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Pete Seeger
![If I Had A Hammer - Pete Seeger [23/24]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120731054529im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QSWQfCkduu0/0.jpg "Live in Australia, 1963, as part of his world tour")
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Avon Old Farms
Avon Old Farms is a single-sex boarding school for boys located in Avon, Connecticut. It was founded by Theodate Pope Riddle, an RMS Lusitania survivor and a master architect. It opened in 1927 and closed for a period during World War II to serve as a convalescent hospital for blind veterans. The current headmaster is Mr. Kenneth H. LaRocque, a Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University graduate.
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Beacon, New York
Beacon is a city located in Dutchess County, New York, United States. Although the city's estimated living population is around 16,000 people, the 2000 census placed the city total population at 13,808. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area. Beacon was named to commemorate the historic beacon fires that blazed forth from the summit of the Fishkill Mountains to alert the Continental Army about British troop movements.
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Communist Party USA
The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist political party in the United States, established in 1919.
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Connecticut
Connecticut () (state code CT) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and New York to the west and south (because various islands of New York span Connecticut's entire coast).
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Croton Point Park
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Cuba
The Republic of Cuba (; , ) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos.
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Dalton School
The Dalton School, originally called the '''Children's University School''', is a private university-preparatory school on New York City's Upper East Side and a member of both the New York Interschool
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Eugene V. Debs
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Francoist Spain
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Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees. Founded in 1636, it is also Harvard's oldest school. Instruction of its students is the responsibility of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
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Hungarian folk music
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Kennedy Center
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Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.
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Louisiana
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Maine
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Manhattan
Manhattan is one of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York. It consists of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a small section on the mainland adjacent to the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, and expanded in 1898 to include surrounding counties. It is the smallest, yet most urbanized of the five boroughs.
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Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in New Jersey, United States, and the county seat of Essex County. Newark has a population of 310,145, making it the largest municipality in New Jersey and the 65th largest city in the U.S.
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North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the Southern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte. North Carolina is now ranked as one of the top 3 leading States for Green Technology, Bio-Chemical Engineering, Medical Sciences, and Computer Engineering through the long-range research and development programs of Research Triangle Park (RTP), UNC Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State .
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San Diego
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The Bronx
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Tunisia
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White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical style. It has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.
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A. J. Muste
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A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a prominent twentieth-century African-American civil rights leader and the founder of both the March on Washington Movement and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark for labor and particularly for African-American labor organizing.
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Adolph Green
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African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
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Alan Chartock
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Alan Seeger
Alan Seeger, born June 22, 1888 and died July 4, 1916, was an American poet who fought in World War I. A statue to his memory and to
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American Masters
American Masters is a PBS television show which produces biographies on the artists, actors and writers of the United States that have left a profound impact on the nation's popular culture. It is produced by WNET in New York City. The show debuted on PBS in 1986.
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Andrew Ford
Andrew Ford (born 1957 in Liverpool) is an English and Australian composer, writer and radio presenter.
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André Previn
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Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco () (born Angela Maria DiFranco on September 23, 1970) is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is a feminist icon.
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Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter and pianist commonly referred to as The Queen of Soul. Although renowned for her soul recordings, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B; and gospel music. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Franklin No. 1 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.
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Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie (born July 10, 1947) is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice. One of Guthrie's works is "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", a satirical talking blues song of about 18 minutes in length.
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B.B. King
Riley B. King (born September 16, 1925), known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter acclaimed for his expressive singing and guitar playing.
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Barry Goldwater
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Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
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Bernie Krause
Bernie Krause (born December 8, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American bioacoustician, who coined the term "biophony". Krause holds a Ph.D. in bioacoustics from Union Institute in Cincinnati, and is remembered as the "Pied Piper" who lured a stray humpback whale from the Sacramento River Delta back to the Pacific Ocean, through the use of sounds.
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Bertolt Brecht
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Bess Lomax Hawes
Bess Lomax Hawes (January 21, 1921 – November 27, 2009) was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax.
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Betty Comden
Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 November 23, 2006) was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green lasted for six decades, during which time they collaborated with other leading entertainment figures such as the famed "Freed Unit" at MGM, Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein.
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Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was an American musician who helped develop the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. He is often referred to as The Father of Bluegrass.
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Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957), known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left wing activist who blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes. His music career has lasted more than 30 years, and he has collaborated with Natalie Merchant, Johnny Marr, Hank Wangford, Florence and the Machine, Kate Nash, Leon Rosselson, members of R.E.M., Michelle Shocked, Less Than Jake, Kitty Daisy & Lewis, Kirsty MacColl, and Wilco. Bragg often plays and speaks at the Tolpuddle Martyrs festival. Bragg Close, a street in Dagenham, is named in his honour, and he currently lives in Dorset.
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Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (22 June 190627 March 2002) was an Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people who have won three Academy Awards for producing, directing and writing the same film (The Apartment).
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Bob Dylan
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Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Lynn Raitt (born November 8, 1949) is an American blues singer-songwriter, born in Burbank, California. During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of acclaimed roots-influenced albums which incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country, but she is perhaps best known for her more commercially accessible recordings in the 1990s including "Nick of Time", "Something to Talk About", "Love Sneakin' Up on You", and the slow ballad "I Can't Make You Love Me". Raitt has received nine Grammy Awards in her career and is a lifelong political activist.
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Bruce Cockburn
Bruce Douglas Cockburn, OC ( ; born May 27, 1945) is a Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter. His 29th album was released in summer 2006, and he has written songs in styles ranging from folk to jazz-influenced rock to rock and roll.
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Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss", is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of Heartland rock infused with pop hooks, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
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Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941 or 1942) is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator, social activist, and philanthropist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. Her music might generally be categorized as folk and traditional music, though she did record one mostly country album, ''I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again'', in Nashville. Some of her other songs have more modern popular sounds. Her work has been covered by such musicians as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Neko Case, Janis Joplin, Chet Atkins, The Indigo Girls and Joe Cocker. She is also responsible for Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding of Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
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Carl Ruggles
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Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."
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Charles Louis Seeger
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Charles Pollock
Charles Cecil Pollock (25 December 1902 Denver, Colorado - 8 May 1988 Paris) was an American painter and eldest brother of Jackson Pollock. His parents were Stella May McClure and LeRoy Pollock, his father, who born McCoy, had taken the surname of his parents' neighbours who adopted him after both his own parents died within a year of each other.
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Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor of film, theatre and television.
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David Boaz
David Boaz (born 1953, Mayfield, Kentucky) is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank. He played a key role in the Institute's development and the American libertarian movement.
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David King Dunaway
David King Dunaway is Professor of English and Communications (adjunct) at the University of New Mexico, Department of English. He is Pete Seeger's biographer, and a national expert on oral history, folk music, and Route 66.
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Delbert Tibbs
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Dick Gaughan
Richard Peter Gaughan usually known as Dick Gaughan (born 17 May 1948, Glasgow) is a Scottish musician, singer, and songwriter, particularly of folk and social protest songs.
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Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer.
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Doc Watson
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (born March 3, 1923) is an American guitar player, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. He has won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded. He performed with his son Merle for over 15 years until Merle's death in 1985, in an accident on the family farm.
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Don McLean
Donald McLean, Jr. (born October 2, 1945, New Rochelle, New York) is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".
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Donovan
Donovan (Donovan Philips Leitch, born 10 May 1946, in Maryhill, Glasgow), is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music.
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Edward Albee
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Edward Villella
Edward Villella (born October 1, 1936, Bayside, New York) is an American ballet dancer and choreographer, frequently cited as America's most celebrated male dancer.
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Eleanor Roosevelt
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Eliza Carthy
Eliza Carthy (born 23 August 1975 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire), is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson.
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Elizabeth Cotten
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Erik Darling
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Ernst Busch (actor)
Ernst Busch (born January 22, 1900 in Kiel, died June 8, 1980 in Berlin) was a German singer and actor.
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Eugene V. Debs
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Fayard Nicholas
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Frank Damrosch
Frank Heino Damrosch (June 22, 1859 – October 22, 1937) was a German-born American music conductor and educator.
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Fred Ebb
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Fred Hellerman
Fred Hellerman, born in Brooklyn, New York (May 13, 1927) and educated at Brooklyn College, is an American folk singer, guitarist, producer and song writer, primarily known as one of the members of The Weavers, together with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Ronnie Gilbert. Fred Hellerman is also known for producing the record album ''Alice's Restaurant'' (1967) for Arlo Guthrie.
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Genghis Khan
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George Wein
George Wein (born October 3, 1925) is an American jazz promoter and producer who has been called "the most famous jazz impresario" and "the most important non-player... in jazz history". He is the founder of what is probably the best-known jazz festival in the United States, the Newport Jazz Festival, which is held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island.
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Gerhart Hauptmann
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Ginger Rogers
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Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor.
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Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.
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Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan (b. Los Angeles, California, United States, July 27, 1927) is an American folk musician and musicologist. He serves as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
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Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was a German and Austrian composer.
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Harold Nicholas
http://wn.com/Harold_Nicholas -
Harold Prince
Harold Smith Prince (born January 30, 1928) is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards. His shows are known for their political context, new approach to romance, and characters who sing and dance with thematic import.
http://wn.com/Harold_Prince -
Harry Everett Smith
Harry Everett Smith (29 May 1923, Portland, Oregon – 27 November 1991, New York City) was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic. Smith is a well-known figure in several fields. People who know him as a filmmaker often do not know of his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, while folk music enthusiasts often do not know he was "the greatest living magician" according to Kenneth Anger.
http://wn.com/Harry_Everett_Smith -
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd Vice President of the United States (1941–1945), the Secretary of Agriculture (1933–1940), and the Secretary of Commerce (1945–1946). In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.
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Henry Cowell
http://wn.com/Henry_Cowell -
Hitler
http://wn.com/Hitler -
Holly Near
Holly Near (born June 6, 1949 in Ukiah, California) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, teacher, and activist for social change.
http://wn.com/Holly_Near -
Idris Davies
Idris Davies (born 6 January 1905 Rhymney, died 6 April 1953), was a Welsh poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English. He was the only poet to cover significant events in the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales coalfield, and from a perspective literally at the coalface.
http://wn.com/Idris_Davies -
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing, Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
http://wn.com/Jack_Lemmon -
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne (born Clyde Jackson Browne; October 9, 1948) is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician who has sold in excess of 17 million albums in the United States alone.
http://wn.com/Jackson_Browne -
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.
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Jacques d'Amboise
'''Jacques d'Amboise''' (born July 28, 1934) is a well-known American ballet dancer, choreographer, and film actor.
http://wn.com/Jacques_d'Amboise -
Jason Robards
Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor on stage and in film and television and a winner of the Tony Award (theatre), two Academy Awards (film) and the Emmy Award (television). He was also a United States Navy combat veteran of World War II.
http://wn.com/Jason_Robards -
Jessye Norman
http://wn.com/Jessye_Norman -
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer, songwriter and activist. Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.
http://wn.com/Joan_Baez -
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an Academy Award-winning American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman.
http://wn.com/Joanne_Woodward -
Joe Hickerson
Joe Hickerson (born 1935) is a noted folk singer and songleader. For 35 years (1963-1998) he was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. Joe is best known for bringing together the original Russian text and his own verses to create the basis for "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" in collaboration with Pete Seeger, and for participating in the first LP recording of "Kumbayah". He is currently active as a clinician, lecturer, researcher, and performer, especially in New York State, Michigan, and the Chicago area.
http://wn.com/Joe_Hickerson -
Joe Hill
http://wn.com/Joe_Hill -
John H. Hammond
http://wn.com/John_H_Hammond -
John Kander
John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
http://wn.com/John_Kander -
Johnny Carson
http://wn.com/Johnny_Carson -
Johnny Cash
http://wn.com/Johnny_Cash -
Johnny Rivers
Johnny Rivers (born John Henry Ramistella, November 7, 1942, New York) is an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. His styles include folk songs, blues, and revivals of old-time rock 'n' roll songs and some original material. Rivers's greatest success came in the mid and late 1960s with a string of hit songs (including "Seventh Son", "Poor Side of Town", "Summer Rain", and "Secret Agent Man"), but he has continued to record and perform to the present.
http://wn.com/Johnny_Rivers -
Joseph Stalin
http://wn.com/Joseph_Stalin -
Josh White
http://wn.com/Josh_White -
Judith Jamison
Judith Anna Jamison (born May 10, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
http://wn.com/Judith_Jamison -
Jule Styne
Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.
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June Carter
http://wn.com/June_Carter -
Katharine Hepburn
http://wn.com/Katharine_Hepburn -
Kirk Douglas
http://wn.com/Kirk_Douglas -
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
http://wn.com/Lauren_Bacall -
Lead Belly
http://wn.com/Lead_Belly -
Leadbelly
http://wn.com/Leadbelly -
Lee Hays
http://wn.com/Lee_Hays -
Len Chandler
Len Hunt Chandler, Jr. (born 27 May 1935), better known as Len Chandler, is a folk musician from Akron, Ohio.
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Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
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Lyndon B. Johnson
http://wn.com/Lyndon_B_Johnson -
Malvina Reynolds
http://wn.com/Malvina_Reynolds -
Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur (born '''Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D'Amato'''; September 12, 1943 in Greenwich Village, New York) is a folk-blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1974 hit song "Midnight at the Oasis," and continues to record albums in the folk traditions.
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Maria Tallchief
Maria Tallchief (born January 24, 1925) was the first American prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is best known for her time with the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1965.
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Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne (born January 16, 1934, Bradford, Pennsylvania) is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages.
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Marion Williams
http://wn.com/Marion_Williams -
Marlene Dietrich
http://wn.com/Marlene_Dietrich -
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese (; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is the founder of the World Cinema Foundation and a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won awards from the Oscars, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Directors Guild of America. Scorsese is president of The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation.
http://wn.com/Martin_Scorsese -
Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson (born 5 May 1953, Scunthorpe, England) is a British folk singer, guitarist and songwriter. He is regarded by many as one of the most skilled folk guitarists currently playing on the British and American folk scene.
http://wn.com/Martin_Simpson -
Maxim Litvinov
http://wn.com/Maxim_Litvinov -
Memphis Slim
http://wn.com/Memphis_Slim -
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is his masterful guitar playing and his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky for which he is best known today. "Travis picking", a syncopated style of finger picking, is named after him. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977.
http://wn.com/Merle_Travis -
Mika Seeger
Mika Seeger is an American ceramic artist of Rhode Island. Although not primarily a musical artist, she did record a definitive version of Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts. She is the daughter of Pete Seeger, a legendary American folk musician.
http://wn.com/Mika_Seeger -
Millard Lampell
Millard Lampell (January 23, 1919 - October 3, 1997) was an American movie and television screenwriter who first became publicly known as a member of the Almanac Singers in the 1940s.
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Moe Asch
http://wn.com/Moe_Asch -
Morton Gould
Morton Gould (December 10, 1913 – February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist.
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Nanci Griffith
Nanci Griffith, (born Nanci Caroline Griffith, July 6, 1953, Seguin, Texas) is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter from Austin, Texas.
http://wn.com/Nanci_Griffith -
Neil Simon
Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. His numerous Broadway successes have led to his work being among the most regularly performed in the world.
http://wn.com/Neil_Simon -
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle; 7 August 1911 – 16 June 1979) was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause.
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Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin (born May 3, 1910) is an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing. His earliest and biggest success was in the writing and directing of radio drama during the 1930s and 1940s.
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Odetta
Odetta Holmes, (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008) known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential musically and ideologically to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin.
http://wn.com/Odetta -
Patrick Sky
Patrick Sky (born Patrick Lynch in Liveoak Gardens, Georgia, in 1943) is a musician, singer and songwriter of Irish and Native American ancestry (Creek Indian, Sky was raised near the Lafouche Swamps of Louisiana). A contemporary of Bob Dylan and others in the Greenwich Village folk boom of the 1960s, following military service Sky released a number of well received albums from 1965 onwards and played with many of the leading performers of the period, particularly Buffy Sainte-Marie, Eric Andersen and the blues singer Mississippi John Hurt (whose Vanguard albums Sky produced). Sky's song "Many A Mile" became a folk club staple, and has been recorded by Sainte-Marie and others.
http://wn.com/Patrick_Sky -
Paul Nelson (critic)
Paul Nelson (born January 21, 1936, in Warren, Minnesota, and died circa June 28, 2006, in New York City) was a folk and rock music critic who wrote for Sing Out! and Rolling Stone. He was instrumental in launching and supporting the careers of Bob Dylan, The New York Dolls, Elliott Murphy, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. Nelson defended Bob Dylan when he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Nelson was found dead in his Manhattan apartment in July of 2006. Heart disease was determined to be the cause of death, according to the medical examiner's office in New York City.
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Paul Newman
http://wn.com/Paul_Newman -
Paul Robeson
Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert singer and film actor, who became noted for his wide-ranging social justice activism. A forerunner of the civil rights movement, Robeson was also an All-American athlete, lawyer, writer, trade unionist, peace activist, Phi Beta Kappa Society laureate, and a recipient of the Spingarn Medal and Stalin Peace Prize. Robeson achieved international notoriety for both his artistic accomplishments and his outspoken radical beliefs, which largely clashed with the Jim Crow climate of the pre-civil rights United States. As a result, he became a prime target of the political right during the McCarthyist era. Despite being one of the most internationally famous cultural figures of the 20th century, persecution by the US government and media virtually erased Robeson from mainstream US culture and subsequent interpretations of US history; including civil rights and black history.
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Peggy Seeger
Peggy Seeger (born June 17, 1935, New York City) is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.
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Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival:See Richard Silverstein,
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger -
Peter Yarrow
Peter Yarrow (born May 31, 1938) is an American singer who found fame with the 1960s folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow co-wrote (with Leonard Lipton) one of the group's most famous songs, "Puff, the Magic Dragon". He is also a political activist and lends his support to causes that range from opposition to the Vietnam war to the creation of Operation Respect.
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Raffi (musician)
Raffi Cavoukian, CM, OBC (born July 8, 1948), better known by his stage name Raffi, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, author, essayist and lecturer. He has developed his career as a "global troubadour", to become a music producer, author, entrepreneur, systems thinker, and the founder of Centre for Child Honouring, a vision for global restoration.
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Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was a blues and gospel singer and guitarist who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica. His finger-picking guitar style influenced many other artists and his students in New York included Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Woody Mann, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Winslow, and Ernie Hawkins. He has influenced the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Townes van Zandt, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb' Mo', Ollabelle and Resurrection Band.
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Richard Fariña
http://wn.com/Richard_Fariña -
Richie Havens
Richard P. "Richie" Havens (born January 21, 1941) is an American folk singer and guitarist. He is best known for his intense rhythmic guitar style (in open tuning), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
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Risë Stevens
http://wn.com/Risë_Stevens -
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn (known professionally as Roger McGuinn, previously as Jim McGuinn, and born James Joseph McGuinn III on July 13, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with The Byrds.
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Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh (b. 1937, New York City) is an American writer, professor, historian, former Marxist, and neoconservative. He is known for his work on the Cold War espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and his advocacy of the state of Israel.
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Ronnie Gilbert
Ronnie Gilbert (born September 7, 1926) is an American folk-singer, one of the original members of The Weavers with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman.
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Roscoe Holcomb
Roscoe Holcomb, (born as Roscoe Halcomb September 5, 1912 - died February 1, 1981) was an American singer, banjo player, and guitarist from Daisy, Kentucky. A prominent figure in Appalachian folk music, Holcomb was the inspiration for the term "high, lonesome sound," coined by folklorist and friend John Cohen. The term is now used to describe bluegrass singing, although Holcomb was not, strictly speaking, a bluegrass performer.
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Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.
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Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger (July 3, 1901 - November 18, 1953), born Ruth Porter Crawford, was a modernist composer and an American folk music specialist.
http://wn.com/Ruth_Crawford_Seeger -
Sam Gary
Sam Gary (February 19, 1917 – July 20, 1986) was an African-American blues, spiritual and folk singer, who to the wider public is known for his long-lasting musical co-operation with Josh White.
http://wn.com/Sam_Gary -
Samantha Bumgarner
"Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner (October 31, 1878 - December 24, 1960) was an acclaimed early country and folk music performer from Dillsboro, North Carolina. She won much praise for her work with the fiddle and banjo. In 1924, accompanied by guitarist Eva Davis, she traveled to New York City and recorded about a dozen songs, making her perhaps the first recorded female country music artist. The recordings are also notable for being the first use of a 5-string banjo on a recording. She was a yearly staple at Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival from 1928 til shortly before her death.
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Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery KBE (born 25 August 1930), more commonly known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes.
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Shaka Zulu
http://wn.com/Shaka_Zulu -
Shawn Phillips
Shawn Phillips (born February 3, 1943) helped define folk-rock in the 1960s and progressive-new-age rock in the 1970s.
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Shirley Temple
http://wn.com/Shirley_Temple -
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE ( or ; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat. He broke through as a star in acclaimed performances in American films and plays, which, by consciously defying racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world.
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Silvio Rodríguez
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Sis Cunningham
Agnes ("Sis") Cunningham (February 19, 1909 – June 27, 2004) was an American musician, best known for her involvement as a performer and publicist of folk music and protest songs. She was the founding editor of Broadside magazine, which she published with her husband Gordon Friesen and their daughters.
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Son House
http://wn.com/Son_House -
Spanish Civil War
http://wn.com/Spanish_Civil_War -
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards (eight, more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. His most famous scores include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins, as well as the lyrics for West Side Story and . He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim -
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Judkins (born May 13, 1950), name later changed to Stevland Hardaway Morris, known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist. Blind from shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown Records' Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
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Studs Terkel
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The Stanley Brothers
The Stanley Brothers were a legendary American bluegrass duo made up of brothers Carter and Ralph Stanley.
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Theodore Bikel
Theodore Meir Bikel (born May 2, 1924) is a character actor, folk singer and musician. He made his film debut in The African Queen (1951) and was nominated for an Academy award for his supporting role as Sheriff Max Muller in The Defiant Ones (1958).
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Thomas B. Allen
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Tom Glazer
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Tom Morello
Thomas Baptiste "Tom" Morello (born May 30, 1964) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist best known for his tenure with the bands Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, his acoustic solo act The Nightwatchman, and his newest group, Street Sweeper Social Club. He is best-known for his use of guitar effects, his innovative guitar solos, his use of tapping, and his heavy riffs. He was featured as one of the guitarists in ''Rolling Stone's'' list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"and was ranked #26 .
http://wn.com/Tom_Morello -
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for over forty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Tom Winslow
Tom Winslow (born Thomas Griffin Winslow, 1940) is a prominent American folk singer and writer, who is best known as a "disciple" of Reverend Gary Davis and a former member of Pete Seeger's band. He has performed with his family as The Winslows and recorded with Al Polito. His career as a performing artist has lasted over forty years. He is most notable as the composer of "Hey Looka Yonder (It's The Clear Water)", a folk song that has been the anthem of the Sloop Clearwater. While he has toured throughout the United States, he continues to perform in Upstate New York into his sixties.
http://wn.com/Tom_Winslow -
Trini Lopez
http://wn.com/Trini_Lopez -
Victor Borge
http://wn.com/Victor_Borge -
Vietnam War
http://wn.com/Vietnam_War -
Will Geer
Will Geer (March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons.
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Willie Dixon
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Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 30, 1933) is an American country singer-songwriter, author, poet, actor and activist. He reached his greatest fame during the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, and remains iconic, especially in American popular culture.
