing legal battle with Geffen, although he was also frustrated that the label had rejected his 1982 country album ''Old Ways''. It was also the year when Young's third child, his second with wife Pegi was born; his daughter Amber Jean, a child who was later diagnosed with inherited epilepsy. Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for ''Old Ways'' with his country band, the International Harvesters. The album was finally released in an altered form midway through 1985. Young also appeared at that year's Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, collaborating with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the quartet's first performance for a paying audience in over ten years.

Young's last two albums for Geffen were more conventional in genre, although they incorporated production techniques like synthesizers and echoing drums that were previously uncommon in Young's music. Young recorded 1986's ''Landing on Water'' without Crazy Horse, but reunited with the band for the subsequent year-long tour and final Geffen album, ''Life'', which emerged in 1987. Young's album sales dwindled steadily throughout the eighties; today ''Life'' remains his all-time-least successful studio album, with an estimated four hundred thousand sales worldwide.

Switching back to his old label Reprise Records, Young continued to tour relentlessly, assembling a new blues band called The Bluenotes in mid-1987 (a legal dispute with musician Harold Melvin forced the eventual rechristening of the band as Ten Men Working midway through the tour). The addition of a brass section provided a new jazzier sound, and the title track of 1988's ''This Note's For You'' became Young's first hit single of the decade. Accompanied by a video that parodied corporate rock, the pretensions of advertising, and Michael Jackson, the song was initially unofficially banned by MTV for mentioning the brand names of some of their sponsors. Young wrote an open letter, "What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?" Despite this, the video was eventually named best video of the year by the network in 1989. By comparison, the major music cable network of Young's home nation, Muchmusic, ran the video immediately.

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills and Nash to record the 1988 album ''American Dream'' and play two benefit concerts late in the year, but the group did not embark upon a full tour. The album was only the second-ever studio record for the quartet.

Re-return to prominence (1990s)

Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World", which hit #2 on the U.S. mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying album, ''Freedom'', rocketed him back into the popular consciousness after a decade of sometimes-difficult genre experiments. The album's lyrics were often overtly political; "Rockin' in the Free World" deals with homelessness, terrorism, and environmental degradation, implicitly criticizing the government policies of President George H.W. Bush.

The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several ''Freedom'' tracks was reminiscent of the ''Rust Never Sleeps'' album, and foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge. The rising stars of the genre, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, frequently cited Young as a major influence, contributing to his popular revival. A tribute album called ''The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young'' was released in 1989, featuring covers by alternative and grunge acts including Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Soul Asylum, Dinosaur Jr, and the Pixies.

Young's 1990 album ''Ragged Glory'', recorded with Crazy Horse in a barn on his Northern California ranch, continued this distortion-heavy aesthetic. Young toured for the album with Orange County, California country-punk band Social Distortion and alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth as support, much to the consternation of many of his old fans. ''Weld'', a two-disc live album documenting the tour, was released in 1991. Sonic Youth's influence was most evident on ''Arc'', a 35-minute collage of feedback and distortion spliced together at the suggestion of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and originally packaged with some versions of ''Weld''.

1992's ''Harvest Moon'' marked an abrupt return to the country and folk-rock stylings of ''Harvest'' and reunited him with some of the musicians from that album, including singers Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. The title track was a minor hit and the record was well received by critics, winning the Juno Award for Album of the Year in 1994. Young also contributed to Randy Bachman's nostalgic 1992 tune "Prairie Town," and garnered a 1993 Academy Award nomination for his song "Philadelphia", from the soundtrack of the Jonathan Demme movie of the same name. An ''MTV Unplugged'' performance and album emerged in 1993. Later that year, Young collaborated with Booker T. and the M.G.s for a summer tour of Europe and North America. Some European shows ended with a rendition of "Rockin' in the Free World" played with Pearl Jam, foreshadowing their eventual full-scale collaboration two years later.

