Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, atFrench Hospital in New York City.[1] His family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in thePuritan,Calvinist New England tradition",[2] traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician fromWürttemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during theAmerican Revolution and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.[3]
Peter Seeger (on father's lap) with his father and mother, Charles and Constance Seeger and brothers on a camping trip (May 23, 1921)
In 1911, Charles was hired to establish the music department at UC Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspokenpacifism duringWorld War I.[7] Charles and Constance moved back east, making their base of operations on the estate of Charles's parents inPatterson, New York, about 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City. When Peter was eighteen months old, Charles and Constance set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South.[8] Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New YorkInstitute of Musical Art (laterJuilliard), whose president and family friend,Frank Damrosch, was Constance's adoptive "uncle".[9] Charles also taught part-time at theNew School for Social Research.
At four, Pete was sent away to boarding school, but was brought home a year and a half later when his parents learned the school failed to inform them that he had contractedscarlet fever.[10] He attended first and second grades inNyack, New York, before being sent away to another boarding school inRidgefield, Connecticut.[11]
Career and money tensions led to marital problems between Charles and Constance. When Charles discovered in 1927 that Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, he became enraged and a series of separations and temporary reconciliations ensued.[12] Pete was eight at the time of the first marital split. As Seeger's biographerDavid King Dunaway writes, "Like many children of divorce, Pete was caught between parents and developed an aversion to family quarrels."[12] In 1932, Charles married his composition student and assistant,Ruth Crawford, now considered by many to be one of the most importantmodernist composers of the 20th century.[13] Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements toCarl Sandburg's influential folk song anthology, theAmerican Songbag (1927), and later created original settings for eight of Sandburg's poems.[14] Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government'sFarm Resettlement program, theWPA'sFederal Music Project (1938–1940) and the wartimePan American Union.[15] AfterWorld War II, he taughtethnomusicology at UC Berkeley andYale University.[16][17]
In 1935, Pete was selected to attendCamp Rising Sun (CRS), the George E. Jonas Foundation's international leadership camp, held every summer in upstate New York. He remained a loyal alumnus through the decades and attended a CRS event at age 93 in July 2012.[18]
Pete's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, would go on to become a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at theDalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 atFieldston Lower School inthe Bronx.[19] Pete's uncle,Alan Seeger, a noted Americanwar poet ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed inWorld War I. 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, married British folk singer and activistEwan MacColl.Mike Seeger was a founder of theNew Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members,John Cohen, married Pete's half-sister Penny, also a talented singer, who died young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children.
Despite being classical musicians, Peter's parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to theukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, he enrolled in theAvon Old Farms School inAvon, Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1936. During the summer of 1935, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-stringbanjo for the first time at theMountain Dance and Folk Festival in westernNorth Carolina nearAsheville, as he related in an April 1963 interview on Folk Music Worldwide.[20] The festival was organized by localfolklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performerBascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles had hired forFarm Resettlement music projects.[21] The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers:
watched square-dance teams fromBear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, andSoco Gap; heard the five-string banjo playerSamantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from theCherokee 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 made 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."[22]
For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a "conversion experience". Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic plucking technique from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.[23] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at theGreenwich Village loft of painter and art teacherThomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played "Cindy" and "Old Joe Clark" with his studentsCharlie andJackson Pollock; friends from the "hillbilly" recording industry; andavant-garde composersCarl Ruggles andHenry Cowell. It was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "John Henry" for the first time.[24]
Seeger enrolled atHarvard 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.[25] He dreamed of a career in journalism and took courses in art as well. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at theDalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York state with the Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a travelingpuppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico".[26] One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An October 2, 1939Daily Worker article 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, aboutantisemitism 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 theCIO 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, theAmerican 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.[27]
That fall, Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assistingAlan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at theArchive of American Folk Song of theLibrary 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 theOrganization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–1953).[28] Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk-singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax andNicholas Ray's weeklyColumbia Broadcasting showBack Where I Come From (1940–41) alongsideJosh White,Burl Ives,Lead Belly, andWoody Guthrie (whom he had first met atWill Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert formigrant workers on March 3, 1940).Back Where I Come From was unique in having aracially integrated cast.[29] The show was a success, but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast.
