Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913

by Daniel Wolff

Overview

A tour de force of storytelling years in the making: a dual biography of two of the greatest songwriters, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, that is also a murder mystery and a history of labor relations and socialism, big business and greed in twentieth-century America—woven together in one epic saga that holds meaning for all working Americans today.

When thirteen-year-old Daniel Wolff first heard Bob Dylan’s "Like a Rolling Stone," it ignited a life-long interest in understanding the rock poet’s anger. When he later discovered "Song to Woody," Dylan’s tribute to his hero, Woody Guthrie, Wolff believed he’d uncovered one source of Dylan’s rage. Sifting through Guthrie’s recordings, Wolff found "1913 Massacre"—a song which told the story of a union Christmas party during a strike in Calumet, Michigan, in 1913 that ended in horrific tragedy.

Following the trail from Dylan to Guthrie to an event that claimed the lives of seventy-four men, women, and children a century ago, Wolff found himself tracing the history of an anger that has been passed down for decades. From America’s early industrialized days, an epic battle to determine the country’s direction has been waged, pitting bosses against workers and big business against the labor movement. In Guthrie’s eyes, the owners ultimately won; the 1913 Michigan tragedy was just one example of a larger lost history purposely distorted and buried in time.

In this magnificent cultural study, Wolff braids three disparate strands—Calumet, Guthrie, and Dylan—together to create a devastating revisionist history of twentieth-century America. Grown-Up Anger chronicles the struggles between the haves and have-nots, the impact changing labor relations had on industrial America, and the way two musicians used their fury to illuminate economic injustice and inspire change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062451705
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/12/2018
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	444,539
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Daniel Wolff is the author of The Fight for Home; How Lincoln Learned to Read; 4th of July/Asbury Park; and You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. He’s been nominated for a Grammy, published three collections of poetry, and collaborated with, among others, songwriters, documentary filmmakers, photographers, and choreographer Marta Renzi, his wife.

Editorial Reviews

No matter how much you think you know about Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, you’re wrong… This is the best sense anyone has ever made about the connection between them, and the best reappraisal either has had in a couple of decades.

Dave Marsh

…Wolff provides a primer on the complicated history of anger, political and personal, in American music, one that’s never been more needed than it is today. There aren’t many cultural histories that read like they’ve been written for activists and fans. Grown-Up Anger moves to the head of that list.

Craig Werner

…an exciting romp across labor union history through the lens of American music. Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie’s protest and solidarity songs represent the disaffection of those marginalized by industrialization, war, and later globalization. If you’re not sure why we need unions… consider Daniel Wolff’s Grown-Up Anger a must read.

Karen Lewis

The path leading from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan has been well traveled, but Daniel Wolff has gone off-road and forged bold new connections between the two cultural titans… The result is an imaginative tour de force that sheds new light on…the heartbreaking history that created them both.

Anthony DeCurtis

…Wolff provides a primer on the complicated history of anger, political and personal, in American music, one that’s never been more needed than it is today. There aren’t many cultural histories that read like they’ve been written for activists and fans. Grown-Up Anger moves to the head of that list.

Timothy B. Tyson

In this book—so soberly inflamed that the pages seem to turn of their own accord—the history of the American twentieth century is made of lodestars that don’t figure in conventional accounts… It is at precisely this moment that its story will be most fully heard.

Greil Marcus

In Grown-Up Anger, Daniel Wolff assembles an American triad to raise the ghosts of greed and misery. Through memory, music, and a clear insight into the emotional process of protest, Wolff reminds us of how it did, and how it does, ultimately feel.

Patti Smith

In this elegantly written and insightful cultural history, Wolff examines [the Calumet] calamity and how it connects to the artistic evolution of Dylan and Guthrie. The book reads like a historical detective story, one where the sleuth is savvy enough to know some mysteries won't be solved. A skillful and intrepid researcher, Wolff offers pocket histories of the two singers that echo each other…Wolff is not cynical, but his accounts of these two relentlessly self-mythologizing artists are appropriately skeptical…

