Larry Long

Contemporary singer and songwriter Larry Long had a mission: to take Woody Guthrie's music back to the Dust Bowl balladeer's hometown. Okemah, OK, had spent about 40 years with its jaw set against its most famous native son. Decent folk there called him a Communist and said a determined "NO" when The Guthrie family proposed a kind of museum at the decaying homeplace back in the '70s. "It would just attract hippies," said the decent folk who knew this Woody was just trouble. Long's gentle subversion was to teach Guthrie's songs to the kids of Okemah and encourage them to make up their own songs in Guthrie's kid-friendly idiom. The results were recorded at a local theater by the Flying Fish label, and now Okemah's water tower proudly proclaims the town as "Home of Woody Guthrie." Long's releases included 1988's It Takes a Lot of People..., 1992's Troubadour, 1996's Here I Stand and 2000's Well May the World Go.