Pete Seeger entertainingEleanor Roosevelt (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party marking the opening of the United Federal Labor Canteen,CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C., 1944[30]
From 1942 to 1945, Seeger served in theU.S. Army as an Entertainment Specialist, eventually attaining the rank of corporal.[31][32] He had been initially trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain American troops with music, including in theSouth Pacific.[32] Later, when people asked him what he did in thewar, he always answered, "I strummed my banjo."[33] During the war, he also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts byNorman Corwin.
In early 1941, while still only 21, Seeger started performing as a member of theAlmanac Singers along with Millard Lampell,Cisco Houston,Woody Guthrie, Butch Hawes andBess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of78s onKeynote and other labels:Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941),Talking Union, and an album each of sea shanties 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 ofRoosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This “anti-war” anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party USA line after the 1939Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and in particular after the Soviet invasion of Poland on the 17th of September that year which maintained that the greatest threat was ‘militarism’, ostensibly as hostile to the Soviet Union- a shift from the ‘anti-fascist’, pro-engagement preceding line. 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 thePopular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt'sarms embargo onLoyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[36] and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.
A June 16, 1941, review inTime magazine, which, under its owner,Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs'Songs for John Doe album, accusing it of scrupulously echoing "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 alarmed was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of GovernmentCarl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In a review in the June 1941Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Poison in Our System", he pronouncedSongs 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 ‘poison’,[37] the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.[38]
While the U.S. had not declared war on the Axis powers in mid-1941 (and would not do so until the Pearl Harbor attack that December), the country was energetically producing arms and ammunition for its allies overseas. Despite the boom in manufacturing this concerted rearming effort brought, African-Americans were barred from working in defense plants. Racial tensions rose as Black labor leaders (such asA. Philip Randolph andBayard Rustin) and their white allies began organizing protests and marches. To combat this social unrest, President Roosevelt issuedExecutive Order 8802 (the Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war—angering some leftists (in particular, Trotskyist groups). Copies ofSongs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.[39] The Almanac Singers'Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP byFolkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year, the Almanacs issuedDear 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 lifelong 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 later continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiatedSongs for John Doe. In 1942, a year after theJohn 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 YorkWorld 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 andHenry Luce's right-hand man,C. D. Jackson, Vice President ofTime magazine, had founded "to combat all the Nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups in the United States).[40]
After returning from WWII service, Seeger and others establishedPeople'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".[41] 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 theProgressive Party ticket. Despite attracting enormous crowds nationwide, Wallace did not win any electoral votes. Following the election, he was excoriated by many for accepting campaign help from Communists and their ‘fellow travelers’ such as Seeger and singerPaul Robeson.[42]
Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the republican forces in theSpanish Civil War. In 1943, withTom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s calledSongs 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 Quince Brigada". In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP calledSongs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendarySix Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed byErnst Busch and a chorus of members of theThälmann Battalion, made up of volunteers from 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" byHanns Eisler andBertolt Brecht), "Lied der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song of the International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals", known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").
As a self-described "split tenor" (between a tenor and a countertenor),[10] Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: theAlmanac Singers andthe Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 withMillard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activistLee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement,[43] racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie,Bess Lomax Hawes,Sis Cunningham,Josh White, andSam 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 an 1892 play byGerhart Hauptmann, about a workers' strike (which contained the lines "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). They did benefits for strikers, at which they sang songs such as "Talking Union", about the struggles for unionisation of industrial workers such as miners and automobile workers.[44] Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays,Ronnie Gilbert, andFred Hellerman; laterFrank Hamilton,Erik Darling, andBernie Krause serially took Seeger's place. 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. The Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. The Weavers' string of majorhits began with "On Top of Old Smoky" and an arrangement ofLead Belly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene",[4] which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950,[10] and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena".[4] Other Weavers 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), and theZulu song bySolomon Linda, "Wimoweh" (aboutShaka), among others.
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 subsequentreunion tour, which produced a hit version ofMerle Travis's "Sixteen Tons", as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya", aGullah 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 ofBillboard chart hits and, in its turn, spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.
Four long-neck banjos inspired by Seeger's. The instrument on far left was closely constructed to match Seeger's.American Banjo Museum.
