This Land Is Your Land
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"This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs, written by Woody Guthrie in 1940. It was originally written in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Guthrie considered that song unrealistic and complacent, and was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio, so he wrote a different song, originally called "God Blessed America for Me." Guthrie varied the lyrics over time, sometimes including more overtly political verses that often do not appear in recordings or publications.
The publication "10 of the Woody Guthrie songs" was submitted as evidence in the court case JibJab v Ludlow to prove this song was in the Public domain.[1] |
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters,
This land was made for you and me
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And saw above me that endless skyway,
And saw below me the golden valley, I said:
This land was made for you and me
I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts,
And all around me , a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me
Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing —
This land was made for you and me
When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling;
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting:
This land was made for you and me
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people —
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
This land was made for you and me
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do."
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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.
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