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Topic: Pete Seeger |
Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 1:19 am |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140128
Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94 By JON PARELESJAN. 28, 2014
Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.
His death was confirmed by his grandson, Kitama Cahill Jackson, who said he died of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.
For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.
In his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall Overcome,†which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.
Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene†— which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,†which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,†became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,†Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Mr. Seeger was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock. Decades later, Bruce Springsteen drew the songs on his 2006 album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,†from Mr. Seeger’s repertoire of traditional music about a turbulent American experience, and in 2009 he performed Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land†with Mr. Seeger at the Obama inaugural. At a Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Mr. Seeger’s 90th birthday, Mr. Springsteen introduced him as “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along.â€
Although he recorded more than 100 albums, Mr. Seeger distrusted commercialism and was never comfortable with the idea of stardom. He invariably tried to use his celebrity to bring attention and contributions to the causes that moved him, or to the traditional songs he wanted to preserve.
Mr. Seeger saw himself as part of a continuing folk tradition, constantly recycling and revising music that had been honed by time.
During the McCarthy era Mr. Seeger’s political affiliations, including membership in the Communist Party in the 1940s, led to his being blacklisted and later indicted for contempt of Congress. The pressure broke up the Weavers, and Mr. Seeger disappeared from television until the late 1960s. But he never stopped recording, performing and listening to songs from ordinary people. Through the decades, his songs have become part of America’s folklore.
“My job,†he said in 2009, “is to show folks there’s a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.â€
Peter Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, to Charles Seeger, a musicologist, and Constance de Clyver Edson Seeger, a concert violinist. His parents later divorced.
He began playing the ukulele while attending Avon Old Farms, a private boarding school in Connecticut. His father and his stepmother, the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, were collecting and transcribing rural American folk music, as were folklorists like John and Alan Lomax. He heard the five-string banjo, which would become his main instrument, when his father took him to a square-dance festival in North Carolina.
Young Pete became enthralled by rural traditions. “I liked the strident vocal tone of the singers, the vigorous dancing,†he is quoted in “How Can I Keep From Singing,†a biography by David Dunaway. “The words of the songs had all the meat of life in them. Their humor had a bite, it was not trivial. Their tragedy was real, not sentimental.â€
Planning to be a journalist, Mr. Seeger attended Harvard, where he founded a radical newspaper and joined the Young Communist League. After two years, he dropped out and came to New York City, where Mr. Lomax introduced him to the blues singer Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly. Mr. Lomax also helped Mr. Seeger find a job cataloging and transcribing music at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress.
Mr. Seeger met Mr. Guthrie, a songwriter who shared his love of vernacular music and agitprop ambitions, in 1940, when they performed at a benefit concert for migrant California workers. Traveling across the United States with Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Seeger picked up some of his style and repertory. He also hitchhiked and hopped freight trains by himself, trading and learning songs.
When he returned to New York later in 1940, Mr. Seeger made his first albums. He, Millard Lampell and Mr. Hays founded the Almanac Singers, who performed union songs and, until Germany invaded the Soviet Union, antiwar songs, following the Communist Party line. Mr. Guthrie soon joined the group.
During World War II the Almanac Singers’s repertory turned to patriotic, antifascist songs, bringing them a broad audience, including a prime-time national radio spot. But the group’s earlier antiwar songs, the target of an F.B.I. investigation, came to light, and the group’s career plummeted.
Before the group completely dissolved, however, Mr. Seeger was drafted in 1942 and assigned to a unit of performers. He married Toshi-Aline Ohta while on furlough in 1943.
When he returned from the war he founded People’s Songs Inc., which published political songs and presented concerts for several years before going bankrupt. He also started his nightclub career, performing at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Mr. Seeger and Paul Robeson toured with the campaign of Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party presidential candidate, in 1948.
Mr. Seeger invested $1,700 in 17 acres of land overlooking the Hudson River in Beacon and began building a log cabin there in the late 1940s. In 1949, Mr. Seeger, Mr. Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman started working together as the Weavers. They were signed to Decca Records by Gordon Jenkins, the company’s music director and an arranger for Frank Sinatra. With Mr. Jenkins’s elaborate orchestral arrangements, the group recorded a repertoire that stretched from “If I Had a Hammer†to a South African song, “Wimoweh†(the title was Mr. Seeger’s mishearing of “Mbube,†the name of a South African hit by Solomon Linda), to an Israeli soldiers’ song, “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,†to a cleaned-up version of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene.†Onstage, they also sang more pointed topical songs.