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Woody Guthrie
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World War I
World War I was a military conflict centered on Europe that began in the summer of 1914. The fighting ended in late 1918. This conflict involved all of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding ones in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in history.
http://wn.com/World_War_I
Seeger, Pete Filmography
- The Resurrection of Victor Jara (2012)
- Rooted in Peace (2012)
- Rooted in Peace (2012)
- Lead Belly: Life, Legend, Legacy (2012)
- Rooted in Peace (2012)
- Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation (2012)
- Over 90 & Loving It (2011)
- Give Me the Banjo (2011)
- My First Guitar (2011)
- Sounds Like a Revolution (2010)
- Music of Ireland: Welcome Home (2010)
- Recording: The History of Recorded Music (2010)
- My Music: John Sebastian Presents Folk Rewind (2010)
- Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune (2010)
- GasLand (2010)
- Play On, John: A Life in Music (2009)
- Worlds of Sound: The Ballad of Folkways (2009)
- We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial (2009)
- Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (2009)
- Let Freedom Sing: How Music Inspired the Civil Rights Movement (2009)
- The Power of Their Song: The Untold Story of Latin America's New Song Movement (2008)
- In Search of Myster Ey (2008)
- 'Til the River Runs Clear (2007)
- Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place (2007)
- The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival (2007)
- Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007)
- The Kingston Trio: 50 Years of Havin' Fun (2006)
- Swim for the River (2006)
- The Ballad of Peter La Farge (2006)
- The Legend of Liam Clancy (2006)
- Swim for the River (2006)
- The Peace! DVD (2005)
- The American Ruling Class (2005)
- This Machine Kills Fascists (2005)
- Isn't This a Time! A Tribute Concert for Harold Leventhal (2004)
- Peter, Paul, and Mary: Carry It on - A Musical Legacy (2004)
- Get Up, Stand Up (2003)
- Bill Moyers on the Hudson (2002)
- Strange Fruit (2002)
- Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (2002)
- Freedom Highway: Songs that Shaped a Century (2001)
- A Sigh and a Wish: Helen Creighton's Maritimes (2001)
- The Travellers: This Land Is Your Land (2001)
- The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack (2000)
- The Internationale (2000)
- Crossing the Line (1999)
- Along the Erie Canal (1998)
- An Act of Conscience (1997)
- The 39th Annual Grammy Awards (1997)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1996)
- Joe Heaney: Sing the Dark Away (1996)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1994)
- Legends of Country Blues Guitar (1994)
- Raimon: 30 anys d'Al vent (1993)
- Harry Bridges: A Man and His Union (1993)
- Carnegie Hall at 100: A Place of Dreams (1991)
- Tribute to Harry Chapin (1991)
- Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1990)
- Sing Yourself Silly! (1990)
- Sesame Street, Special (1988)
- A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly (1988)
- In Our Hands (1984)
- Chords of Fame (1984)
- Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin' (1984)
- Seeing Red (1983)
- The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time (1982)
- Pete Seeger on the Hudson (1979)
- Love It Like a Fool (1977)
- Rien qu'une petite chanson d'amour (1974)
- The Foolish Frog (1971)
- The Foolish Frog (1971)
- The Foolish Frog (1971)
- Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)
- Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)
- Alice's Restaurant (1969)
- Gavilan (1968)
- Silvo (1967)
- Festival (1967)
- Rainbow Quest (1965)
- Lines: Horizontal (1962)
- Cattle Ranch (1961)
- Indian Summer (1960)
- To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)
RELEASE
ALBUMS
- Trail to Mexico
- Red River Valley
- Old Joe Clark
- St. James Infirmary
- Greer County Bachelor
- Ox Driver's Song
- Buffalo Gals
- Joe Bowers
- Texian Boys
- My Sweetheart Is A Mule In The Mines
- Johnny Gray
- Cowboy Yodel
- Sioux Indians
- Ida Reed
- Holler
- Cumberland Gap
- Wake Up, Jacab
- Sweet Betsy From Pike
- Buffalo Skinners
- Wiskey, Rye Whiskey
- Stewball
- Whoopie Ti-Yi-Yo, Get Along Little Dogies
- Strawberry Roan
- Jay Gould's Daughter
- Play-Party
- I Never Will Marry
- Riflemen of Bennington
- Kingdom Coming
- Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase
- Peg and Awl
- The Titanic
- Sinking of the Reuben James
- Listen Mr. Bilbo
- Hold the Line
- Passing Through
- Coal Creek March
- I Come and Stand at Every Door
- Times A-Getting Hard
- Little Boxes
- From Way Up Here
- The Battle of Maxton Field
- My Get Up and Go
- The Bells of Rhymney
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- Guantanamera
- There Once Was a Woman Who Swallowed a Lie
- Wasn't That a Time
- Viva La Quice Brigada
- Wimoweh
- English Is Cuh-ray-zee
- Odds on Favorite
- A Little of This and That
- Nameless Banjo Riff
- False From True
- Now We Sit Us Down
- Pete's Greeting (Spoken)
- Visions of Children
- Wonderful Friends
- The Water Is Wide
- Pete Talks About Clearwater (Spoken)
- It's a Long Haul
- Throw Away That Shad Net (How Are We Gonna Save Tomorrow?)
- Song of the World's Last Whale
- The First Settlers
- Cindy
- Pete's Intro to If It Can't Be Reduced (Spoken)
- If It Can't Be Reduced
- Spring Fever
- Pete Speaks About World War II (Spoken)
- When I Was Most Beautiful
- Bach at Treblinka
- We Will Love or We Will Perish
- The Story of Tzena, Tzena, Tzena (Spoken)
- Tzena, Tzena, Tzena
- One Percent Phosphorous Banjo Riff
- Pete Speaks About Involvement (Spoken)
- Or Else! (One-A These Days)
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- Little Fat Baby
- Arrange and Re-Arrange
- Alleluya
- Pete's Extroduction (Spoken)
- If This World Survives
- How Soon?
- We Shall Not Be Moved
- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
- On Top of Old Smokey
- Suliram
- She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
- Frog Went A-Courtin'
- The Fox
- All I Want
- Union Maid
- Which Side Are You On?
- Talking Union
- Erie Canal
- Blow the Man Down
- The Golden Vanity
- The Coast of High Barbary
- Blow Ye Winds, Heigh-Ho
- The Trail to Mexico
- Fare You Well, Polly
- Ox Driver's Song
- The Buffalo Skinners
- He Lies in the American Land
- Pittsburgh Town
- The Death of Harry Simms
- The Ballad of Barney Graham
- Hayseed Like Me
- Banks Of The Ohio
- You Are My Sunshine
- Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
- The Foggy Dew
- Molly Malone
- Old Maid's Song
- Oh, How He Lied
- Where The Old Allegheny and the Monongahela Flow
- Leatherwing Bat
- Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier
- Farther Along
- Go Down Moses
- All My Trials
- Monsieur Banjo
- No More Auction Block
- Hole In The Bucket
- What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor
- Army Life
- Blue Mountain Lake
- Lady Margaret
- John Hardy
- Johnson
- John Riley
- Washer Lad
- Talking Blues
- Lolly-Too-Dum
- T.B. Blues
- Summertime
- This Land Is Your Land
- Pastures of Plenty
- House of the Rising Sun
- Hard Travelin'
- John Henry
- Do Re Mi
- Vigilante Man
- Hard, Ain't It Hard?
- Dust Bowl Blues
- Talking Dust Bowl Blues
- Pretty Boy Floyd
- I Ain't Got No Home
- Worried Man Blues
- Cumberland Gap
- Stackolee
- Mule Skinner Blues
- Babe O' Mine
- A Picture From Life's Other Side
- Better World A-Coming
- So Long, It's Been Good to Know You
- If I Had a Hammer
- Goodnight Irene
- Barbara Allen
- Talking Union
- Wimoweh (Mbube)
- John Henry
- Little Boxes
- Michael Row the Boat Ashore
- This Land Is Your Land
- Guantanamera
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)
- The Bells of Rhymney
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- We Shall Overcome
- Gypsy Davy
- Deep Blue Sea
- New River Train
- St. James Hospital
- Erie Canal
- St. Louis Blues
- Boll Weevil
- The Girl I Left Behind
- When I First Came to This Land
- The Titanic
- El-A-Noy
- Lady of Carlysle
- My Good Man
- Golden Vanity
- Ain't It A Shame
- Swanee River
- Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
- The Boys From County Mayo
- No Irish Need Apply
- Paddy Works On The Railroad
- Arkansas Traveler
- When I Was Single
- Wondrous Love
- Ground Hog
- Old Blue
- She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain
- Erie Canal
- Barbara Allen
- Young Man Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn
- Midnight Special
- The House of the Rising Sun
- Careless Love
- Oh What a Beautiful City
- Poor Boy
- Sally Ann
- The Riddle Song
- Go Tell Aunt Rhody
- The Water Is Wide
- The Fox
- The Keeper and the Doe
- Pretty Polly
- Jesse James
- Stagolee
- Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair
- Camptown Races
- Blow the Man Down
- Froggie Went a Courting
- I Had a Rooster (Barnyard Song)
- Putting on the Style
- The Farmer's Curst Wife
- Hard Travelling
- Alabama Bound
- Wimiweh
- Dink's Song
- Union Maid
- Washington Breakdown
- Talking Union
- Which Side Are You On
- Round and Round Hitler's Grave
- The Sinking of the Reuben James
- C for Conscription
- Liza Jane
- All I Want
- Dear Mr. President
- Deliver the Goods
- Cindy
- Casey Jones
- Buffalo Girls
- Roll the Union On
- Talking Atom
- Newspaper Man
- Ground Hog
- Little Boxes
- Wimoweh (Mbube)
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- Abiyoyo
- The Bells of Rhymney
- Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)
- Talking Union
- Which Side Are You On
- We Shall Overcome
- Living in the Country
- Darling Corey
- Guantanamera
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- Barbara Allen
- This Land Is Your Land
- Michael Row the Boat Ashore
- John Henry
- Shenandoah
- Blue-Tailed Fly (Jimmie Crack Corn)
- Black Girl
- Skip To My Lou
- The Big Rock Candy Mountain
- Clementine
- Yankee Doodle
- Home On The Range
- John Brown's Body
- Goodnight, Irene
- Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
- Oh, Susanna
- Wayfaring Stranger
- Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep
- Down In The Valley
- The Wabash Cannonball
- On Top Of Old Smoky
- Frankie And Jonny
- I Ride An Old Paint
- The Wreck Of The Railroad
- Wagoner's Lad
- Old Dan Tucker
- I've Been Working On The Railroad
- Cielito Lindo
- So Long, It's Been Good To know You (Dusty Old Dust)
- America The Beautiful
- This Land Is Your Land
- Skip to My Lou
- Foolish Frog
- Raccoon's Got a Bushy Tail
- Green Grass Grew All Around
- Mister Rabbit
- Frog Went A-Courting
- She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain
- I Know an Old Lady
- Abiyoyo
- Way Out There
- Yodeling
- Roving Gambler
- Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
- Declaration of Independence
- Get Up and Go
- City of New Orleans
- Estadio Chile
- Guantanamera
- On a Monday
- Presidential Tag
- Walkin’ Down the Line
- Medley: Robin the Bobbin / Mary, Mary Quite Contrary / Little Jack Horner
- Die Gedanken Sind Frei
- Jackaro
- Never Wed an Old Man
- John Brown's Body
- Going Across the Mountains
- Harry Simms
- King Henry
- Medley: Ode to Joy / Goliath, Goliath
- Queen Anne Front
- Joe Hill's 'Casey Jones'
- One Grain of Sand
- The Pill
- The Draft Dodger Rag
- Mao Tse Tung
- Walking Down Death Row
- Two From Shakespeare: Full Fathom Five / Perchance to Win
- Beans in My Ears
- Equinoxial
- Joe Hill's 'Casey Jones' (alternate with guitar)
- What Next?
- If I Had a Hammer (Introduction)
- Banks of Marble
- Which Side Are You On
- Casey Jones (The Union Scab)
- Talking Union
- Joe Hill
- Union Maid
- Step by Step
- Solidarity Forever
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- Talking Atom
- Crow on the Cradle
- Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
- Study War No More
- Bourgeois Blues
- River of My People
- Hold On (Hand on the Plow)
- We Shall Overcome
- He Lies in the American Land
- Well May the World Go
- Turn, Turn, Turn
- Tomorrow Is a Highway
- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread
- We'll Be A-doubling
- Arrange and Rearrange
- If I Had a Hammer
- The Farmer's Curst Wife
- Down in the Valley
- Jesse James
- Yankee Doodle
- Home on the Range
- Skip to My Lou
- Clementine
- I Ride an Old Paint
- Buffalo Gals
- Oh! Susanna
- Goodnight Irene
- Mary Don't You Weep
- Swanee River
- John Brown's Body
- John Henry
- Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
- The Fox
- The Gal I Left Behind Me
- Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherles Child
- Gee But I Want to Go Home
- The House of the Rising Sun
- Camptown Races
- Frankie and Johnny
- Eight Hour Day
- Black Jack Davy
- America the Beautiful
- Living in the Country
- My Oklahoma Home Blowed Away
- Get Up and Go
- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread
- Never Wed an Old Man
- Queen Anne Front
- Cryderville Jail
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- This Land Is Your Land
- Draft Dodger Rag
- The Pill
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- My Name Is Liza Kalvelage
- Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)
- Guantanamera
- Last Train to Nuremberg
- Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
- Oh, Freedom
- We Shall Overcome
- Oh Yes I'd Climb (The Highest Mountain for You)
- Seek and You Shall Find
- The Sinking of the Reuben James
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
- Down by the Riverside
- Nameless Lick
- Over the Hills
- East Virginia
- My Name Is Lisa Kalvelage
- My Father's Mansion's Many Rooms
- Melodie D'Amour
- Those Three Are on My Mind
- Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies
- Los Quatros Generales
- Introduction
- Manyura Manyah
- Malaika
- Oh Mary Don't You Weep
- The Foolish Frog
- Deep Blue Sea
- Never Wed an Old Man
- Old Joe Clark / Oh Had I a Golden Thread
- Holy Ground
- Darlin' Corey / Skip to My Lou / Going Across the Mountains
- Midnight Special
- It Takes a Worried Man
- Coal Creek March
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- Down by the Riverside
- John Riley
- Risselty-Rosselty
- Devilish Mary
- Come All Fair Maids
- East Virginia Blues
- I Had a Wife
- Skillet Good and Greasy
- Darling Corey
- Four Banjo Pieces
- Jam on Jerry's Rocks
- Penny's Farm
- Danville Girl
- Get Along Little Dogies
- Opening Theme
- Cindy
- Blue Skies
- The Girl I Left Behind Me
- Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
- Duet From Beethoven's Symphony No. 7
- Chorale From Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
- Russian Folk Themes and Yodel
- Anitra's Dance/Brandy Leave Me Alone
- Opening Theme (reprise)
- Mexican Blues
- Time's A-Getting Hard
- Empty Pocket Blues
- Sally My Dear
- Oh! Liza, Poor Gal
- Sally Ann
- Woody's Rag
- Peg and Awl
- The Blind Fiddler
- The Buffalo Skinners
- Eight-hour Day
- Hard Times in the Mill
- Roll Down the Line
- Hayseed Like Me
- The Farmer Is the Man
- Come All You Hardy Miners
- He Lies in the American Land
- Casey Jones
- Let Them Wear Their Watches Fine
- Cotton Mill Colic
- Seven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat
- Mill Mother's Lament
- Fare Ye Well, Old Ely Branch
- Beans, Bacon, and Gravy
- The Death of Harry Simms
- Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues
- Ballad of Barney Graham
- My Children Are Seven in Number
- Raggedy
- Pittsburgh Town
- Sixty Per Cent
- Introduction
- John Henry
- Introduction to song
- Aunt Rhody
- Lonesome Valley
- Amazing Grace
- Recorder improvisation - introduction to l'Internationale
- l'Internationale
- Old Time Religion
- Introduction to song
- Down-a-Down
- Introduction of Louis Killen
- Rothesay-O
- Introduction to song
- Old Settler's Song
- Introduction to song
- Acres of Clams
- Abiyoyo
- Teaching Song
- Cristo Ya Nacio
- Presentación
- I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag
- Turn, Turn, Turn
- We Shall Overcome
- Paxem in terris
- Somos el barco
- San Francisco Solano
- Llorando estoy
- Baionga
- Cuanto tiempo por vivir
- La cultura es la sonrisa
- Cachito, campeón de Corrientes
- Sólo le pido a Dios
- Hombres de hierro
- La cigarra
- Tierra de sol y luna
- Bajo el sol de Bogotá
- Cristo de Palacaguina
- La colina de la vida
- John Henry
- Brigada n. 15
- Deported (El deportado)
- Sailing Up, Sailing Down (Río arriba, río abajo)
- Guantanamera
- Applause
- Little Birdie
- Henry My Son
- Here's to Cheshire - Here's to Cheese (Froggy)
- Oh Shenandoah
- Skip to My Lou
- Git Along Little Doggies
- Didn' Ol' John Cross the Water on His Knees
- Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal
- I've Been Working on the Railroad
- Riding in My Car
- Put Your Finger in the Air
- The Foolish Frog
- Ilka's Bedouin Tune
- Frere Jacques
- Fisherman's Song
- It Could Be a Wonderful World
- Abi Yoyo
- Let Everyone Clap Hands Like Me
- Michael Row the Boat Ashore
- Ha Ha Thisaway
- De Grey Goose
- Be Kind to Your Parents
- Applause
- This Land Is Your Land
- Applause
- 'Twas on a Night Like This
- Mary Had a Baby
- Glory to That New Born King
- What Child Is This?
- Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow
- Carol of the Beasts
- Carol of the Beasts (instrumental)
- The First Noel
- Behold That Star
- Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
- Masters in This Hall
- Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming (instrumental)
- Twelve Gates to the City
- Sam, the Whaler
- Abiyoyo
- Sweet Little Baby
- Sweepy, Sweepy, Sweepy
- Where Are My Pajamas?
- Green Grass Grows All Around
- One Grain of Sand
- [audience]
- Banjo Medley: Cripple Creek / Old Joe Clark / Leather Britches
- Lady Margret
- Mrs. McGrath
- Mail Myself to You
- My Ramblin' Boy
- A Little Brand New Baby
- What Did You Learn in School Today?
- Little Boxes
- Mrs. Clara Sullivan's Letter
- Who Killed Norma Jean?
- Who Killed Davey Moore?
- Farewell
- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
- Didn't He Ramble (fragment)
- Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
- If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus
- I Ain't Scared of Your Jail
- Oh Freedom
- Coal Creek March
- Oh What a Beautiful City
- Clean-Oh / Ladies Auxiliary
- The Beeles of Rhymney
- So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh
- Viva La Quince Brigada
- Suliram
- Wimoweh (Mbube)
- Bring Me Little Water, Silvy
- The Bourgeois Blues
- Roll On, Columbia
- East Virginia
- Saint James Hospital
- The Death of Harry Simms
- We Shall Not be Moved
- Cripple Creek / Old Joe Clark / Ida Red
- Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies
- John Hardy
- My Father's Mansions
- God Bless the Grass
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- Quite Early Morning
- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread
- Introdução ao espectáculo
- Union Maid
- Guantanamera
- Italian flute
- I Come And Stand At Every Door
- We Shall Overcome
- Wasn't tha a time
- Christo ya nació
- Well May the World Go
- This Old Man
- We shal overcome (final)
- Wabash Cannonball
- Circles
- Hills of Glenshee
- Ocean Crossing
- Celery‐Time
- Run, Come See Jerusalem
- Sailin’ Up, Sailin’ Down
- How Can I Keep From Singing
- Old Time Religion
- Pretty Boy Floyd
- Ladies Auxiliary
- Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone
- Precious Friend You Will Be There
1975-07-25: Wollman Rink, Central Park, New York, NY, USA
(Released 1975)
select all
add to playlist
- Michael Row the Boat Ashore
- Ooh Lordy
- Derry Down
- Cayawagine
- Listen Here Mama
- On a Monday
- My Creole Belle
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- The Bourgeous Blues
- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
- Victor Jara
- Patriots’ Dreams
- Guamtanamera
- La Revolution
- Week on Rag
- City of New Orleans
- My Golden River
- This Is Your Land
- Wellonay the World Go
- Al
- Cop in Town
- Anytime
- Photography
- Tarantella
- Jig
- In Massachusetts
- Swing Low Sweet Chariot
- Lonesome Valley
- Wimoweh
- The Lie
- Motorsickle Song
- Ukelele Lady
- Bring Back 1899
- If I Had a Hammer / Amazing Grace
- Bye Bye My Roseanna
- Jacob’s Ladder
- Little Boxes
- Ira Hayes
- Bill Brown
- The Thresher
- Who Killed Norma Jean?
- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
- Blowin' in the Wind
- Lou Marsh
- The Willing Conscript
- Paths of Victory
- Ol' Jim Crow
- If You Want to Go to Freedom
- This Land Is Your Land
- Oh What a Beautiful City
- Healing River
- Follow the Drinkin' Gourd
- Viva La Quince Brigada
- Oh Louisianna
- The Bells of Rhymney
- Go Down Old Hannah
- How Can I Keep From Singing
- Mrs. McGrath
- Mrs. Clara Sullivan's Letter
- (The Ring on My Finger Is) Johnny Give Me
- I Come and Stand at Every Door
- I Can See a New Day
- Little Boxes
- Fare Thee Well
- Never Turn Back, We'll Never Turn Back
- The Willing Conscript
- The Ballad Of Ira Hayes
- Who Killed Davey Moore?
- I Ain't A-Scared Of Your Jail
- What Did You Learn In School Today?
- A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
- The Thresher
- William Moore, The Mailman
- Business
- The Song Of The Punch Press Operator
- The Ballad Of Lou Marsh
- If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus
- Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
- I Ain't Scared of Your Jail
- Oh Freedom!
- That's What I Learned in School
- Little Boxes
- Who Killed Norma Jean?
- Who Killed Davey Moore?
- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
- Mail Myself to You
- Guantanamera
- Tshotsholosa
- We Shall Overcome
- We Shall Overcome
- Living in the Country
- Mister Tom Hughes' Town
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- Barbara Allen
- Turn, Turn, Turn
- Around and Around Old Joe Clark
- Windy Old Weather
- Ram of Darby
- Juanita
- Andorra
- The False Knight Upon the Road
- Pretty Boy Floyd
- Banks of Marble
- TVA Song
- Martian Love Song
- Forty Two Kids
- State of Arkansas
- Declaration of Independence
- The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be
- The Ballad of Sherman Wu
- Roll on Columbia
- Reuben James
- Then We'll Have Peace
- The Scaler
- Newspapermen
- Talking Atoms
- Teachers Blues
- Demi Song
- Battle of Maxton Field
- Doctor Freud
- There Is Something Nasty Happening in This Land
- Open the Door
- I'll Sing Me a Love Song
- The Trip We Took Over the Mountain
- She Moved Through the Fair
- Sally My Dear
- No Sir, No!
