| Coordinates | 28°36′36″N77°13′48″N |
|---|
| name | Pete Seeger |
|---|
| landscape | yes |
|---|
| background | solo_singer |
|---|
| birth name | Peter Seeger |
|---|
| alma-mater | Harvard University (dropped out) |
|---|
| birth date | May 03, 1919 |
|---|
| birth place | Manhattan, New York, United States |
|---|
| instrument | Banjo, guitar, recorder, mandolin, piano, ukulele |
|---|
| genre | Protest music, Americana, American folk music |
|---|
| occupation | Musician, songwriter, activist, television host |
|---|
| years active | 1939–present |
|---|
| label | Folkways, Columbia, CBS, Vanguard, Sony Kids’, SME |
|---|
| associated acts | The Weavers, The Almanac Singers, Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Leadbelly |
|---|
| notable instruments | Martin JSO Sing Out 60th Pete Seeger Guitar, Martin J12SO Sing Out 60th Pete Seeger Guitar
}} |
|---|
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962), Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962), and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song'', Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".
Family and personal life
Seeger was born in French Hospital,
Midtown Manhattan . His Yankee-Protestant family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition", traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from Wurtemburg, Germany, had emigrated to America in
revolutionary times and married into an old New England family in the 1780s.
His namesake, Pete's father, Harvard-trained composer and musicologist
Charles Louis Seeger, Jr., established the first musicology curriculum in the U.S. at the University of California in 1913; helped found the
American Musicological Society; and was a key founder of the academic discipline of
ethnomusicology. Pete's mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, raised in
Tunisia and trained at the
Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the
Juilliard School.
In 1912 Charles Seeger was hired to establish the music department at the University of California at Berkeley but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken Pacifism during World War I. Charles and Constance moved back east, making Charles' parents' estate in Patterson, New York, northeast of New York City, their base of operations. When baby Pete was eighteen months old, they set out with him and his two older brothers in a home-made trailer, on a quixotic mission to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South. On their return, Constance taught violin and Charles composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constance's adoptive "uncle". Charles also taught part time at the New School for Social Research. Career and money tensions led to quarrels and reconciliations, but when Charles discovered Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, they separated, and Charles took custody of their three sons. Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government's Farm Resettlement program, the WPA's Federal Music Project (1938–1940), and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of California and Yale University.
Charles and Constance Seeger divorced when Pete Seeger was seven, and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and assistant, Ruth Crawford Seeger, now considered by many one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century. Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg's extremely influential folk song anthology the ''American Songbag'' (1927) and later created significant original settings to eight of Sandburg's poems. Pete's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx. Pete's uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in First World War. All four of Pete's half siblings from his father's second marriage – Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) – became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, was married for many years to British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Pete's half-sister Penny (herself a talented singer who died young); Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folks songs for children.
In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ōta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months while Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him. They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika (Potter and muralist), and Tinya Seeger (Potter)—and grandchildren Tao (musician), Cassie Seeger (Artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (filmmaker), Moraya, Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the PBS documentary ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song''.
Seeger lives in Beacon, New York. He remains very engaged politically and maintains an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley Region of New York, especially in the nearby City of Beacon, New York. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves.
Musical career
Early work
At four, Seeger was sent away to
boarding school, but came home two years later, when his parents learned the school had failed to inform them he had contracted scarlet fever. He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the
ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it, while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen Seeger entered prep school at the
Avon Old Farms boarding school in
Connecticut, where he was selected to attend
Camp Rising Sun, the
Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer leadership program. During the summer of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string
banjo for the first time at the
Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western
North Carolina near
Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer
Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for
Farm Resettlement music projects. The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers
watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo player Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being make there as well. As Lunsford’s daughter would later recall, those country people "held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park."
For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a "conversion experience". Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo. The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings in at the
Greenwich Village loft of painter and art teacher
Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played
"Cindy" and "
Old Joe Clark" with his students
Charlie and
Jackson Pollock; friends from the
"hillbilly" recording industry; as well as
avant-garde composers
Carl Ruggles and
Henry Cowell. It was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "
John Henry" for the first time.
Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938. He dreamed of a career in journalism and also took courses in art. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico". One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939 ''Daily Worker'' reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:
During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring "suppers" and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.
"They fed us too well," the girls reported. "And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm."
In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about anti-Semitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security—"and always," the puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.
