ANOTHER SIDE OF WOODY; EMERGING WORKS REVEAL RARE, LIGHT MOMENTS IN GUTHRIE'S LIFE.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer

Maybe the last thing populist folkie Woody Guthrie is widely known for are children's songs. The composer of such hard-charging ballads as ``This Land Is Your Land'' also penned lighter fare during a particularly happy time in his life.

Some of the songs, such as ``Riding in My Car,'' ``Mail Myself to You'' and ``Bling-Blang,'' were sung from a child's perspective. Guthrie would play these lively tunes for his young daughter, Cathy, in their Coney Island, N.Y., apartment.

``These were nonpolitical songs, full of good vibes and loony inventiveness,'' said record producer and Guthrie expert Frank Fuchs. ``Not many people knew about Woody's other side. Take `Riding in My Car' - lots of people covered it, but not many know Guthrie wrote it.''

When Cathy was killed in a fire at age 4, the songs were forgotten and lost for nearly 40 years.

In 1989, a songbook put together by Guthrie and his wife, Marjorie, was unearthed at Sarah Lawrence College where Marjorie taught dance.

Enter Studio City-based musician-producer Fuchs. Fuchs' and Guthrie's mothers were pals in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Fuchs met the folk singer several times before he died in 1967.

``From that, I'd always been interested in Woody's music,'' said Fuchs, whose own songs have been covered by the Spinners, Phoebe Snow, Syd Straw and others.

Fuchs, who spent a decade on the road with r&b singer Cissy Houston and her daughter, Whitney, has produced several Guthrie projects over the years, including ``This Land Is Your Land'' (Rounder), which is up for a Grammy Award on Feb. 25 for Best Children's Musical Album.

``These were obscure publishing demos done on one microphone captured on tiny reels,'' Fuchs said of the source material for the nominated disc. ``It's not sonically pristine, and I didn't try to make it like that, either.''

Guthrie's singer-songwriter son, Arlo, worked with Fuchs on the album, alongside about a dozen top musicians, including drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist James ``Hutch'' Hutchinson of Bonnie Raitt's band and multi-instrumentalist Eric Weissberg.

The title track features a tender duet between Woody and Arlo, based on a 1953 Library of Congress recording of Guthrie singing his best-known song.

``It's not like the Natalie Cole-Nat King Cole duet,'' explained Fuchs, who is in his late 40s. ``I wouldn't call ours electronically enhanced. Woody's performance was on acetate, which we transferred to digital and then back to analog so we could record along with it. It's not perfect by any means.''

Other tracks among the 11 cuts on ``This Land Is Your Land'' were recorded from scratch with Arlo on vocals.

Guthrie, estimated to have composed 1,000 songs in his lifetime, took his firsthand experience of the dustbowl lifestyles detailed in John Steinbeck's novel, ``The Grapes of Wrath,'' and created folk classics such as ``So Long, It's Been Good to Know You,'' ``Do-Re-Mi,'' ``I Ain't Got No Home,'' ``Goin' Down That Road Feelin' Bad'' and ``Talking Dust Bowl Blues.''

Bruce Springsteen has described ``This Land Is Your Land'' as ``the best song ever written about America.''

Considered the first major folk singer to write songs that commented directly on contemporary life and social conditions, Guthrie fostered the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s, influencing Bob Dylan and Springsteen.

The Guthrie torch has been carried by Ani DiFranco, Dave Alvin, Ry Cooder, Nanci Griffith and Billy Bragg.

This year, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a Guthrie stamp.

And Fuchs - who was nominated for a Grammy several years ago for co-producing another Guthrie project, ``Grow Big Songs'' - is helping with a traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit on Guthrie due to start touring the country next year.

There is also a companion video of nine Guthrie tunes from the ``This Land Is Your Land'' album. This spring, the Family Channel will show the film, ``This Land Is Your Land: The Animated Kids' Songs of Woody Guthrie,'' which Fuchs helped create.

``These songs are just great for kids today,'' Fuchs said. ``They're as fresh, funny and wonderful now as they were when Woody wrote them.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Some of Woody Guthrie's songs were sung from a child's perspective. Guthrie would play these lively tunes for his young daughter, Cathy, who died in a fire at age 4.

(2) Record producer and Guthrie expert Frank Fuchs met the folk singer several times before Guthrie died in 1967. ``From that, I'd always been interested in Woody's music.''

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News