In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version ofHow to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that sold over 100,000 copies in the 1962 edition[45] and is credited as teaching folk musicians such as Jerry Gray ofThe Travellers to play the instrument.[46] Seeger also recorded an instructional album alongside the manual. Both are available for free viaSmithsonian Folkways, a nonprofit record label of theSmithsonian Institution.[47] He went on to invent thelong-neck orSeeger 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,[citation needed] 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 inDavid 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 traditionalAppalachian "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head".[48]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.[citation needed]
Inspired by his mentor Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists", Seeger emblazoned his banjo head in 1952 with the slogan "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender", writing those words on every subsequent banjo he owned.[49]
From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated withLead 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") andcapo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant ofdrop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.[50]
In 1956, Seeger and his wife, Toshi, traveled toPort of Spain,Trinidad, to seek out information on thesteel drum. The two searched out a local panyard director, Kim Loy Wong, and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then-new national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.[51] He was attempting to include the unique flavor of the instrument in American folk music.
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 Henry Wallace campaign), and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. However, with the ever-growing revelations ofJoseph Stalin's atrocities and theHungarian Revolution of 1956, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Socialism. He left the CPUSA in 1949, but remained friends with some who did not leave it, although he argued with them about it.[52][53]
On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of theHollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead theFifth Amendment (which would have suggested to many that his testimony might be self-incriminating). Instead, as the Hollywood Ten had done, he declined to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate hisFirst 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][55][56] Seeger's refusal to answer questions that he believed violated his fundamental constitutional rights led to a March 26, 1957 indictment forcontempt of Congress. For some years thereafter, 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 ten one-year terms in jail (to be served concurrently), but in May 1962, an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.[10][57]
In 1960, theSan 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 theAmerican Civil Liberties Union obtained aninjunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. Almost 50 years later, in February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of its predecessors.[58]
To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger worked 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 forMoe Asch'sFolkways 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 withJoe Hickerson), "Turn! Turn! Turn!" adapted from theBook of Ecclesiastes,[4] and "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poetIdris Davies (1957),[59] gained wide currency. Seeger was the first person to make a studio recording of "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" in 1956. Seeger also was closely associated with theCivil Rights Movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmarkCarnegie Hall concert, featuring the youthfulFreedom Singers, as a benefit for theHighlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event, andMartin Luther King Jr.'sMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August of that same year, brought the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to wide audiences. He sang it on the 50-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, along with 1,000 other marchers.[60]By this time, Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered inGreenwich Village, as a longtime columnist inSing Out!, the successor to the People's SongsBulletin, and as a founder of the topicalBroadside 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 ofPeople's Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to theIndustrial Workers of the World or Wobblies'Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizerJoe Hill (1879–1915) (theLittle Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie, who was known to carry it around).[61]
Seeger toured Australia in the fall of 1963.[62] He helped spark a folk boom throughout the country at a time when popular music tastes competed between folk, thesurfing craze, and the British rock invasion that gave the worldThe Beatles andThe Rolling Stones, among others. Seeger's single "Little Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, peaked at No. 24 on theAustralian record charts in February 1964.[63] Folk clubs sprang up all over the nation; folk performers were accepted in established venues; Australian performers singing Australian folk songs—many of their own composing—emerged in concerts and festivals, on television, and on recordings; and folk-music performers from overseas were encouraged to tour Australia.[64]
In November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs", about the death-row inmateDelbert Tibbs, who was laterexonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.[66]
Seeger at 86 on the cover ofSing Out! (Summer 2005), a magazine he helped found in 1950
Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers ofBob Dylan; he was responsible for urging A&R manJohn Hammond to produce Dylan's first LP onColumbia, and for inviting him to perform at theNewport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member.[69] There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of theButterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965Newport Folk Festival that Seeger 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 managerAlbert Grossman and Festival board members (who besides Seeger also includedTheodore Bikel,Bruce Jackson,Alan Lomax, festival MCPeter Yarrow, andGeorge Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier, there had been a scuffle and a brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax. The festival's board, in an emergency session, had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but then backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular drawsOdetta andPeter, Paul and Mary.[70] Although Seeger has been portrayed as a folk purist who opposed Dylan's "going electric",[71] when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, Seeger 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 booHowlin' 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.[72]