That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting
Alan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at the
Archive of American Folk Song of the
Library of Congress. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "
race" and "
hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the
Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53). Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and
Nicholas Ray's weekly
Columbia Broadcasting show ''Back Where I Come From'' (1940–41) alongside of
Josh White,
Burl Ives,
Leadbelly, and
Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at
Will Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for
migrant workers on March 3, 1940). ''Back Where I Come From'' was unique in having a
racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at the
White House organized by
Eleanor Roosevelt called "An Evening of Songs for American Soldiers," before an audience that included the
Secretaries of War,
Treasury, and the
Navy, among other notables. The show was a success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During
the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by
Norman Corwin.
Group recordings
As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor), Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: The
Almanac Singers and
The Weavers. The
Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with
Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist
Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement, racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times:
Woody Guthrie,
Bess Lomax Hawes,
Baldwin "Butch" Hawes,
Sis Cunningham,
Josh White, and
Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" to avoid compromising his father's government career.
In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as The Weavers, named after the title of a 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann about a workers' strike (which contained the lines, "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman (later, Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling and Bernie Krause serially took the place of Seeger). In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language—arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers even on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. Because of this, the somewhat hokey string orchestra and chorus arrangements on their hit records with Decca Records, and, no doubt also because of their considerable, if temporary, financial success, the Weavers incurred criticism from some progressives for supposedly compromising their political integrity. It was a tricky dilemma, but Seeger and the other Weavers felt that the imperative of getting their music and their message out to the widest possible audience amply justified these measures.
The Weavers' string of major hits began with "On top of Old Smokey" and an arrangement of Leadbelly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." Other Weaver hits included, "So Long It's Been Good to Know You" (by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), the South African Zulu song, "Wimoweh" (about "the lion," warrior chief Shaka Zulu), to name a few.
The Weavers' performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya," a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.
In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter's repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.
In the documentary film ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song'' (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.
Banjo and 12-string guitar
In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', a book that many
banjo players credit with starting them off on the
instrument. He went on to invent the ''Long Neck'' or ''Seeger'' banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo,is slightly longer than a
bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in
David King Dunaway's biography, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string" Pete Seeger "gentrified" the more percussive traditional Appalachian "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head." Though what Dunaway's informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated with the style.
From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated with Lead Belly, who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.
Introduction of the "Steel Pan" to U.S. Audiences
In 1956, then "Peter" Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steel pan, steel drum or "Ping-Pong" as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago.
Recent work
Obama Inaugural Celebration
On January 18, 2009, Seeger joined
Bruce Springsteen, grandson
Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, and the crowd in singing the
Woody Guthrie song "
This Land Is Your Land" in the finale of Barack Obama's Inaugural concert in Washington, D.C. The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of
two verses not often included in the song, one about a "private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a
Depression-era relief office.
90th Birthday Celebration
On May 3, 2009, at
The Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on
PBS during the summer), ranging from
Dave Matthews,
John Mellencamp,
Billy Bragg,
Bruce Springsteen,
Tom Morello,
Ani DiFranco and
Roger McGuinn to
Joan Baez,
Richie Havens,
Tom Paxton,
Ramblin' Jack Elliott and
Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter
Silvio Rodríguez was also invited to appear but his visa was not approved in time by the US government. Consistent with Seeger's long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the
Hudson River. Seeger's 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.
Other recent appearances
On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister
Peggy, his brothers
Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the
American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.
On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the ''Late Show with David Letterman'', singing "Take It From Dr. King". In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released ''At 89'', Seeger's first studio album in 12 years.
On September 19, Pete Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, particularly notable because the Festival does not normally feature folk artists.
On April 18, 2009, Pete Seeger performed in front of a small group of Earth Day celebrants at Teachers College in New York City. Among the songs he performed were "This Land is Your Land", "Take it From Dr. King", and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain".
A number of Pete Seeger celebrations are being organized in Australia including a revival of the musical play about his life ''One Word ... WE!'', a DVD of his 1963 concert in Melbourne Town Hall, and concerts in folk clubs and folk festivals. ''One Word ... WE!'' was performed at the Tom Mann Theatre in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2009. It was written by Maurie Mulheron, who is also musical director and a performer. Frank Barnes directed.
In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed a song "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City. The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger's Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle. Pete Seeger performed with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other celebrated musicians. The event, promoted under the name #OccupyTheCircle, was LiveStreamed, and dubbed by some as "The Pete Seeger March".
He contributed a spoken version of Forever Young to the 2012 album Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International.