In 1950 and 1951 the Weavers were national stars, with hit singles and engagements at major nightclubs. Their hits included “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine†and Mr. Guthrie’s “So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Yuh),†and they sold an estimated four million singles and albums.
But “Red Channels,†an influential pamphlet listing performers with suspected Communist ties, appeared in June 1950 and listed Mr. Seeger, although by then he had quit the Communist Party. He would later criticize himself for having not left the party sooner, though he continued to describe himself as a “communist with a small ‘c.’ â€
Despite the Weavers’ commercial success, by the summer of 1951 the “Red Channels†citation and leaks from F.B.I. files had led to the cancellation of television appearances. In 1951, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee investigated the Weavers for sedition. And in February 1952, a former member of People’s Songs testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that three of the four Weavers were members of the Communist Party.
As engagements dried up the Weavers disbanded, though they reunited periodically in the mid-1950s. After the group recorded an advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes, Mr. Seeger left, citing his objection to promoting tobacco use.
Shut out of national exposure, Mr. Seeger returned primarily to solo concerts, touring college coffeehouses, churches, schools and summer camps, building an audience for folk music among young people. He started to write a long-running column for the folk-song magazine Sing Out! And he recorded prolifically for the independent Folkways label, singing everything from children’s songs to Spanish Civil War anthems.
In 1955 he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he testified, “I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature.†He also stated: “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.â€
Mr. Seeger offered to sing the songs mentioned by the congressmen who questioned him. The committee declined.
Mr. Seeger was indicted in 1957 on 10 counts of contempt of Congress. He was convicted in 1961 and sentenced to a year in prison, but the next year an appeals court dismissed the indictment as faulty. After the indictment, Mr. Seeger’s concerts were often picketed by the John Birch Society and other rightist groups. “All those protests did was sell tickets and get me free publicity,†he later said. “The more they protested, the bigger the audiences became.â€
By then, the folk revival was prospering. In 1959, Mr. Seeger was among the founders of the Newport Folk Festival. The Kingston Trio’s version of Mr. Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?†reached the Top 40 in 1962, soon followed by Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of “If I Had a Hammer,†which rose to the Top 10.
Mr. Seeger was signed to a major label, Columbia Records, in 1961, but he remained unwelcome on network television. “Hootenanny,†an early-1960s show on ABC that capitalized on the folk revival, refused to book Mr. Seeger, causing other performers (including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary) to boycott it. “Hootenanny†eventually offered to present Mr. Seeger if he would sign a loyalty oath. He refused.
He toured the world, performing and collecting folk songs, in 1963, and returned to serenade civil rights advocates, who had made a rallying song of his “We Shall Overcome.â€
Like many of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “We Shall Overcome†had convoluted traditional roots. It was based on old gospel songs, primarily “I’ll Overcome,†a hymn that striking tobacco workers had sung on a picket line in South Carolina. A slower version, “We Will Overcome,†was collected from one of the workers, Lucille Simmons, by Zilphia Horton, the musical director of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., which trained union organizers.
Ms. Horton taught it to Mr. Seeger, and her version of “We Will Overcome†was published in the People’s Songs newsletter. Mr. Seeger changed “We will†to “We shall†and added verses (“We’ll walk hand in handâ€). He taught it to the singers Frank Hamilton, who would join the Weavers in 1962, and Guy Carawan, who became musical director at Highlander in the ‘50s. Mr. Carawan taught the song to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at its founding conventio
The song was copyrighted by Mr. Seeger, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Carawan and Ms. Horton. “At that time we didn’t know Lucille Simmons’s name,†Mr. Seeger wrote in his 1993 autobiography, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.†All of the song’s royalties go to the “We Shall Overcome†Fund, administered by what is now the Highlander Research and Education Center, which provides grants to African-Americans organizing in the South.
Along with many elders of the protest-song movement, Mr. Seeger felt betrayed when Bob Dylan appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with a loud electric blues band. Reports emerged that Mr. Seeger had tried to cut the power cable with an ax, but witnesses including the producer George Wein and the festival’s production manager, Joe Boyd (later a leading folk-rock record producer), said he did not go that far. (An ax was available, however. A group of prisoners had used it while singing a logging song.)
