193. Woody Guthrie is in good hands

THE NATIONAL TREASURE that is American folk and country music came over on boats from the British Isles in the 17th century, especially the Scots-Irish borderlands. It traveled down the Appalachian—via fiddle, banjo and guitar—in ballads and hymns, the words changing into new songs but the music immutable.

It was the first music that the great American songwriter Woody Guthrie ever heard: his mother singing classic Anglo-Celtic ballads in a high-nasal country twang at their home