p. 50
Alternate Title: 
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
First Line: 
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting

Reference

About the Song

This song was originally a poem by Woody Guthrie published in 1948. The Colorado folksinger, Martin Hoffman, put the poem to music in 1958. The poem was written after Guthrie read a report of the plane crash in the January 29, 1948 issue of the New York Times. The laborers had come to the US as part of the "braceros" program in which the US imported Mexican farm laborers legally to make up for deficits in the US labor market.

Guthrie originally recorded the song as a poem that he read without a melody with a simple background guitar accompaniment. Pete Seeger began singing the song with Hoffman's melody and popularized this version.

Fifty covers of this song can be found on Secondhand Songs at https://secondhandsongs.com/work/3786/all

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