- Stranger's Blues
- I'm Gonna Walk With Jesus
- Study War No More
- Passing Through
- Over the Hills
- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
- Chalil Melody
- Little Girl See Through My Window
- Strangest Dream
- Listen Mr. Bilbo
- Autherine
- The Hammer Song
- River of My People
- Ink Is Black
- The Happy Whistler
- Quite Early Morning
- We Sing Out
- There'll Come a Day
- Solartopia
- Down by the River
- River
- Mastinchele Wachipi Olewan (The Rabbit Song)
- The River that Flows Both Ways
- I See Freedom
- Take It from Dr. King
- De Colores
- It Really Isn't Garbage
- English is Cuh-ray-zee
- River Song
- It's a Long Haul
- We Shall Not Be Moved
- Turn, Turn, Turn
- Tomorrow's Children
- Quite Early Morning
- Intro
- Midnight Special
- Green Grass Grew All Around
- Freight Train
- Pretty Boy Floyd
- Buffalo Skinners (Trail of the Buffalo)
- Oklahoma Hills
- My Rainbow Race
- This Old Man
- Goin’ Down the Road (Feelin’ Bad)
- All Over the World
- Oh Mom
- City of New Orleans
- Precious Friends
- Where Have All the Gone
- Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
- Bought Me a Cat
- Jim Crack Corn
- The Train Is A-Coming
- This Old Man
- Frog Went A-Courting
- Jim Along Josie
- There Was a Man and He Was Mad
- Clap Your Hands
- She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain
- All Around the Kitchen
- Bily Barlow
- I Know (A Little Girl)
- I Want to Be a Farmer
- Skip to My Lou
- Candy Gal
- Ring Around the Rosy/Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush/London Bridge
- Shoo Fly
- Liza Jane
- Pig in the Parlor
- New River Train
- Yankee Doodle
- Jolly Is the Miller
- Go in and Out the Window
- She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
- Skip to My Lou
- Here We Go Loopy-Lee
- Goin' to Boston
- Little Sally Walker
- I've Been Workin' on the Railroad
- Let Us Come In
- Birthday Polka
- I Wonder, I Wonder, I Wonder
- Captain Jinks
- Bob-A-Needle
- Mary Wore a Red Dress
- Red Bird
- Ha Ha Thisaway
- Soon as We Cook Sweet Potatoes
- Study War No More (Down by the Riverside)
- We Are Soldiers in the Army
- Oh, Mary Don't You Weep
- Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
- Mrs. McGrath
- I'm on My Way to Canaan's Land
- Deep Blue Sea
- Que Bonita Bandera
- Wimoweh
- Hold On
- Freiheit
- If I Had a Hammer (Hammer Song)
- Skip to My Lou
- Sailin' Up, Sailin' Down
- Canoe Song
- Coming Round the Mountain
- This Land Is Your Land (feat. Arlo Guthrie)
- Abi Yo Yo
- We Are the Boat
- Guantanamera
- The River That Flows
- Lonesome Valley
- Living in the Country/Freight Train
- My Rainbow Race
- Skip to My Lou
- Blow the Man Down
- Weave-Room Blues
- The Farmer Is the Man
- Wood-Chopping Song
- Four Pence a Day
- Vignid a Fremd Kind
- Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield
- Pepsi-Cola
- Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
- Joshua Fought the Battle of Jerico
- Oh Worrycare
- On Top of Old Smokey
- Goodnight, Irene
- John Henry
- Dayenu
- It Could Be a Wonderful World
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- Hold On
- (If I Had a Hammer) The Hammer Song
- Wimoweh
- Pygmy Tune
- When I First Came to This Land
- The Bells of Rymney
- Dink's Song
- Red River Valley
- Chaconne ('yellow Bird')
- Meadowland
- Suliram (Indonesian Lullaby)
- Putting on the Style
- Tb Blues
- I'm Gonna Walk and Talk With Jesus
- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
- Tomorrow Is a Highway
- The Sinking of the Reuben James
- Johnny Comes Down to Hilo
- Stranger's Blues
- The Gal I Left Behind Me
- Hard Travelling
- The Power and the Glory
- Pretty Saro
- 70 Miles
- The Faucets Are Dripping
- Cement Octopus
- God Bless the Grass
- The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood
- Coal Creek March
- The Girl I Left Behind
- I Love a Rabbit
- The People Are Scratching
- Coyote, My Little Brother
- Preserven El Parque Elysian
- My Dirty Stream
- Johnny Riley
- Barbara Allen
- From Way Up Here
- My Land Is a Good Land
- America the Beautiful
- Business
- There'll Come a Time
- Fly Through My Window
- I Had a Rooster
- Come All You Bold Sailormen
- Old Grey Mule
- Alligator, Hedgehog
- Frog Went A-courting
- Racoon's Got a Bushy Tail
- I Know an Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly)
- Ground Hog
- Mister Rabbit
- Grey Goose
- Teency Weency Spider
- The Old Hen
- Skip to My Lou
- My Little Kitty
- The Little Black Bull
- Leatherwing Bat
- The Keeper and the Doe
- The Darby Ram
- Mole in the Ground
- The Fox
- Turtle Dove
- Old Paint
- The Elephant
- The Foolish Frog
- Little Dogies
- Bear Hunt
- Old Blue
- Midnight Special
- Abiyoyo
- Where Have All The Flowers Gone
- Mooses Come Walking
- When The Ship Comes In
- Learning a Song
- Guantanamera
- Politicians
- The Ross Perot Guide to Answering Embarrassing Questions
- Over‐rehearsing
- Sailing Down This Golden River
- If I Had A Hammer
- The Sixties
- When a Soldier Makes It Home
- Denmark Folk Festival
- Can’t Help Falling In Love
- If I Had a Hammer
- We Shall Overcome
- Lolly-Too-Dum
- Wimoweh
- John Henry
- Barbara Allen
- Little Boxes
- Michael Row the Boat Ashore
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone
- Turn Turn Turn
- Darlin' Corey
- Guantanamera
- This Land Is Your Land
- Hobo's Lullaby
- The Erie Canal
- Down by the Riverside
- Get Up and Go
- The Girl I Left Behind
- Barbara Allen
- Johny Riley
- I Can See a New Day
- Sourwood Mountain
- Never Wed an Old Man
- John Brown's Body
- Joe Hill's 'Casey Jones'
- The Draft Dodger Rag
- Beans in My Ears
- Down by the Riverside
- Michael, Row the Boat
- Big Rock Candy Mountain
- I've Been Working on the Railroad
- Down in the Valley
- Blue Tail Fly
- Black Is the Color
- Boll Weevil
- Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
- The Fox
- Casey Jones
- The House Carpenter
- Three Courting Songs
- The Greenland Fisheries
- Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues
- Paddy Works on the Railroad
- Go Down Old Hannah
- Road to Eilat
- Ariran
- Die Gedanken Sind Frei
- Bayeza
- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
- In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down
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Pete Seeger - What Did You Learn In School?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:53
- Published: 07 Aug 2006
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
Pete singing on BBC's 'Tonight In Person' in 1964. (Ripped from Folk Sounds of the Sixties, BBC4, 2006). Apologies for the watermark which appears. I hope to upload a watermark-free version in the future.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_What_Did_You_Learn_In_School?
Pete Seeger - Guantanamera
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:31
- Published: 17 Feb 2007
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
As usual, Pete gets the whole audience to sing along.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Guantanamera
pete seeger which side are you on
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:47
- Published: 12 Apr 2007
- Updated: 25 Jul 2012
union song
http://wn.com/pete_seeger_which_side_are_you_on
Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:23
- Published: 18 Feb 2008
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955. In one of Pete's darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "And Quie Flows the Don". Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as "Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?" Shortly after she sang it in German. The song's impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It's universal message, "let there be peace in the world" did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world. May it have the same effect today and bring renewed awareness to all that hear it.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Where_Have_All_the_Flowers_Gone?
Pete Seeger - "Forever Young"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:20
- Published: 14 Mar 2012
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
From "Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International". amnestyusa.org Buy this track now! tinyurl.com Also see: "The Story Behind 'Forever Young": youtu.be And visit: www.ForeverPete.com Music Produced by Martin Lewis & Mark Hudson. Video: Produced by Martin Lewis. Filmed by Jake Clennell. Edited by Peter Shelton.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Forever_Young
Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen HD This Land is Your Land We Take Care Of Our Own Wrecking Ball
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:44
- Published: 20 Jan 2009
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen HD This Land is Your Land We Take Care Of Our Own Wrecking Ball Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen HD This Land is Your Land We Are One Obama Coldplay Christmas Lights Lyrics Music Video Official The Promise Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen HD HQ "This Land is Your Land" "We Are One" Obama Inaugural The Boss Tea Party Wrecking Ball's track-list: 01. We Take Care of Our Own 02. Easy Money 03. Shackled and Down 04. Jack of All Trades 05. Death to My Hometown 06. The Depression 07. Wrecking Ball 08. You've Got It 09. Rocky Ground 10. Land of Hope and Dreams 11. We Are Live 12. Swallowed Up (iTunes Bonus Track) 13. American Land (iTunes Bonus Track) Tracklist
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Bruce_Springsteen_HD_This_Land_is_Your_Land_We_Take_Care_Of_Our_Own_Wrecking_Ball
Pete Seeger- " My Rainbow Race" 1971
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:44
- Published: 19 Oct 2011
- Updated: 25 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger on "The Johnny Cash Show" complete and uncut
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:24
- Published: 04 Feb 2009
- Updated: 27 Jul 2012
Folk music and civil-rights icon Pete Seeger brought his brand of straight-talking this-banjo-kills-fascists* political activism to "The Johnny Cash Show" on March 4, 1970. It's clear from this clip that Cash is the student and Seeger is the master as he and Cash rip through the Grand-Ole-Opry-friendly classic American singalong folk tune "Worried Man Blues." * This has been edited by Mikerickson01 into a much better description: Pete Seeger's banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_on_The_Johnny_Cash_Show_complete_and_uncut
Pete Seeger - We shall overcome
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:47
- Published: 24 Jan 2008
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger sings We Shall Overcome.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_We_shall_overcome
If I Had A Hammer - Pete Seeger [23/24]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:07
- Published: 07 Jul 2009
- Updated: 26 Jul 2012
Live in Australia, 1963, as part of his world tour
http://wn.com/If_I_Had_A_Hammer_Pete_Seeger_23_24_
Solidarity Forever (Pete Seeger)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:54
- Published: 19 Aug 2006
- Updated: 27 Jul 2012
Solidarity Forever sung by Pete Seeger with old photographs of the labor movement in US History.This is a tribute to all the workers who sacrificed to make a better world for their children and grand children.
http://wn.com/Solidarity_Forever_Pete_Seeger
Banks of Marble - by Pete Seeger
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:17
- Published: 19 Dec 2008
- Updated: 21 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger singing the classic "workers' rights" tune from the 1950's. Lyrics below: BANKS ARE MADE OF MARBLE I've traveled round this country From shore to shining shore. It really made me wonder The things I heard and saw. I saw the weary farmer, Plowing sod and loam; I heard the auction hammer A knocking down his home. CHORUS: But the banks are made of marble, With a guard at every door, And the vaults are stuffed with silver, That the farmer sweated for. I saw the seaman standing Idly by the shore. I heard the bosses saying, Got no work for you no more. But the banks are made of marble, With a guard at every door, And the vaults are stuffed with silver, That the seaman sweated for. I saw the weary miner, Scrubbing coal dust from his back, I heard his children cryin', Got no coal to heat the shack. But the banks are made of marble, With a guard at every door, And the vaults are stuffed with silver, That the miner sweated for. I've seen my brothers working Throughout this mighty land; I prayed we'd get together, And together make a stand. FINAL CHORUS: Then we'd own those banks of marble, With a guard at every door; And we'd share those vaults of silver, That we have sweated for. Words and Music by Les Rice
http://wn.com/Banks_of_Marble_by_Pete_Seeger
Pete Seeger Live - new protest song about BP oil spill in gulf coast on Banjo w James Maddock guitar
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:15
- Published: 12 Apr 2012
- Updated: 07 Jul 2012
On July 23th 2010 Pete Seeger performed live at a Gulf Coast Oil Spill fundraiser at The City Winery in New York City. There, he unveiled to the public his new protest song about the BP oil spill entitled "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You." Backing up Pete's singing and banjo picking is the singer/songwriter James Maddock on acoustic guitar. All proceeds of this concert went to the Gulf Restoration Network. The song was written by Lorre Wyatt and Pete Seeger. The show was produced and hosted by Richard Barone. The video was edited and mixed by Matthew Billy. The audio is a mixture of the microphones on stage and the camera microphone behind the audience. The stage microphones picked up the singing and banjo playing while the camera microphone picked up the audience singing along and clapping. Lyrics: When we look and we can see things are not what they should be God's counting on me, God's counting on you When we look and see things that should not be God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. And when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Live_new_protest_song_about_BP_oil_spill_in_gulf_coast_on_Banjo_w_James_Maddock_guitar
Pete Seeger - Garden Song (Inch by inch)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Published: 14 May 2008
- Updated: 18 Jul 2012
Pete in concert with Arlo in the late 70's.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Garden_Song_Inch_by_inch
Pete Seeger/Abiyoyo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:39
- Published: 01 Jul 2008
- Updated: 21 Jul 2012
Pete has been doing this story for decades. It's a wonderful kids story about a giant named Abiyoyo. Live at Wolftrap August 8, 1993. Live video mix and the sound track is from our CD titled, "More Together Again". To be released at Carnegie Hall in November. Arlo & Pete and family will be performing there this year! www.risingsonrecords.com
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Abiyoyo
Pete Seeger Bruce Springsteen Obama Inauguration
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:20
- Published: 03 May 2012
- Updated: 23 Jun 2012
Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen rehearse on the national lawn in Washington Dc for Obamas Inauguration. Pete Seeger! Cherry Blossom Media Prinicipal Photographer: Michael French
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Bruce_Springsteen_Obama_Inauguration
Pete Seeger - Rye Whiskey
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:19
- Published: 01 Mar 2011
- Updated: 24 Jul 2012
Rye whiskey rye whiskey Rye whiskey I cry If you don't give me rye whiskey I surely will die If the ocean was whiskey And I was a duck I'd dive to the bottom And never come up Way up on Clinch Mountain I wander alone I'm drunk as the devil Just leave me alone I'll eat when I'm hungry I'll drink when I'm dry If a tree don't fall on me I'll live 'til I die
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_Rye_Whiskey
Talking Union - Pete Seeger
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:24
- Published: 26 Feb 2011
- Updated: 20 Jul 2012
Talking Union by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, 1941 The Almanac Singers, Woodie Guthrie, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell and Pete Seeger Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you. You got to build you a union, got to make it strong, But if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long. You get shorter hours, better working conditions, Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore. It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain Just why you got to ride on the union train. 'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay, We'll all be a-waitin' 'til Judgment Day. We'll all be buried, gone to heaven, St. Peter'll be the straw boss then. Now you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't; He speeds up the work 'til you're 'bout to faint. You may be down and out, but you ain't beaten, You can pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'. Talk it over, speak your mind, Decide to do somethin' about it. Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool To go to your meetin' and act like a stool. But you can always tell a stool, though, that's a fact, He's got a yaller streak a-runnin' down his back. He doesn't have to stool, he'll always get along On what he takes out of blind men's cups. You got a union now, and you're sittin' pretty, Put some of the boys on the steering committee. The boss won't listen when one guy squawks, But he's got to listen when the union talks. He'd better, be mighty lonely <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Talking_Union_Pete_Seeger
Pete Seeger's new protest song - BP oil spill - Gods Counting on Me, Gods Counting On You - Banjo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:05
- Published: 12 Apr 2012
- Updated: 08 Jul 2012
Pete's Seeger sings and plays banjo on his new protest song "God's Counting On Me, God's Counting on You." He wrote this song about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The song was written by Lorre Wyatt and Pete Seeger. This was filmed, recorded and edited at the Beacon Sloop Club by Mark McCarroll. Audio was mixed by Matthew Billy. Lyrics: When we look and we can see things are not what they should be God's counting on me, God's counting on you When we look and see things that should not be God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. And when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill God's counting on me, God's counting on you Yes when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. Don't give up don't give in, workin' together we all can win God's counting on me, God's counting on you Don't give up don't give in, workin' together we all can win God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger's_new_protest_song_BP_oil_spill_Gods_Counting_on_Me,_Gods_Counting_On_You_Banjo
PETE SEEGER ~ Hobo`s Lullaby ~
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:15
- Published: 07 Oct 2009
- Updated: 22 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger ~ HOBO`S LULLABY ~ For Henry.
http://wn.com/PETE_SEEGER_~_Hobo`s_Lullaby_~
The Story Behind "Forever Young" by Pete Seeger
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:16
- Published: 14 Mar 2012
- Updated: 23 Jul 2012
Mini-documentary about the recording of the song "Forever Young" by Pete Seeger featured on the album "Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International" available here: music.amnestyusa.org; Buy this track now! http Watch the music video here: youtu.be And visit: www.ForeverPete.com Mini-docu produced & edited by Peter Shelton.
http://wn.com/The_Story_Behind_Forever_Young_by_Pete_Seeger
Pete Seeger on Optimism, Stabilization and the Internet
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:14
- Published: 04 Jul 2012
- Updated: 25 Jul 2012
Pete Seeger recently sat down in his home on a Hudson Valley hilltop for an interview with Andrew Blechman of Orion Magazine (and with Dot Earth there to tape the proceedings). Here's the main question Blechman asked: "We 're trying to ask people to come up with some thing, a noun, that we'll need for the next 30 years in order to survive on the planet and to flourish and to live with some form of grace." Pete's answer? The word "stabilization," a couple of relevant tunes, and an optimistic view of the Internet as an unparalleled tool for sharing and shaping ideas. More on Orion's "30 Year Plan" project here: j.mp More on Seeger at Dot Earth: j.mp
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger_on_Optimism,_Stabilization_and_the_Internet
Pete Seeger's 'Rainbow Race' sung by 40000 Norwegians in response to Andreas Brevik.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:35
- Published: 27 Apr 2012
- Updated: 16 Jul 2012
This really restores my faith in the human race. The man singing took Pete Seeger's song and made it into a Norwegian children's song called 'Children of the Rainbow.' Andreas Brevik denounced it as 'Marxist Propaganda.' The next day, 40000 Norwegians turn up and sing it, beautiful.
http://wn.com/Pete_Seeger's_'Rainbow_Race'_sung_by_40000_Norwegians_in_response_to_Andreas_Brevik
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30 Jul 2012
Aboard A US Military Plane: Reacting to the Syrian government forces attack on Aleppo, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's assault on Aleppo will be "a nail...
Hearing Pete Seeger
19 Jul 2012
New Yorker
I went over to Bryant Park yesterday afternoon, behind the New York Public Library, to hear Pete Seeger, whom I admire. I wrote a profile of Seeger a few years ago, which became a book, and which allowed me to spend a little bit of time with him. The occasion for the profile was Bruce...(size: 5.5Kb)
Woody Guthrie at 100: Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Will Kaufman Honor the "Dust Bowl Troubadour"
04 Jul 2012
Democracy Now
Commemorations are being held across the country this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the country’s greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie. Born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, Guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs, including "This Land Is Your Land,"...(size: 48.8Kb)
Huffington Post
Sing-along: On Listening to Pete Seeger Perform "The Sinking of the Good Reuben James" Bob Cowser, Jr. is a participant in an NEH seminar commemorating Woody Guthrie's Centennial, led by James Kimball. Pete Seeger's summer music festival, the Hudson River Revival in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, has hosted...(size: 6.5Kb)
The Washington Post
Queen Elizabeth II is having a big party this year. She is celebrating because she has served as queen of the United Kingdom and 15 other countries for 60 years. If you think 60 years is a long time to work, you’re absolutely right. But the queen, who is 86, has a lot of company among older...(size: 2.9Kb)
My Pete Seeger Spring: A Visit to Say Thanks
11 May 2012
Huffington Post
On a fine spring day with trees in soft green bloom, I left Manhattan for Pete Seeger's place, near Beacon NY, courtesy of his longtime friend and noted videographer Jim Brown. During the drive Jim and I talked non-stop: about my singer-songwriter beginnings, about the early folk music scene, Jim's...(size: 6.7Kb)
Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger
03 May 2012
Huffington Post
Today is Pete Seeger's 93rd birthday. What's an appropriate gift for the most influential folk artist of the 20th century? A few years ago some of Pete's fans launched a campaign to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is time to resurrect that effort. No one can get a crowd singing like he...(size: 13.5Kb)
Huffington Post
OSLO, Norway — They gathered by the tens of thousands in the drenching rain to face down terrorism with song. Drawn by a Facebook-organized protest, Norwegians flocked to public squares across the country Thursday and rallied against far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik, now on trial for a...(size: 6.0Kb)
Folk legend Pete Seeger honoured by arts academy
25 Apr 2012
The Daily Telegraph
Pete Seeger to receive a 'Distinguished Service' award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Image 1 of 2 Pete Seeger, seen here backstage before his set at George Wein's Newport Folk Festival in 2009, will receive a 'Distinguished Service' award from the American...(size: 10.7Kb)
Folk legend Pete Seeger honored by arts academy
25 Apr 2012
The Washington Times
NEW YORK (AP) - Folk music legend Pete Seeger has won a prize and he might just sing a song to celebrate. The 92-year-old troubadour is receiving a “Distinguished Service” award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to academy executive director Virginia Dajani, Seeger...(size: 3.9Kb)
Daily Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Folk music legend Pete Seeger has won a prize and he might just sing a song to celebrate. The 92-year-old troubadour is receiving a "Distinguished Service" award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to academy executive director Virginia Dajani, Seeger might...(size: 2.3Kb)
| Pete Seeger | |
|---|---|
 Seeger at the Clearwater Festival, 2007 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Peter Seeger |
| Born | (1919-05-03) May 3, 1919 (age 93) Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Genres | Protest music, Americana, American folk music |
| Occupations | Musician, songwriter, activist, television host |
| Instruments | Banjo, guitar, recorder, mandolin, piano, ukulele |
| Years active | 1939–present |
| Labels | 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.[1] 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.[2] 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".
Contents |
Family and personal life[link]
Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan[citation needed]. His Yankee-Protestant family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition",[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]
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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9][10]
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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15]
Musical career[link]
Early work[link]
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.[16] He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut.[17] 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.[18] 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."[19]
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.[20] 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.[21]
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.[22] 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".[23] 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 antisemitism 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.[24]
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).[25] 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,"[26] 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[link]
As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor),[28] 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,[29] 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 Dusty Old Dust" ("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[link]
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."[30] Although 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.[31]
Introduction of the "Steel Pan" to U.S. Audiences[link]
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[link]
Obama Inaugural Celebration[link]
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.[32][33] 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.[32][34]
90th Birthday Celebration[link]
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),[35] 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,[36] 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.[37]
Other appearances (2000s)[link]
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.,[38] 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".
2010s[link]
In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed the song "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[39]
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. [2] 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.[40] The event, promoted under the name #OccupyTheCircle, was LiveStreamed, and dubbed by some as "The Pete Seeger March". [3]
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.
On April 26, 2012, tens of thousands of Norwegians gathered in a show of unity at a rally in Oslo to sing Pete Seeger's song "My Rainbow Race" which a mass murderer had ridiculed as an example of "Marxist" brainwashing. The shooter was on trial for killing 77 people on July 22, 2011, insisting that his victims, who included 69 children, were traitors.[41] The song, which Seeger wrote in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam, has long been a popular children's song in Norway. Its lyrics include the lines: "Some want to take the easy way / Poisons, bombs! They think we need 'em. / Don't they know you can't kill all the unbelievers. / There's no shortcut to freedom." Folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen, author of the Norwegian version, led a crowd of over 40,000 in singing in both Norwegian and English. "I grew up with this song and have sung it to my child," said Lill Hjønnevåg, one of the organizers of the demonstration." Another organizer, blogger Bagnhild Holmås, said that although song might be Utopian, "the message is far from cheesy. [The killer] thinks we're brainwashed anyway, but it's important to show our distance. . . ." Culture ministers from Sweden, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland joined in the singing.[42]. From the U.S. Pete Seeger voiced his support of the event.
