California is a garden of Eden
A paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not
You won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do-re-mi

These lines come from Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl-era song “Do Re Mi,” written after he traveled with and wrote about migrant workers heading west during the Great Depression. In the late 1930s, thousands of “Okies” and other displaced families fled drought, farm foreclosures, and unemployment, drawn by booster promises that California offered plentiful jobs and easy prosperity. Guthrie’s song functions as a warning: the journey itself is punishing, and California’s economy—especially for newcomers without savings—could be just as harsh. The lyric reflects Guthrie’s broader project of documenting working-class realities and puncturing romantic myths about the West.

Guthrie contrasts the Edenic image of California with the material reality that survival depends on money (“do-re-mi,” slang for cash). The rhyme and sing-song cadence mimic a folk sermon: the promise of paradise is conditional, and poverty turns the dream into hardship. The quote critiques economic inequality and the way advertising and rumor can lure desperate people into further precarity. It also captures a recurring Guthrie theme—dignity amid displacement—by implying that the problem is not the migrants’ character but a system in which opportunity is gated by resources. The lyric remains resonant as a commentary on migration, cost of living, and the monetization of “paradise.”

1) “California is a garden of Eden / A paradise to live in or see / But believe it or not / You won’t find it so hot / If you ain’t got the do re mi.”
2) “California is a garden of Eden / A paradise to live in or see / But believe it or not / You won’t find it so hot / If you ain’t got the do-re-mi.”