This Land Is Your Land

Rare card · No. 61807

"This Land Is Your Land" is a song by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. One of the United States' most famous folk songs, its lyrics were written in 1940 in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Its melody is based on a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land". The popular short version was first released on the 10-inch album This Land Is My Land: American Work Songs (Folkways FP 27) in 1951. However, the song itself became well known due to that it was copyrighted and included in many songbooks from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. In 1989, a 1947 recording on the Asch record label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2002, "This Land Is Your Land" was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording...

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