Activism[link]
1930s and 1940s[link]
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.[43]
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[44]), 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,[45] the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.[46]
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.[47] 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).[48] 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.[49]
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 and designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People"[50] 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 won only 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.[51]
Spanish Civil War songs[link]
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[link]
In 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.[52][53]
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."[54] 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.[55][56]
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.[57]
Vietnam War era[link]
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,[58] 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."[citation needed]
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,[59] after wide publicity[60] it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.[61]
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.[62]
Environmentalism[link]
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.[63] 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.[64] 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.
File:Pete Seeger Clearwater.jpg
Seeger's album Clearwater Classics. The title alludes to his work with the Clearwater group, working to clean the Hudson River.
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 it. 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.[65]
Solo career and the folk song revival[link]
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[66] (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 toured Australia in 1963. His single "Little Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one in the nation's Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom throughout the country at a a time when post Kennedy assassination popular musical tastes competed between folk, the surfing craze and the British rock boom which gave the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones among others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs many of their own composing, emerged in concert and festivals, on television and on recordings and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia. 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 most recently at the Tom Mann Theatre, a Trade Union-owned and operated theatre in Surry Hills, also in inner Sydney, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2009. 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. Mulheron was its Musical Director and it was directed by Frank Barnes.
A DVD of Seeger's 1963 Melbourne Town Hall concert has been released by The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It is an historical document in black and white and is well worth owning. The Sydney-based instrumental and vocal ensemble Loosely Woven based at Humph Hall on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, showcased Seeger's work and times in one of its 2009 seasons, to celebrate the Pete Seeger ninetieth birthday. Loosely Woven's Artistic Director Wayne Richmond and his new wife Gial, attended the 2011 Clearwater Festival and met Pete Seeger..
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[52] 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.[67]
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. [4]
File:SO!vol49 2 Pete Seeger.PNG
Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out! (Summer 2005), a magazine he helped found in 1950 and still occasionally contributes to.
Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan[link]
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.[68] 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.[69] Seeger has been portrayed as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's "going electric".[70] 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.[71]
Repudiation of Stalin[link]
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.[72] 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."[72] 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....[73] 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.[74][75]
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."[76] 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.[77][78]
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":[79] "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."[80] 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]."[75]
Thursday, April 26, 2012, Pete Seeger's song "My Rainbow Race" were sung by 40 000 people in Oslo, Norway. The Norwegian version, "Barn av regnbuen", translated by Lillebjørn Nielsen, 1973. The occasion was the ongoing trial against the fascist Anders Behring Breivik, who shot and killed 69 youths on Utøya, July 22, 2011, and wounded many more.
Selected discography[link]
| Release Date | Album Title | Record Label |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960 | Smithsonian Folkways |
| 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[link]
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[who?] 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[link]
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.[81] 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.[82]
- 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[link]
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From Seeger[link]
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pete 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."[83]
- "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."[84]
- "Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."[85]
- "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."[76]
- "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."[75]
- "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."[86]
- "I believe God is everywhere."[87]
- "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 @[88]
From others[link]
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."[85]
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[link]
- Seeger family
- Tao Rodríguez-Seeger – grandson
- Tom Winslow – Clearwater singer and songwriter
Notes[link]
- ^ See Richard Silverstein, "Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger, Guardian UK, April 30, 2009: "As the iconic folk singer turns 90, we can say that America is a far better country for his having shared his music with us. Pete Seeger, the American troubadour and balladeer of the common man." For Pete Seeger as a cultural icon see also: Minna Bromberg and Alan Fine, "Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purificaton of Difficult Reputations", Social Forces, Vol. 80 (June 2002), No. 4, pp. 1135–1155. They write:
We chart Seeger's reputation through four historical periods: recognition among his peers on the Left (1940s), ruin in the McCarthy period (1950-62), renown among sympathetic subcultures (1960s), and institutionalization as a cultural icon. While it has clear advantages, institutionalization can also have a dampening effect on an artist's oppositional potency.
- ^ Alec Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music," in The New Yorker (April 17, 2006), pp. 44–53.
- ^ David King Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing (New York: [Random House, 1981, 1990], revised edition, Villard Books, 2008), p. 17.
- ^ See Ann M. Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music (University of Pittsburg, 1992), pp. 4-5.
- ^ Dunaway (2008), p. 20.
- ^ According to Dunaway, the British-born president of the university "all but fired" Charles Seeger (How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 26).
- ^ Ann Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life In Music, 83–85.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 32. Frank Damrosch, siding with Constance, fired Charles from Juilliard, see Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composer's Search for American Music (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 224–25.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 22, 24.
- ^ Winkler (2009), p. 4.
- ^ See Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composer's Search for American Music, 1997).
- ^ David Lewis, Ruth Crawford Seeger Biography in 600 Words on website of her daughter, Peggy Seeger.
- ^ "John Seeger Dies at 95". WordPress.com. 18 January 2010. http://peteseegersite.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/john-seeger-dies-at-95/. Retrieved 5 November 2010.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 131.
- ^ Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006), pp. 47–48.
- ^ Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006) p. 50 and Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 32.
- ^ Alec Wilkinson, The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger (New York: Knopf, 2009), p. 43.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 48-49.
- ^ Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 239.
- ^ Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 239.
- ^ Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 235. According to John Szwed, Jackson Pollock, later famous for his "drip" paintings, played harmonica, having smashed his violin in frustration, see: Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World (Viking, 2010), p. 88.
- ^ According to Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 51, after failing one of his winter exams and losing his scholarship.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 61–63.
- ^ Emery, Lawrence, "Interesting Summer: Young Puppeteers in Unique Tour of Rural Areas," quoted on Pete Seeger website
- ^ The resultant 22-page mimeographed "List of American Folk Music on Commercial Recordings", issued in 1940 and mailed by Lomax out to academic folklore scholars, became the basis of Harry Smith's celebrated Anthology of American Folk Music on Folkways Records. Seeger also did similar work for Lomax at Decca in the late 1940s.
- ^ Folk Songs in the White House, Time, March 3, 1941. Accessed online 30 September 2008.
- ^ From the Washington Post, February 12, 1944: "The Labor Canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, CIO, will be opened at 8 p.m. tomorrow at 1212 18th st. nw. Mrs. Roosevelt is expected to attend at 8:30 p.m."
- ^ Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 47.
- ^ See the Wikipedia entry on the CIO.
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 100.
- ^ Acoustic Guitar Central.
- ^ a b Tommy Stevenson, "'This Land Is Your Land' Like Woody Wrote It", Tuscaloosa News, January 18, 2009. Accessed January 19, 2009.
- ^ Maria Puente and Elysa Gardner, "Inauguration opening concert celebrates art of the possible", USA Today, January 19, 2008. Accessed January 20, 2009.
- ^ YouTube: Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Accessed January 20, 2009.
- ^ Web site announcing Seeger's 90th birthday celebration
- ^ Hudson River Sloop Clearwater.
- ^ Here are links to other "For Pete's Sake: Sing!" 90th-birthday shows on Sunday, May 3: Seattle, WA, Sequim, WA , Bellingham, WA, Huntington, NY, Telkwa, BC, Ithaca, NY, Richmond, VA, Rockville, MD, Boston, MA, Sherborn, MA, Knoxville, TN, Dayton, OH, in Australia, in Scotland.
- ^ "How Can I Keep from Singing?": A Seeger Family Tribute. 2007 symposium and concert, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (web presentation includes program, photographs, and webcasts).
- ^ Patrick Doyle, Video: Pete Seeger Debuts New BP Protest Song: Songwriter talks inspiration behind "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You", Rolling Stone online, 26 July 2010. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IPd_OkeVtI
- ^ Balazs Korany and Victoria Klesty, "Tens of thousands gather to sing song Anders Breivik hates", Vancouver Sun, April 26, 2012.
- ^ "Breivik trial: Norwegians rally around peace song," BBC World News, Europe, 26 April 2012.
- ^ He later commented "Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in ’49, though.... I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in ’38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though, and I didn’t examine closely enough what was going on.... I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was." Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 52; see also The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait (2009), p. 114.
- ^ Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 180.
- ^ "The Poison in Our System" (excerpt from the Atlantic Monthly) by Carl Joachim Friedrich. Note: Dunaway misses the significance of military propagandist Carl Joachim Friedrich, when he mistakenly refers to him as "Karl Frederick," an error other writers who relied on Dunaway repeated.
- ^ Friedrich's review concluded: "The three records sell for one dollar and you are asked to ‘play them in your home, play them in your union hall, take them back to your people.’ Probably some of these songs fall under the criminal provisions of the Selective Service Act, and to that extent it is a matter for the Attorney-General. But you never can handle situations of this kind democratically by mere suppression. Unless civic groups and individuals will make a determined effort to counteract such appeals by equally effective methods, democratic morale will decline." Upon US entry into the war in 1942, Friedrich became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council for Democracy, charged with combatting isolationism, and had his article on the Almanacs reprinted as one of several pamphlets which he sent to radio network executives.
- ^ Although the Almanacs were accused -- both at the time and in subsequent histories -- of reversing their attitudes in response to the Communist Party's new party line, "Seeger has pointed out that virtually all progressives reversed course and supported the war. He insists that no one, Communist Party or otherwise, told the Almanacs to change their songs. (Seeger interview with [Richard A.] Reuss 4/9/68)" quoted in William G. Roy, "Who Shall Not Be Moved? Folk Music, Community and Race in the American The Communist Party and the Highlander School," ff p. 16.
- ^ Blanche Wiessen Cook, Eisenhower Declassified (Doubleday, 1981), page 122. "The Council was a limited affair," Cook writes, "...that served mostly to highlight Jackson's talents as a propagandist."
- ^ See: "Singers on New Morale Show Also Warbled for Communists," New York World Telegram, February 17, 1942
- ^ People's Songs Inc. People's Songs Newsletter No 1. February 1946. Old Town School of Folk Music Resource center collection.
- ^ American Masters: "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song - KQED Broadcast 2-27-08.
- ^ a b "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" - PBS American Masters, 2008-02-27
- ^ , p. 52.
- ^ Pete Seeger to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, August 18, 1955. Quoted, along with some other exchanges from that hearing, in Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 53.
- ^ United States v. Seeger, 303 F. 2d 478 (2nd Circuit 1962)
- ^ Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 53.
- ^ Dillon, Raquel Maria. "School board offers apology to singer Pete Seeger". Sign On San Diego. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/feb/11/pete-seeger-apology-021109/?zIndex=51324. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
- ^ Beans in My Ears.
- ^ Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode 1, September 10, 1967.
- ^ How "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" Finally Got on Network Television in 1968.
- ^ Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode 24, February 25, 1968.
- ^ Brown, Jim (Director) (2005). The Power of Song (DVD). Genius Products LLC. ISBN 1-59445-156-7.
- ^ Featured in the PBS documentary, a more specific cite is needed.
- ^ Howard, Alan (2007). The Don McLean Story: Killing Us Softly With His Songs. Lulu Press Inc.. p. 420. ISBN 978-1-4303-0682-5.
- ^ See the Annual Clearwater Festival website.
- ^ BBC Wales.
- ^ Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, by David Bianculli, Touchstone, 2009.
- ^ Fellow Newport Board member Bruce Jackson writes, "Pete Seeger, more than any of the other board members, had a personal connection with Bob Dylan: it was he who [in 1962] had convinced the great Columbia A and R man John Hammond, famous for his work with jazz and blues musicians, to produce Dylan's eponymous first album, Bob Dylan. If anyone was responsible for Bob Dylan’s presence on the Newport Stage [in 1965], it was Pete Seeger". See Bruce Jackson, The Story Is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 148.
- ^ John Szwed, Alan Lomax, 'The Man Who Recorded the World (Viking, 2010), p. 354. The Butterfield Blues Band, a new, integrated Chicago-based electric band, was the closer in an afternoon blues workshop entitled "Blues: Origins and Offshoots", hosted by Lomax, that had included African-American blues greats Willie Dixon, Son House, Memphis Slim, and a prison work group from Texas, along with bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Lomax, upset that Butterfield's group had been shoehorned into his workshop, reportedly complained aloud about how long they took to set up their electrical equipment and introduced them with the words, "Now, let's find out if these guys can play at all." This infuriated Grossman (who was angling to manage the new group), and he responded by attacking Lomax physically. Michael Bloomfield stated, "Alan Lomax, the great folklorist and musicologist, gave us some kind of introduction that I didn’t even hear, but Albert found it offensive. And Albert went upside his head. The next thing we knew, right in the middle of our show, Lomax and Grossman were kicking ass on the floor in the middle of thousands of people at the Newport Folk Festival. Tearing each other's clothes off. We had to pull 'em apart. We figured 'Albert, man, now there's a manager!'" quoted in Jan Mark Wolkin, Bill Keenom, and Carlos Santana's, Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues (San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books), p. 102. See also Ronald D. Cohen's introduction to "Part III, The Folk Revival (1960s)" in Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, Ronald D. Cohen, ed. (London: Routledege), p. 192.
- ^ Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote: "Backstage, Peter Seeger and the great ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax attempted to cut the band’s power cables with an axe." See Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic, the Story of the Basement Tapes [1998], republished in paperback as The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (New York: Holt, 2001), p. 12. Marcus's apocryphal story was elaborated by Maria Muldaur and Paul Nelson in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home (2005).
- ^ David Kupfer, Longtime Passing: An interview with Pete Seeger, Whole Earth magazine, Spring 2001. Accessed online October 16, 2007.
- ^ a b David King Dunaway (2008), p. 103.
- ^ David T. Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York : Pantheon Books, 1993 ISBN 0-679-40591-7).
- ^ Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography, edited by Peter Blood (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Sing Out Publication, 1993, 1997), page 22.
- ^ a b c Daniel J. Wakin, "This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin Over a Decade Ago", New York Times, September 1, 2007. Accessed October 16, 2007.
- ^ a b "The Old Left". New York Times Magazine. 1995-01-22. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D7123BF931A15752C0A963958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/S/Seeger,%20Pete. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
- ^ Boaz, David (April 14, 2006). "Stalin's songbird". London: Guardian News and Media Limited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/14/post33?commentpage=1. Retrieved 2009-03-27.
- ^ Boaz's article is reprinted in his book, The Politics of Freedom (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 2008) pp. 283-84
- ^ Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 422.
- ^ Seeger turns on Uncle Joe, NewStatesMan, 27/9/2007.
- ^ Mid-Hudson Civic Center, accessed 2009-05-15.[dead link]
- ^ Alan Chartock, "New York has a chance to honor an American hero," Legislative Gazette, April 24, 2009, found at Legislative Gazette website. Accessed April 29, 2009.
- ^ Rolling Stone, April 13, 1972.
- ^ When Will They Ever Learn?, accessed 2009-05-15.
- ^ a b We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger, Democracy Now!, September 4, 2006. Accessed December 6, 2008. (Interview from 2004).
- ^ Lyrics to "Take It From Dr. King".
- ^ A Beliefnet interview with the great folk singer on God, religion, and whether music can change the world., accessed 2009-05-15.
- ^ [1]
References[link]
- 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. Audio Version
- 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.
- Winkler, Allan M. (2009). To everything there is a season: Pete Seeger and the power of song. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press.
- Zollo, Paul (January 7, 2005). "Pete Seeger Reflects On His Legendary Songs". GRAMMY Magazine. http://www.grammy.com/features/2005/0107_seeger.aspx.
Further reading[link]
- 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[link]
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This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (November 2010) |
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pete Seeger |
- 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
- The short film "To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
- The short film "Music from Oil Drums (1956)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
- 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).
- Works by or about Pete Seeger in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Matthews, Scott (2008-08-06). "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival". Southern Spaces. http://southernspaces.org/2008/john-cohen-eastern-kentucky-documentary-expression-and-image-roscoe-halcomb-during-folk-revival.
- Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations in Australia
- Pete Seeger 90th birthday cake cutting at the Beacon Sloop Club.
- Pete Seeger discography at Discogs
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Seeger, Pete |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American politician |
| Date of birth | May 3, 1919 |
| Place of birth | Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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"Springsteen" redirects here. For other uses, see Springsteen (disambiguation).
| Bruce Springsteen | |
|---|---|
 Springsteen in 2009; Working on a Dream Tour in Valladolid, Spain |
|
| Background information | |
| Also known as | The Boss, Bad Scooter |
| Born | (1949-09-23) September 23, 1949 (age 62) Long Branch, New Jersey, United States |
| Genres | Rock, folk rock, heartland rock, hard rock, roots rock |
| Occupations | Musician, Songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, harmonica, bass guitar, piano, percussion, banjo, drums, keyboards |
| Years active | 1969–present |
| Labels | Columbia |
| Associated acts | The E Street Band, Steel Mill, Miami Horns, The Sessions Band |
| Website | www.brucespringsteen.net |
| Notable instruments | |
| Fender Telecaster Takamine Guitars Gibson J-45 Hohner Marine Band Harmonica Gibson J-200 Gibson ES-335 Gibson Hummingbird |
|
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.[1]
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide[2] and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone.[3] His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry.[4] His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
Raised a Roman Catholic,[5] Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with the nuns and rejected the strictures imposed upon him, even though some of his later music reflects a Catholic ethos and included a few rock-influenced, traditional Irish-Catholic hymns.[6] Recently in Paris (2012) before the launch of his latest album, Wrecking Ball, he explained that it was his Catholic upbringing rather than political ideology that most influenced his music. He noted in the interview that his faith had given him a "very active spiritual life," although he joked that this "made it very difficult sexually." He added: "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic."[7]
In ninth grade, he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there, either. Old teachers have said he was a "loner, who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar." He completed high school, but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony.[8] He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.[6]
Career history[link]
1962–1972: Early years[link]
Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, his mother bought him his first guitar for $18; later, she took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60 Kent guitar, as he later memorialized in his song "The Wish".
In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big.[9]
Called for induction when he was 18, Springsteen failed his physical examination and did not serve in Vietnam. In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984, he said, "When I got on the bus to go take my physical, I thought one thing: I ain't goin'." He had suffered a concussion in a motorcycle accident when he was 17, and this together with his "crazy" behaviour at induction and not taking the tests, was enough to get him a 4F.[10]
In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey. Springsteen acquired the nickname "The Boss" during this period as when he played club gigs with a band he took on the task of collecting the band's nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates.[11] Springsteen is not fond of this nickname, due to his dislike of bosses,[12] but seems to have since given it a tacit acceptance. Previously he had the nickname "Doctor".[13] From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with Steel Mill, which also featured Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit, and also briefly in California. In January 1970 well-known San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Elwood gave Springsteen credibility in his glowing assessment of Steel Mill: "I have never been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent." Elwood went on to praise their "cohesive musicality" and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as "a most impressive composer." During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Canton, Massachusetts, Richmond, Virginia, Asbury Park and along the Jersey Shore, quickly gathering a cult following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style: Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom (early–mid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971–mid 1972). With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed, with occasional temporary additions such as horn sections, "The Zoomettes" (a group of female backing vocalists for "Dr. Zoom") and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, R&B, jazz, church music, early rock 'n' roll, and soul. His prolific songwriting ability, with "More words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums", as his future record label would describe it in early publicity campaigns, brought his skill to the attention of several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appel's pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.
Even after Springsteen gained international acclaim, his New Jersey roots showed through in his music, and he often praised "the great state of New Jersey" in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York venues. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.
1972–1974: Initial struggle for success[link]
Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jersey–based colleagues into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band (although it would not be formally named as such for several more years). His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite,[14] though sales were slow. Because of Springsteen's lyrical poeticism and folk rock–rooted music exemplified on tracks like "Blinded by the Light", (which would later be a hit for Manfred Mann and go to No. 1, making it the only time Springsteen had a No. 1 single as a songwriter), and "For You", as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. "He sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by 'Like a Rolling Stone,'" wrote Crawdaddy magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteen's first interview/profile, in March 1973. Crawdaddy discovered Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion.[15] (Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.)[16] Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in Creem in 1975 that when Springsteen's first album was released "... many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrison's."[17] The track "Spirit in the Night" especially showed Morrison's influence, while "Lost in the Flood" was the first of many portraits of Vietnam veterans and "Growin' Up", his first take on the recurring theme of adolescence.
In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was released, again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteen's songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe and the lyrics often romanticized teenage street life. "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Incident on 57th Street" would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" continues to rank among Springsteen's most beloved concert numbers.
In the May 22, 1974, issue of Boston's The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote after seeing a performance at the Harvard Square Theater, "I saw rock and roll's future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."[18] Landau subsequently became Springsteen's manager and producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of "Born to Run" to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the album's release. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song "Born To Run". During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard "sounds in [his] head" that he could not explain to the others in the studio. It was during these recording sessions that "Miami" Steve Van Zandt would stumble into the studio just in time to help Springsteen organize the horn section on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" (it is his only written contribution to the album), and eventually led to his joining the E Street Band.[citation needed] Van Zandt had been a long-time friend of Springsteen, as well as a collaborator on earlier musical projects, and understood where he was coming from, which helped him to translate some of the sounds Springsteen was hearing. Still, by the end of the grueling recording sessions, Springsteen was not satisfied, and, upon first hearing the finished album, threw the record into the alley and told Jon Landau he would rather just cut the album live at The Bottom Line, a place he often played.[19]
1975–1983: Breakthrough[link]
On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New York's Bottom Line club. The engagement attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling Stone magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.[20]) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and while there were no hit singles, "Born to Run" (Billboard No. 23), "Thunder Road", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" (Billboard No. 83), and "Jungleland" all received massive album-oriented rock airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations. The songwriting and recording was more disciplined than before, while still maintaining an epic feel. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, Born to Run is considered by some fans to be among the best rock and roll albums of all time and Springsteen's finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27 of that year. So great did the wave of publicity become that Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a concert appearance in London.
A legal battle with former manager Mike Appel kept Springsteen out of the studio for nearly a year, during which time he kept the E Street Band together through extensive touring across the U.S. Despite the optimistic fervor with which he often performed, his new songs had taken a more somber tone than much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977, Springsteen returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was a turning point in Springsteen's career. Gone were the raw, rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first two albums; now the songs were leaner and more carefully drawn and began to reflect Springsteen's growing intellectual and political awareness. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity and length of its shows.[citation needed]
By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands. Manfred Mann's Earth Band had achieved a U.S. No. 1 pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of Greetings' "Blinded by the Light" in early 1977. Patti Smith reached No. 13 with her take on Springsteen's unreleased "Because the Night" (with revised lyrics by Smith) in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit No. 2 in 1979 with Springsteen's also unreleased "Fire".
In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, playing an abbreviated set while premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summer's No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and footage of Springsteen's fabled live act, as well as Springsteen's first tentative dip into political involvement.
Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song double album The River in 1980, which included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads, and finally yielded his first hit Top Ten single as a performer, "Hungry Heart". This album marked a shift in Springsteen's music toward a pop-rock sound that was all but missing from any of his earlier work.[citation needed]This is apparent in the stylistic adoption of certain eighties pop-rock hallmarks like the reverberating-tenor drums, very basic percussion/guitar and repetitive lyrics apparent in many of the tracks. The title song pointed to Springsteen's intellectual direction, while a couple of the lesser-known tracks presaged his musical direction. The album sold well, becoming his first topper on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring Springsteen's first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.
