Woody Guthrie

Regarding guitar playing, Woody Guthrie once said, "If you play more than two chords, you're showing off." In many ways, this quote personified the man who was responsible for timeless and classic folk standards such as "This Land is Your Land" and "The Grand Coulee Dam." The content of what came naturally to him spanned from children's sing-alongs to anti-fascist, working-class anthems, romantic love songs with wide opened landscaped backdrops, hobo-hillbilly boxcar standards, and dust bowl ballads akin to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath-- Guthrie grew up around and experienced similar circumstances first hand. His soulful, nasal twang crooning was imitated by almost everyone who has ever picked up an acoustic guitar or attended a coffeehouse hootenanny. Guthrie was undoubtedly the most celebrated and influential folk Singer-Songwriter of the twentieth century.