Ramblin' Man
The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie
28 March 2006
Description
Winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award for Best Folk, Pop, or Jazz Biography
"A beautiful job…In exploring the nuances of Guthrie's work, Cray's exacting style is pitch-perfect." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
A patriot and a political radical, Woody Guthrie captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs. He was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the fatal fires that stalked his family and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At forty-two, he was cruelly silenced by Huntington’s disease. Ed Cray, the first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, has created a haunting portrait of an American who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself.
Reviews
"A welcome and important work." — Robert Santelli, Rolling Stone
"Something about Woody Guthrie seems to attract interesting, unexpected biographers…But all these surprising Guthrie chroniclers have nothing on Ed Cray." — David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
"Offers a much-needed corrective to the romanticized, too-familiar Guthrie." — Eddie Dean, Bookforum
"The wonderful thing about Ed Cray’s Ramblin’ Man is that it puts aside the legend and the myth and gives us the man, without tearing him apart in the process." — The Globe and Mail
"This biography resonates." — Carlo Wolff, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"It’s an amazing story, never less than well-told here, on occasion considerably more." — St. Louis Post-Gazette
Awards
Winner — Oklahoma Book Award, 2005
Winner — ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, 2005