The River was followed in 1982 by the stark solo acoustic Nebraska. Recording sessions had been held to expand on a demo tape Springsteen had made at his home on a simple, low-tech four-track tape deck. However during the recording process Springsteen and producer Landau realized the songs worked better as solo acoustic numbers than full band renditions and the original demo tape was released as the album. Although the recordings of the E Street Band were shelved, other songs from these sessions would later be released, including "Born in the U.S.A." and "Glory Days". According to the Marsh biographies, Springsteen was in a depressed state when he wrote this material, and the result is a brutal depiction of American life. While Nebraska did not sell as well as Springsteen's two previous albums, it garnered widespread critical praise (including being named "Album of the Year" by Rolling Stone magazine's critics) and influenced later significant works by other major artists, including U2's album The Joshua Tree. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers. Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraska's release.
1984–1991: Commercial and popular phenomenon[link]
Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, with seven singles hitting the Top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and bandmates. The lyrics in the verses were entirely unambiguous when listened to, but the anthemic music and the title of the song made it hard for many, from politicians to the common person, to get the lyrics—except those in the chorus, which could be read many ways.[21] The song was widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, and in connection with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable folklore. Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered by the Chrysler Corporation to use the song in a car commercial. (In later years, to eliminate the bombast and make the song's original meaning more explicitly clear, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only by acoustic guitar. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.) "Dancing in the Dark" was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard music charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actress's career. The song "Cover Me" was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer, but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summer's work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, "Protection". Videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma and John Sayles. Springsteen was featured on the "We Are the World" song and album in 1985. His live single "Trapped" from that album received moderate airplay on U.S. Top 40 stations as well as reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart.[22]
During the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips, whom he would marry in 1985.
The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteen's visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience demographic he would ever reach (aided by the release of Arthur Baker's dance mixes of three of the singles). Live/1975–85, a five-record box set (also on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and became the first box set to debut at No. 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U.S. Live/1975–85 summed up Springsteen's career to that point and displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers and back; the communal sense of purpose between artist and audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteen's difficult relationship with his father; and the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long coda to "Racing in the Street". Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the album's song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording and trading among fans.
During the 1980s, several Springsteen fanzines were launched, including Backstreets magazine, which started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteen's management and official website.
After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love album (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band. It presaged the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips and described some of his unhappinesses in the relationship. Reflecting the challenges of love in "Brilliant Disguise", Springsteen sang:
| “ | I heard somebody call your name, from underneath our willow. I saw something tucked in shame, underneath your pillow. Well I've tried so hard baby, but I just can't see. What a woman like you is doing with me. | ” |
The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements. During the European leg in 1988, Springsteen's relationship with backup singer Patti Scialfa became public and Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1988.[23] Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! tour for Amnesty International. In late 1989 he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California, marrying in 1991.
1992–2001: Artistic and commercial ups and downs[link]
In 1992, after risking fan accusations of "going Hollywood" by moving to Los Angeles (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch and Lucky Town were even more introspective than any of his previous work and displayed a newly revealed confidence. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself.
An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received and further cemented fan dissatisfaction. Springsteen seemed to realize this a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech:
| “ | I've gotta thank him because – what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs – and I tried it in the early '90s and it didn't work; the public didn't like it.[24] | ” |
A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in 1994 for his song "Streets of Philadelphia", which appeared the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia. The song, along with the film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS.[citation needed] The music video for the song shows Springsteen's actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track.[citation needed] This technique was developed on the "Brilliant Disguise" video.
In 1995, after temporarily re-organizing the E Street Band for a few new songs recorded for his first Greatest Hits album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary Blood Brothers), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour that followed successfully featured many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet and not to clap during the performances.
Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family.[25] In 1998, Springsteen released the sprawling, four-disc box set of out-takes, Tracks. Subsequently, Springsteen would acknowledge that the 1990s were a "lost period" for him: "I didn't do a lot of work. Some people would say I didn't do my best work."[26]
Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by Bono of U2, a favor he returned in 2005.
In 1999, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together again and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year. Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey and a ten-night, sold-out engagement at New York City's Madison Square Garden which ended the tour. The final two shows were recorded for an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City. A new song, "American Skin (41 Shots)", about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo which was played at these shows proved controversial.
In November 2000, Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site. Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. In February 2001, Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar. A WIPO panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.[27][28]
On Labor Day 2001 Springsteen played at Donovan's Reef in Sea Bright, NJ, surprising a local cover band named Brian Kirk and the Jerks and performed "Rosalita" with them showing his support and love.
2002–2007: Return to success[link]
File:RisingTourGiantsStadiumLot.jpg
The scene outside the Giants Stadium parking lot for banner-marked, record-setting, 10-night stand of The Rising Tour during July 2003.
In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising, produced by Brendan O'Brien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks, was a critical and popular success. (Many of the songs were influenced by phone conversations Springsteen had with family members of victims of the attacks who in their obituaries had mentioned how his music touched their lives.) The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S. and Europe to promote the album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come close.[29] During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented online communities had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came to a final conclusion with three nights in Shea Stadium, highlighted by renewed controversy over "American Skin" and a guest appearance by Bob Dylan.
During the early 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. These shows were explicitly intended for the devoted fans, featuring numbers such as the E Street Shuffle outtake "Thundercrack", a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows. The song "My City of Ruins" was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. Looking for an appropriate song for a post-Sept. 11 benefit concert honoring New York City, he selected "My City of Ruins", which was immediately recognized as an emotional highlight of the concert, with its gospel themes and its heartfelt exhortations to "Rise up!" The song became associated with post-9/11 New York, and he chose it to close The Rising album and as an encore on the subsequent tour.
At the Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The Clash's "London Calling" along with Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt and No Doubt's bassist, Tony Kanal, in tribute to Joe Strummer; Springsteen and the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River and the triple Sandinista!. In 2004, Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in the "Vote for Change" tour, along with John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Bright Eyes, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne, and other musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit the liberalism political organization group America Coming Together and to encourage people to register and vote. A finale was held in Washington, D.C., bringing many of the artists together. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close. While in past years Springsteen had played benefits for causes in which he believed – against nuclear energy, for Vietnam veterans, Amnesty International, and the Christic Institute – he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of Walter Mondale to attract an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan "Born in the U.S.A." flap). This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteen's "No Surrender" became the main campaign theme song for John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential campaign; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.
Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, and was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation. Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released.[30] The title track concerns an ordinary soldier's feelings and fears during the Iraq War. Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteen's anti-corporate politics. The album entered the album charts at No. 1 in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland). Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the album's release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe) tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp, ukulele, banjo, electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and percussion were also used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of "Reason to Believe", "The Promised Land", and Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.
In November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called E Street Radio. This channel featured commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks, interviews, and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.
In April 2006, Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and The Miami Horns from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks. The Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed The Seeger Sessions Band (and later shortened to The Sessions Band). Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews,[31] but newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance.[32][33][34] By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, containing selections from three nights of November 2006 shows at The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June.
Springsteen's next album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 new Springsteen songs plus "Long Walk Home", performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track (the first included on a Springsteen studio release), "Terry's Song", a tribute to Springsteen's long-time assistant Terry Magovern, who died on July 30, 2007.[35] The first single, "Radio Nowhere", was made available for a free download on August 28. On October 7, Magic debuted at No. 1 in Ireland and the UK. Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at No. 57, and Live in Dublin almost cracked the top 20 in Norway again. Sirius Satellite Radio also restarted E Street Radio on Channel 10 on September 27, 2007, in anticipation of Magic.[36] Radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications was alleged to have sent an edict to its classic rock stations to not play any songs from the new album, while continuing to play older Springsteen material. However, Clear Channel Adult Alternative (or "AAA") station KBCO did play tracks from the album, undermining the allegations of a corporate blackout.[37] The Springsteen and E Street Band Magic Tour began at the Hartford Civic Center with the album's release and continued through North America and Europe. Springsteen and the band performed live[38] on NBC's Today Show in advance of the opener. Longtime E Street Band organist Danny Federici left the tour in November 2007 to pursue treatment for melanoma[39] from which he would die in 2008.[40]
2008–present: Recent activities[link]
Springsteen at a rally for the presidential candidate Barack Obama
Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008
Springsteen supported Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, announcing his endorsement in April 2008[41] and going on to appear at several Obama rallies as well as performing several solo acoustic performances in support of Obama's campaign throughout 2008,[42] culminating with a November 2 rally where he debuted "Working On A Dream" in a duet with Scialfa.[43] At an Ohio rally, Springsteen discussed the importance of "truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of every American to have a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, and a life filled with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of home...But today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless and morally-adrift administration."[44]
Following Obama's electoral victory on November 4, Springsteen's song "The Rising" was the first song played over the loudspeakers after Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. Springsteen was the musical opener for the Obama Inaugural Celebration on January 18, 2009 which was attended by over 400,000.[45] He performed "The Rising" with an all-female choir. Later he performed Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" with Pete Seeger.
On June 18, 2008, Springsteen appeared live from Europe at the Tim Russert tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to play one of Russert's favorite songs, "Thunder Road". Springsteen dedicated the song to Russert, who was "one of Springsteen's biggest fans."[citation needed]
On January 11, 2009, Springsteen won the Golden Globe Award for Best Song for "The Wrestler", from the Mickey Rourke film by the same name.[46] After receiving a heartfelt letter from Mickey Rourke, Springsteen supplied the song for the film for free.[47]
Springsteen performed at the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009,[48] agreeing to do it after many previous offers.[49] A few days before the game, Springsteen gave a rare press conference, where he promised a "twelve-minute party."[50][51] His 12:45 set, with the E Street Band and the Miami Horns, included abbreviated renditions of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"", "Born to Run", "Working on a Dream", and "Glory Days", the latter complete with football references. The set of appearances and promotional activities led Springsteen to say, "This has probably been the busiest month of my life."[52]
Springsteen's Working on a Dream album was released in late January 2009[53] and the supporting Working on a Dream Tour ran from April 2009 until November 2009. The tour featured few songs from the new album, with instead set lists dominated by classics and selections reflecting the ongoing late-2000s recession.[54] The tour also featured Springsteen playing songs requested by audience members holding up signs as on the final stages of the Magic Tour.[54] Drummer Max Weinberg was replaced for some shows by his 18-year-old son Jay Weinberg, so that the former could serve his role as bandleader on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.[54] During this tour, Springsteen and the band made their first real foray in the world of music festivals, headlining nights at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, Festival des Vieilles Charrues in France, the Bonnaroo Music Festival in the United States and the Glastonbury Festival in the UK[55] and Hard Rock Calling in the UK.[56] Several shows on the tour featured full album presentations of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Born in the U.S.A.[57] The band performed a stretch of five final shows at his homestate Giants Stadium, opening with a new song highlighting the historic stadium, and his Jersey roots, named "Wrecking Ball".[58] The tour ended as scheduled in Buffalo, NY in November 2009 amid speculation that it was the last performance ever by the E Street Band, but during the show Springsteen said it was goodbye “for a little while.”[59] A DVD from the Working on a Dream Tour entitled London Calling: Live in Hyde Park was released in 2010.
In addition to his own touring, Springsteen made a number of appearances at tribute and benefit concerts during 2009, including The Clearwater Concert, a celebration of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary benefit concert,[60] a benefit for the advocacy group Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall.[61] On January 22, 2010, he joined many well-known artists to perform on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief,[62] organized by George Clooney to raise money to help the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
File:American Land ESB Fireworks Giants 100309.jpg
Fireworks go off at the conclusion of the "E! Street! Band!" exhortation during the final shows at Giants Stadium.
In 2009, Springsteen performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.[63]
Springsteen was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award to figures from the world of arts for their contribution to American culture, in December 2009.[64] President Obama gave a speech in which he talked about how Springsteen has incorporated the life of regular Americans in his expansive pallette of songs and how his concerts are beyond the typical rock-and-roll concerts, how, apart from being high-energy concerts, they are "communions". He ended the remark "while I am the president, he is The Boss". Tributes were paid by several well-known celebrities including Jon Stewart (who described Springsteen's "unprecedented combination of lyrical eloquence, musical mastery and sheer unbridled, unadulterated joy"). A musical tribute featured John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, and Jennifer Nettles, Melissa Etheridge, Eddie Vedder, and Sting.
The 2000s ended with Springsteen being named one of eight Artists of the Decade by Rolling Stone magazine[65] and with Springsteen's tours ranking him fourth among artists in total concert grosses for the decade.[66]
In September 2010, a documentary about the making of his 1978 album Darkness on The Edge of Town was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film, The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, was included in a box set reissue of the album, entitled The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story, released in November 2010. Also airing on HBO, the documentary explored Springsteen's making of the acclaimed album, and his role in the production and development of the tracks.
Springsteen has finished his next studio album with Ron Aniello,[67] who also co-produced the 2007 album Play It As It Lays, by Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa. Ron Aniello also produced "Children's Song" early in 2011, a duet with Springsteen and Scialfa, which was done for a charity project.
Clarence Clemons, the E Street Band's saxophonist since 1972, died on June 18, 2011, of complications from a stroke. “Clarence lived a wonderful life,” Springsteen said in a statement. “He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage.”[68]
Springsteen's 17th studio album, Wrecking Ball, was released on March 6, 2012. On January 13, 2012, Hollywood Reporter released an article describing the sound of the new album. According to the article, the album is Springsteen at his angriest yet and addresses economic justice quite a bit. The article describes the album musically as being very rock-and-roll with unexpected textures, loops, electronic percussion and a variety of influences.[69] The album consists of eleven tracks plus two bonus tracks. Three songs previously only available as live versions, "Wrecking Ball", "Land of Hope and Dreams," and "American Land," appear on the album.[70] The album's first single, "We Take Care of Our Own", was released on January 19, 2012.
On January 24, 2012, Springsteen's official web site announced that the E Street Band will commence a world tour called the Wrecking Ball Tour on March 18, 2012, in Atlanta. The tour will run through at least July 31, 2012, and will consist of at least two legs featuring 51 dates, although the headline "First US Leg of 2012 World Tour" may imply that the tour will continue into autumn 2012 or beyond.[71] As tickets for the first U.S. dates went on sale, many fans were unable to obtain tickets, much like for the 2009 Working on a Dream Tour, allegedly due to a heavy volume of ticket scalpers. Shows sold out within minutes and many tickets appeared, at much higher prices, on resale websites such as StubHub less than an hour after the onsale time. Ticketmaster said web traffic was 2.5 times the highest level of the past year during the online sales and suggested that scalpers played a big role. U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell has called for stronger government oversight of online box offices. Pascrell introduced the BOSS ACT in 2009 to increase transparency in the ticket industry. Pascrell said he would reintroduce the bill to Congress.[72][73]
"Rocky Ground" has been announced as the second single from Wrecking Ball and will be released exclusively as part of Record Store Day on April 21, 2012.
Wrecking Ball became Springsteen's tenth No. 1 album in the United States tying him with Elvis Presley for third most No. 1 albums of all-time. Only The Beatles (19) and Jay-Z (12) have more No. 1 albums. Wrecking Ball knocked out Adele's Grammy winning album, 21 after 23 nonconsecutive weeks at #1.[74]
On March 15, 2012, Springsteen was the keynote speaker at the annual SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas.
Musical style[link]
Bruce Springsteen draws on many musical influences from the reservoir of traditional American popular music, folk, blues and country. From the beginning, rock and roll has been the dominant influence. On his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey, the folk-influence is clear. An example of the influence of this music genre to Springsteen's music is his song "This Hard Land" which demonstrates a clear influence of the style of Woody Guthrie.[citation needed]
He expanded the range of his musical compositions on his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.[citation needed] Elements of Latin American music, jazz, soul, and funk influences can be heard; the song "New York City Serenade" is even reminiscent of the music of George Gershwin. These two records prominently featured pianist David Sancious, who left the band shortly into the recording of Springsteen's third album, Born To Run. This album, however, also emphasized the piano, the responsibility now of Roy Bittan.
Earlier in his career, Springsteen has focused more on the rock elements of his music. He initially compressed the sound and developed Darkness On The Edge Of Town just as straightforward as concise musical idiom, for the simple riffs, hard rock guitar solos and clearly recognizable song structures are dominant. He also drew upon a few influences from punk rock on the album, as can be heard on the heavy rhythm following the bridge solo on 'Candy's Room'.[citation needed] His music has been categorized as heartland rock, a style typified by Springsteen, John Fogerty, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and John Mellencamp. This music has a lyrical reference to the U.S. everyday and the music is kept rather simple and straightforward. This development culminated with Springsteen's hit album Born in the U.S.A., the title song of which has a constantly repeating, fanfare-like keyboard riff and a pounding drum beat. These sounds fit with Springsteen's voice: it cries to the listener the unsentimental story of a disenchanted angry figure. Even songs that can be argued to be album tracks proved to be singles that enjoyed some chart success, such as "My Hometown" and "I'm on Fire", in which the drum line is formed from subtle hi-hat and rim-clicks-shock (shock at the edge of the snare drum) accompanied by synthesizer and Springsteen's soft guitar line. The album, along with some previous records such as "Cadillac Ranch" showed clear rockabilly influences as is evident from his guitar solos, in-fills and vocal styles on these. Another clear influence of early rock n roll on Springsteen's music is evident on the song "Light of Day".
In recent years, Springsteen has changed his music further.[citation needed] There are more folk elements up to the gospel to be heard. His last solo album, Devils and Dust, drew rave reviews not only for Springsteen's complex songwriting, but also for his expressive and sensitive singing.
On the album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions Springsteen performs folk classics with a folk band, rather than his usual E Street Band. On his ensuing tour he also interpreted some of his own rock songs in a folk style.[citation needed]
The 2007 album Magic was a reflection on the old stadium rock attitude and with its lush arrangements was almost designed to be performed at large stadiums, which also succeeded on the corresponding tour.[citation needed]
Lyrical themes[link]
| "I spent most of my life as a musician measuring the distance between the American dream and American reality" |
| —Bruce Springsteen[75][C] |
Often described as cinematographic in their scope, Springsteen's lyrics frequently explore highly personal themes such as individual commitment, dissatisfaction and dismay with life in a context of every day situations.[76]
It has been recognized that there was a shift in his lyrical approach starting with the album Darkness on the Edge of Town, in which he focused on the emotional struggles of working class life.[77][78]
Politics and activism[link]
Springsteen's music has often contained political themes reflecting his responses to the events occurring around him. A number of these songs contributed to Springsteen’s stardom; many songs cannot be explained without including Springsteen’s political views. The following are a chronological order of the political and activist causes Springsteen has publicly campaigned for:
September 19–23, 1979: Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden.
August 20, 1981: A Night For The Vietnam Veterans for the Vietnam Veterans’ Association as an appeal to help “heal the physical and psychological wounds inflicted on the soldiers who fought the nation’s most unpopular war”.[79][80]
1984: Turned down several million dollars offered by the Chrysler Corporation to use the song "Born in the U.S.A." in a car commercial.
1985: Featured on the "We Are the World" song and album
1988: Headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! tour for Amnesty International.
2004: "No Surrender" became the main campaign theme song for John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential campaign; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.
April 2008: Springsteen announced his endorsement supporting Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.[81] Throughout the year, he showed his support by attending several rallies and performing in support of Obama’s campaign.
2009: Springsteen contributed to the soundtrack of The People Speak by playing guitar and harmonica.
January 2009: Springsteen was the musical opener for the Obama Inaugural Celebration.
May 3, 2009: Springsteen made an appearance at The Clearwater Concert.
October 29 & 30, 2009: Springsteen made an appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary benefit concert.[82]
January 22, 2010: Springsteen made an appearance at Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief.[83]
Springsteen has additionally been associated with various local food banks, particularly with the New Jersey Food bank for many years. During concerts, he usually breaks the routine to announce his support and later matches the total collection during the concert with his own money. During his Charlotte, North Carolina concert on November 3, 2009, he started with a $10,000 donation for the local food bank to start the collections process – which he again matched later.
He has made substantial financial contributions to various workers' unions both in America and in Europe.
Springsteen is a strong supporter of gay rights, particularly marriage equality. In 2009, he urged lawmakers to legalize gay marriage, later posting on his website "I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same-sex couples".[84]
Personal life[link]
Springsteen and Julianne Phillips (born May 6, 1960) were married from May 13, 1985 to May 1988, when they separated.[85] The two were opposites in background and his traveling took its toll on their relationship. The final blow came when Springsteen began an affair with Patti Scialfa (born July 29, 1953), whom he had dated briefly in 1984 shortly after she joined the band. Phillips and Springsteen separated in the spring of 1988 without making an announcement to the press, and on August 30, 1988, Julianne filed for divorce. The Springsteen/Phillips divorce was finalized on March 1, 1989.
After the separation in 1988, Springsteen began living with Scialfa. Springsteen received press criticism for the hastiness in which he and Scialfa took up their relationship. In a 1995 interview with The Advocate, Springsteen spoke about the negative publicity the couple subsequently received. "It's a strange society that assumes it has the right to tell people whom they should love and whom they shouldn't. But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, 'Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but that's life.'" He also noted that, "I went through a divorce, and it was really difficult and painful and I was very frightened about getting married again. So part of me said, 'Hey, what does it matter?' But it does matter. It's very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly- which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals- is a part of your place in society and in some way part of society's acceptance of you...Patti and I both found that it did mean something."[86]
On July 25, 1990 Scialfa gave birth to the couple's first child, Evan James Springsteen. On June 8, 1991 Springsteen and Scialfa married at their Beverly Hills home. Their second child, Jessica Rae Springsteen, was born on December 30, 1991; and their third child, Samuel Ryan Springsteen, was born on January 5, 1994.[87] The family owns and lives on a horse farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey. They also own homes in Wellington, Florida, a wealthy horse community near West Palm Beach, Los Angeles and Rumson, New Jersey. Their eldest son, Evan, attends Boston College. Their daughter Jessica is a nationally ranked champion equestrian,[88] and attends Duke University.
Since 1991, Springsteen has led a relatively quiet life for a well-known popular performer and artist.[89] He moved from Los Angeles to New Jersey in the early 1990s specifically to raise a family in a non-paparazzi environment.[89] It has been reported that the press conference regarding the 2009 Super Bowl XLIII half-time show was his first press conference for more than 25 years.[90] However, he has appeared in a few radio interviews, most notably on NPR and BBC.[citation needed] 60 Minutes aired his last extensive interview on TV[91] before his tour to support his album, Magic.
Bands[link]
Bruce Springsteen has been a member of, or has been backed by, several bands during his career, most notably The E Street Band.
His earliest known band is The Castiles.
Prior to signing his first record deal in 1972, Springsteen was a member of several bands including Steel Mill. In October 1972 he formed a new band for the recording of his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., which became known as The E Street Band, although the name was not officially introduced until September 1974.[92][93] The E Street Band performed on all of Springsteen's recorded works from his debut until 1982's Nebraska, a solo album on which Springsteen himself played all the instruments.[citation needed] The full band returned for the next album Born in the USA, but there then followed a period from 1988 to 1999 in which albums were recorded with session musicians. The E Street Band were briefly reunited in 1995 for new contributions to the Greatest Hits compilation, and on a more permanent basis from 1999, since which time they have recorded 3 albums together (The Rising, Magic and Working on a Dream) and performed a number of high profile tours.