Activism
1930s and 1940s
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the
Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the
Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually "drifted away" (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.
In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, ''Songs for John Doe'' (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the ''Talking Union'', and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, ''Songs for John Doe'' was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was "phony" and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake) and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.
A June 16, 1941, review in ''Time'' magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' ''John Doe'', accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war." Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste," though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government, Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military. In a review in the June 1941 ''Atlantic Monthly'', entitled "The Poison in Our System," he pronounced ''Songs for John Doe'' "...strictly subversive and illegal," "...whether Communist or Nazi financed," and "a matter for the attorney general," observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison, the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.
At that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was energetically re-arming. African Americans were barred from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly angered both African Americans and white progressives. Black union leaders A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste began planning a huge march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to urge desegregation of the armed forces. The march, which many regard as the first manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was canceled after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barring discrimination in hiring by companies holding federal contracts for defense work. This Presidential act defused black anger considerably, although the US army still refused to desegregate, declining to participate in what it called "social engineering."
Roosevelt's order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The Communist Party now immediately directed its members to get behind the draft, and it also forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war (angering some leftists). Copies of ''Songs for John Doe'' were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors. The Almanac Singers' ''Talking Union'' album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year the Almanacs issued ''Dear Mr. President'', an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President," was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his life-long credo:
Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all important now. / What is important is what we got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do, / Other things can wait.//
Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday, / Just give us a little time. // This is the reason that I want to fight, / Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right. / No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because / I want a better America, and better laws, / And better homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like / "You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro," / "You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"/ "You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."//
So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job to do / That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through, / Let no one else ever take his place / To trample down the human race. / So what I want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry up and get the job done.
Seeger's critics, however, have continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated ''Songs for John Doe''. In 1942, a year after the ''John Doe'' album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York ''World Telegram'' (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of ''Time'' magazine, had founded "...to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist..." antiwar groups in the United States). and was shown to the Almanac's employers in order to keep them off the air. Coincidentally, defamatory reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately the Almanacs had to disband.
Seeger served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered "I strummed my banjo." After returning from service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts that was designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People" With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace only won in New York City, and, in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had not been) for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.
Spanish Civil War songs
Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the
Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with
Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called ''
Songs of the Lincoln Battalion'' on Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "
There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama," and "
Viva la Quinta Brigada." In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called ''Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades''. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary ''Six Songs for Democracy'' (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by
Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the
Thälmann Battalion, made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs were: "Moorsoldaten" (
"Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps), "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne," "Hans Beimler," "Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront" ("Song of The United Front" by
Hanns Eisler and
Bertolt Brecht), "Der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song Of The International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals," known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").
1950s and early 1960s
thumb|right|Pete Seeger in 1955In the 1950s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing revelations of
Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA beginning in 1949 but remained friends with some who did not leave it, though he argued with them about it.
On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957 indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.
In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. In February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.
Vietnam War era
A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger
satirically attacked then-President
Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album ''
Dangerous Songs!?'', of
Len Chandler's children's song, ''"
Beans in My Ears"''. Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears," which, as the lyrics imply, ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the
Vietnam War the phrase implied that "Alby Jay" was a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ," and sarcastically suggested "that must explain why he doesn't respond to the protests against his war policies."
Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the ''Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'', the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists",photo Seeger's banjo was emblazoned with the motto "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender."photo
In the documentary film ''The Power of Song'', Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.
Environmentalism
Seeger is involved in the environmental organization
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he co-founded in 1966. This organization has worked since then to highlight
pollution in the
Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of that effort, the
sloop ''
''Clearwater'''' was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down from
Maine to
South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, and thence to the
Hudson River. Amongst the inaugural crew was
Don McLean, who co-edited the book ''Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew'', with sketches by
Thomas B. Allen for which Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 ''Clearwater'' album. The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The
Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at
Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for ''Clearwater's'' construction.
Seeger wrote and performed "That Lonesome Valley" about the then-polluted Hudson River in 1969, and his band members also wrote and performed songs commemorating the ''Clearwater''.
Seeger was inspired to clean the Hudson because he believed the river is a beautiful part of nature, and that if it were taken care of, it could be a place to bring people together. The Hudson was filled with oil pollution, sewage, and toxic chemicals that were killing off any life in the Hudson. Pete Seeger had a goal to change this, and took action to accomplish that goal.