In 1994 Young again collaborated with Crazy Horse for ''Sleeps with Angels'', a record whose dark, sombre mood was influenced by Kurt Cobain's death earlier that year; the title track in particular dealt with Cobain's life and death, without mentioning him by name. Cobain had quoted Young's lyric "It's better to burn out than fade away" (a line from "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)") in his suicide note, causing Young to then on emphasize the line "'cause once you're gone you can't come back" when performing the song. Young had reportedly made repeated attempts to contact Cobain prior to his death. Still enamored with the grunge scene, Young reconnected with Pearl Jam in 1995 for the live-in-the-studio album ''Mirror Ball'' and a tour of Europe with the band and producer Brendan O'Brien backing Young. 1995 also marked Young's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he was inducted by Eddie Vedder.

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Young's next collaborative partner was filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who asked Young to compose a soundtrack to his 1995 black and white western film ''Dead Man''. Young's instrumental soundtrack was improvised while he watched the film alone in a studio. The death of longtime mentor, friend, and producer David Briggs in late 1995 prompted Young to reconnect with Crazy Horse the following year for the album and tour ''Broken Arrow''. A Jarmusch-directed concert film and live album of the tour, ''Year of the Horse'', emerged in 1997. From 1996–97 Young and Crazy Horse toured extensively throughout Europe and North America, including a stint as part of the H.O.R.D.E. Festival's sixth annual tour.

In 1998, Young renewed his collaboration with rock band Phish, sharing the stage at the annual Farm Aid concert and then at Young's Bridge School Benefit, where he joined headliners Phish for renditions of "Helpless" and "I Shall Be Released." Phish declined Young's later invitation to be his backing band on his 1999 North American tour.

The decade ended with the release in late 1999 of ''Looking Forward'', another reunion with Crosby, Stills and Nash. The subsequent tour of the United States and Canada with the reformed super quartet earned $42.1 million, making it the eighth largest grossing tour of 2000.

Renewed activism and brush with death (2000s)

Neil Young continued to release new material at a rapid pace through the first decade of the new millennium. The studio album ''Silver & Gold'' and live album ''Road Rock Vol. 1'' were released in 2000 and were both accompanied by live concert films. His 2001 single "Let's Roll" was a tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks, and the effective action taken by the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular. At the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" benefit concert for the victims of the attacks, Young performed John Lennon's "Imagine" and accompanied Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready on the song "Long Road", a Pearl Jam song that was written with Young during the ''Mirrorball'' sessions. "Let's Roll" was included on 2002's ''Are You Passionate?'', an album mostly composed of mellow love songs dedicated to Young's wife, Pegi, backed by Booker T & the MGs.

In 2003, Young released ''Greendale'', a concept album recorded with Crazy Horse members Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. The songs loosely revolved around the murder of a police officer in a small town in California and its effects on the town's inhabitants. Young, under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey", directed an accompanying film of the same name, featuring actors lip-synching to the music from the album. Young toured extensively with the ''Greendale'' material throughout 2003 and 2004, first with a solo, acoustic version in Europe, then with a full-cast stage show in North America, Japan, and Australia. Young began using biodiesel on the 2004 Greendale tour, powering his trucks and tour buses with the fuel. "Our Greendale tour is now ozone friendly,” Young said. “I plan to continue to use this government approved and regulated fuel exclusively from now on to prove that it is possible to deliver the goods anywhere in North America without using foreign oil, while being environmentally responsible.” Young spent the latter portion of 2004 giving a series of intimate acoustic concerts in various cities with his wife, who is a trained vocalist and guitar player.

In March 2005, while working on the ''Prairie Wind'' album in Nashville, Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He was treated successfully with a minimally invasive neuroradiological procedure, performed in a New York hospital on March 29. Two days afterwards, Young passed out on a New York street from bleeding from the femoral artery, which surgeons had used to access the aneurysm. The complication forced Young to cancel his scheduled appearance at the Juno Awards telecast in Winnipeg, but within months he was back on stage, appearing at the close of the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario on July 2. During the performance, he debuted a new song, a soft hymn called "When God Made Me". Young's brush with death influenced ''Prairie Wind'''s themes of retrospection and mortality. The album's live premiere in Nashville was immortalized by filmmaker Jonathan Demme in the 2006 film ''Neil Young: Heart of Gold''.

