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This song was written by Woody Guthrie in 1948, after he heard on the radio that deportees
were killed in a plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon.
The passengers were migrant farm workers being deported back to Mexico.
Woody was so furious with the broadcast, he jotted down these words on a napkin:
"You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane. All they will call you will be Deportees."
Woody dedicated this song to farm workers of the world hoping they would soon cease to be victims.
Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics and Martin Hoffman composed the music."
- JOAN BAEZ
*** Bonus Track ***
THE KINGSTON TRIO sing "Deportee" on their superb 1964 album "Time To Think" :
Between 2009 and 2017, I wrote 220 articles/essays on folk songs, including perhaps 170 or more done by the Kingston Trio.
I posted them first on Kingston Crossroads and then decided to preserve them indefinitely and hence created on Blogger my Comparative Video 101 page.
For those who didn't follow my page, the articles included some background and commentary on each song, followed by five or more different versions.
The one linked here on the song that Guthrie originally named "Plane Wreck At Los Gatos" appeared in 2009. When researchers established and released the names of the 28 victims in 2013, I added them to the end of the article.
http://compvid101.blogspot.com/2009/04/and-justice-for-all-woody-guthriemartin.html
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on 5/4/2025, 5:00 pm, in reply to "