The final song of the recording shows us a side of Guthrie the public has only recently begun to discover. We don't associate him with love songs, but as is apparent from Browne's 15-minute song, "You Know The Night" (a shorter version was prepared for radio and released on August 15, 2011 and can be heard online), it's not because he never gave the subject any thought. Based on a 30-page entry in Guthrie's journals talking about the night he met his second wife, Marjorie Mazia, thee song is an unabashed confession of love along with a wonderful list of reasons for that love coming into existence. All that sparks the desire and need--from sexual attraction to intellectual compatibility--are dealt with as Guthrie and Browne run down what atrracted Guthrie to his wife. Yet it's far more than just a shopping list of reasons for falling in love, as the song itemizes not only what the observer sees in the person across from him, but the feelings each evokes in him. The song is filled with the joy and fears of a man finding himself inexplicably falling in love, and expresses the wonder we all feel when we know we've met the person we believe we're supposed to spend the rest of our lives with.
Guthrie should be a national icon in the United States for the way in which he was able to express the hopes and dreams of people who normally don't have a voice in his music. The Anti-Communist witch hunts of the Post World War II era followed by the onset of his fatal disease not only denied him the opportunity for writing and performing; it also ensured his music and name were kept from a great many people. It wasn't until the folk music boom of the 1960s that he was "discovered" by a new generation, and even then it was only as the Guy Who Inspired Bob Dylan, not in recognition for his own work. Sure, schoolkids around the country might have been learning the words to his most famous song, but nobody was telling them who he was or anything about the rest of his music.
Guthrie wrote about subjects nobody wanted to talk about: the plight of migrant workers, dirt farmers, sharecroppers and how the greed of a few could hurt so many. Those weren't popular topics in the Post-War boom days, and in the 1960s most people were more concerned with avoiding the draft and getting stoned then fighting for the rights of poor farmers in Tennessee and Oklahoma. Yet if you stop and listen to any of his songs, you'll realize they have the unique ability to speak truths without preaching, tell people's stories without sentimentalizing them, and speak to something we all have to one degree or another: our hearts.
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