Young's renewed activism manifested itself in the 2006 album ''Living With War'', which was hastily recorded and released in less than a month. The album's overtly political songs rebuked U.S. President George W. Bush and the War in Iraq and included the provocatively titled "Let's Impeach the President". Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited for the supporting "Freedom Of Speech Tour '06". ''CSNY Déjà Vu'', a concert film of the tour directed by Young was released in 2008, along with an accompanying live album.

While Young had never been a stranger to eco-friendly lyrics, themes of environmentalist spirituality and activism became increasingly prominent in his work throughout the 1990s and 2000s, especially on ''Greendale'' and ''Living With War''. The trend continued on 2007's ''Chrome Dreams II'', with lyrics exploring Young's personal eco-spirituality. Also in 2007, Young accepted an invitation to participate in ''Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino'', contributing his version of "Walking to New Orleans".

In 2008, Young revealed his latest project, the production of a hybrid-engine 1959 Lincoln called Lincvolt. A new album loosely based on the Lincvolt project, ''Fork in the Road'', was released on April 7, 2009. Unfortunately, the car caught fire in November, 2010, in a California warehouse, and along the way it burned an estimated $850,000 worth of Young's rock and roll memorabilia collection. Initial reports suggest the fire might have been triggered by an error in the vehicle's plug-in charging system. Young blamed the fire on human error and said he and his team were committed to rebuilding the car. "The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of the car," he said.

A Jonathan Demme concert film from a 2007 concert at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, called the ''Neil Young Trunk Show'' premiered on March 21, 2009, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. It was featured at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2009 and was released in the US on March 19, 2010 to critical acclaim.

Young's most recent album appearance was on the album ''Potato Hole'', released on April 21, 2009 by Memphis organ player Booker T. Jones, of Booker T. & the MG's fame. Young plays guitar on nine of the album's ten instrumental tracks, alongside Drive-By Truckers, who already had three guitar players, giving some songs on the album a total of five guitar tracks. Jones contributed guitars on a couple of tracks.

Young continues to tour extensively. In 2009, he headlined the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England, at Hard Rock Calling in London (where he was joined onstage by Paul McCartney for a rendition of "A Day in the Life") and, after years of unsuccessful booking attempts, the Isle of Wight Festival in addition to performances at the Big Day Out festival in New Zealand and Australia and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.

Young was also the victim of an Internet hoax death in early 2011 triggered by the death of an English football player of the same name.

New performances (2010s)

On January 22, 2010, Young performed "Long May You Run" on the final episode of ''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien''. On the same night, he and Dave Matthews performed the Hank Williams song "Alone and Forsaken", for the ''Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief'' charity telethon, in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Young performed "Long May You Run" at the closing ceremony of the 2010 Olympic winter games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In May 2010, it was revealed Young had begun working on a new studio album produced by Daniel Lanois. This was announced by David Crosby, who said that the album "will be a very heartfelt record. I expect it will be a very special record." On May 18, 2010, Young embarked upon a North American solo tour to promote his then upcoming album, ''Le Noise'', playing a mix of older songs and new material. Although billed as a solo acoustic tour, Young also played some songs on electric guitars, including Old Black. Young is continuing his Twisted Road tour with a short East Coast venture during the Spring of 2011. Young also contributed vocals to the Elton John-Leon Russell album, "The Union", singing a beautiful second stanza in the track, "Gone to Shiloh", and providing backing vocals as well.

Young currently lives near La Honda, California on his Broken Arrow Ranch, named after one of his early Buffalo Springfield songs. The original 140-acre parcel was purchased in 1970 for $350,000 cash and has grown to thousands of acres.

Archives project

As far back as 1988, Young spoke in interviews of his efforts to compile his unreleased material and to remaster his existing catalog. The collection was eventually titled the Neil Young Archives Series. The first installment, entitled ''The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972'', was originally planned for a 2007 release but was delayed, and released on June 2, 2009.

Three performances from the ''Performance Series'' of the archives were released individually before ''The Archives Vol. 1''. ''Live at the Fillmore East'', a selection of songs from a 1970 gig with Crazy Horse, was released in 2006. ''Live at Massey Hall 1971'', a solo acoustic set from Toronto's Massey Hall, saw release in 2007. ''Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968'', an early solo performance and, chronologically, the first disc in the performance series, emerged late in 2008.