The 106-foot long sailboat, Clearwater, was built to conduct science-based environmental education aboard the sailing ship. Not only has this project allowed for the clean-up of the river, but also for many people to experience a first-hand look into water chemistry, and the river's ecosystem. Clearwater has education programs with many colleges and institutions, including SUNY New Paltz, and Pace University. The sail ship has become widely recognized for its key role in the environmental movement. Every summer, the Clearwater Festival brings Hudson Valley residents together to enjoy music, their cultural heritage, and support a good cause.
Solo career and the folk song revival
To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger had gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for
Moe Asch's
Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as, "
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with
Joe Hickerson), "
Turn, Turn, Turn", adapted from the
Book of Ecclesiastes, and "
The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poet
Idris Davies (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger also was closely associated with the 1960s
Civil Rights movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall Concert, featuring the youthful
Freedom Singers, as a benefit for the
Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event and Martin Luther King's
March on Washington in August of that year, in which Seeger and other folk singers participated, brought the Civil Rights anthem "
We Shall Overcome" to wide audiences. A version of this song, submitted by Zilphia Horton of Highlander, had been published in Seeger's People's Songs ''Bulletin'' as early as in 1947.
By this time Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in ''Sing Out!'', the successor to the People's Songs ''Bulletin'', and as a founder of the topical ''Broadside'' magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of People's Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies' ''Little Red Song Book'', compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The ''Little Red Song Book'' had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie's, who was known to carry it around.)
Pete Seeger made two tours of Australia, the first in 1963. At the time of this tour, his single "Little Boxes" (written by Malvina Reynolds) was number one in the nation's Top 40s. In 1993 the Australian singer/playwright Maurie Mulheron assembled a musical biography of Seeger's, and friends', work in a stage production ''One Word ... WE!''. It enjoyed a long and sold-out season at the New Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. It was reprised in 2000 and 2009, and the company has also taken the show on tour to folk festivals at Maleny and Woodford in Queensland, and Port Fairy in Victoria.
The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational folk-music television show, ''Rainbow Quest''. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Donovan, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger's national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.
In November 1976 Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs" about then death row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.
Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan
Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of
Bob Dylan and was responsible for urging
John Hammond to produce Dylan's first LP on Columbia and for inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member. There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the
Butterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965
Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan's manager,
Albert Grossman and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included
Theodore Bikel,
Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC
Peter Yarrow, and
George Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier there had been a scuffle and brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax; and the Board, in an emergency session, had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws
Odetta and
Peter, Paul, and Mary. Seeger has been portrayed as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's
"going electric". but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:
I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.
Repudiation of Stalin
In 1982 Seeger performed at a benefit concert for
Poland's Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer
David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form. In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time." In his autobiography ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone'' (1993 and 1997 reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? I think so." He went on to put his thinking in context:
How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of Nations in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger's book, ''From Yale to Jail''.... At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely cruel misleader." I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She's part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let's look ahead.
In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."
In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his life-long activism, he also found himself attacked once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in ''The Guardian'', entitled "Stalin's Songbird" in which he excoriated ''The New Yorker'' and ''The New York Times'' for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as "someone with a longtime habit of following the party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May 1941 ''Songs for John Doe'', contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from ''Dear Mr. President'', issued in 1942, after the USA and the USSR had entered the war.
In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student—historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative ''National Review''—Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues": "''I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues.''" The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965]."
Selected discography
| ! Release Date
|
! Album Title
|
! Record Label
|
| 2009
|
''American Favorite Ballads, The Complete Collection Vol.1-5''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2009
|
"Pete Seeger at Bard College" credited to "Ono Okoy and the Banshees," a student performance art group dedicated to "preserving the footsteps of Pete Seeger" by singing folk music and recording his footsteps.
|
Appleseed Recordings
|
| 2008
|
''At 89''
|
Appleseed Recordings
|
| 2007
|
''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 5''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2006
|
''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 4''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2004
|
''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 3''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2003
|
''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2002
|
''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 2000
|
''American Folk, Game and Activity Songs''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1998
|
''Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1998
|
''If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1998
|
''Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big)''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1996
|
''Pete''
|
Living Music Records
|
| 1993
|
''Darling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1992
|
''American Industrial Ballads'' (Reissue of 1956 album)
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1991
|
''Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1990
|
''Folk Songs for Young People''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1990
|
''American Folk Songs for Children''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1989
|
''Traditional Christmas Carols''
|
Smithsonian Folkways
|
| 1980
|
''God Bless the Grass''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1979
|
''Circles & Seasons''
|
Warner Bros. Records
|
| 1974
|
''Banks of Marble and Other Songs''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1973
|
''Rainbow Race''
|
Columbia Records
|
| 1968
|
''Wimoweh and Other Songs of Freedom and Protest''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1967
|
"Waist Deep In The Big Muddy And Other Love Songs"
|
Columbia Records
|
| 1966
|
Dangerous Songs!?
