Arlo Guthrie artist picimg 2 . akamaized . netiu 2520166 a 334482 brrnf 9638 a 67365 . png Arlo Guthrie born 10 th July 1947 , Brooklyn , New York is an American folk singer who is the son of folk singer and composer Woody Guthrie and his wife Marjorie Mazia Guthrie , a onetime professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and founder of The Committee to Combat Huntington ' s Disease . He graduated from the Stockbridge School of Massachusetts in 1965 , and briefly attended Rocky Mountain College . His most famous work is Alice ' s Restaurant , a talking blues song that lasts eighteen minutes and twenty seconds in its original recorded version Guthrie has been known to spin the story out to fortyfive minutes in concert . The song , a bitingly satirical protest against the Vietnam War draft , is based on a true incident . In the song , Guthrie was called up for a draft examination , and rejected as unfit for military service as a result of a criminal record consisting in its entirety of a single arrest , court appearance , fine and cleanup order for littering . In reality , Guthrie , though a carrier of the genetically inherited disease Huntington ' s chorea , was classified as fit 1 A however , his draftlottery number did not come up . Read more on Last . fm . Guthrie 218 , 855 listeners , 1 , 331 , 623 plays tags folk , singersongwriter , 60 s , classic rock , americana Please downvote if incorrect ! Selfdeletes if score is 0 .