In an interview in 2008, Neil Young discussed ''Toast'', an album originally recorded with Crazy Horse in San Francisco in 2000 but never released. The album will be part of the ''Special Edition Series'' of the Archives. No release date currently exists for ''Toast''. The album ''A Treasure,'' with live tracks from 1985 sessions with the International Harvesters, during a time when he was being sued by Geffen Records, was released in June 2011.

On July 14, 2009, Young's first four solo albums were reissued as remastered HDCD discs and digital downloads as discs 1–4 of the ''Original Release Series'' of the Archives.

Awards and recognitions

2011 Juno Awards Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album of the Year, and Allan Waters Humanitarian Award

2011 Grammy Awards Best Rock Song "Angry World" – Neil Young, songwriter

2010 Grammy Awards Best Art Direction On A Boxed/Special Limited Edition Package "Archives Volume One 1963-1973" – Neil Young, Gary Burden, Jenice Heo

Canadian Music Hall of Fame, 1982

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. First in 1995 for his solo work, with an induction speech given by Eddie Vedder, and again in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield.

As one of the original founders of Farm Aid, he remains an active member of the board of directors. For one weekend each October, in Mountain View, California, he and his wife host the Bridge School Concerts, which have been drawing international talent and sell-out crowds for nearly two decades with some of the biggest names in rock having performed at the event including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, The Who, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tom Waits, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Sir Paul McCartney and Dave Matthews. The concerts are a benefit for the Bridge School, which develops and uses advanced technologies to aid in the instruction of children with disabilities. Young's involvement stems at least partially from the fact that both of his sons have cerebral palsy and his daughter, like Young himself, has epilepsy.

Young was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for his song "Philadelphia" from the film ''Philadelphia''. Bruce Springsteen won the award for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" from the same film. In his acceptance speech, Springsteen said that "the award really deserved to be shared by the other nominee's song." That same night, Tom Hanks accepted the Oscar for Best Actor and gave credit for his inspiration to the song "Philadelphia".

He was part owner of Lionel, LLC, a company that makes toy trains and model railroad accessories. In 2008 Lionel emerged from bankruptcy and his shares of the company were wiped out. At this time his status with Lionel is unknown, according to Lionel CEO Jerry Calabrese he is still a consultant for Lionel. He was instrumental in the design of the Lionel Legacy control system for model trains and it is believed he will continue to develop the system. Young has been named as co-inventor on seven U.S. Patents related to model trains.

Young has twice received honorary doctorates. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1992, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University in 2006. The latter honour was shared with his wife Pegi for their creation of the Bridge School. In 2006, Young was given Manitoba's highest civilian honour, when he was appointed to the Order of Manitoba. In 2009, he was then given Canada's highest civilian honour, when he was appointed to the Order of Canada.

''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2000, ranked Young thirty-fourth in its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time, and in 2003, included five of his albums in its list of 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2000, Young was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. In 2006, ''Paste'' magazine compiled a "Greatest Living Songwriters" list; Young was ranked second behind Bob Dylan. (While Young and Dylan have occasionally played together in concert, they have never collaborated on a song together, or played on each others' records). He ranked thirty-ninth on ''VH1's 100 Greatest Artist of Hard Rock'' that same year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame explained that while Young has "avoided sticking to one style for very long, the unifying factors throughout Young’s peripatetic musical journey have been his unmistakable voice, his raw and expressive guitar playing, and his consummate songwriting skill."

Young's political outspokenness and social awareness influenced artists such as Blind Melon, Phish, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. Young is referred to as "the Godfather of Grunge" because of the influence he had on Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and the entire grunge movement. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam inducted Young into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, citing him as a huge influence. Young is cited as being a significant influence on experimental rock artists Sonic Youth, Jesse Marchant, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Yorke recounted of first hearing Young after sending a demo tape into a magazine when he was 16, who favourably compared his singing voice to Young's. Unaware of Young at that time, he bought ''After the Gold Rush'', and "immediately fell in love" with his work, calling it "extraordinary". Dave Matthews lists Neil Young as one of his favorite and most inspirational songwriters and covers his songs on occasion. The British Indie band The Bluetones named their number one debut album after the song "Expecting to Fly" (written by Young when still with Buffalo Springfield) and have covered the song while touring. Young also inspired Oasis singer-songwriter Noel Gallagher, with Gallagher covering "My My, Hey Hey (Into the Black)" on the live album ''Familiar to Millions''.

