Where Have All the Flowers Gone
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"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" is a folk song of the 1960s written by Pete Seeger.
He found inspiration for the song while on his way to a concert. Leafing through his notebook he saw the passage, "Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they've all taken husbands. Where are the men, they're all in the army." These lines were from a Ukrainian folk song referenced in a novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don. Seeger adapted it to a tune, a lumberjack version of "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill." With only three verses, he recorded it once in a medley on a Rainbow Quest album and forgot about it. hi
The Kingston Trio recorded the song in 1961 and claimed authorship, but they took their name off when Seeger asked them to. Their single reached #21 on the charts. Peter, Paul and Mary also recorded it into a popular folk song. It was performed by Marlene Dietrich in German, as "Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind", with translated lyrics by Max Colpet.
