MY FRIEND AND FORMER EMPLOYER RUSS Barnard, who published Country Music magazine in New York for more than two decades, hails from the Panhandle town of Pampa. About a year after entering Yale University, in 1956, he joined the burgeoning folk-music revival and first heard the name of Woody Guthrie—the wellspring of modern American folk music and composer of “This Land Is Your Land,” “Pastures of Plenty,” and a couple thousand other songs. Sometime later Russ was stunned to learn that Guthrie had lived eight formative years in Pampa. During a trip home in 1981, he visited then-sheriff Rufe Jordan, who had attended school with Guthrie. “I asked him how I could grow up in Pampa and never hear the name,” Russ says. Sheriff Jordan…
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