Nora Guthrie is one of the most popular and richest Music Executive who was born on January 2, 1950 in New York, United States. In the wake of Note of Hope, another original collaboration project was released. New Multitudes features Jay Farrar (Son Volt), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Will Johnson (Centro-matic) as well as Anders Parker. Nora first asked Jay Farrar to peruse the Archive which he then invited other musicians to participate in the project. A majority of the songs on the two CDs, stem from Woody’s early days during his time in Los Angeles, the 1930s. Woody’s time on the city’s skid row and then his returning in LA in the 1950s in the beginning were two deeply emotional times during his lifetime.
The year 1994 was the time Nora was the co-founder of The Woody Guthrie Archives together with Harold Leventhal and archivist Jorge Arevalo. Along with overseeing the Archives and conserving her father’s personal papers and original works of art, Nora develops and produces new projects that help increase the legacy of Woody Guthrie’s culture. In 1996 The Woody Guthrie Archives was open for research at no cost to scholars and students and made Woody Guthrie’s professional and personal collection accessible to the general public in the very first instance.
In 1998, Nora worked with folk artist Kathy Jakobsen to create the children’s book This Land is Your Land, published by Little Brown, and Co., which illustrates and highlights Guthrie’s classic lyric. It has won numerous awards and literary praise. The same year, Guthrie curated her first major exhibit “This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). The exhibit opened in May 2000, at the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles and toured for three years at major museums throughout the country, including the National Museum, Washington, DC and the Museum of the City of New York.
In 1998, Guthrie was Executive Producer of the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration Mermaid Avenue. These albums created new music to previously unknown Woody Guthrie lyrics and received critical acclaim and Grammy nominations in 1999 and 2001 respectively.
Guthrie’s first venture in 1992 was the release of a songbook that was lost, containing the original words and drawings of Woody, called Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs, published by Harper Collins. In the year following she produced the accompanying album together with her brother Arlo which earned her an Grammy award for the Best Children’s Album category.