One version of the Newport Festival controversy, as well as a positive depiction of Seeger's early 1960s efforts to boost an unknown Bob Dylan, is dramatized in the 2024 filmA Complete Unknown, whereEdward Norton plays Seeger.[73]
Pete Seeger, Stern Grove, San Francisco, August 6, 1978
A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of theVietnam War, Seegersatirically attacked then-PresidentLyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the albumDangerous Songs!?, ofLen 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", implying that "Alby Jay" (a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ") was deaf to war protesters’ concerns.[74]
During 1966, Seeger andMalvina Reynolds took part in environmental activism. The albumGod Bless the Grass was released in January of that year and became the first album in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same ideologies of nationalism, populism, and criticism of big business.[75]
Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about acaptain—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers inLouisiana during World War II. With its lyrics about a platoon being led into danger by an ignorant captain, the song's anti-war message was obvious—the line "the big fool said to push on" is repeated several times.[76] In the face of arguments with the management ofCBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of theSmothers 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 theVietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show,[77] after wide publicity,[78] it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show on February 25, 1968.[79]
At the November 15, 1969,Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in singingJohn Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" as they rallied across from the White House. Seeger's voice carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like "Are you listening,Nixon?" between thechoruses of protesters singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance."[80]
In the documentary filmThe Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1972.[81]Phạm Tuyên composed "Let me hear your guitar, my U.S. friend" ("Gảy đàn lên hỡi người bạn Mỹ") as a tribute to Seeger's support for the DRV. When Seeger and his wife arrived at the airport, Phạm Tuyên greeted them and they sang the song together.[82]
Seeger in 1979
Being a supporter of progressive labor unions, Seeger had supportedEd Sadlowski in his bid for the presidency of theUnited Steelworkers of America. In 1977, Seeger appeared at a fundraiser inHomestead, Pennsylvania. In 1978, Seeger joined American folk, blues, and jazz singerBarbara Dane at a rally in New York for striking coal miners.[83] He also headlined a benefit concert—with bluegrass artistHazel Dickens—for the striking coal miners of Stearns, Kentucky, at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1979.[84] Also in 1979, he was honored with theEugene V. Debs Award for Social Justice by theEugene V. Debs Foundation, inTerre Haute, Indiana.
In 1980, Pete Seeger performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The performance was later released by Smithsonian Folkways as the albumSingalong Sanders Theater, 1980.[85]
In 1966, Seeger and his wife Toshi founded theHudson River Sloop Clearwater, a nonprofit organization based inBeacon, New York, that sought to protect theHudson River and surrounding wetlands and waterways through advocacy and public education. It constructed a floating ambassador for this environmental mission, the sloopClearwater, and began an annual music and environmental festival, today known as theGreat Hudson River Revival.[86]
In 1982, Seeger performed at a benefit concert for the1982 demonstrations in Poland against the Polish government. His biographerDavid Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of socialism in its Soviet form.[87] 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".[87] In his autobiographyWhere Have All the Flowers Gone (1993, 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 couldHitler have been stopped?Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to theLeague of Nations in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifistDave Dellinger's book,From Yale to Jail ...[88] 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 theInquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims byCrusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize forstealing land from Native Americans andenslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians forGenghis Khan. And supporters ofRoosevelt could apologize for his support ofSomoza, ofSouthern White Democrats, ofFranco Spain, for puttingJapanese 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.[89][90]
Seeger in 1999
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".[91]In later years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006,David Boaz—Voice of America andNPR commentator and president of thelibertarianCato Institute—wrote an opinion piece inThe Guardian, entitled "Stalin's Songbird", in which he excoriatedThe New Yorker andThe 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 theAlmanac Singers' May 1941Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war fromDear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.[92][93]
In 2007, in response to criticism from historianRon Radosh, a formerTrotskyist who now writes for the conservativeNational Review, Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues":[94]
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.[95]
The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you're right, I should have asked to see thegulags when I was in U.S.S.R. [in 1965]."[90]
Seeger appears in the 1997 documentary filmAn Act of Conscience, which was filmed between 1988 and 1995. In the film, Seeger joins a group of demonstrators protesting in support ofwar tax resistersRandy Kehler and Betsy Corner, whose home was seized by theInternal Revenue Service (IRS) after the couple openly refused to pay their federal income taxes as a protest against war and military spending.[96]
In 2003, Pete Seeger was a participant in an anti-Iraq war protest.[97]
On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sisterPeggy, his brothersMike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by theAmerican Folklife Center in honor of theSeeger family, held at theLibrary of Congress in Washington, D.C.,[98] where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.
Pete Seeger (right), 88 years old, photographed in March 2008 with his friend, the writer and musicianEd Renehan
In September 2008,Appleseed Recordings releasedAt 89, Seeger's first studio album in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on theLate Show with David Letterman, singing "Take It From Dr. King".
