So far in our week-long centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie and his murder ballads, we’ve listened to the classic and amusing “Philadelphia Lawyer” and two hard hitting ballads, “Ludlow Massacre” and “1913 Massacre”, which both tell different stories of the murder of striking miners.


While the tone of the former is quite different than the latter two, they all demonstrate Woody’s fundamental sense of justice for the little guy.  No doubt Woody was at his best when he expressed that in his more political songs, and I want to get back to all that one more time before the week runs out.  But for a quick break, I want to consider another murder ballad of Woody’s that, while much more personal than political, shows clearly his fundamental values.  And, it’s just an awesome country song to boot.


“East Texas Red” tells the story of two itinerant working men during the Great Depression, who ride the rails to find a job, and their encounter with a brakeman and ‘bull’ nicknamed East Texas Red – “The meanest man on the shiny rails.”   The two workers roll into town somewhere around Longview and bum some meat and potatoes.  Red finds them boiling up a stew near the tracks and kicks over their pot to give them the bum’s rush.  The two men tell Red that he better get his “business fixed” because, in one year’s time, they’ll send him for a ride on that “little black train.”  And that’s exactly what they do.

For my money, lyrically this is one of the richest songs Woody ever wrote.  Woody the poet comes alive in these lines.  The story doesn’t just happen in “east Texas”, it happens “down in the scrub oak timber of the southeast Texas gulf.”  Red doesn’t just carry a gun, he’s “sporting his smooth running gun.”  I could sing this song every day and never tire of it because of the pictures it paints on the backs of my eyelids.


But, right; it’s the murder we’re concerned with here.  There is no hand wringing about Red’s murder, but that’s typical of Country and Western outlaw and murder ballads. The popular conception of “karma” is really what this is all about.  It is, as many traditional murder ballads, a cautionary tale – and though the setting is Depression-era America and the context is riding the rails, the message is universal.  It’s about as simple as it can be.

There’s something too here about the fundamental dignity of a human being, and the ignorance thereof.  No doubt Woody learned about judging books by their covers the hard way, during the Dust Bowl and Depression.  When the two workers come back to Longview with “the dough in their clothes”, Woody’s warning us about that as well.