Pete Seeger

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Pete Seeger
Seeger ca. 1955
Seeger ca. 1955
Background information
Born May 3, 1919 (1919-05-03) (age 89)
Origin Greenwich Village
Genre(s) Folk
Occupation(s) Activist, songwriter
Years active 1940-present
Associated acts The Weavers,The Almanac Singers,Woody Guthrie,Arlo Guthrie

Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919), better known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer, political activist, and a key figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival. As a member of the Weavers, he had a string of hits, including a 1949 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" that topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950.[1] However, his career as a mainstream performer was seriously curtailed by the Second Red Scare: he came under severe attack as a former member of the Communist Party of the United States of America. Later, he re-emerged on the public scene as a pioneer of protest music in the late 1950s and the 1960s.

He is perhaps best known today as the author or co-author of the songs "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", 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. Seeger is also widely credited with popularizing the traditional song "We Shall Overcome", which was recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists, and became the publicly perceived anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement soon after musicologist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.

Contents

[edit] Family and personal life

Seeger was born in New York City, USA. His father, Charles Louis Seeger, was a musicologist and an early investigator of non-Western music, and his mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, a prominent classical violinist.[2] His stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was one of the most significant female composers of the 20th Century. His siblings Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger also had notable musical careers. Half-brother Mike Seeger went on to form the New Lost City Ramblers, who influenced Bob Dylan. His eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was an astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, an educator. His uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet, was killed during the First World War.

In 1936 he heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina,[3] and his life was changed forever. Pete Seeger attended the Avon Old Farms boarding school in Connecticut, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. He then attended Harvard University until he left in 1938 during his sophomore year. In both cases, he was a scholarship student.[4] In 1943 he married Toshi-Aline Ohta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. Pete and Toshi have three children, Daniel, Mika and Tinya, and grandchildren Tao, Cassie, Kitama, Moraya, Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with The Mammals.

Seeger lives in the hamlet of Dutchess Junction in the Town of Fishkill, NY and remains very active politically, as well as maintaining an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley Region of New York, especially in the nearby City of Beacon, NY. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949, and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves, and eventually in a larger house.[5] Seeger joined the Community Church (a church practicing Unitarian Universalism)[6] and often performs at functions for the Unitarian Universalist Association.[7][8]

[edit] Musical career

[edit] Early work

"Arlo, folk songs are serious."
Pete Seeger to Arlo Guthrie

Seeger's education in Harvard College was paid for in part by his siblings, parents, and scholarship money. There he was exposed to students with concerns about "what to do with Hitler", including those in the pacifist groups, the socialists and communist party. He dropped out of college in 1939.[9] and he took a job in Washington, D.C. at the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress. In that capacity, he met and was influenced by many other musicians such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He met Guthrie in person at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers concert on March 3, 1940 and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration.

Pete Seeger, 1944. Eleanor Roosevelt is center.
Pete Seeger, 1944. Eleanor Roosevelt is center.

[edit] Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger has long been interested in the music that came out of the Spanish Civil War. In 1944, he was invited by Moses Asch (later of Folkways Records) to record a collection of Spanish Civil War songs. These included "Valley of Jarama" and "Peat Bog Soldiers".

[edit] Banjo

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, and slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo.

[edit] Group recordings

As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor),[10] he was a founding member of several folk groups. These included the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie, and the Weavers with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman.

The Weavers had major hits in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era. Their number # 1 hit of 1950 was Good Night Irene. They also performed briefly in a reunion tour in 1955, which produced the hit, 16 Tons. In The Power of Music, Seeger claims he resigned from the Weavers because the three other band members had agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.

In 1955 he recorded an album entitled Union Songs for Folkways Records (FH 5285A).