On January 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandsonTao Rodríguez-Seeger joinedBruce Springsteen and the crowd in singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" in the finale of Barack Obama's inaugural concert in Washington, D.C.[99][100] The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion oftwo 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 aDepression-era relief office. The former's final line, however, "This land was made for you and me", is modified to "That side was made for you and me".[99][101]
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 theDeepwater Horizon oil spill.[108] A performance of the song by Seeger, Wyatt, and friends was recorded and filmed aboard the sloopClearwater in August for a single and video produced byRichard Barone and Matthew Billy, released on election day, November 6, 2012.[109]
On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march withOccupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City.[111] 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, where he performed with his grandson,Tao Rodríguez-Seeger,Arlo Guthrie,David Amram, and other celebrated musicians.[112] The event, promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was livestreamed, and was dubbed by some "the Pete Seeger March".
In January 2012, Seeger joined the Rivertown Kids in paying tribute to his friend Bob Dylan, performing Dylan's "Forever Young" on theAmnesty International albumChimes of Freedom.[113] This song, Seeger's last single, marked Seeger's only music video, which went viral in the wake of his death two years later.[114]
On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitledPete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems. This two-CD spoken-word work was conceived of and produced by noted percussionistJeff Haynes and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his life against a background of music performed by more than 40 musicians of varied genres.[116] The launch of the audiobook was held at theDia:Beacon on April 11, 2013, to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred people, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among themSamite,Dar Williams,Dave Eggar, andRichie Stearns ofthe Horse Flies andNatalie Merchant) performing live under the direction of producer and percussionistHaynes.[117]
On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was in New York City for the 400-year commemoration of theTwo Row Wampum Treaty between the Iroquois and the Dutch. On an interview he gave that day toDemocracy Now!, Seeger sang "I Come and Stand at Every Door", as it was also the 68th anniversary of thebombing of Nagasaki.[118][119]
On September 21, 2013, Seeger performed atFarm Aid at theSaratoga Performing Arts Center inSaratoga Springs, New York. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, he sang "This Land Is Your Land",[120] and included a verse he said he had written specifically for the Farm Aid concert.
In 1943, Seeger marriedToshi Aline Ohta, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi's death in July 2013.[121] Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months while Seeger was deployed overseas; Seeger never saw him.[122] They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker),Mika (a potter and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildrenTao Rodríguez-Seeger (a folk musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a psychotherapist), Moraya (a marriage and family therapist married to the former NFL playerChris DeGeare), Penny, and Isabelle, and great-grandchildren Dio and Gabel. Tao sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with theMammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the 2007PBS documentaryPete Seeger: The Power of Song.
When asked byBeliefnet about his religious or spiritual beliefs, and his definition of God, Seeger replied:
Nobody knows for sure. But people undoubtedly get feelings which are not explainable and they feel they're talking to God or they're talking to their parents who are long dead. I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God. I've had preachers of the gospel, Presbyterians and Methodists, saying, "Pete, I feel that you are a very spiritual person". And maybe I am. I feel strongly that I'm trying to raise people's spirits to get together. ... I tell people I don't think God is an old white man with a long white beard and no navel; nor do I think God is an old black woman with white hair and no navel. But I think God is literally everything, because I don't believe that something can come out of nothing. And so there's always been something. Always is a long time.