|
Columbia Records
|
| 1966
|
God Bless The Grass
|
Columbia Records
|
| 1964
|
''Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1930-50''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1964
|
''Broadsides - Songs and Ballads''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1962
|
''12-String Guitar as Played by Lead Belly''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1961
|
"Story Songs"
|
Columbia Records
|
| 1960
|
'' At The Village Gate''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1960
|
''Champlain Valley Songs''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1959
|
''American Play Parties''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1958
|
''Gazette, Vol. 1''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1957
|
''American Ballads''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1956
|
''With Voices Together We Sing''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1956
|
''Love Songs for Friends and Foes''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1955
|
"The Folksinger's Guitar Guide (Instruction)
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1955
|
''Bantu Choral Folk Songs''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1954
|
''How to Play a 5-String Banjo (instruction)''
|
Folkways Records
|
| 1954
|
''The Pete Seeger Sampler''
|
Folkways Records
|
Tribute albums
In 1998 Appleseed Records issued a double-CD tribute album: ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger'', which included readings by
Studs Terkel and songs by
Billy Bragg,
Jackson Browne,
Eliza Carthy,
Judy Collins,
Bruce Cockburn,
Donovan,
Ani DiFranco,
Dick Gaughan,
Nanci Griffith,
Richie Havens,
Indigo Girls,
Roger McGuinn,
Holly Near,
Odetta,
Tom Paxton,
Bonnie Raitt,
Martin Simpson, and
Bruce Springsteen, among others.
In 2001, Appleseed release "If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2." In 2003, it issued the double-CD ''Seeds: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Volume 3'', the final set in its trilogy of releases celebrating Seeger's music.
In April 2006 Bruce Springsteen released a collection of folk songs associated with Seeger's repertoire, titled, ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions'' (which some reviewers noted that, oddly, contained no songs actually composed by Seeger). Springsteen and his band also toured to sellout crowds in a series of concerts based on those sessions. He had previously performed the Seeger staple, "We Shall Overcome", on ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone''.
In the 1970s Harry Chapin released a song dedicated to Seeger called "Old Folkie".
Awards
Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including :
The Mid Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)
Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger's home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Honor (1994)
The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
"The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal" (1996)
Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record "Pete" (1997)
The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999)
The Schneider Family Book Award for his children's picture book "The Deaf Musicians." (2007)
The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)
The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
Grammy Award for best traditional album of 2008 for his record "At 89" (2008)
A proposal to name the
Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.
The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)
Quotes
From Seeger
"Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I."
"I like to say I'm more
conservative than
Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other."
"Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."
"I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than
Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail."
"I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader. I don't speak out about a lot of things. I don't talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead."
"There is hope for the world." – in ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song''.
"We sang about Alabama 1955, / But since 9-11, we wonder, will this world survive? / The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: / We can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing – // Don’t say it can’t be done, / The battle's just begun. / Take it from Dr. King, / You too can learn to sing, / So drop the gun."
"I believe God is everywhere."
"Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life." – Seeger, October 17, 2009, at community concert in Beacon, New York
"I usually quote Plato, who said: It is very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the republic." 0:45 @
From others
Jim Musselman (founder of
Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger:
:He was one of the few people who invoked the
First Amendment in front of the
House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). Everyone else had said the
Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were
dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, "I'm gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association...."
:...I was actually in law school when I read the case of United States v. Seeger, and it really changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, "We're all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn't matter who we associate with." That's what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it's an important part of history that people need to remember."
Raffi on his concert video "Raffi on Broadway" during the introduction of May There Always Be Sunshine:
"And this song is the one that I first heard Pete Seeger singing. And he tells me that it was written by a four-year-old boy in Russia. And it's just got four lines and it's been translated into a number of languages."
See also
Seeger family
Tao Rodríguez-Seeger – grandson
Tom Winslow – Clearwater singer and songwriter
Notes
References
Dunaway, David K. ''How Can I Keep from Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger''. [McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990)] Revised Edition. New York: Villard Trade Paperback, 2008 ISBN 0-07-018150-0, ISBN 0-07-018151-9, ISBN 0-306-80399-2, ISBN 0-345-50608-1.