As the United States grew divided over the Vietnam War, Mr. Seeger wrote “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,†an antiwar song with the refrain “The big fool says to push on.†He performed the song during a taping of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour†in September 1967, his return to network television, but it was cut before the show was broadcast. After the Smothers Brothers publicized the censorship, Mr. Seeger returned to perform the song for broadcast in February 1968.
During the late 1960s Mr. Seeger started an improbable project: a sailing ship that would crusade for cleaner water on the Hudson River. Between other benefit concerts he raised money to build the Clearwater, a 106-foot sloop that was launched in June 1969 with a crew of musicians. The ship became a symbol and a rallying point for antipollution efforts and education.
In May 2009, after decades of litigation and environmental activism led by Mr. Seeger’s nonprofit environmental organization, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, General Electric began dredging sediment containing PCBs it had dumped into the Hudson. Mr. Seeger and his wife also helped organize a yearly summer folk festival named after the Clearwater.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s Mr. Seeger toured regularly with Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son, and continued to lead singalongs and perform benefit concerts. Recognition and awards arrived. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, and in 1993 he was given a lifetime achievement Grammy Award. In 1994, President Bill Clinton handed him the National Medal of Arts, America’s highest arts honor, given by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1999, he traveled to Cuba to receive the Order of Félix Varela, Cuba’s highest cultural award, for his “humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism.â€
In 1996, Mr. Seeger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Arlo Guthrie, who paid tribute at the ceremony, mentioned that the Weavers’ hit “Goodnight, Irene†reached No. 1, only to add, “I can’t think of a single event in Pete’s life that is probably less important to him.†Mr. Seeger made no acceptance speech, but he did lead a singalong of “Goodnight, Irene,†flanked by Stevie Wonder, David Byrne and members of the Jefferson Airplane.
Mr. Seeger won Grammy Awards for best traditional folk album in 1997, for the album “Pete,†and in 2009, for the album “At 89.†He also won a Grammy in the children’s music category in 2011 for “Tomorrow’s Children.â€
Mr. Seeger kept performing into the 21st century, despite a flagging voice; audiences happily sang along more loudly. He celebrated his 90th birthday, on May 3, 2009, at a Madison Square Garden concert — a benefit for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater — with Mr. Springsteen, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Emmylou Harris and dozens of other musicians paying tribute. In August he was back in Newport for the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival.
Mr. Seeger’s wife, Toshi, died in 2013, days before the couple’s 70th anniversary. Survivors include his son, Daniel; his daughters, Mika and Tinya; a half-sister, Peggy; and six grandchildren, including the musician Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, who performed with him at the Obama inaugural. His half-brother Mike Seeger, a folklorist and performer who founded the New Lost City Ramblers, died in 2009.
Through the years, Mr. Seeger remained determinedly optimistic. “The key to the future of the world,†he said in 1994, “is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.â€
_________________
Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin |
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Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 3:10 am
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I think this is my favorite so far of the many tributes now being posted all over the web ....
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From Ron Peters
I'm a jazz musician, but Pete Seeger influenced me on how to be an authentic human being. And that also makes me a better musician. He showed us what it means to stand up for what you believe in. He lived his life true to his principles, and in doing so set an example for all of us to emulate. I have always admired Pete Seeger. Rest peacefully weary soldier. |
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Steel Guitar Books! Website: www.volkmediabooks.com |
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Bob Blair
From:
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 5:49 am
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| What a guy. I saw him live at Toronto's Massey Hall in the early 80's. The house PA went out for awhile - Pete grabbed his banjo, walked up to the front of the stage, and kept right on going. No band - he didn't need one. RIP. |
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Brad Bechtel
From:
San Francisco, CA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 7:23 am
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He was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He wrote the first book on banjo playing many people ever saw.
RIP Pete.
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Brad’s Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars |
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Stephen R. Feldman
From:
Takoma Park, MD
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 7:30 am On Pete Seeger
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One might also read this:
America's Most Successful Communist
http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_urbanities-communist.html
As a performer, there's a Carnegie Hall
album that's really a great example of
"movement" group singing.
Yes, the guy was a really good singer,
and was a great entertainer. But just
once, I'd like to see somebody say something along the lines of
"Yes, when I was a communist (the 30's on), the communists were doing this..."
