Talking Sailor

03. Talking Sailor
(Woody Guthrie/Sanga Music BMI)

Track 3 – Talking Sailor (MASTER MA 20)
First reported in a 1913 number of the Journal of American Folklore, the “Talking Blues” form itself was apparently an older traveling medicine show tradition. Guthrie would repeatedly use the laconic “talking blues” – probably learned from a 78 record – most notably with his “Talking Dust Bowl” of 1940. In “Talking Sailor,” Guthrie’s account is autobiographical; “my woman” is Marjorie Mazia, with whom he was living when he shipped out three times as a messman on a merchant marine vessel during World War II. (The late Jim Longhi documented that little known episode in his heartfelt Woody, Cisco and Me [University of Illinois Press, 1997.])

Here, as was traditional, Guthrie plays solo guitar.