Alan Lomax once described Woody Guthrie as "an unwitting
classicist, someone who understood the power and integrity of
the traditional forms and sang the old songs in an old-fashioned
way, his voice droning and nasal and high-pitched" (Klein 149).
Indeed, sometimes that droning, nasal, high-pitched
traditionalism can make Guthrie's original recordings sound a
little underwhelming. But the key to the music is that it is
simple and accessible. Most people who have heard "This Land Is
Your Land" probably heard a cover of some kind, because the song
has been covered over and over and over. Like any good folk
song, it is a song that people like to sing, not just listen to.
It also tends to sound a little bit familiar even when you hear
it for the first time. "This Land Is Your Land" might have
sounded familiar to people the first time around for an even
more obvious reason: they had heard the tune before. It turns
out the song's tune was lifted almost precisely from a Carter
Family song called "When The World's On