Guy Logsdon: Award-winning Folklorist

Guy W. Logsdon grew up in Ada, OK. He graduated from Ada High School, from East Central State University, and worked in two of the family businesses in Ada ( a furniture store and a Western wear store) before becoming the owner of the former Stall Photography Studio.

He went on to earn a doctorate, to become a folklore professor at the University of Tulsa, and to become the leading authority on Woody Guthrie's life and music, on Western swing music and two of its principle performers (Bob Wills and Johnnie Lee Wills), and an expert on traditional (and bawdy) cowboy music.

His long list of publications includes such books as Woody's Road with Woody Guthrie's only living sibling, Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon (2012); and with Marvin E. Kroeker, Logsdon wrote, Ada, Oklahoma, Queen City of the Chickasaw Nation: A Pictorial History (1998). With co-writers Mary Rogers and William Jacobson, Logsdon wrote, Saddle Serenaders (1995). By himself he wrote, The University of Tulsa: A History, 1882-1972 (1977) and “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing”and Other Songs Cowboys Sing (1989).

Among Guy W. Logsdon's honors so far are these: historical consultant on the 1976 movie "Bound for Glory" on the life of Woody Guthrie; coordinator of Oklahoma's Diamond Jubilee Celebration (75th anniversary) in Washington, D.C.; and author of 23 articles in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, the online publication of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

And in 1999 he won the “Westerners International Co-Founders Award” from the Western History Association for his book, “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing ; one of the founders of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada in 1985; the founder and director of the Oklahoma Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Oklahoma City (which ran from 1992 to 1999); in 1997 he won two coveted awards -- the "American Cowboy Culture Award" from the National Cowboy Symposium & Celebration (Lubbock, TX) for his contributions to Western music . . . and the "Will Rogers Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Academy of Western Artists (Dallas, TX).

In addition, on April 22, 2006, Logsdon won the prestigious "Chester A. Reynolds Award" (included a beautiful Wrangler bronze statue) from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Center. Then on Friday, April 13, 2007, Guy W. Logsdon was inducted into the hall of fame of the Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City.