The 2005 album Devils & Dust was largely a solo recording, with some contribution from session musicians and the 2006 folk rock We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions album was recorded and toured with another band, known as The Sessions Band. In the summer of 2012, Raymond Bernero will join Bruce on the stage at Wrigely Field in Chicago.
Earlier Bands:[94] The Castiles, Earth, Child, Steel Mill, Sundance Blues Band, Dr Zoom and the Sonic Boom, Bruce Springsteen Band.
E Street Band[link]
Main article: E Street Band
Current members:
- Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, harmonica, piano
- Patti Scialfa – backing and duet vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion
- Garry Tallent – bass guitar, tuba
- Roy Bittan – piano, keyboards
- Max Weinberg – drums, percussion
- Steven Van Zandt – lead and rhythm guitar,[95][96] backing vocals, mandolin
- Nils Lofgren – lead and rhythm guitar, pedal steel guitar, backing vocals
With:
- Soozie Tyrell – violin, acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocals [A]
- Charles Giordano – organ, accordion, glockenspiel[B]
Former members:
- 1973–2011 Clarence Clemons (deceased) – tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, backing vocals, percussion
- 1973–2008 Danny Federici (deceased) – organ, accordion, backing vocals
Film[link]
Music used in films[link]
Springsteen's music has been used in many films and he has also written and performed several works specifically for films, examples include Philadelphia, Dead Man Walking, Jerry Maguire, and The Wrestler.
| Film | Year of film release | Song(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dead End Street | 1982 | "Point Blank", "Hungry Heart" and "Jungleland" | First use of Springsteen's music in film |
| Risky Business | 1983 | Hungry Heart | |
| Baby, It's You | 1983 | "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City", "The E Street Shuffle", "She's The One" and "Adam Raised A Cain" | Film directed by John Sayles who later directed music videos for songs from Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love. |
| Ruthless People | 1986 | "Stand on It" (Tracks version) | |
| Light of Day | 1987 | "(Just Around the Corner to the) Light of Day" | Song written for the film. |
| In Country | 1989 | "I'm On Fire" | Film also contained many Springsteen references. |
| Thunderheart | 1992 | "Badlands" (instrumental version) | |
| Honeymoon in Vegas | 1992 | "Viva Las Vegas" | A 1964 song originally recorded by Elvis Presley. |
| Philadelphia | 1993 | "Streets of Philadelphia" | Song written for film. Won an Oscar.[97] |
| Dead Man Walking | 1995 | "Dead Man Walkin'" | Song written for film. Nominated for an Oscar.[98] |
| The Crossing Guard | 1995 | "Missing" | Song was later released in 2003 on The Essential Bruce Springsteen. |
| Jerry Maguire | 1996 | "Secret Garden" | |
| Cop Land | 1997 | "Drive All Night" and "Stolen Car" | Sylvester Stallone's character plays the songs on his turntable. |
| Fierce Creatures | 1997 | "Hungry Heart" | |
| The Wedding Singer | 1998 | "Hungry Heart" | |
| A Night at the Roxbury | 1998 | "Secret Garden" | |
| Big Daddy | 1999 | "Growin' Up" | Played over a montage near the end of the film. |
| Limbo | 1999 | "Lift Me Up" | Another John Sayles film. |
| High Fidelity | 2000 | "The River" and Blues Guitar Riff | Blues riff played by Springsteen, on-screen during his cameo appearance. "Nebraska" played from vinyl on turntable. |
| The Perfect Storm | 2000 | "Hungry Heart" | |
| 25th Hour | 2002 | "The Fuse" | |
| Grand Theft Parsons | 2003 | "Blood Brothers" | |
| Jersey Girl | 2004 | "Jersey Girl" | Cover of the Tom Waits version |
| Reign Over Me | 2007 | "Drive All Night" and "Out In The Street" | The album The River was also well mentioned in the movie. |
| In the Land of Women | 2007 | "Iceman" | [99] |
| The Heartbreak Kid | 2007 | "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" | |
| Lucky You | 2007 | "Lucky Town" | |
| The Wrestler | 2008 | "The Wrestler" | Written for the film. The song was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and nominated for the MTV Movie Award as "Best Song From a Movie". |
| Food, Inc. | 2009 | "This Land Is Your Land" | Live version, Bruce Springsteen's performance of the Woody Guthrie song. |
| The Hunter | 2011 | "I'm On Fire" | Willem Dafoe's character sets up a stereo in a tree and uses the song to wake someone sleeping inside the house. |
Films inspired by music[link]
In turn, films have been inspired by his music, including The Indian Runner, written and directed by Sean Penn, which Penn has specifically noted as being inspired by Springsteen's song "Highway Patrolman".[100]
In September 2010, a documentary about the making of his 1978 album Darkness on The Edge of Town was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.[101]
Kevin Smith is an admitted "big fan" of fellow New Jersey native Springsteen and named his film Jersey Girl after the Tom Waits song which Springsteen made famous. The song was also used on the soundtrack.
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have cited Springsteen's "Thunder Road" as having been a heavy influence on their 2010 film Cemetery Junction, employing the song's themes of escape and optimism into their story of 1970s England.
In 2011, Springsteen appears in an independent film made by a local musician Chris Vaughn from New Jersey entitled Jerseyboy Hero where the songwriter/filmmaker documents his journey to get his music out to the world by attempting to reach one of his two local New Jersey legends, Bruce Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi.[102][103]
Acting[link]
Springsteen made his first on-screen appearance in a brief cameo as himself in High Fidelity in 2000 and it was voted "Best Cameo in a Movie" at the MTV Movie Awards.[104][105]
Discography[link]
Main article: Bruce Springsteen discography
Major studio albums (along with their chart positions in the U.S. Billboard 200 at the time of release):
- 1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (No. 60)
- 1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (No. 59)
- 1975: Born to Run (No. 3)
- 1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town (No. 5)
- 1980: The River (No. 1)
- 1982: Nebraska (No. 3)
- 1984: Born in the U.S.A. (No. 1)
- 1987: Tunnel of Love (No. 1)
- 1992: Human Touch (No. 2)
- 1992: Lucky Town (No. 3)
- 1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad (No. 11)
- 2002: The Rising (No. 1)
- 2005: Devils & Dust (No. 1)
- 2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (No. 3)
- 2007: Magic (No. 1)
- 2009: Working on a Dream (No. 1)
- 2012: Wrecking Ball (No. 1)
Awards and recognition[link]
Grammy Awards[link]
- Springsteen has won 21 Grammy Awards, as follows (years shown are the year the award was given for, not the year in which the ceremony was held):
- Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1984, "Dancing in the Dark"
- Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1987, "Tunnel of Love"
- Song of the Year, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
- Best Rock Song, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
- Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
- Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
- Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
- Best Rock Album, 2002, The Rising
- Best Rock Song, 2002, "The Rising"
- Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 2002, "The Rising"
- Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, 2003, "Disorder in the House" (with Warren Zevon)
- Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2004, "Code of Silence"
- Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2005, "Devils & Dust"
- Best Traditional Folk Album, 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome
- Best Long Form Music Video, 2006, Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born to Run
- Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2007, "Radio Nowhere"
- Best Rock Song, 2007, "Radio Nowhere"
- Best Rock Instrumental Performance, 2007, "Once Upon a Time in the West"
- Best Rock Song, 2008, "Girls in Their Summer Clothes"
- Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2009, "Working on a Dream"
- Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, 2011, The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story
Golden Globe Awards[link]
- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for "Streets of Philadelphia" in 1994.[46]
- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for "The Wrestler" in 2009.[46]
Academy Awards[link]
- Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1993, "Streets of Philadelphia" from Philadelphia.[106]
Emmy Awards[link]
- The Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City HBO special won two technical Emmy Awards in 2001.[107]
Other recognition[link]
- October 27, 1975: Bruce Springsteen appears simultaneously on the covers of Newsweek and Time
- Polar Music Prize in 1997.[108]
- Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1999.[109]
- Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1999.[110]
- Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, 2007.[111]
- "Born to Run" named "The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey" by the New Jersey state legislature; something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song "is about leaving New Jersey".[112]
- The minor planet 23990, discovered September 4, 1999, by I. P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor.[113]
- Ranked No. 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[114]
- Ranked No. 36 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time.
- Made Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People Of The Year 2008 list.[115]
- Won Critic's Choice Award for Best Song with "The Wrestler" in 2009.[116]
- Performed at the Super Bowl XLIII half time show.
- Kennedy Center Honors, 2009.
- Rolling Stone magazine also ranked 8 out of 16 Springsteen's studio albums in their 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list.
- Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road" in its 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time list, in 21st and 86th, respectively.
- Forbes ranked him 6th in The Celebrity 100 in 2009[117]
- John Steinbeck Award
See also[link]
 |
Book: Bruce Springsteen |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
- List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart
- List of best selling music artists
Notes[link]
- ^ It is not clear if Tyrell is as full-fledged a band member as the others: some credits and press releases list her as "With" or "Special Guest", while some omit her; on the other hand, Springsteen has stated in interviews that "Soozie is with us."
- ^ Also not clear if Giordano is as full-fledged a band member as the others.
- ^ This quote is an extract from Springsteen's speech from the stage at a rally for presidential candidate Barack Obama on November 2, 2008
References[link]
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- ^ "Top Selling Artists". riaa.com. http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?table=tblTopArt. Retrieved September 4, 2008.
- ^ "spring would literally mean 'jump'; but idiomatically jumping stone is the correct translation.
- ^ NIAF. "Italian American Contributions". http://www.niaf.org/research/contribution.asp/. Retrieved March 5, 2010. [dead link]
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen – Biography". imdb.com. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0819803/bio. Retrieved March 21, 2010.
- ^ a b Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s. Dave Marsh, 1987, pg. 88–89.
- ^ Editors, "Boss Talk," THE TABLET, February 25, 2012.
- ^ Springsteen. Robert Hilburn, 1985, p. 28.
- ^ "Musicians' best friends to be honored in Freehold". April 17, 2002. http://newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2002/0417/Front_page/003.html.
- ^ Loder, Kurt (December 6, 1984). "The Rolling Stone Interview: Bruce Springsteen". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on April 21, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090421085029/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/5933449. Retrieved March 21, 2010.
- ^ Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader, Penguin, 2004.
- ^ Brett, Oliver (January 15, 2009). "'What's in a nickame?'". London: BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7829013.stm. Retrieved January 21, 2009.
- ^ "Backstage With Bruce: Springsteen On His Early Work". National Public Radio. November 15, 2005. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100038036. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
- ^ Lester Bangs (July 5, 1973). "Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ". Rolling Stone. http://web.archive.org/web/20071224125845rn_1/www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/107193/greetings_from_asbury_park_nj. Retrieved March 21, 2010. [dead link]
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- ^ Rockwell, John (May 9, 1976). "Crawdaddy Party Mirrors Magazine". NY Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40C15F93C5B167493CBA9178DD85F428785F9&scp=1&sq=springsteen%20crawdaddy&st=cse. Retrieved March 21, 2010.
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- ^ Cf. Marsh, David, (2003), pp.14, 203, & various.
- ^ "The Moments". Rolling Stone. June 24, 2004. Archived from the original on December 4, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071204181514/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6085455/the_moments/.
- ^ Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005. 153. Print.
- ^ Billboard. Google Books. May 11, 1985. http://books.google.com/books?id=1CQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT52&dq=billboard+1985&hl=en&ei=MQlaTcPLA4nUgAeQg8HdDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=billboard%201985&f=false. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
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- ^ Fricke, David (February 5, 2009). "Bringing It All Back Home" (PDF). Rolling Stone. http://www.shorefire.com/media/R1071Bruce_20090123_113016.pdf. Retrieved May 3, 2009.
- ^ WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center Administrative Panel Decision, Bruce Springsteen -v- Jeff Burgar and Bruce Springsteen Club
- ^ Smith, Andrew "Bruce Springsteen loses cybersquatting dispute", The Register, February 9, 2001.
- ^ Jon Wiederhorn (September 16, 2003). "Springsteen Is Box-Office Boss With Projected $120M Gross". http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1478248/20030916/story.jhtml.
- ^ ABC News: ABC News[dead link]
- ^ Manzoor, Sarfraz (May 14, 2006). "A runaway American dream". The Guardian (London). http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1774131,00.html. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band – PopMatters Concert Review". Popmatters.com. http://www.popmatters.com/music/concerts/s/springsteen-bruce-060531.shtml. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ JS Online: Born to strum[dead link]
- ^ "Chicago Tribune". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-springsteen-review-story,1,5443206.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl. Retrieved August 27, 2010. Archived from the original on June 29, 2011.
- ^ "Terry Magovern, Rest in Peace", Backstreets.com, August 1, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
- ^ "'E Street Radio' Channel, dedicated to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, returns exclusively to SIRIUS Satellite Radio". http://investor.sirius.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=264991. Retrieved January 21, 2008.
- ^ Friedman, Roger (October 30, 2007). "D-Day for Britney Spears: New CD 'Blackout' Drops : D-Day for Britney/Bruce: No Radio Play/Denise Rich Raises $5M for Cancer/Rotten Meets Cruise". Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306164,00.html. Retrieved March 22, 2008.
- ^ "Today Show: The Boss rocks the plaza!". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20995086/. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ "Springsteen Bandmate on Hiatus for Health Reasons". Reuters. November 22, 2007. http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSN2122708620071123. Retrieved March 22, 2008.
- ^ Sean Piccoli (April 17, 2008). "Springsteen concert postponed over bandmate's death". South Florida Sun-Sentinel. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-418brucespingsteen,0,3217057.story. Retrieved April 17, 2008.
- ^ "Springsteen endorses Obama for president". Associated Press for USA Today. April 16, 2008. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-16-springsteen_N.htm?csp=34. Retrieved April 16, 2008.
- ^ "Pitchfork: News". Pitchforkmedia.com. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/146179-bruce-springsteen-adds-acoustic-obama-shows. Retrieved August 27, 2010. Archived from the original on December 17, 2008.
- ^ "Springsteen plays new 'Working on a Dream' tune at Obama rally in Cleveland". The Plain Dealer. November 2, 2008. http://www.cleveland.com/popmusic/index.ssf/2008/11/springsteen_plays_new_working.html.
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen News – Recording Artists' Eleventh Hour Campaigns – Mostly for Obama". idiomag. November 3, 2008. http://www.idiomag.com/peek/47658/bruce_springsteen. Retrieved November 3, 2008.
- ^ Steve Hendrix and Jonathan Mummolo (January 18, 2009). "Jamming on the Mall for Obama". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011800917.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009011802825&s_pos=.
- ^ a b c "Springsteen, Rahman Snag Musical Golden Globes". Billboard. September 14, 2009. http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/springsteen-rahman-snag-musical-golden-globes-1003929219.story. Retrieved August 27, 2010. Archived from the original on January 5, 2011.
- ^ Bardsley, Garth (January 12, 2009). "How Mickey Rourke Got Bruce Springsteen's 'Wrestler' Song – For Free – MTV Movie News". MTV. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1602516/how-mickey-rourke-got-bruce-springsteens-wrestler-song-free.jhtml. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ^ "Report: "The Boss" to play Super Bowl halftime show". Seattle Post Intelligencer. August 11, 2008. http://www.seattlepi.com/scorecard/nflnews.asp?articleID=237980. [dead link].
- ^ Pareles, Jon (February 1, 2009). "The Rock Laureate". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/arts/music/01pare.html. Retrieved January 29, 2009.
- ^ Shore Fire Media. Retrieved December 2, 2008.
- ^ Lapointe, Joe (January 30, 2009). "Springsteen Promises ‘12-Minute Party' at Halftime". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/sports/football/30springsteen.html. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
- ^ Wallace, Lindsay (February 10, 2009). "Bruce Springsteen Exclusive: 'I Didn't Even Know I Was Up For A Grammy!'". MTV News. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1604738/20090210/springsteen_bruce.jhtml. Retrieved March 7, 2009.
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- ^ a b c Mervis, Scott (May 17, 2009). "Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band break tradition by improvising set list". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09137/970254-388.stm?cmpid=newspanel0. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
- ^ Youngs, Ian (June 28, 2009). "Glastonbury bows down to The Boss". BBC News (London). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8122365.stm. Retrieved June 29, 2009.
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen covers The Clash at London Hyde Park". NME. UK. June 29, 2009. http://www.nme.com/news/bruce-springsteen/45713. Retrieved June 29, 2009.
- ^ Lustig, Jay (October 10, 2009). "Bruce Springsteen rocks Giants Stadium for the last time". The Star-Ledger. http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2009/10/bruce_springsteen_rocks_giants.html. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
- ^ Pareles, Jon (October 11, 2009). "For Springsteen and Giants Stadium, a Last Dance". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/arts/music/12bruce.html. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
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- ^ "The 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concerts". Rockhall25.com. http://www.rockhall25.com/. Retrieved August 27, 2010. Archived from the original on March 9, 2010.
- ^ "Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Springsteen Headline the Fifth Concert for Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall on November 17". Autismspeaks.org. September 10, 2009. http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/seinfeld_springsteen_concert.php. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
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- ^ Jaffer, Nancy (October 9, 2009). "Jessica Springsteen finishes second at Talent Search Finals East, deciding whether to pursue equitation". The Star-Ledger. http://www.nj.com/sports/njsports/index.ssf/2009/10/jessica_springsteen_finishes_s.html.
- ^ a b Andrew Anthony (April 20, 2008). ""The Boss picks his voice of America" ''The Observer'' April 20, 2008". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/apr/20/uselections2008.springsteen?INTCMP=SRCH. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
- ^ Carpenter, Les (January 29, 2009). "www.washingtonpost.com". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012904283.html. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
- ^ "Springsteen: Silence Is Unpatriotic – 60 Minutes". CBS News. July 27, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/60minutes/main3330463.shtml. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ Fricke, David (January 21, 2009). "The Band on Bruce: Their Springsteen". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/25556603/the_band_on_bruce_their_springsteen/print. Retrieved February 7, 2009. [dead link]
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen Bands: from Rogues to E Street Band, passing from Castiles and Steel Mill". http://www.brucespringsteen.it/e_streetx.htm.
- ^ Greetings from E Street (Book), R Santelli
- ^ Little Steven speaks salon.com. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
- ^ Top Musicians Are Composing Own Curricula washingtonpost.com. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
- ^ IMDB – Philadelphia
- ^ IMDB – Dead Man Walking
- ^ Bruce Springsteen – IMDb
- ^ Gleiberman, Owen (October 11, 1991). "Blood Brothers". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,315772,00.html. Retrieved November 18, 2008.
- ^ Friedman, Roger (September 15, 2010). "Springsteen’s Big Night in Toronto Has Lots of "Promise"". Showbiz 411. http://www.showbiz411.com/2010/09/15/springsteens-big-night-in-toronto-has-lots-of-promise. Retrieved September 15, 2010.
- ^ Asbury Park Press. [1], Asbury Park Press: Vaughn snags Springsteen for documentary., March 9, 2008.
- ^ Jerseyboy Hero (2011) – Full cast and crew
- ^ Article on cameo in High Fidelity Entertainment Weekly
- ^ Best cameo MTV award
- ^ "Academy Award for Best Original Song 1994". Songwritershalloffame.org. http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/songs/awards/C179. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ Live in NYC Emmy Awards
- ^ "Polar Music Prize". Polar Music Prize. August 16, 2010. http://www.polarmusicprize.org/newSite/1997.shtml. Retrieved August 27, 2010. [dead link]
- ^ "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". Rockhall.com. http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/bruce-springsteen. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ "Songwriter's Hall of Fame". Songwritershalloffame.org. http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C179. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ Daniel Kreps. "NJ Hall of Fame". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on June 22, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080622053126/http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/05/06/bruce-springsteen-inducted-into-new-jersey-hall-of-fame/. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ "A Brunch O' Bruce". http://www.eonline.com/Features/Features/Bruce/index2.html.
- ^ (23990) Springsteen, IAU Minor Planet Center
- ^ "The Immortals: The First Fifty". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on August 22, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080822035047/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5940039/the_immortals__the_greatest_artists_of_all_time_23_bruce_springsteen.
- ^ Penn, Sean (April 30, 2009). "Time Magazine". Time. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733752_1735322,00.html. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ "Bruce Springsteen wins Critics Choice Award for 'The Wrestler' song". NME. UK. January 9, 2009. http://www.nme.com/news/bruce-springsteen/41980. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
- ^ "The Celebrity 100". Forbes. June 3, 2009. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/53/celebrity-09_The-Celebrity-100_Rank.html.
Sources[link]
- Alterman, Eric. It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive : The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Little Brown, 1999. ISBN 0-316-03885-7.
- Coles, Robert. Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50559-8.
- Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen – the man and his music Harmony Books, New York 1989/1992. ISBN 0-517-58929-X. Contains 15+ interviews and a complete list of all Springsteen songs including unreleased compositions. Complete lising of all concerts 1965–1990 – most of them with tracklists. Hundreds of previously unreleased high quality color pictures.
- Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. 1997; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. New edition of 1997 study book places Springsteen's work in the broader context of American history and culture. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2
- Eliot, Marc with Appel, Mike. Down Thunder Road. Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-86898-5.
- Graff, Gary. The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005. ISBN 1-57859-151-1.
- Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1.
- Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7.
- Knobler, Peter with special assistance from Greg Mitchell. "Who Is Bruce Springsteen and Why Are We Saying All These Wonderful Things About Him?", Crawdaddy, March 1973.
- Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts : The Definitive Biography, 1972–2003. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-96928-X. (Consolidation of two previous Marsh biographies, Born to Run (1981) and Glory Days (1987).)
- Wolff, Daniel. July 4, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. Bloomsbury, 2005. ISBN 1-58234-509-0.
Further reading[link]
- Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8118-5348-9.
- Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Billboard Books, 2003. ISBN 0-8230-8387-X.
- Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200354-9.
- Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1.
- The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink Press, 2005. ISBN 1-57859-157-0.
- Bruce Springsteen: "Talking". Omnibus Press, 2004. ISBN 1-84449-403-9.
- For You: Original Stories and Photographs by Bruce Springsteen's Legendary Fans. LKC Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9784156-0-0.
- Bruce Springsteen on Tour: 1968–2005. by Dave Marsh Bloomsbury USA, 2006. ISBN 978-1-59691-282-3.
- The Gospel according to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption from Asbury Park to Magic. by Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-664-23169-9.
- Magic in the Night: The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen by Rob Kirkpatrick. St. Martin's Griffin, 2009. ISBN 0-312-53380-2.
- Land of Hope and Dreams: Celebrating 25 Years of Bruce Springsteen In Ireland by Greg Lewis and Moira Sharkey. Magic Rat Books. ISBN 978-0-9562722-0-1
- The Light in Darkness. A history of the Darkness on The Edge of Town album and tour. Lawrence Kirsch Communications. 2009 ISBN 978-0-9784156-1-7
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bruce Springsteen |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bruce Springsteen |
- Official website
- E Street Radio
- Bruce Springsteen at Idiomag 21 12 10
- Bruce Springsteen on National Public Radio in 2005
- Highlights of Springsteen at Glastonbury 2009.
- Bruce Springsteen at NPR Music
- "Library of Hope and Dreams":bibliography of published Springsteen scholarship in English.