Forbes, Linda C. "Pete Seeger on Environmental Advocacy, Organizing, and Education in the Hudson River Valley: An Interview with the Folk Music Legend, Author and Storyteller, Political and Environmental Activist, and Grassroots Organizer." ''Organization & Environment'', 17, No. 4, 2004: pp. 513–522.
Gardner, Elysa. "Seeger: A 'Power' in music, politics." USA Today, February 27, 2008. p. 8D.
Seeger, Pete. ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', New York : People’s Songs, 1948. 3rd edition, New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 0-8256-0024-3.
Tick, Judith. ''Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music''. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Wilkinson, Alec. "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music," ''The New Yorker'', April 17, 2006, pp. 44–53.
Wilkinson, Alec. ''The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger''. New York: Knopf, 2009.
Further reading
Seeger, Pete, (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz), ''The Incompleat Folksinger'', New York : Simon and Schuster, 1972. ISBN 0-671-20954-X (excerpts) Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8032-9216-3
"The Music Man." (profile and interview) In ''Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America'', text by Richard Klin, photos by Lily Prince (Leapfrog Press, 2011).
External links
PBS's American Masters site for "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"
Pete Seeger Appreciation Page, a site originally created by Jim Capaldi
"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" documentary filmmaker Jim Brown interview on The Alcove with Mark Molaro, 2007
Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways
"Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing?" Website by Seeger biographer David Dunaway
How Can I Keep From Singing?: A Seeger Family Tribute, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. Online presentation of the March 2007 symposium and concert. All events are available as webcasts via the site. Retrieved August 25, 2009.
"We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" on ''Democracy Now!'', September 2006 (video, audio, and print transcript)
"Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger Turns 90, Thousands Turn Out for All-Star Tribute Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Dozens More" on ''Democracy Now!'', May 2009 (video, audio, and print transcript)
On Point Radio: "The World According to Pete Seeger"
"Pete Seeger Is 86", Studs Terkel, ''The Nation'', May 16, 2005
Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back - National Public Radio interview, July 2, 2005
Peter Seeger interviewed by Australian composer Andrew Ford (MP3 of interview first broadcast in 1999)
Pete Seeger, Folk Singer and Song Writer by Thomas Blair. Part of a series of Notable American Unitarians
1-hour Internet radio interview- Seeger discusses the music industry, the world in general, and more (August 2007).
Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations in Australia
Pete Seeger 90th birthday cake cutting at the Beacon Sloop Club.
Peter (Pete) Seeger, 1913 - Links to articles and videoclips on Seeger, his groups and his songs.
Category:1919 births
Category:Living people
Category:People from Manhattan
Category:Folk musicians from New York
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:African Americans' rights activists
Category:American activists
Category:American folk singers
Category:American singer-songwriters
Category:American banjoists
Category:American buskers
Category:American communists
Category:American environmentalists
Category:American folk-song collectors
Category:American socialists
Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Category:Kennedy Center honorees
Category:Civil rights activists
Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists
Category:American anti-war activists
Category:American pacifists
Category:American tax resisters
Category:American Unitarian Universalists
Category:Pantheists
Category:Hollywood blacklist
Category:American social commentators
Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York
Category:People from Dutchess County, New York
Category:The Weavers members
Category:Fast Folk artists
Category:Seeger family
Category:Songster musicians
Category:Camp Rising Sun alumni
br:Pete Seeger
ca:Pete Seeger
cs:Pete Seeger
da:Pete Seeger
de:Pete Seeger
es:Pete Seeger
fr:Pete Seeger
ga:Pete Seeger
gl:Pete Seeger
ko:피트 시거
id:Pete Seeger
it:Pete Seeger
he:פיט סיגר
hu:Pete Seeger
nl:Pete Seeger
ja:ピート・シーガー
no:Pete Seeger
pl:Pete Seeger
pt:Pete Seeger
ru:Сигер, Пит
simple:Pete Seeger
sh:Pete Seeger
fi:Pete Seeger
sv:Pete Seeger
vi:Pete Seeger
zh-yue:皮特西格
zh:皮特·西格
![Å (Norwegian pronunciation: [oː], from å](http://web.archive.org./web/20120511033853/http://cdn9.wn.com/pd/6b/e2/605df19d5495989ba5bcb6bf54ca_medium.jpg "Å (Norwegian pronunciation: [oː], from å")
