What distinguishes real folk music from fake? Was Guthrie’s 1930s work real folk music? Or maybe the Carter Family?
The Carter Family is real folk music. A.P. traveled about (sometimes with a black guitar player) collecting songs from the hills and hollers.
Woody wrote songs about his own life. In my book, that qualifies as real.
Woody Guthrie was a Communist, and Communists are totalitarians. Everything they do is for the Cause. They never deviate from this principal. They are "soldiers with guitars/pens/whatever." Have you never read how one Communist writer in Hollywood who said that not every single thing had to be about politics was raked over the coals by his comrades and made to grovel and recant?
Perhaps you are unaware that Guthrie and Seeger stuck with Stalin all through the non-aggression pact with Hitler (y'sh"z), traveling about and singing "peace" songs against interventin . . . until their "motherland" was invaded.
The Carters weren't Communists.