And yes, I was one of those kids who grew
up around all this stuff, and I've inhaled
my share of teargas, etc. I just don't like seeing it glossed over, any more than
glossing over the Klan stuff. There was bad stuff going on on more than one side...
Lest we forget |
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Brad Bechtel
From:
San Francisco, CA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 7:49 am
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"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." -- Pete Seeger
"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." -- the inscription on his banjo.
_________________
Brad’s Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars |
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Bill Hatcher
From:
Atlanta Ga. USA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 9:37 am
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| all long neck banjos in the world are a little sad today...... |
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Stephen R. Feldman
From:
Takoma Park, MD
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 9:43 am and...
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| Just the flailin' style ones... |
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Michael Breid
From:
Eureka Springs, Arkansas, USA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 10:40 am
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| I'll miss Pete everytime I pick up my longneck banjo to play. Some of the dyed in the wool bluegrass players claim that Earl never played one, but they need to look on page 13 of Earl's new revised banjo book. Hmmmm. There's Earl sitting on a couch playing a longneck banjo. Well, well, well. RIP Mr. Seeger you taught us a heck of a lot more than just how to play a banjo. |
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Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 10:50 am
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Most people don’t know that among Seeger’s accomplishments, he, along with Les Paul, was one of the pioneers in the art of multitrack recording. Back in 1960, Seeger and his brother Mike composed and recorded music for a film called Indian Summer. This all instrumental album was recorded on a 3 track tape recorder. Seeger himself probably dismissed it as being less important than his singing and activism. I think it shows what a great musician he was.
This recording, which is now available on CD, was one of my primary influences. It taught me that the multitrack tape recorder is also a musical instrument, to be stroked and fondled and manipulated, just as any other. Anybody who has hard any of my recordings and listens to this music, will readily see its on my work.
The album itself is absolutely beautiful. I consider it to be a Masterpiece, and will someday be acknowledged as such.
Here is a review;
http://www.allmusic.com/album/indian-summer-mw0000892004
Review by Stewart Mason [-]
One of Pete Seeger's most non-traditional and interesting albums, Indian Summer contains the soundtracks to four different short films. The entirety of side one is taken up by the soundtrack to Jules V. Schwerin's non-narrative film Indian Summer, composed and recorded by Seeger with his son, Michael Seeger, (Mike was Pete’s half brother, not his so- MP) who between them play fiddle, banjo, guitar, bamboo flute, harmonica, pump organ, 12-string guitar, and drums, with incidental voices and sound effects (from birdsong to heavy machinery) from the film's soundtrack mixed in. It's a fascinating, wide-ranging piece that wanders through a variety of moods and musical settings, one of those soundtracks that makes the listener want to see the movie itself. Side two consists of three shorter soundtracks, to Norman McLaren's Horizontal Lines (featuring Seeger overdubbing himself on half a dozen instruments, with sound effects) and two films by himself and wife Toshi Seeger, The Many-Colored Paper (an overdubbed two-guitar improvisation on "Deck the Halls" that sounds like it was hugely influential to the folks who began Windham Hill Records) and The Country Fiddle (three examples of traditional country fiddle playing with banjo and clogging accompaniment). Richly musical and historically important, this is an often-overlooked but utterly essential Pete Seeger release.
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Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 10:53 am
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Pete was one of my main influences growing up. I bought my first banjo, a long-necked one, and my first 12-string guitar, under his influence. He had a good long life, and I guess it comes as no surprise that he's passed away, although I expected him to reach a hundred.  |
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Tom Keller
From:
Greeneville, TN, USA
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Posted 28 Jan 2014 6:22 pm
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I have adored and respected Pete Seeger for 50 years. RIP Pete
Tom Keller |
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Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 29 Jan 2014 2:33 am Another tribute
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/a-folk-revivalist-who-used-his-voice-to-bring-out-a-nations.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140129&_r=0
Pete Seeger, a Folk Revivalist Who Used His Voice to Bring Out a Nation’s By JON PARELESJAN.
Pete Seeger sang until his voice wore out, and then he kept on singing, decade upon decade. Mr. Seeger, who died on Monday at 94, sang for children, folk-music devotees, union members, civil-rights marchers, antiwar protesters, environmentalists and everyone else drawn to a repertoire that extended from ancient ballads to brand-new songs about every cause that moved him. But it wasn’t his own voice he wanted to hear. He wanted everyone to sing along.
