Guthrie Documentary Is Bound for Glory As...

Guthrie Documentary Is Bound for Glory

As I went walking, I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing’

But on the other side, it didn’t say nothin’

That side was made for you and me .

That’s the verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” that your third-grade teacher never bothered with during sing-alongs in music hour. We do, however, get to hear it at the end of the spirited 1984 documentary “Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin,’ ” and if there’s one stanza that encapsulates the singer’s Everyman credo, his poetry and his music, that might just be the one.

This enlightening 74-minute show, which originally aired as a PBS special, tells the story of America’s greatest folk singer-songwriter through the eyes of his rock star son, Arlo.

In retracing his father’s remarkable life and music, Arlo starts in Woody’s home town of Okemah, Okla., moves through his years in California writing and singing protest songs for migrant farm workers, to his life as a celebrity in New York and, finally, his 15 long years in a New York hospital with Huntington’s disease, the hereditary illness that ultimately killed him.

As the man whose songs inspired Bob Dylan to pick up a guitar and, in turn, influenced just about every folk-based songwriter since, Woody Guthrie probably more than anyone else deserves credit for infusing American popular music with a social conscience.

Growing up in the Dust Bowl during the Depression, then moving to California in search of prosperity, he traveled a road that gave him a firsthand look at racism, workers’ rights, corporate greed, women’s rights, political duplicity and just about every other social issue this country has wrestled with. That road also diverted him from being the kind of husband and father he might have been to two wives and several children.

This film was created by the same team that the previous year had put together “Wasn’t That a Time?,” a heartfelt look at the Weavers folk group. That show was all the more touching because all four original members were still alive and because they had a reunion concert to build the show around. Because Guthrie died in 1967, and because there is only one brief film clip showing him singing, this documentary seems less immediate.

But through candid interviews with Hoyt Axton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Rose Maddox, Judy Collins, Joan Baez as well as Woody’s first and second wives and other friends, “Hard Travelin’ ” is a tribute that takes on the air of a poignant home movie.

“Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin’,” (1984) directed by Jim Brown. Not rated.