The Australian rock group Powderfinger named themselves after Young's song "Powderfinger" from Young's ''Rust Never Sleeps''. The members of the Constantines have occasionally played Neil Young tribute shows under the name Horsey Craze. While in Winnipeg on November 2, 2008 during the Canadian leg of his tour, Bob Dylan visited Young's former home in River Heights, where Young spent his teenage years. Dylan was interested in seeing the room where some of Young's first songs were composed.

Jason Bond, an East Carolina University biologist, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider in 2007 and named it ''Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi'' after Young, his favorite singer (a previous similar case was the dinosaur ''Masiakasaurus knopfleri'' named after the musician Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits).

In 2001, Young was awarded the Spirit of Liberty award from the civil liberties group People for the American Way. Young was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year on January 29, 2010, two nights prior to the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. In addition was also nominated for two Grammy Awards; Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance ("Fork In The Road") and Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package ["Neil Young Archives Vol. I (1963–1972)"]. Young won the latter Grammy Award. In 2010, Young was ranked #26 in Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

Juno Awards

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Year ! Category ! Nominated work ! Result |- | rowspan=2 | 2011 || Artist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | Adult Alternative Album of the Year || ''Le Noise'' || |- | 2008 || Adult Alternative Album of the Year || ''Chrome Dreams II'' || |- | 2007 || Adult Alternative Album of the Year || ''Living With War'' || |- | rowspan=3 | 2006 || Adult Alternative Album of the Year || ''Prairie Wind'' || |- | Jack Richardson Producer of the Year || "The Painter" || |- | Songwriter of the Year || "The Painter", "When God Made Me", "Prairie Wind" || |- | rowspan=2 | 2001 || Best Male Artist || Neil Young || |- | Best Roots & Traditional Album – Solo || ''Silver & Gold'' || |- | 1997 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | rowspan=2 | 1996 || Best Rock Album || ''Mirror Ball'' || |- | Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | rowspan=3 | 1995 || Songwriter of the Year || Neil Young || |- | Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | Entertainer of the Year || Neil Young || |- | rowspan=2 | 1994 || Single of the Year || "Harvest Moon" || |- | Album of the Year || ''Harvest Moon'' || |- | rowspan=2 | 1993 || Songwriter of the Year || Neil Young || |- | Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1991 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1990 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1989 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1986 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1982 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1981 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1980 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1979 || Male Vocalist of the Year || Neil Young || |- | 1975 || Composer of the Year || Neil Young || |}

Instruments

Guitars

In 2003, ''Rolling Stone'' listed Young as eighty-third in its ranking of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", describing him as a "restless experimenter...who transform[s] the most obvious music into something revelatory." Young is a collector of second-hand guitars, but in recording and performing, he frequently uses just a few instruments, as is explained by his longtime guitar technician Larry Cragg in the film ''Neil Young: Heart of Gold''. They include:

1953 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. Nicknamed "Old Black", this is Young's primary electric guitar and is featured on ''Rust Never Sleeps'' and other albums. Old Black got its name from an amateur paintjob applied to the originally gold body of the instrument, sometime before Neil acquired the guitar in the late 1960s. In 1972, a mini humbucker pickup from a Gibson Firebird was installed in the lead/treble position. This pickup, severely microphonic, is considered a crucial component of Neil's sound. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was installed as early as 1969, and can be heard during the opening of "Cowgirl in the Sand" from ''Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere''.

Martin D-45. His primary steel-string acoustic guitar, used to write "Old Man" and many other songs. It was one of four instruments bought by Stephen Stills for himself and his band-mates in CSNY in order to celebrate their first full concert at the Greek Theater in 1969.

Martin D-28. Nicknamed "Hank" after its previous owner, Hank Williams. Hank Williams, Jr., had traded it for some shotguns; it went through a succession of other owners until it was located by Young's longtime friend Grant Boatwright. The guitar was purchased by Young from Tut Taylor. Young has toured with it for over 30 years. A story about the guitar and the song it inspired, "This Old Guitar," can be seen about 50 minutes into the film ''Neil Young: Heart of Gold''. It is Young's primary guitar for ''Prairie Wind''.