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Springsteen, Bruce |
| Alternative names | Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen |
| Short description | An American singer-songwriter |
| Date of birth | September 24, 1949 |
| Place of birth | Long Branch, New Jersey, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is about the singer. For other uses, see Johnny Cash (disambiguation).
| Johnny Cash | |
|---|---|
 Cash in 1969. |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | John R. Cash |
| Born | (1932-02-26)February 26, 1932 Kingsland, Arkansas, United States |
| Origin | Kingsland, Arkansas, United States |
| Died | September 12, 2003(2003-09-12) (aged 71) Nashville, Tennessee, United States |
| Genres | Country, rock and roll, folk, americana, gospel, blues, rockabilly |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, musician, actor |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin |
| Years active | 1955–2003 |
| Labels | Sun, Columbia, Mercury, American, House of Cash, Legacy Recordings |
| Associated acts | The Tennessee Three, The Highwaymen, June Carter Cash, The Statler Brothers, The Carter Family, The Oak Ridge Boys, Area Code 615, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers |
| Website | johnnycash.com |
| Notable instruments | |
| Martin Acoustic Guitars[1] | |
John R. "Johnny" Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003), was an American singer-songwriter, actor,[2] and author,[2] who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.[3] Although he is primarily remembered as a country music icon, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice;[4][5][6] for the "boom-chicka-boom" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness,[7][8] coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor;[4] for providing free concerts inside prison walls;[9][10] and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".[11] He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."[12][13] and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues".
Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption.[4][14] His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers, including "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson"; as well as railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line".[15] Late in his career, Cash covered songs by several rock artists, most notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails - the resulting music video was voted one of the best of all time and is sometimes seen as Cash's epitaph.
Cash, a troubled but devout Christian,[16][17] has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."[18][19][20] A Biblical scholar,[2][21][22] he penned a Christian novel titled Man in White,[23][24] and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament.[25][26] Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man.[27][28] Accordingly,[29] Cash is said to have "contained multitudes", and has been deemed "the philosopher-prince of American country music".[30][31]
Contents |
Personal life[link]
Early life[link]
Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas,[32] the fourth of seven children to Ray Cash (May 13, 1897, Kingsland, Arkansas – December 23, 1985, Hendersonville, Tennessee)[33] and Carrie Cloveree Rivers (March 13, 1904, Rison, Arkansas – March 11, 1991, Hendersonville, Tennessee).[34][35] Cash was named John R. Cash because his parents couldn't think of a name, but he went by J. R. all throughout his childhood as a shortened version of his real name. When Cash enlisted in the Air Force, they wouldn't let him use initials as his name, so he began to use his legal name of John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name.[36]
The Cash children were, in order: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Reba, Joanne and Tommy.[37][38] His younger brother, Tommy Cash, also became a successful country artist.
In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas. He started working in cotton fields at age five, singing along with his family simultaneously while working. The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising".[39] His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.
Cash was very close to his older brother, Jack.[40] In May 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling head saw in the mill where he worked and was almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died on May 20, 1944, at age 15.[39] Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven.
Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.[41]
Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force on July 7, 1950.[42] After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit, assigned as a Morse Code Intercept Operator for Soviet Army transmissions at Landsberg, Germany "where he created his first band named The Landsberg Barbarians."[43] He was the first radio operator to pick up the news of the death of Joseph Stalin.[44] After he was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant on July 3, 1954, he returned to Texas.[45]
Marriages and family[link]
On July 18, 1951, while in Air Force training, Cash met 17-year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in her native San Antonio. They dated for three weeks, until Cash was deployed to Germany for a three year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of pages of love letters.[46] On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Anne's Catholic church in San Antonio. The ceremony was performed by her uncle, Father Vincent Liberto. They had four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara. Cash's drug and alcohol abuse, constant touring, and affairs with other women, and his close relationship with future wife June Carter, led Liberto to file for divorce in 1966.[47]
In 1968, 13 years after they first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June Carter, an established country singer, during a live performance in London, Ontario,[48] marrying on March 1, 1968, in Franklin, Kentucky. They had one child together, John Carter Cash (born March 3, 1970). They continued to work together and tour for 35 years, until June Carter died in 2003. Cash died just four months later. Carter co-wrote one of Cash's biggest hits, "Ring of Fire," with singer Merle Kilgore. She and Cash won two Grammy awards for their duets.
Vivian Liberto claims a different version of the origins of "Ring of Fire" in I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, stating that Cash gave Carter the credit for monetary reasons.[49]
Heritage[link]
Cash's heritage was a British Isles mix. He learned upon researching his heritage that he was of Scottish royal descent on his father's side, traced back to Malcolm I of Scotland.[50][51][52] After meeting with now-dead laird Major Michael Crichton-Stuart of Falkland, Fife, Scotland, Johnny traced the Cash family tree to eleventh-century Fife;[53][54][55] Cash Loch and other locations in Fife bear the name of his family.[53]
Cash also had English and Scots-Irish ancestry. Though he did not have American Indian ancestry, his empathy and compassion for Native American Indians were unabated. These feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. Through his maternal grandmother, Rosanna Lee (Hurst) Rivers, Cash is distantly related to millionaire William Randolph Hearst and socialite Patty Hearst.[citation needed]
Friends[link]
Cash was a long time friend of Woody Hayes (ex Ohio State Buckeyes football coach). The lyrics "I braided Twigs of Willows Made a String of Buckeye Beads" from the song Flesh and Blood was for Woody.[citation needed]
Career[link]
Early career[link]
In 1954, Cash and Vivian moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mostly gospel songs, Phillips told him that he didn't record gospel music any longer. It was once rumored that Phillips told Cash to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell," though in a 2002 interview Cash denied that Phillips made any such comment.[56] Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs delivered in his early rock'a'billy style. In 1955 Cash made his first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!", which were released in late June and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.
File:Million Dollar Quartet.jpg
Cash (standing at right) with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis. Cash wrote in his book, Cash: the Autobiography, that he sang the songs on the recordings, but was the one who was the farthest from the microphone and was singing the songs in a higher pitch to blend in with Elvis.
On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on studio owner Sam Phillips to pay a social visit while Carl Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session. Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have since been released under the title Million Dollar Quartet.
Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed, recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label partly due to the fact that Phillips wasn't keen on Johnny recording gospel, and he was only getting a 3% royalty as opposed to the standard rate of 5%. Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Lewis. The following year Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" became one of his biggest hits.
In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June and Helen. June, whom Cash would eventually marry, later recalled admiring him from afar during these tours. In the 1960s he appeared on Pete Seeger's short lived Rainbow Quest.[57]
He also acted in a 1961 film entitled Five Minutes to Live, later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac. He also wrote and sang the opening theme.
Outlaw image[link]
As his career was taking off in the late 1950s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who was heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction. In a behind-the-scenes look at The Johnny Cash Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there was to try."
Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts. The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. The song was originally performed by June's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.
In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burnt several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California.[58][59] When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."[39] The fire destroyed 508 acres (206 ha), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172 ($923,127 today). Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001.[60] He said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.[39]
Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested October 4 by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.
Cash was later arrested on May 11, 1965, in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin prison album.)
In the mid 1960s, Cash released a number of concept albums, including Ballads Of the True West (1965), an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration, and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the Native Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this point, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his first wife and canceled performances.
In 1967, Cash's duet with June Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.
Johnny Cash's final arrest was in Walker County, Georgia where he was taken in after being involved in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription pills. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned the money down, and then spent the night in a LaFayette, Georgia jail. The singer was released after a long talk with Sheriff Ralph Jones, who warned him of his dangerous behavior and wasted potential. Johnny credited that experience for saving his life, and he later came back to LaFayette to play a benefit concert that attracted 12,000 people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the time) and raised $75,000 for the high school.[61]
Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave, when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported to be exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him conquer his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on March 1) in Franklin, Kentucky. June had agreed to marry Cash after he had "cleaned up".[62] He rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Rev. Jimmie Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend Hank Snow.
According to longtime friend Marshall Grant, Cash's 1968 rebirth experience did not result in his completely stopping use of amphetamines. However, in 1970, Cash ended all drug use for a period of seven years. Grant claims that the birth of Cash's son, John Carter Cash, inspired Cash to end his dependence. Cash began using amphetamines again in 1977. By 1983, he was once again addicted, and entered the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California for rehabilitation. Cash managed to stay off drugs for several years, but by 1989, he was dependent again and entered Nashville's Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. In 1992, he entered the Loma Linda Behavioural Medicine Centre in Loma Linda, California for his final rehabilitation (several months later, his son followed him into this facility for treatment).[63][64][65]
Folsom Prison Blues[link]
Cash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s. His first ever prison concert was held on January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.[66] These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).
The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison Blues", while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and No. 2 on the U.S. Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, though they still retain the audience reaction overdubs of the originals.
In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker ("At Österåker") was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.
"The Man in Black"[link]
From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The Statler Brothers opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed booking more mainstream performers as guests; such notables included Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition (who appeared a record four times on his show), James Taylor, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton (then leading Derek and the Dominos), and Bob Dylan. During the same period, he contributed the title song and other songs to the film Little Fauss and Big Halsey, which starred Robert Redford, Michael J. Pollard, and Lauren Hutton. The title song, The Ballad of Little Fauss and Big Halsey, written by Carl Perkins, was nominated for a Golden Globe award.
Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes.
Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."[67]
By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black". He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black."
He wore black on behalf of the poor and hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime",[68] and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or drugs.[68] "And," Cash added, "with the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans', I wore it 'in mournin' for the lives that could have been.' ... Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of darkness to carry off."[68]
He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits.[39] He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked black as his on-stage color.[39] To this day, the US Navy's winter blue uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.[69]
In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline. He made commercials for Amoco, an unpopular enterprise in an era in which oil companies made high profits while consumers suffered through high gasoline prices and shortages. However, his autobiography (the first of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997. His friendship with Billy Graham led to the production of a film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated.
He also continued to appear on television, hosting an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances included a role in an episode of Columbo (Swan Song). He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television mini-series North and South. Johnny and June also appeared in Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV series) as a recurring couple. Cash also had a starring role in a Columbo film.
He was friendly with every US President starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest to Jimmy Carter, with whom he became close friends.[39] He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.[39]
When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1970,[70] Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either and instead selected other songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, "What Is Truth" and "Man in Black". Cash wrote that the reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them, rather than any political reason.[39] However, Cash added, even if Nixon's office had given Cash enough time to learn and rehearse the songs, their choice of pieces that conveyed "antihippie and antiblack" sentiments might have backfired.[71]
Highwaymen[link]
File:Highwaymen.jpg
From left to right Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, who formed the country music supergroup, The Highwaymen
In 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age 48, but during the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, although he continued to tour successfully. In the mid 1980s, he recorded and toured with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson as The Highwaymen, making three hit albums which were released beginning with the originally titled "Highwaymen" in 1985, followed by "Highwaymen 2" in 1990, and concluding with "Highwaymen - The Road Goes on forever" in 1995.
During that period, Cash appeared in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride of Jesse Hallam, winning fine reviews for a film that called attention to adult illiteracy. In the same year, Cash appeared as a "very special guest star" in an episode of the Muppet Show. In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder in Coweta County, based on a real-life Georgia murder case, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he won acclaim.
Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm.[72]
At a hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a heart attack), Jennings suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent double bypass surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience". He said he had visions of Heaven that were so beautiful that he was angry when he woke up alive.[citation needed]
Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and was not properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody.[citation needed] "Chicken in Black" was about Cash's brain being transplanted into a chicken. Ironically, the song turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill the relationship with the label before they did, and it was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.
In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team up with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to create the album Class of '55. Also in 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.
American Recordings[link]
After Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991 (see Johnny Cash discography).
His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to popularity with an audience not traditionally interested in country music. In 1991, he sang a version of "Man in Black" for the Christian punk band One Bad Pig's album I Scream Sunday. In 1993, he sang "The Wanderer" on U2's album Zooropa. Although no longer sought after by major labels, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock.
Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his Martin Dreadnought guitar – one of many Cash played throughout his career.[73] The album featured covers of contemporary artists selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and commercial success. Cash teamed up with Brooks & Dunn to contribute "Folsom Prison Blues" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. On the same album, he performed the Bob Dylan favorite "Forever Young".
Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour. The actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one of her twin sons after him. He lent his voice for a cameo role in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)," as the "Space Coyote" that guides Homer Simpson on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released Unchained, which won the Best Country Album Grammy. Believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, he wrote Cash: The Autobiography in 1997.
Last years[link]
In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of multiple system atrophy. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums. The video that was released for "Hurt", a cover of the song by Nine Inch Nails, fits Cash's view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the song, from American IV, is now generally recognized as "his epitaph,"[74] and received particular critical and popular acclaim.
June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record, completing 60 more songs in the last four months of his life, and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. At the July 5, 2003, concert (his last public performance), before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his late wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage:
The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has.
Death[link]
Cash died of complications from diabetes at approximately 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville - less than four months after his wife. It was suggested that Johnny's health worsened due to a broken heart over June's death.[75][76] He was buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the mother of Rosanne Cash and three other daughters, died from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71. It was her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.[77]
In June 2005, Cash's lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville was put up for sale by his estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb and wife Linda and titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother, Tommy Cash. During a major restoration of the property by the new owner, Cash's home was accidentally destroyed by workers using linseed oil products in a spontaneous combustion-ignited fire on April 10, 2007.[78]
One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the No.1 position on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006.
On February 23, 2010, three days before what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second posthumous record, titled American VI: Ain't No Grave.
Legacy[link]
From his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock and roll in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame in the 1990s as a living legend and an alternative country icon, Cash influenced countless artists and left a large body of work. Upon his death, Cash was revered by the greatest popular musicians of his time. His rebellious image and often anti-authoritarian stance influenced punk rock.[79][80]
Among Cash's children, his daughter Rosanne Cash (by first wife Vivian Liberto) and his son John Carter Cash (by June Carter Cash) are notable country-music musicians in their own right.
Cash nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what was acceptable in country music even while serving as the country music establishment's most visible symbol. At an all-star concert which aired in 1999 on TNT, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Dom DeLuise and U2. Cash himself appeared at the end and performed for the first time in more than a year. Two tribute albums were released shortly before his death; Kindred Spirits contains works from established artists, while Dressed in Black contains works from many lesser-known artists.
In total, he wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of albums. A box set titled Unearthed was issued posthumously. It included four CDs of unreleased material recorded with Rubin as well as a Best of Cash on American retrospective CD.
In recognition of his lifelong support of SOS Children's Villages, his family invited friends and fans to donate to that charity in his memory. He had a personal link with the SOS village in Diessen, at the Ammersee Lake in Southern Germany, near where he was stationed as a GI, and also with the SOS village in Barrett Town, by Montego Bay, near his holiday home in Jamaica.[81] The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.[82]
In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cash[83] No.31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[84]
In a tribute to Cash after his death, country music singer Gary Allan included the song "Nickajack Cave (Johnny Cash's Redemption)" on his 2005 album entitled Tough All Over. The song chronicles Cash hitting rock bottom and subsequently resurrecting his life and career.
The main street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway"; the Johnny Cash Museum is located in the town.
On November 2–4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival was held in Starkville, Mississippi. Starkville, where Cash was arrested over 40 years earlier and held overnight at the city jail on May 11, 1965, inspired Cash to write the song "Starkville City Jail". The festival, where he was offered a symbolic posthumous pardon, honored Cash's life and music, and was expected to become an annual event.[85]
JC Unit One, Johnny Cash's private tour bus from 1980 until 2003, was put on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum in 2007. The Cleveland, Ohio museum offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis (it is stored during the winter months and not exhibited during those times).
WWE Superstar The Undertaker used Cash's song "Aint No Grave" (from American VI: Ain't No Grave) to announce his return following an absence in February, 2011, and as his entrance music for Wrestlemania XXVII. Independent circuit wrestlers Tyson Dux and Brodie Lee also use "God's Gonna Cut You Down" (from American V: A Hundred Highways) as entrance music. Other professional wrestlers who have used Cash's songs as entrance music include Austin Aries, who used his cover of the Depeche Mode's song "Personal Jesus" (from American IV: The Man Comes Around), and Necro Butcher, who used both "The Man Comes Around" and "Hurt". WWE also used "Hurt" in a special video package that was aired on Monday Night RAW in November 2005 as a tribute to Eddie Guerrero, a popular WWE Superstar who had died of heart failure while he was still contracted with the company. It is also noted that current WWE Superstar Ted DiBiase, Jr. is a huge fan of Cash, as is former WWE Diva and current TNA Knockout Mickie James.
The television show "The Deadliest Catch" is using the song "Ain't No Grave" as the theme song in many of their commercials.
One of Cash's greatest hits, "Hurt", was also used to advertise Prototype 2 in the trailer called "The Power Of Revenge".
Portrayals[link]
The Canada Trust company used his name and images for their Johnny Cash automatic bank machines during the late 80s and early 90s.
In 1998, country singer Mark Collie was the first to portray Cash, in the short film, I Still Miss Someone.
In November of 2005, Walk the Line, an Academy Award-winning biopic about Cash's life starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny (for which he was nominated for the 2005 Best Actor Oscar) and Reese Witherspoon as June (for which she won the 2005 Best Actress Oscar), was released in the United States on to considerable commercial success and critical acclaim. Both Phoenix and Witherspoon have won various other awards for their roles, including the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, respectively. They both performed their own vocals in the film, and Phoenix learned to play guitar for his role as Cash. Phoenix received the Grammy Award for his contributions to the soundtrack. John Carter Cash, the first child of Johnny and June, served as an executive producer on the film.
On March 12, 2006 Ring of Fire, a jukebox musical of the Cash oeuvre, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, but closed due to harsh reviews and disappointing sales on April 30, 2006.
On April 11, 2010, Million Dollar Quartet, a musical portraying the early Sun recording sessions involving Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, debuted on Broadway. Actor Lance Guest portrayed Cash. The musical was nominated for three awards at the 2010 Tony Awards, and won one.
Discography[link]
Awards and honors[link]
- For detailed lists of music awards, see List of Johnny Cash awards.
Cash received multiple Country Music Association Awards, Grammys, and other awards, in categories ranging from vocal and spoken performances to album notes and videos.
In a career that spanned almost five decades during which he rose to recording industry icon status, Cash was the personification of country music to many people around the world. Cash was a musician who was not tied to a single genre. He recorded songs that could be considered rock and roll, blues, rockabilly, folk, and gospel, and exerted an influence on each of those genres. Moreover, he had the unique distinction among country artists of having "crossed over" late in his career to become popular with an unexpected audience, young indie and alternative rock fans. His diversity was evidenced by his presence in three major music halls of fame: the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1980), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1992). Only thirteen performers are in both of the last two, and only Hank Williams Sr., Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, and Bill Monroe share the honor with Cash of being in all three. However, only Cash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the regular manner, unlike the other country members, who were inducted as "early influences." His pioneering contribution to the genre has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.[86] He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996. Cash stated that his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in 1980, was his greatest professional achievement. In 2001, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[87] He was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for best cinematography for "Hurt" and was supposed to appear, but died during the night.
In 2007, Cash was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.[88]
Further reading[link]
- Graeme Thomson The Resurrection of Johnny Cash: Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings Jawbone Press ISBN 978-1-906002-36-7
Sources[link]
Notes[link]
- ^ Über Pro Audio LLC (2009). Johnny Cash—Guitars and Equipment. Retrieved on May 15, 2009.
- ^ a b c Last.fm (2010). Johnny Cash & June Carter. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ Eugene Register-Guard (2003, September 13). The Man in Black: Legendary Johnny Cash dead at 71. Retrieved on October 20, 2009.
- ^ a b c Pareles J (1994). "Pop Review: Johnny Cash, austerely direct from deep within". The New York Times. Retrieved March 20, 2010.
- ^ Although Cash's voice type endured over the years, his timbre changed noticeably: "Through a recording career that stretche[d] back to 1955", Pareles writes, Cash's "bass-baritone voice [went] from gravelly to grave".
- ^ Urbanski D (2003). The man comes around: The spiritual journey of Johnny Cash. Lake Mary, FL: Relevant Media, p. xiv.
- ^ Dickie M (2002). "Hard talk from the God-fearin, pro-metal man in Black". In M Streissguth (Ed.), Ring of fire: The Johnny Cash reader. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, pp. 201–205. Original work published 1987.
- ^ Streissguth M (2006). Johnny Cash: The biography. Philadelphia: Da Capo, p. 196.
- ^ Fox JA (October 17, 2005). "The Boston Herald: Hard time's never a 'circus'". Baylor University. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
- ^ Streissguth M (2005). Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The making of a masterpiece. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo.
- ^ For Cash, black stage attire was a "symbol of rebellion—against a stagnant status quo, against ... hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas"; Cash J; Carr P (2003). Cash: The Autobiography. San Francisco: HarperCollins, p. 64.
- ^ Schultz B (2000, July 1). "Classic Tracks: Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues'". Mix. Retrieved March 22, 2010. Schultz refers to this phrase as Cash's "trademark greeting", and places his utterance of this line, on Cash's At Folsom Prison, album "among the most electrifying [seconds] in the history of concert recording."
- ^ For additional quotations by Johnny Cash, consult the Johnny Cash page at Wikiquote,
- ^ Mulligan J (2010, February 24). "Johnny Cash: American VI: Ain't No Grave". entertainment.ie. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
- ^ For discussion of, and lyrics to, Cash's songs, see Cusic D (Ed.) (2004). Johnny Cash: The songs. New York: Thunder's Mouth.
- ^ Clapp R (2008). Johnny Cash and the great American contradiction: Christianity and the battle for the soul of a nation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, p. xvi.
- ^ Urbanski (2003).
- ^ Clapp (2008), p. xviii.
- ^ Other appraisals of Cash's iconic value have been even bolder. Clapp (2008) writes: "Very few figures in recent history are seen as more representative of American identity as Cash ... His has often been suggested as the face that should be added to the select pantheon on Mt. Rushmore", p. xvi.
- ^ See also Miller S (2003). Johnny Cash: The life of an American icon. London: Omnibus, p. 227.
- ^ Stoudt C (June 9, 2009). "Review: 'Ring of Fire' at La Mirada Theatre". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ Public Radio Exchange (2010). "Johnny Cash: Amazing Grace" Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ Cash J (2008). Man in white: A novel about the Apostle Paul. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
- ^ BBC News (2003). Obituary: Johnny Cash. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ Rivkin D (Producer) (2007). Johnny Cash reading the complete New Testament (Deluxe Ed.). Audio recording. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
- ^ Morris E (December 24, 2008). "Johnny Cash's reading of the New Testament now on DVD". Country Music Television. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ Urbanski (2003), pp. xx–xxi.
- ^ For example, Urbanski (2003, p. 39) notes that Cash's habit of performing in black attire began in a church. In the following paragraph, Urbanski (pp. 39–40) quotes Cash (cf. Cash & Carr, 2003, p. 64) as indicating that this habit was partially reflective of Cash's rebellion "against our hypocritical houses of God".
- ^ Urbanski D (2010). "Johnny Cash's complicated faith: Unwrapping the enigma of the Man in Black". Relevant Magazine. Retrieved March 22, 2010. According to Urbanski, Cash's self-perception was accurate: "He never intended to be categorized or pigeonholed", and indeed he amassed a "cluster of enigmas" which "was so impenetrably deep that even those closest to him never got to see every part of him".
- ^ Huss J; Werther D (Eds.) (2008). Johnny Cash and philosophy: The burning ring of truth. Chicago: Open Court.
- ^ Open Court Publishing Company (2007). Johnny Cash and Philosophy. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
- ^ Miller (2003), p. 341.
