Saturday Music Post – Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

I normally post only links to my Saturday music posts at The Faculty Lounge, but this one is especially timely and I thought there would be some interest in seeing it in full.

My first post on Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” was in 2018. It was timely then and it is sadly even more timely now.

On January 28, 1948, a plane crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, killing 28 migrant farm workers who were being returned to Mexico, along with four crew members. The New York Times carried a report of the accident the next day, but the story included only the names of the American crew members, while referring to the Mexicans only as “deportees.” Deeply moved by what he considered racism, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem about the crash, in which he supplied names for some of the nameless farm workers. Some years later, the poem was set to music by a New York schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman. The resulting song — known as “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) — has since been recorded by dozens of artists, although I found fewer videos than I’d hoped for.

Alas, there doesn’t appear to be a recording of Woody himself singing the song. The Youtube clip claiming to be Woody is actually Arlo. The most well-known interpretation, I think, was by Cisco Houston, accompanied by Eric Weisberg.

Arlo Guthrie