His death was announced by Guthrie on his Rising Sun Records Facebook page on Friday, just a week before Thanksgiving. Guthrie wrote that he died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which had been his residence for nearly 40 years, and cited his poor health. Other details were not immediately available.

“This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without him,” Guthrie wrote. “Alice and I spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, and she seemed like her old self. We joked and laughed a lot, even though we knew we would never get a chance to talk together again.”

Born Alice Mae Pelkey ​​in New York City, Brock was a lifelong rebel who was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, among other organizations. In the early 1960s, she left Sarah Lawrence College, moved to Greenwich Village and married Ray Brock, a woodworker who encouraged her to leave New York and resettle in Massachusetts.

Guthrie, the son of legendary folk musician Woody Guthrie, first met Brock around 1962 when he was attending the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts and she was the librarian. They became friends and kept in touch after leaving school, when he lived with her and her husband in the converted Stockbridge churchyard which became the Brocks’ main residence.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1965, a simple act led to Guthrie’s arrest, his avoidance of military service during the Vietnam War, and a song that has endured as a protest classic and holiday favorite. Guthrie and his friend, Richard Robbins, were helping Brocks throw out trash, but because they could not find an open trash can, they threw it down a hill. The police charged him with illegal dumping, jailed him for some time, and fined him $50, a minor offense with major consequences.

By 1966, Alice Brock was running The Back Room restaurant in Stockbridge, Guthrie was a rising star and his breakout song was an 18-minute talking blues that described his arrest and which made him ineligible for the draft. The chorus was a tribute to Alice – whose restaurant, Guthrie pointed out, was not actually called Alice’s Restaurant – which countless fans have since memorized:

You can get whatever you want at Alice’s Restaurant / You can get whatever you want at Alice’s Restaurant / Walk right behind it / Only half a mile from the railway track / You can get whatever you want at Alice’s Restaurant.

Guthrie assumed his song was too long to be commercially popular, but it soon became a radio perennial and part of popular culture. “Alice’s Restaurant” was the title of her million-selling debut album, and the basis for a film and cookbook of the same name. Alice Brock would write a memoir, “My Life as a Restaurant,” and collaborate with Guthrie on a children’s book, “Moses Come Walking.” At the time of his death, they were discussing an exhibit dedicated to him at his former Stockton home, now the Guthrie Center, which serves a free dinner every Thanksgiving.

Brock ran three different restaurants at different times, although he later admitted that he initially did not care much for cooking or business. She would also attribute the breakdown of her marriage to her professional life, while denying rumors that she was unfaithful to her husband. His respect was immortalized by Guthrie, who late advised in “Alice’s Restaurant”: “You can get whatever you want at Alice’s Restaurant, except Alice.”

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