The New York Times Book Review - Jason Zinoman

04/24/2017
In this bold and moving history, author and songwriter Wolff follows a path of memory and resistance through the labor struggles and music of 20th-century America. Wolff argues here that the mass murder of 74 men, women, and children (mine workers and members of their families—most of the victims were children) during a bitter strike in 1913 in Michigan reverberated through the careers of two remarkable American musicians. Using Woody Guthrie’s elegy for the massacre as a launching point, Wolff examines how the dust bowl and the Depression transformed the hillbilly entertainer into a radical artist. Linked to Calumet through his own Midwestern origins and his wholesale imitation of Guthrie, the young Bob Dylan inherited his role model’s hobo crown. Yet the very different conditions of post-WWII prosperity and teen rebellion in which he came up led Dylan to reject the pious expectations of the folk scene for a more personal rebellion, one that remade rock and roll. Without surrendering insight or authority, Wolff spans a remarkable range of material, including 19th-century copper mining on the Upper Peninsula, the origins of folk out of traditional genres, and the ’60s counterculture. Wolff’s descriptions of Guthrie are particularly engaging, as are his forays into music criticism and labor history. At times, the anger that Wolff foregrounds appears too amorphous to convincingly unify such diverse subjects and eras. Yet in a scathing finale that sends him to the postindustrial ghost town of Calumet, Wolff makes clear that by forgetting the past that Dylan and Guthrie passed down to us—and the injustices that motivated their art—we are in danger of losing our futures. (June)

Publishers Weekly

In this book—so soberly inflamed that the pages seem to turn of their own accord—the history of the American twentieth century is made of lodestars that don’t figure in conventional accounts… It is at precisely this moment that its story will be most fully heard.

Griel Marcus

04/01/2017
On Christmas Eve, 1913, 73 people (mostly children) were killed in a stampede at a Christmas party in Calumet, MI. This tragedy, related to a bitter copper miners' strike, was commemorated in Woody Guthrie's 1945 song "1913 Massacre," and is at the core of this book. Wolff (4th of July, Asbury Park; You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke) weaves Calumet and early labor strife into a dual biography of Guthrie (1912–67) and Bob Dylan (b. 1941). It alternates chapters relating Guthrie's and Dylan's formative years, emphasizing how injustice and older folk and blues music influenced their songs. His chapter on the stampede, its aftermath, and Guthrie's song, is very effective and moving. Two personal essays bookend this work. In the first chapter, Wolff writes about his discovery of Dylan as a high school student and the profound impact of "Like a Rolling Stone." He concludes with an almost Orwellian account of a 2013 visit to Calumet, where he visited the cemeteries and saw the remains of a once-thriving mining town. VERDICT Readers with an interest in American political and labor history will most appreciate this book. Fans of Dylan and Guthrie will be in familiar territory but will also learn about strands of influence on their work.—Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Library Journal

★ 2017-03-28
A masterful tale of music, social, and economic history.In 1965, when poet and essayist Wolff (The Names of Birds, 2015, etc.) was 13, he first heard Bob Dylan's "sound of anger" on the radio. "Like a Rolling Stone" impressed him mightily. He sought out his earlier albums, and on Dylan's first, there were two original songs. One was "Song to Woody," which was "the sound of someone looking back in order to tell the truth." This led the author to find out more about Woody Guthrie and to hear his music. He discovered a great singer/songwriter and political activist. That search then led him to Arlo Guthrie and his album, "Hobo's Lullaby," which included one of his father's songs, "1913 Massacre." In Calumet, Michigan, mostly striking mine workers, their wives, and children were having a crowded Christmas party in a large hall when someone falsely yelled "Fire!" In the desperate crush to escape, 73 people died. Listening to the song, Wolff realized Dylan had used the very same melody for his song about Guthrie. The pieces were falling into place: "Follow that darkish vein back to find…what? The history of anger. Hope. The truth." The author takes us on a stunning, riveting journey as we learn about the young Dylan, Woody, Joe Hill, the famous singer/songwriter and union leader, the small town of Calumet, with its copper-mining operations in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and the unions and miners who were constantly taken advantage of by management and the mine owners. Along the way, Wolff introduces us to Woody's fellow activist musician Pete Seeger and noted song collector Alan Lomax. He also tells the story of union organizer Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor, who first told Woody the Calumet story, and Alexander Agassiz, son of the famous scientist, who hired James MacNaughton as the union-busting manager of the Calumet mine in 1901. Wolff's elegantly intertwined historical drama is consistently revelatory. A dazzling, richly researched story impeccably told.

Kirkus Reviews