Cumulative Matching / Woody Guthrie

Continuous matching of the person with the right kind of problems - as in Norma Jeane's case re perfect self doubt - will result in continual development of characteristic involved. To become 'great' in a field of performance that uses this characteristic (ie in which it becomes a key characteristic) requires much more than continuous matching. It requires continuous matching in an area that is valued, monitored, and promoted by your culture/ subculture and the institutions within it. It requires continuous matching in an area where there is "little room at the top", in which - as Ellen Winner puts it - "the funnel is small".

Achieving 'greatness' requires continuous matching in an area in which there is competition and selection, in an area in which each match gives you some advantage over peers who do not obtain such a match, in which each match increases your capacity with regard to the characteristic involved, and in process increases other's awareness of your changing status, ie increases your visibility and hence chances of gaining access to a higher, more advanced, challenging level of problem solving relevant to the characteristic involved, should the opportunity to take on such problems occur.

In short achieving 'greatness' requires Cumulative Matching, a continual cumulating process of being in a position to take on problems valued by your culture/ subculture and hence organizations within it; resulting in obtaining a cumulative advantage re access to opportunities and resources not available to others on each occasion, with the result that the development of your key characteristics accelerates relative to peers who did not get such organizational advantages, as does your credibility /visibility/ positioning re gaining access to other organizations and taking on related but more challenging problems, thus further accelerating your cumulative advantage re development of key characteristics involved.

Woody Guthrie's early development as a wordslinger -- as a musician whose "favorite instrument" was the typewriter -- gives us with a clear example of this cumulative matching process. By his mid-teens Woody was already a mega-wordslinger. Harmonizing night after night with Tubba and Red and the rest of Tom Moore's family in Okemah on those "old Tennessee church songs", he'd be popping out "funny new verses" right as they were singing along. And a few years later in Pampa, Woody was playing "house parties and barn dances and local radio" and fronting the Corncob Trio on their weekend gigs at "the Tokyo" - "telling jokes, mugging, dancing", with the words "rolling and flowing so easily you just had to sit back and find out where he was going".

How did Woody get so far ahead of his peers, a fair few of whom surely would have started out with at least equal genetic potential for such word play? We can only guesstimate of course, but in Woody's case that's not too hard.

In the rural Southwest of 1912, how many boys were born to a father like "One- Punch" Charley, writing in the Okemah Ledger that he was “as happy as a lobster” cos he had a brand new “inhabitant of lapland”, a “morning caller, a noonday crawler, and a midnight bawler”? How many were born to a father who was pulling a crowd “every morning” down at “Parsons’ drugs”, ‘round ten - “just to hear him talking over coffee” , a crowd that would “invite him home to dinner”, just to hear him talk again? To a father who had a "reputation as the best storyteller and quickest wit in Okfuskee County"?

How many 3, 4, 5 year olds would "sit on the front porch in the evenings waiting for the sound of his father's horse on the hard clay street"; waiting to go running down the road when those hooves come a clomping, to 'woooop' and being scooped, right up to daddy's lap, and “How did y’r saddle horse do today?”, “He et all my oats, an he et my hay”?

How many 4, 5, 6 year olds spent night after night listening to papa singing “apart and together” with mama on “hymns, spiritual songs, and songs about how to save your lost and homeless soul and self”; songs that were “lots better” cos he’d “put in a little of the wild running fighting sounds and monkey shines that made your ears stand away out and wiggle for more”?

How many boys at that age got all of mama’s best hours while Clara and Lee Roy were gone, off down the “muddy” little “wagon road” to their clapboard school? How many got day after day, and month after month, up on the “grassy hill”... continues in Arrival ...with mama “chording on the piano” and singing her “maudlin, old-time country ballads” “over and over” in her “high-pitched nasal twang”, and “then all over again”, “til it sounded like a nice ripe and a juicey strawberry in her mouth”?

How many boys in Woody's Southwest spent their childhoods "hopping around the house, making up snatches of rhyme" just like daddy, and then "trying to sing them just like his mother'?

How many of these boys would have followed up this childhood with three straight years of street schooling? With three straight years, from 8 to 11, just as Woody's “intellectual curiosity”, his desire “to know” and take on “parental roles”, were all skyrocketing. Three straight years of scrambling round, from sun up and down; from “oil derricks to peddler, preacher, and punchup the street, to girly house, pool hall and brawl”. Three straight years of bobbing up and down in the whole “flood of gypsy wagons, stray musicians, street singers, and cement men”; in the “wild tribes of bootleggers, horse traders, rollers, rousters, and pimps”. Three straight years of “seeing it, sighting it, sucking it down”... continues in Arrival

...How many would have gotten three straight years of dropping by the other school, to tell a few jokes and stories? Dropping by while Matt and Nick and all his old friends - all the scrubbed up kids who “wouldn’t talk to trash like him” - were stuck in Latin or English or maybe flunking algebra again. Dropping by to put in a few days pulling 'A's in the typing class. Pulling 'A's writing bout the "wild rush of wind" that “whined for a minute like a puppy under a box and then roared down the alley, squealing like a hundred mad elephants”. Bout the “phone wires whistling” and “the rain burning hot”, the “bales of hay” flying up and “splitting apart, and blowing through the sky like popcorn sacks”. Writing about the 1000s of lives he'd already lived and heard and seen… continues in Arrival

...And a few more years of that same process, that same cumulative matching in Pampa, in Raton and Dodge City, on that "old, dusty road to Cal li forn i a..."; a few more years of cumulative matching and Woody'd be walking on to that stage in New York, a "Shakespeare in overalls".

The information and quotes above re Woody Guthrie come mostly from Klein, 1980; Guthrie, 1970; and Yurchenco, 1970.

Ellen Winner’s quote comes from Winner, 2000. Academic research relevant to cumulative matching is discussed in Arrival. see for example, Sosniak (1985) re ‘accumulating advantages’, and Zuckerman (1977) re Nobel laureates.

References cited above and many others are available in Arrival. see Sources.