Although Mr. Seeger summed up Vietnam-era frustration when he wrote “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy†and created a lasting antiwar parable with “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,†he wasn’t simply a protest singer or propagandist. Like his father, the musicologist Charles Seeger, and his colleague the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger was devoted to songs that had been passed on through generations of people singing and playing together. He was determined — in an era when recording was rarer and broadcasting limited — to get those songs heard and sung anew, lest they disappear.
That put him at the center of the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, in all its idealism, earnestness and contradictions. Collectors found songs that had archetypal resonance, sung in unpretty voices and played with regional quirks, and transcribed them to be learned from sheet music. The folk revival prized authenticity — the work song recorded in prison, the fiddle tune recorded on a back porch — and then diluted it as the making of amateur collegiate strum-alongs. Mr. Seeger and his fellow folk revivalists freely adapted old songs to new occasions, using durable old tunes to carry topical thoughts, speaking of a “folk tradition†of communal authorship and inevitable change. They would warp a song to preserve it. (In succeeding years, copyright problems could and did ensue.)
It was an era of purists generating the impure, and, sloppy or saccharine as it could be, it turned out well. Folk-revival ditties pointed their more dedicated listeners — particularly musicians — back to original versions, extending the reach of regional styles. The hootenanny movement spurred people to play music instead of passively consume it, and the noncommercial, do-it-yourself spirit — though not the sound of banjos and acoustic guitars — would resound in punk-rock, which had its own kind of protest songs.
Even more important, the folk revival, with Mr. Seeger as one of its prime movers, introduced American pop to a different America: the one outside Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood, where a volunteer gospel choir could sing with more gumption than a studio chorus, and where a decades-old song about hard times could speak directly to the present. The folk revival reminded the pop world that songs could be about something more than romance — a notion that the revival’s greatest student and transformer, Bob Dylan, would run with. Mr. Seeger also learned and performed songs from abroad; there were folks there, too.
Mr. Seeger’s discography runs to dozens of albums: topical songs, Mother Goose rhymes, banjo instruction, African songs, lullabies, blues, Civil War songs, Spanish Civil War songs and far more. His canon was selective but not exclusive; he wanted all those songs to get more chances. His cultural mission was democratic.
His mission was political too, of course. In 2012, Mr. Seeger told an interviewer on WNYC how he would like to be remembered: “He made up songs to try and persuade people to do something,†not just say something. As the 1940s began, he recorded songs reflecting the Communist party line; accusations of Communist Party affiliations got him questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted during the McCarthy era. More felicitously, Mr. Seeger recast traditional songs to rally unions, civil-rights groups, Vietnam War protesters and environmentalists. Mr. Seeger was a longtime mentor for topical songwriters. The best of his own songs, like the biblical “Turn! Turn! Turn!†and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?†reach for cycles and archetypes, not ephemeral complaints.
Pop tastes quickly turned away from the folk revival; the Beatles were more fun. In the 21st century, folky protest and topical songs have generally been shunted to the far sidelines. Although Bruce Springsteen has taken songs from Mr. Seeger’s repertory to arenas, social consciousness is now disseminated more widely through metal and hip-hop. Yet the plink of acoustic instruments is still a token of sincerity. The banjo has resurfaced in groups like Mumford & Sons, while fascination with the folk-revival era animates the Coen brothers film “Inside Llewyn Davis.â€
Yet Mr. Seeger wasn’t aiming for pop celebrity anyway. He had all the audiences he needed: at Carnegie Hall or at Barack Obama’s inauguration or at a local coffeehouse, in a high-school classroom or at a union meeting. He had the kindly demeanor of a favorite uncle and the encouraging tone of a secular preacher as he picked his banjo and taught another chorus to yet another audience, beaming as the singalong grew louder and more confident, turning one more group of folks into a community.
_________________
Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin |
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Stephen R. Feldman
From:
Takoma Park, MD
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Posted 29 Jan 2014 5:30 am Lest we forget...
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From another former banjo student of
Pete's:
(I know, I can't MAKE you read it,
and wouldn't want the power to be able
to do so, but...)
"Time for Pete Seger to Repent"
http://www.nysun.com/arts/time-for-pete-seeger-to-repent/56379/
"Don't say murder, don't say kill,
It was destiny, it was (Stalin, Mao...?)
God's will..."