[edit] Soloing

Seeger started a solo career in 1958, and is known for songs such as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer" (co-written with Lee Hays), "Turn, Turn, Turn," adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and "We Shall Overcome" (which he and Guy Carawan based on a spiritual). Seeger became influential in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village. He helped found Broadside Magazine and Sing Out!. He was strongly associated with Moses Asch and Folkways Records. To describe the new crop of folk singers, many of whom were politically minded in their songs, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his former bandmate Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. He has often sung and is associated with the song "Joe Hill". He also performed and recorded covers of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" and the folk classics "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" and "This Little Light of Mine."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Seeger toured college campuses extensively. He made a world tour starting in 1962. During the same period, he increasingly adopted the 12-string guitar as his accompaniment, his distinctive custom-made guitars sporting a triangular soundhole, and combining the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-key techniques 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.[11] Other folk performers adopted the 12-string guitar as a result, ensuring its survival and contributing to its great popularity and mainstream acceptance in the 1960s and 70s.

Pete Seeger made two tours of Australia the first in 1963. At the time of this tour, his single Little Boxes (written by Malvina Reynolds) was number one in the nation's Top 40's. In 1993, the Australian singer/plawright Maurie Mulherin, assembled an anthology of Seeger's 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.

In the mid-60s he hosted a regional folk music television show called Rainbow Quest, which featured folk musicians playing traditional folk music. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Mississippi John Hurt, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Roscoe Holcomb, The Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Richard Fariña, The Beers Family, and Mimi Fariña, and many others. Thirty-nine[12] hourlong programs were recorded at new UHF station WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi with Sholom Rubinstein.

Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out! (Summer 2005), a magazine that he helped found in 1950 and to which he still occasionally contributes.
Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out! (Summer 2005), a magazine that he helped found in 1950 and to which he still occasionally contributes.

An early advocate of Bob Dylan, Seeger was supposedly incensed over the distorted electric sound Dylan brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, especially with the inability to clearly hear the lyrics. There are many conflicting versions of exactly what ensued,[13] some claiming that he actually tried to disconnect the equipment. He is often cited as one of the main opponents to Dylan at Newport 1965, but 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.[14]

[edit] Later work

In 1998 a double-CD tribute album was released - "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger". It contained contributions from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Tom Paxton, Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn, Judy Collins, Indigo Girls, Dick Gaughan, Martin Simpson, Odetta and others.

As of 2008, Pete Seeger still performs occasionally in public, and for a number of years has appeared at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough Tennessee to tell stories, these days mostly children's stories such as Abiyoyo. He performed at MerleFest April 27–April 30, 2006 in Wilkesboro, NC.

On March 16, 2007, the 88-year old Pete Seeger performed with his siblings Mike and Peggy and other Seeger family members at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where he had been employed as a folk song archivist 67 years earlier.

In April 2006, Bruce Springsteen released a collection of songs associated with Seeger or in Seeger's folk tradition, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Springsteen performed a series of concerts based on those sessions, to sellout crowds. Springsteen had previously recorded one Seeger favorite, "We Shall Overcome," on the 1998 "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" tribute album.

[edit] Activism

[edit] Pre-1950

As a young man Seeger was a U.S. communist party (CPUSA) member and activist (see #Quotes From Seeger). His anti-war record Songs for John Doe was released in 1941. After Germany’s breaking of the pact and its attack on the Soviet Union, copies were removed from sale and the remaining inventory was reportedly destroyed. Only a few copies exist to this day.[citation needed]

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Seeger became a strong proponent of military action against Germany. He served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but 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 established People's Songs, an organization designed to 'Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People"[15] Seeger tried to get Henry A. Wallace elected President in 1948. [16]

[edit] 1950s and early 1960s

After 1950, Seeger continued strong support of the labor movement in the U.S., and became an anti-Stalinist socialist, rejecting the policies of Stalin and the Stalinist form of Communism practiced in the Soviet Union. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA in 1949, remained friends with some who did not leave it, but argued with them.[12][17] Seeger said of his renouncement of Stalinist communism: "I realized I could sing the same songs I sang whether I belonged to the Communist Party or not, and I never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization."[18] Seeger has made his rejection of Stalin publicly explicit several times. Among these are his 1993 book Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, and a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine. In 2007, he wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues", and also a letter to historian Ron Radosh, an anticommunist critic of Seeger, apologizing for being blind to Stalin's failings. "I think you’re right," wrote Seeger, "I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R."[19] On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) where he refused to name personal and political associations stating it 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."[20] 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 in March 1961, and sentenced to a year in jail, but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.[21]

[edit] Vietnam War era

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[22], ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War the phrase implied that "Alby Jay" was a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ", and sarcastically suggested "that must explain why he doesn't respond to the protests against his war policies".