Vintage Martin D-18: Young used an old D-18 throughout his early days performing in coffee houses in Canada and on some early Buffalo Springfield work, before he received the D-45 from Stills. It can also be seen on unreleased footage from the Woodstock documentary, particularly on an exceptional acoustic duet of the Buffalo Springfield track "Mr. Soul" with Stills. The guitar has often been used to carry "dropped standard tuning" (DGCFAD) which Young often uses in concert. This allowed him to perform songs such as "Ambulance Blues" and "Don't let it Bring You Down" live without having to tune all 6 strings onstage.

Other notable (or odd) instruments played by Young include:

On CMT live he is shown playing with Phish in which he plays a Languedoc G2, Presumably that of Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio

Vagabond Travel Guitar, used for "Let's Impeach the President" on ''The Colbert Report''.

Taylor 855 12-string, used in the first half of ''Rust Never Sleeps''.

1927 Gibson Mastertone, a six-string banjo tuned like a guitar, used on many recordings and played by James Taylor on "Old Man."

Gretsch 6120 (Chet Atkins model). Before Young bought Old Black, this was his primary electric guitar during his Buffalo Springfield days.

Gretsch White Falcon. Young purchased a late 1950s model near the end of the Buffalo Springfield era; in 1969 he bought a stereo version of the same vintage guitar from Stephen Stills, and this instrument is featured prominently during Young's early '70s period, and can be heard on tracks like "Ohio," "Southern Man," "Alabama," "Words (Between the Lines of Age)," and "L.A.". It was Young's primary electric guitar during the ''Harvest'' era, since Young's deteriorating back condition (eventually fixed with surgery) made playing the much heavier Les Paul difficult. This particular White Falcon is the stereo 6137, in which the signal from the three bass strings is separated from the signal from the three treble strings. Young typically plays this guitar in this stereo mode, sending the separate signals to two different amps, a Fender Deluxe and either a Fender Tremolux or a low-powered Tweed Fender Twin. The separation of the signals is most prominently heard on the ''Harvest'' song "Words."

Gibson Flying V, on the ''Time Fades Away'' tour.

Fender Broadcaster, on the ''Tonight's the Night'' album and tour.

Reed organ

Young owns an Estey reed organ, serial number 167272, dating from 1885, which he frequently plays in concert and which was recently restored. The instrument and its restoration are documented in ''The Reed Society Quarterly'' (30.1: 6ff); a photograph of the instrument is on the cover.

Amplification

Young uses various vintage Fender Tweed Deluxe amplifiers. His preferred amplifier for electric guitar is the Fender Deluxe, specifically a Tweed-era model from 1959. He purchased his first vintage Deluxe in 1967 for $50 from the drummer of Crazy Horse, Ralph Molina, and has since acquired nearly 450 different examples, all from the same era, but he maintains that it's the original model that sounds superior and is crucial to his trademark sound. The Tweed Deluxe is almost always used in conjunction with a late-1950s Magnatone 280 (similar to the amp used by Lonnie Mack and Buddy Holly). The Magnatone and the Deluxe are paired together in a most unusual manner: the external speaker jack from the Deluxe sends the amped signal through a volume potentiometer and directly into the input of the Magnatone. The Magnatone is notable for its true pitch-bending vibrato capabilities, which can be heard as an electric piano amplifier on "See the Sky About to Rain". A notable and unique accessory to Young's Deluxe is the Whizzer, a device created specifically for Young, which physically changes the amplifier's settings to pre-set combinations. This device is connected to footswitches operable by Young onstage in the manner of an effects pedal.

Discography

:''See also the discographies for Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young''

See also

Music of Canada

Canadian rock

Notes

References

McKay, George (2009) "'Crippled with nerves": popular music and polio'. ''Popular Music'' 28:3, 341–365.

External links

Neil's Garage – Official website

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young official website

Sugar Mountain – a compilation of set lists from Neil Young's concert performances

Youngtown Rock and Roll Museum – Omemee, Ontario

Review of Crazy Horse at the Fillmore 1970

"Neil Young: Don't be Denied", PBS, ''American Masters'', TV documentary, 2009

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