The first song to “go viral”?
Posted: February 24th, 2008, by Michael JensenBeautiful piece, on Bob Edwards Weekend, on Pete Seeger, one of my heroes.
He tells the story of Woody Guthrie’s writing This Land is Your Land. I paraphrase:
“A few teachers started singing it, and it just got sung. It was never sold, it was never distributed, it was never played on the radio, it just passed from person to person, across the country. And pretty soon, it had always been around.”
It’s the power of stickiness, in that song’s perfection and simplicity; it’s a slow-viral story of quality passing not by links at the speed of digg, but by voices, and I found it sweet.
Quality finds its audience, one way or another.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Any chance you can post a link directly to the story? I’ve been searching around the site and I can’t find it. I grew up on that song, and I’d love to hear the piece and share it with my siblings.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Bob Edwards Weekend has released the wall, and poking around yielded this, which is I think what you want:
http://www.bobedwardsradio.com/blog/2008/2/21/pete-seeger.html
It’s an hour well spent. Seeger is a truly great American.