- ^ Ray Cash at findagrave.com
- ^ Carrie Cash at findagrave.com
- ^ Streissguth (2005), p. 11.
- ^ "Cash, Johnny". Oxford Music Online. May 18, 2010.
- ^ Johnny Cash's Funeral. Johnny and June Carter Cash Memorial Website. Retrieved on January 16, 2009.
- ^ Reba Cash Hancock. Harpeth Family Funeral Services. Retrieved on January 16, 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Cash, Johnny. Cash: The Autobiography.
- ^ Jack D. Cash at findagrave.com
- ^ Gross, Terry. All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists.
- ^ Billy Abbott. "Johnny Cash - February 26, 1932 - September 12, 2003". Southernmusic.net. http://www.southernmusic.net/johnnycash.html. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
- ^ Malone, Bill, and Judith McCulloh. Stars of Country Music. Chicago: 1975.
- ^ Miller (2003), p.40
- ^ Berkowitz, Kenny (June 2001). "No Regrets Johnny Cash, the man in black, is back at the top of his game". Acoustic Guitar (102). http://www.acousticguitar.com/issues/ag102/featureA102.shtml. Retrieved June 28, 2009.
- ^ Turner, Steve. (2004) The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend. W Publishing Group, pp. 43–44.
- ^ Turner, Steve. (2004) The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend. W Publishing Group, pp. 116–117.
- ^ Sweeting, Adam (2003-09-12). Obituary: Johnny Cash. The Guardian. Retrieved on January 26, 2009.
- ^ Liberto, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, p. 294.
- ^ Millar, Anna. June 4, 2006.Celtic connection as Cash walks the line in Fife. Scotland on Sunday. Scotsman.com. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
- ^ Cash, Roseanne (2010). Composed a memoir. Viking Press/Penguin Group. ISBN 978-1-101-45769-6.
- ^ Manzoor, Sarfraz (Sunday February 7, 2010).Scottish roots of Johnny Cash, the man in black tartan.Guardian.uk.co, The Observer. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
- ^ a b Miller, Stephen (2003). Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon. Omnibus. ISBN 0-7119-9626-1.
- ^ Dalton, Stephanie. January 15, 2006. "Walking the line back in time." Scotland on Sunday Scotsman.com. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
- ^ Cash, John R. with Patrick Carr. (1997) Johnny Cash, the Autobiography. Harper Collins. p. 3.
- ^ The Man in Black's Musical Journey Continues. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- ^ "Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest" http://www.richardandmimi.com/rainbowquest.html
- ^ "Major brush fire." Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1965, p. 1.
- ^ "Control of Brush Fire Near; 700 Acres Burned." Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1965, p. 27.
- ^ Williford, Stanley and Howard Hertel. "Singer Johnny Cash Pays $82,000 to U.S. in Fire Case." Los Angeles Times, Jul 3, 1969, p. A3.
- ^ Rome News Tribune, Aug 14, 1970
- ^ Zwonitzer, Mark (2002). Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone, The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85763-4.
- ^ Grant, Marshall (2005). I Was There When It Happened – My Life With Johnny Cash. Cumberland House. ISBN 1-58182-510-2.
- ^ Cash, John Carter (2007). Anchored In Love. Thomas Nelson. ISBN 0-8499-0187-1.
- ^ Cash In Treatment, Orlando Sentinel, November 26, 1989
- ^ "Inmate Merle Haggard hears Johnny Cash play San Quentin State Prison",
- ^ The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show 1969–1971, Disc 1 (of 2), Reverse Angle Production, 2007.
- ^ a b c Cash & Carr (1997), pp. 85–86.
- ^ The good, bad and ugly of proposed uniforms. Navy Times. October 4, 2004.
- ^ 17 April 1970: RN Welcomes The Man In Black to the White House Nixon Foundation blog. April 17, 2011.
- ^ Cash & Carr (2003), p. 212.
- ^ Johnny Cash: The Rebel Page 3.
- ^ Fretbase, The Guitars of Johnny Cash.
- ^ Rolling Stone Magazine, The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, 2004 (bibliographic information is needed for this reference).
- ^ December 30, 2011 (2003-11-24). "Death from a Broken Heart, on". Medicinenet.com. http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52318. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
- ^ "Johnny Cash Dead at Age 71". Countrymusic.about.com. 2003-09-12. http://countrymusic.about.com/library/bljohnnycashobit.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
- ^ Rosanne Cash, liner notes for Black Cadillac.
- ^ "Fire destroys Johnny Cash house". BBC News. April 11, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6543503.stm. Retrieved September 29, 2010.
- ^ The original punk rocker BY JIM DeROGATIS Pop Music Critic, September 14, 2003. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- ^ Johnny Cash Made the Most Punk-Rock Album Ever. In 1969. by Matt Cibula, September 15, 2003. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- ^ Johnny Cash profile at SOS Children's Villages.
- ^ Johnny Cash profile at SOS Children's Villages - USA.
- ^ Kristofferson, Kris. "31 Johnny Cash". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5940054/31_johnny_cash. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
- ^ "The Immortals: The First Fifty". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939214/the_immortals_the_first_fifty. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
- ^ "Mississippi town to honor the 'Man in Black'". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20611738/. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
- ^ "RHOF Inductees with Certificates". Rockabilly Hall of Fame. http://www.rockabillyhall.com/Certificates.html. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
- ^ Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts
- ^ "Johnny Cash". Hit Parade Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on January 6, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080106180837/http://www.hitparadehalloffame.org/xhtml_heads/Candidates/Inductee_johnny_cash.html. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
References[link]
- D'Ambrosio, Antonino (2009). A Heartbeat and A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears. With Original Art by Shepard Fairey and Photos by Jim Marshall. Perseus Books/Nation Books ISBN 978-1-56858-407-2
- Gross, Terry (2006). All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists. Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0010-3.
- Millier, Bill. (retrieved September 7, 2004). Johnny Cash Awards. JohnnyCash.com.
- Miller, Stephen (2003). Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon. Omnibus. ISBN 0-7119-9626-1. http://books.google.ca/books?id=NZDEbEHKMPsC&lpg=PP1&dq=Johnny%20Cash%3A%20The%20Life%20of%20an%20American%20Icon&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=true.
- Streissguth, Michael. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Da Capo Press (2004). ISBN 0-306-81338-6.
- Urbanski, Dave. The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash. New York: Relevant Books. ISBN 0-9729276-7-0.
- Cash, Johnny; Patrick Carr (1997). Cash: The Autobiography. Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-101357-9.
- Cash, Johnny. May 18, 2010. [clarification needed]
- Turner, Steve. The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend. Nashville, W Publishing Group, 2004. (The Authorized Biography).
- Thomson, Liz. Cash, Johnny. www.oxfordmusiconline.com. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/05087?q=Johnny+Cash&hbutton_search.x=23&hbutton_search.y=8&hbutton_search=search&source=omo_t237&source=omo_gmo&source=omo_t114&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
- Holmes, Cynthia S. (January, 2004), Remembering H. Dale Jackson, Connect: Newsletter of the CBF of Missouri, p. 2
Published works[link]
- Cash, Johnny. Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975. ISBN 99924-31-58-X.
- Cash, Johnny, with Patrick Carr. Cash: The Autobiography. New York: Harper Collins, 1997. ISBN 0-06-101357-9.
- Cash, Johnny, with June Carter Cash. Love liner notes. New York: Sony, 2000.
- Cash, Johnny, The Man in White, 1986.
External links[link]
|
Book: Johnny Cash |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johnny Cash |
|
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Johnny Cash |
- Official website
- Johnny Cash Official Label Website
- Official Johnny Cash Lost Highway Artist Page
- at the Country Music Hall of Fame
- at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
- at the Hit Parade Hall of Fame
- Larry King's November 26, 2002 interview With Johnny Cash on CNN
- Johnny Cash: Best Photos – slideshow by Life magazine
- Johnny Cash at the Internet Movie Database
- Johnny Cash at AllRovi
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| First None recognized before
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First Amendment Center/AMA "Spirit of Americana" Free Speech Award 2002 |
Succeeded by Kris Kristofferson |
| Preceded by Buddy & Julie Miller |
AMA Album of the Year (artist) 2003 |
Succeeded by Loretta Lynn |
| Preceded by Jim Lauderdale |
AMA Artist of the Year 2003 |
Succeeded by Loretta Lynn |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Cash, Johnny |
| Alternative names | Cash, John R.; Cash, J.R. |
| Short description | Singer and songwriter |
| Date of birth | (1930-02-26)February 26, 1930 |
| Place of birth | Kingsland, Arkansas |
| Date of death | September 12, 2003(2003-09-12) |
| Place of death | Nashville, Tennessee |
http://wn.com/Johnny_Cash
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Кэш, Джонни
http://de.wn.com/Johnny Cash
http://it.wn.com/Johnny Cash
http://es.wn.com/Johnny Cash
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Demetri Martin | |
|---|---|
 Demetri Martin at Northeastern University on April 11, 2007 |
|
| Born | (1973-05-25) May 25, 1973 (age 39) New York City, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Years active | Since 2002 |
| Genres | Observational comedy, surreal humor, musical comedy, wit/wordplay, sketch comedy |
| Subject(s) | Everyday Life, American Culture, Random Subjects |
| Influences | Steven Wright, Eddie Izzard, Emo Philips, Mitch Hedberg, Socrates |
| Notable works and roles | · Demetri Martin. Person. · Correspondent on The Daily Show · Himself/Various on Important Things with Demetri Martin · Elliot Tiber in Taking Woodstock (2009) |
| Website | www.demetrimartin.com |
Demetri Martin (born May 25, 1973) is an American comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer and humorist. Martin is best known for his work as a stand-up comedian, contributor on The Daily Show and for his Comedy Central show Important Things with Demetri Martin.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Demetri Martin was born to a Greek American family[1] in New York City, New York, and grew up in Toms River, New Jersey. He is the son of Lillian, a nutritionist, and Dean C. Martin, now deceased, a Greek Orthodox priest.[2] Martin graduated from Yale University in 1995. Although he was accepted into Harvard Law School, he went to New York University School of Law after he received a full scholarship.[3]
Career[link]
In 2001, Martin caught his first big break in stand-up comedy when he appeared on Comedy Central's stand-up showcase Premium Blend. At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe he won the Perrier award with his show If I....[4] The show was turned into a British television special in 2004. From 2003 to 2004, Martin wrote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.[5] In 2004, Martin had his own Comedy Central Presents stand-up special. His special was divided into three parts. In the first, he performed in traditional stand-up comedy fashion. In the second segment, he used humorous drawings as visual aids, which would serve either as the punchline or a background. During the third segment, he played a guitar and put on a pseudo-play where he would strum his guitar while alternating between playing harmonica and talking; some of his comedian friends dressed as fairies and dragons acted according to the story he was telling, detailing the magical land where his jokes came from. Martin's mother and grandmother also appeared.
Since late 2005, he has been credited as a contributor on The Daily Show, on which he has appeared as the named "Senior Youth Correspondent" and on which he hosts a segment called "Trendspotting". He has used this segment to talk about so-called hip trends among youth such as hookahs, wine, guerilla marketing and Xbox 360. A piece about social networking featured his profile on MySpace.[6] On March 22, 2007, Demetri made another appearance on The Daily Show, talking about the Viacom lawsuit against Google and YouTube.
He has recorded a comedy CD/DVD titled These Are Jokes, which was released on September 26, 2006. This album also features Saturday Night Live member Will Forte and stand-up comedian Leo Allen.
Martin returned to The Daily Show on March 22, 2006, as the new Youth Correspondent, calling his segment "Professional Important News with Demetri Martin". In 2007, he starred in a Fountains of Wayne music video for "Someone to Love" as Seth Shapiro, a character in the song. He also starred in the video for the Travis single "Selfish Jean", in which he wears multiple t-shirts with lyrics written on them.
On September 2, 2007, Martin appeared on the season finale of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords. He appeared as a keytar player named Demetri.[7]
He also had a part in the movie The Rocker (2008) starring Rainn Wilson. Martin played the part of the videographer when the band in the movie was making their first music video.
In 2009, he hosted and starred in his own television show called Important Things With Demetri Martin on Comedy Central. Later in June, it was announced his show had been renewed for a second season.[8] The second season premiered, again on Comedy Central, on February 4, 2010. Martin has stated that Important Things will not return for a third season.
Prior to completing work on his second season, Martin starred in the comedy-drama film Taking Woodstock (2009), directed by Ang Lee, which premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In the film Martin plays Elliot Tiber, a closeted gay artist who has given up his ambitions in the city to move upstate and help his old-world Jewish family run their Catskill Mountains motel. The film is based on the book written by Tiber.
On April 25, 2011, Martin released his first book, titled This Is a Book by Demetri Martin.
Martin was slated to portray Paul DePodesta as Oakland Athletics assistant GM to Billy Beane in the 2011 movie Moneyball, however was dropped and Jonah Hill took his place in the movie.
Plans[link]
Martin sold his movie concept Will to DreamWorks; he is expected to play a key supporting role.[9] He will play the lead in the film Moon People, a pitch that he sold to Columbia Pictures.
Martin also signed a blind script deal with CBS in October 2010 to produce, write, and star in his own television series.[10]
After CBS was shown the pilot for the series, they decided not to air it.[11]
On August 11, 2011, Fox ordered a presentation of a new animated show they might air.[citation needed]
[edit] If I
If I is a Perrier Comedy Award-winning comedy one-man show written and performed by Demetri Martin at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.[12] It was also aired on British television as a special. The show is an autobiographical examination of Martin's life, as seen through various definitions of the word "if."
The title of the special comes from a lengthy palindromic poem that Martin wrote; the words "if I" are at the center of the poem.[13]
Comedic style[link]
Martin is known for being an unconventional stand-up comic. He uses one-liners and drawings on a "large pad", as well as accompanying his jokes with music on either guitar, harmonica, piano, keyboard, glockenspiel, toy bells, ukulele, or tambourine, sometimes all at once.[14] He has cited comedian Steven Wright as an important influence (both use deadpan one-liners in their acts) and he is also a fan of Bill Cosby.[15]
Personal life[link]
According to a July 2011 interview on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Demetri had a short-lived marriage to a girl he knew from high school. They began dating after high school and got married when he was in NYU Law School and she was attending NYU Medical School. He was aged 25 and in the end of his marriage when his stand-up career began.[3]
He is extremely allergic to nuts and peanuts.[16]
Martin moved to Santa Monica, California in 2009.[17]
Filmography[link]
- Invite Them Up (2005)
- These Are Jokes (2006)
- Demetri Martin. Person. (2007)
- Important Things with Demetri Martin (2009–2010)
Filmography and television work[link]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Analyze That | Personal Assistant | credited as "Demitri Martin" |
| 2003 | If I | Himself | British television special, also writer |
| 2004 | 12:21 | Himself | short film, also writer |
| 2004 | Late Night with Conan O'Brien | Himself | 1 episode, series writer |
| 2007 | "Someone to Love" | Seth Shapiro | Fountains of Wayne music video |
| 2007 | Flight of the Conchords | Demetri | Season 1, Episode 12 |
| 2008 | The Rocker | Kip (a music video producer) | |
| 2009 | Paper Heart | Himself | |
| 2009 | Post Grad | Ad Exec | |
| 2009 | Taking Woodstock | Elliot Tiber | |
| 2009–2010 | Important Things with Demetri Martin | Himself / Various | writer, series creator, executive producer, and composer |
| 2011 | Take Me Home Tonight | Carlos | |
| 2011 | Contagion | Dr. David Eisenberg | |
| 2011 | Conan | Himself | guest |
Written works[link]
- This Is a Book, April 2011, ISBN 978-0446539708.
Awards and nominations[link]
| Year | Award | For | Category | Result | Other notes |
| 2003 | Perrier Comedy Award | If I | Won | At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe | |
| 2004 | Emmy Awards | Late Night with Conan O'Brien | Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Program | Nominated | Shared with Mike Sweeney (head writer), Chris Albers, Jose Arroyo, Andy Blitz, Kevin Dorff, Daniel J. Goor, Michael Gordon, Brian Kiley, Michael Koman, Brian McCann, Guy Nicolucci, Conan O'Brien, Allison Silverman, Robert Smigel, Brian Stack, Andrew Weinberg |
| 2005 | Writers Guild of America Award | Late Night with Conan O'Brien | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) - Series | Won | Shared with Mike Sweeney (head writer), Chris Albers, Jose Arroyo, Andy Blitz, Kevin Dorff, Daniel J. Goor, Michael Gordon, Brian Kiley, Michael Koman, Brian McCann, Guy Nicolucci, Conan O'Brien, Allison Silverman, Robert Smigel, Brian Stack, Andrew Weinberg |
| 2006 | Barry Award | Dr. Earnest Parrot Presents Demetri Martin | Won | Award for best show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival |
References[link]
- ^ "Demetri Martin: The joker in the pack". The Independent (London). August 17, 2004. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/demetri-martin-the-joker-in-the-pack-556879.html.
- ^
- "Sepinwall on TV: 'Important Things with Demetri Martin' Interview". TV & Film. New Jersey Entertainment. http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/02/sepinwall_on_tv_important_thin.html. Retrieved January 25, 2010.
- "Article: 'I know men who can far outgeek me'; Demetri Martin is obsessed with word games and maths, and sets himself bizarre challenges. He's also a favourite to win this year's Perrier Award". The Evening Standard. August 21, 2003. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-106769338.html?refid=gg_x_02. Retrieved January 25, 2010.
- ^ a b "WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 195 - Demetri Martin". Wtfpod.com. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_195_-_demetri_martin. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
- ^ Martin, Demetri (May 25, 2004). "Diary: A Weeklong Electronic Journal". Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2101150/entry/2101158/. Retrieved February 24, 2007.
- ^ "Demetri Martin Bio". Comedy Central. http://www.comedycentral.com/comedians/browse/m/demetri_martin.jhtml. Retrieved March 7, 2008.
- ^ "News Team: Demetri Martin". The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/news_team/contributors/demetri_martin.jhtml. Retrieved February 24, 2007.
- ^ "The Flight of the Conchords" The Third Conchord (2007) - Full cast and crew
- ^ Itzkoff, Dave (June 2, 2009). "Another 'Important' Season for Demetri Martin". The New York Times. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/another-important-season-for-demetri-martin/. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
- ^ Gardner, Chris (March 27, 2006). "'Will' Fills D'Works Bill". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117940457.html?categoryid=1948&cs=1. Retrieved February 24, 2007.
- ^ "Demetri Martin To Star, Write, Produce Own CBS Show". October 19, 2010. http://demetrimartin.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/demetri-martin-to-star-write-produce-own-cbs-show/.
- ^ "Demetri Martin's CBS Show Not Happening". March 11, 2011. http://demetrimartin.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/demetri-martins-cbs-show-not-happening/.
- ^ Boztas, Senay (August 24, 2003). "Martin Lands Perrier Award". The Sunday Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article883269.ece. Retrieved May 12, 2009.
- ^ "Festival: It's All Geek to Me". The Sunday Times (London). August 17, 2003. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article872984.ece.
- ^ "Comedian Demetri Martin's 'Important' TV Show Fails at Funny". The Daily Texan. February 20, 2009. http://www.dailytexanonline.com/1.1370449-1.1370449. Retrieved January 25, 2010. [dead link]
- ^ Huang, Keith (May 5, 2005). "Word Games". Gelf. http://www.gelfmagazine.com/mt/archives/word_games.html. Retrieved February 24, 2007.
- ^ "Will Ferrell Rider". The Smoking Gun. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/will-ferrell-rider?page=2. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
- ^
- The Adam Carolla Show (podcast), 13 April 2011, 20 minute mark
- Horn, John (June 21, 2009). "Demetri Martin, star of 'Taking Woodstock'". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/21/entertainment/ca-hot-martin21. Retrieved 21 April 2011. "Martin, who recently moved from Brooklyn to West Los Angeles"
External links[link]
|
|
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012) |
- Official website
- Demetri Martin on Myspace
- Demetri Martin at the Internet Movie Database
- Interview from November, 2006, in Onion AV Club
- Interview from October 2006, in The DePaulia
- Article, in The Scotsman
- Article, in Gelf Magazine
- Interview by Brian M. Palmer
- MP3 Audio Interview on The Sound of Young America public radio show and podcast
- Interview Believer Mag
- New Jersey Monthly Magazine
- Fresh Air, NPR.org
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Martin, Demetri |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer, and humorist |
| Date of birth | May 25, 1973 |
| Place of birth | New York City, New York, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Demetri_Martin
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Мартин, Деметри
http://de.wn.com/Demetri Martin
http://it.wn.com/Demetri Martin
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetri_Martin
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
5:39
Pete Seeger/Abiyoyo
jguth3
Pete Seeger/Abiyoyo
Pete has been doing this story for decades. It's a wonderful kids story about a giant named Abiyoyo. Live at Wolftrap August 8, 1993. Live video mix and the sound track is from our CD titled, "More Together Again". To be released at Carnegie Hall in November. Arlo & Pete and family will be performing there this year! www.risingsonrecords.com
2:19
Pete Seeger - Rye Whiskey
arthuropentower
Pete Seeger - Rye Whiskey
Rye whiskey rye whiskey Rye whiskey I cry If you don't give me rye whiskey I surely will die If the ocean was whiskey And I was a duck I'd dive to the bottom And never come up Way up on Clinch Mountain I wander alone I'm drunk as the devil Just leave me alone I'll eat when I'm hungry I'll drink when I'm dry If a tree don't fall on me I'll live 'til I die
3:24
Talking Union - Pete Seeger
solidaritet2010
Talking Union - Pete Seeger
Talking Union by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, 1941 The Almanac Singers, Woodie Guthrie, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell and Pete Seeger Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you. You got to build you a union, got to make it strong, But if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long. You get shorter hours, better working conditions, Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore. It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain Just why you got to ride on the union train. 'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay, We'll all be a-waitin' 'til Judgment Day. We'll all be buried, gone to heaven, St. Peter'll be the straw boss then. Now you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't; He speeds up the work 'til you're 'bout to faint. You may be down and out, but you ain't beaten, You can pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'. Talk it over, speak your mind, Decide to do somethin' about it. Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool To go to your meetin' and act like a stool. But you can always tell a stool, though, that's a fact, He's got a yaller streak a-runnin' down his back. He doesn't have to stool, he'll always get along On what he takes out of blind men's cups. You got a union now, and you're sittin' pretty, Put some of the boys on the steering committee. The boss won't listen when one guy squawks, But he's got to listen when the union talks. He'd better, be mighty lonely <b>...</b>
7:05
Pete Seeger's new protest song - BP oil spill - Gods Counting on Me, Gods Counting On You - Banjo
Extramission1
Pete Seeger's new protest song - BP oil spill - Gods Counting on Me, Gods Counting On You - Banjo
Pete's Seeger sings and plays banjo on his new protest song "God's Counting On Me, God's Counting on You." He wrote this song about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The song was written by Lorre Wyatt and Pete Seeger. This was filmed, recorded and edited at the Beacon Sloop Club by Mark McCarroll. Audio was mixed by Matthew Billy. Lyrics: When we look and we can see things are not what they should be God's counting on me, God's counting on you When we look and see things that should not be God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. And when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill God's counting on me, God's counting on you Yes when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through, Hopin' we'll all pull through Me and you. Don't give up don't give in, workin' together we all can win God's counting on me, God's counting on you Don't give up don't give in, workin' together we all can win God's counting on me, God's counting on you Hopin' we'll all <b>...</b>
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