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain — referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool" — who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." And it was not seriously contested[citation needed] that much of the audience would grasp Seeger's allegorical casting of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show,[23] after wide publicity[24], it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.[25]

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

[edit] Environment

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.[26] The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for Clearwater's construction.

Seeger's album Clearwater Classics. The title alludes to his work with the Clearwater group, working to clean the Hudson River.
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.

[edit] Awards

Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including :

There is also currently a petition being circulated to persuade the Norwegian Nobel Committee to nominate Seeger for a Nobel Peace Prize.

[edit] Quotes

[edit] From Seeger

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • "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."
  • "My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around '38. I drifted out in the '50s. I apologize [in his recent book] for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader."
  • "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."
  • "Plagiarism is the basis of all culture." Seeger quoting his father.
  • "Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple."
  • "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."
  • "Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."
  • "There is hope for the world." - in Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

[edit] From others

Jim Musselman (founder of Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger:

"He was one of the few people who invoked the First Amendment in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). 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 Seeger v. United States, 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."[27]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p.44
  2. ^ New York Times, December 19, 1911 wedding announcement
  3. ^ Dunaway 1990, p. 48-49.
  4. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p. 50.
  5. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p. 47–48.
  6. ^ Wendy Schuman, Pete Seeger's session, Beliefnet. The interview is undated, but he remarks on being married 63 years, so it is in 2006–2007. Accessed online 16 October 2007.
  7. ^ Opening Celebration and Plenary I of the Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005. Accessed online 16 October 2007.
  8. ^ There is a mention in of him (along with several other famous Unitarian Universalists) in the lead paragraph of the article Unitarian Universalism on the official site of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregation. Accessed online 16 October 2007.
  9. ^ According to [Wilkinson 2006], p. 51, he failed one of his winter exams and lost his scholarship.
  10. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p. 47.
  11. ^ http://www.acousticguitar.com/issues/ag115/gear115.html
  12. ^ a b "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" - PBS American Masters, 2008-02-27
  13. ^ In the Dylan documentary No Direction Home, John Cohen, Maria Muldaur and Seeger himself recount conflicting memories and impressions of the incident.
  14. ^ David Kupfer, Longtime Passing: An interview with Pete Seeger, Whole Earth magazine, Spring 2001. Accessed online 16 October 2007.
  15. ^ People's Songs Inc. People's Songs Newsletter No 1. Feb 1946. Old Town School of Folk Music Resource center collection.
  16. ^ American Masters: "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song - KQED Broadcast 2-27-08
  17. ^ An Interview with Filmmaker Jim Brown "In 1949, when he realized that Stalin was involved in atrocities going on in Russia he removed himself from the Communist Party." (Filmmaker of Pete Seeger: The Power of Song)
  18. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p. 52.
  19. ^ Daniel J. Wakin, This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin Over a Decade Ago, New York Times, September 1, 2007. Accessed 16 October 2007.
  20. ^ Pete Seeger to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, August 18, 1955. Quoted, along with some other exchanges from that hearing, in [Wilkinson 2006], p.53
  21. ^ [Wilkinson 2006], p. 53.
  22. ^ Beans in My Ears
  23. ^ Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode 1, 10 September 1967.
  24. ^ How "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" Finally Got on Network Television in 1968
  25. ^ Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode 24, 25 February 1968.
  26. ^ Featured in the PBS documentary, a more specific cite is needed.
  27. ^ We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger, Democracy Now!, September 4, 2006. Accessed 16 October 2007.

[edit] References

[edit] External links