b. 1947 · American folk singer · son of Woody Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie, born July 10, 1947 in Brooklyn, was already famous for the sprawling “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” when Goodman approached him at the bar of the Quiet Knight in Chicago and asked to play him something. Guthrie agreed on the condition that Goodman buy him a beer. He recorded the song for Hobo’s Lullaby ↗ on Reprise, and the single reached No. 18 on the Hot 100 and No. 4 on Easy Listening in 1972 — the only Top 40 hit he ever had. His reading is unhurried and genuinely lovely, and he has never claimed to have written it; the error is the listener’s, and it is purely chronological.