Maybe he's got something in his will for
the Ukrainian and Chinese famine victims,
the Vietnamese boat people...
Hey, when I was 15, I didn't know either...but now, there's no excuse...
I don't like doing this, it pains me to
have to point this out to people I respect
and admire, but "it is what it is...." |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Herb Steiner
From:
Spicewood TX 78669
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Posted 29 Jan 2014 2:06 pm Re: Lest we forget...
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| Stephen R. Feldman wrote: |
From another former banjo student of
Pete's:
(I know, I can't MAKE you read it,
and wouldn't want the power to be able
to do so, but...)
"Time for Pete Seger to Repent"
http://www.nysun.com/arts/time-for-pete-seeger-to-repent/56379/
"Don't say murder, don't say kill,
It was destiny, it was (Stalin, Mao...?)
God's will..."
Maybe he's got something in his will for
the Ukrainian and Chinese famine victims,
the Vietnamese boat people...
Hey, when I was 15, I didn't know either...but now, there's no excuse...
I don't like doing this, it pains me to
have to point this out to people I respect
and admire, but "it is what it is...." |
It obviously doesn't pain you TOO much, since you've posted about it TWICE now, nor do I notice anything that requires you do so, but you seem to feel you have a mandate, regardless.
I would like to point out that b0b doesn't care too much for injecting politics into threads here in Forumland.
Just sayin... |
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Stephen R. Feldman
From:
Takoma Park, MD
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Posted 29 Jan 2014 5:29 pm Point taken
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Herb,
I think you can praise someone and
notice their mistakes at the same time.
But I agree, I think b0bs got the right
attitude.
Thanks,
Steve |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 29 Jan 2014 8:03 pm
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I never cared much for Pete Seeger's music. I think of him more as a poet/philosopher who played an instrument and sang because poetry doesn't have much of an audience in this modern age.
I was surprised by the announcement of his death. I thought he died a couple of years ago.
Politics aside (because politics are not allowed on this forum), I'd like to mention Pete Seeger's contributions to the steel guitar community, but I can't because it appears there are none. As far as I know, he never recorded with a steel guitarist. Maybe he shared the stage with a dobro player now and then. I doubt that he had any animosity towards steel players; we probably just weren't on his radar.
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Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 30 Jan 2014 6:02 am
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I always love pointing out that Pete's stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a great composer in the early 20th century. She gave up modernist composing to become an archivist of American folk music.
Quite an amazing family.
Here is some of her work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0lBfEyNICE
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Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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Brad Bechtel
From:
San Francisco, CA
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Posted 30 Jan 2014 7:37 am
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There's a picture of the Seeger family from 1921 on the Shorpy photo blog. Visit the link for a larger photo.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5689
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Brad’s Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 30 Jan 2014 2:28 pm
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| b0b wrote: |
| ...I'd like to mention Pete Seeger's contributions to the steel guitar community, but I can't because it appears there are none. As far as I know, he never recorded with a steel guitarist. Maybe he shared the stage with a dobro player now and then... |
Well that's because his music was always acoustic, not electric, and the steel guitar is an electric instrument. I don't recall any particular occasion that he sang with a Dobro player, but that wouldn't surprise me as he sang along with several old-time country bands, The New Lost City Ramblers, for instance, of which his brother Mike was a member, and the Greenbriar Boys. |
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Pete Finney
From:
Nashville Tn.
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Posted 31 Jan 2014 7:49 am
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| I don't know of Seeger ever performing with steel, and the majority of his music is solo or in an acoustic setting. But he did occasionally perform or record with rhythm sections or electric instruments; he was never really the hard-core "folk" purist that he was sometimes portrayed as. |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 31 Jan 2014 10:29 am
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| Brad Bechtel wrote: |
There's a picture of the Seeger family from 1921 on the Shorpy photo blog. Visit the link for a larger photo.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5689 |
Of course at this early date Peggy and Mike hadn't yet been born. I read once that Libba Cotten, the folk singer, was their nanny at one time. She was the composer of "Freight Train", amongst many others. |
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Joachim Kettner
From:
Germany
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Posted 31 Jan 2014 12:12 pm
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| Quote: |
I read once that Libba Cotten, the folk singer, was their nanny at one time. She was the composer of "Freight Train", amongst many others.
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Alan here she is talking to and playing with Pete Seeger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI39CeOy_Us
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