Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919 in New York City), almost universally known as "Pete Seeger", is a folk singer and political activist. He was a major contributor to folk and pioneer of protest music in the 1950s and the 1960s. He is perhaps best known as the author or co-author of the songs "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "If I Had a Hammer", and "Turn, Turn, Turn", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and which are still sung all over 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-1960's.
His father Charles Seeger was a musicologist and an early investigator of non-Western music. 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. Pete Seeger attended Avon Old Farms in Connecticut and then Harvard University until he left in the mid-1930's during his sophomore year. In 1943 he married Toshi-Aline Ohta, whom he credits with being the support that made the rest of his life possible. Pete and Toshi have three children, Danny, Meka and Tinya.
Career
"Arlo, folk songs are serious."
In late 1930s and early 1940s—after Seeger dropped out of Harvard, where he had been studying journalism—he met and was influenced by many important musicians such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He met Woody at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers concert and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration.
He was a founding member of the folk groups The Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and The Weavers with Lee Hays and Ronnie Gilbert. The Weavers had major hits in the early 1950s, before being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era. In 1954, Pete was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee for Un-American Activities (HUAC) where he refused to name personal and political associations stating it would violate his First Amendment Rights.
Seeger started a solo career in 1958 (see 1958 in music), and is known for songs such as "If I Had a Hammer" (co-written with Lee Hays), "Turn, Turn, Turn" (adapted from Ecclesiastes), and "We Shall Overcome" (based on a spiritual).
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 3 frets longer than a typical Banjo, and slightly longer than a Bass Guitar at 25 Frets, and is tuned a minor third lower.
Seeger became influential in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village. He contributed to Broadside Magazine and Sing Out. 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".
In the mid-sixties he hosted a regional folk music TV show called Rainbow Quest which featured folk musicians playing traditional folk music. Among his guests was Johnny Cash, June Carter, The Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Mimi Parent and Dick Fariña.
An early advocate of Bob Dylan, Seeger was 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, some claiming that he actually tried to disconnect the equipment; Seeger's own version is that when the sound man refused to try to reduce the distortion he exclaimed "Goddamn it, if I had an ax, I'd cut the cable." [1]
Seeger is involved in the environmental organization the Clearwater group, which he 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 and regularly sails the river as classroom, stage and laboratory with an all-volunteer crew. The Clearwater Festival is an annual two-day concert held on the banks of the Hudson in Croton Point, New York.
Seeger is known for his ardent political beliefs and his involvement with leftist political organizations, including the Communist Party. Political opponents called him by pejorative names such as "Stalin's Songbird". His supporters called him "America's Tuning Fork" and "A Living Saint". (Zollo 2005). Seeger's anti-war record Songs for John Doe, released in 1941 took the Communist Party's official isolationist line (Hitler and Stalin having signed a non-aggression pact the previous year). At that time Seeger was also strongly anti-Franklin D. Roosevelt, owing to what he considered the President's weak support of workers' rights. After Germany’s breaking of the pact, the pacifism of Songs for John Doe was hopelessly obsolete and copies were quickly removed from sale. The remaining inventory was reportedly destroyed. Only a few copies exist to this day. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, Seeger returned to his earlier stance as a strong proponent of military action against Germany; he was drafted into the Army, where he served honorably in the Pacific. Seeger left the Communist Party in 1950, five years before Nikita Khrushchev's Secret speech revealed Stalin's crimes and led to a mass exodus from the Party. He became an anti-Stalinist but retained his belief in Socialism.
Seeger achieved some notoriety in 1967 and 1968 for his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain—a "big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. Seeger performed the song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour after some arguments with CBS about whether the song's lyrics were objectionable. Although the on-air version left out the last two verses, which were the most explicitly political, the song remained clearly an allegory about the U.S. under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson which was in over its head in the Vietnam War.
Another slight against Lyndon Johnson can be heard in Seeger's seemingly juvenile song, "Beans in My Ears" from his album Dangerous Songs!? in which he accuses "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" (Alby Jay is meant to sound like LBJ) of having beans in his ears, or of not listening to the people.
Pete Seeger now rarely sings in public, but for a number of years has appeared at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough Tennessee to tell stories, these days mostly childen's stories, such as Abiyoyo.
In February 2006, Bruce Springsteen announced that his next release would be a collection of Seeger songs. He has recorded one Seeger song, "We Shall Overcome," on a 1998 tribute to the folk singer, and has covered songs by other folk singers like Guthrie and Bob Dylan in live concerts in the past.
Quotes
- "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."
- " I really like money, i just dont think other people should have it"
References
- Seeger, Pete. How to Play the Five-String Banjo, 3rd edition. New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 0825600243.
- Dunaway, David K., How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger, McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990), ISBN 0070181500, ISBN 0070181519, ISBN 0306803992
- Zollo, Paul (7 January 2005). "Pete Seeger Reflects On His Legendary Songs".
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