Woody Guthrie in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie made 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. In February 1940 he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", as a response to what he felt was an overplaying of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on the radio. Guthrie thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. He adapted the melody from an old gospel song, "Oh My Loving Brother", which had been adapted by the country
Woody Guthrie Foundation on the third volume of "Mermaid Avenue". The Woody Guthrie Publications website lists Jonatha Brooke's version of "You'd Oughta Be Satisfied Now" as a "derivative work". Woody Guthrie Foundation The Woody Guthrie Foundation, founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization which formerly served as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. Dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of information about Guthrie's vast cultural legacy, the Woody Guthrie Archives houses the largest collection of Woody Guthrie material in the world. The archives opened to the public in New York City in 1996. The archives were subsequently moved to the new