Seeger lived inBeacon, 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. He remained engaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in theHudson Valley region of New York throughout his life. For years during theIraq War, Seeger maintained a weekly protest vigil alongside Route 9 inWappingers Falls, near his home. He told aNew York Times reporter that "working for peace was like adding sand to a basket on one side of a large scale, trying to tip it one way despite enormous weight on the opposite side." He went on to say, "Some of us try to add more sand by teaspoons ... It's leaking out as fast as it goes in and they're all laughing at us. But we're still getting people with teaspoons. I get letters from people saying, 'I'm still on the teaspoon brigade.'"[125]
Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013, at the age of 91,[121][10] and Seeger died atNewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94.[126]
Response and reaction to Seeger's death quickly poured in. PresidentBarack Obama noted that Seeger had been called "America's tuning fork"[127] and that he believed in "the power of song" to bring social change, "Over the years, Pete used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for workers' rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger."[128] Folksinger and fellow activistBilly Bragg wrote that "Pete believed that music could make a difference. Not change the world, he never claimed that – he once said that if music could change the world he'd only be making music – but he believed that while music didn't have agency, it did have the power to make a difference."[129]Bruce Springsteen said of Seeger's death, "I lost a great friend and a great hero last night, Pete Seeger," before performing "We Shall Overcome" while on tour in South Africa.[130]
Not all responses to Seeger's passing were complimentary.Michael Moynihan ofThe Daily Beast wrote an obituary entitled "The Death of 'Stalin's Songbird'" and included these remarks:
Along with countless other sensible people, I have often bristled at the mindless deification of Pete Seeger, the nonagenarian folk singer who died yesterday at age 94...we all remember good-but-overpraised songs like "If I Had a Hammer" and the treacly classic "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" But as the encomiums threaten to overwhelm, it's important to remember that Seeger, once an avowed Stalinist, was a political singer once devoted to a sinister political system—a position he held long after the Soviet experiment drenched itself in blood and collapsed in ignominy.[131]
A posthumous suggestion that Seeger's name be applied to thereplacement Tappan Zee Bridge being built over theHudson River was made by a local town supervisor.[86][133] Seeger's boat, thesloopClearwater, is based atBeacon, New York, just upriver from the bridge and frequently sails down to Manhattan to continuing spreading Seeger's message and music.[134]
Oakwood Friends School, located in Poughkeepsie New York, not far from Seeger's home, performed "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" at one of their worship meetings. The collaboration was with three teachers (playing guitar and vocals) as well as a student harmonica player and a student vocalist.
A free five-day memorial called Seeger Fest took place on July 17–21, 2014, featuring Judy Collins, Peter Yarrow, Harry Belafonte, Anti-Flag, Michael Glabicki of Rusted Root, Steve Earle, Holly Near, Fred Hellerman, Guy Davis, DJ Logic, Paul Winter Consort, Dar Williams, DJ Kool Herc, The Rappers Delight Experience, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, David Amram, Mike + Ruthy, Tom Chapin, James Maddock, The Chapin Sisters, Rebel Diaz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emma's Revolution, Toni Blackman, Kim & Reggie Harris, Magpie, Abrazos Orchestra, Nyraine, George Wein, The Vanaver Caravan, White Tiger Society, Lorre Wyatt, AKIR, Adira & Alana Amram, Aurora Barnes, The Owens Brothers, The Tony Lee Thomas Band, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, New York City Labor Chorus, Roland Moussa, Roots Revelators, Kristen Graves, Bob Reid, Hudson River Sloop Singers, Walkabout Clearwater Chorus, Betty & The Baby Boomers, Work O' The Weavers, Jacob Bernz * Sarah Armour, and Amanda Palmer.[135]
In 2014, Wepecket Island Records recorded a Pete Seeger tribute album calledFor Pete's Sake.
In 2020,Kronos Quartet releasedLong Time Passing, an album of all new arrangements of Pete Seeger's music commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation and released on Smithsonian Folkways.
On July 21, 2022, the United States Postal Service issued a Pete Seeger"Forever" stamp. The stamp is based on a photograph of Seeger playing a long neck banjo, taken by Seeger's son Daniel some time in the early 1960s. It's a commemorative in the Music Icons series, with a print quantity of 22,000,000.[136]
TheMid-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. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award[140] for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
^According toJudith Tick, Charles was fired from his job at Juilliard because Frank Damrosch sided with Constance in the Seeger divorce.Ruth Crawford Seeger, pp. 224–25.
^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.
^Wilkinson 2006, p. 51. Seeger reportedly lost his Harvard scholarship after failing one of his winter exams.
^Emery, Lawrence, "Interesting Summer: Young Puppeteers in Unique Tour of Rural Areas", quoted onPete Seeger website
^The resultant 22-pagemimeographed "List of American Folk Music on Commercial Recordings", issued in 1940 and mailed by Lomax out to academic folklore scholars, became the basis ofHarry Smith's celebratedAnthology of American Folk Music onFolkways Records. Seeger also did similar work for Lomax atDecca in the late 1940s.
^From theWashington 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."
^"Seeger, Pete, Cpl".army.togetherweserved.com.Archived from the original on January 16, 2021. RetrievedApril 1, 2020.
^Reineke, Hank (2023).Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie. American Popular Music. Vol. 10. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 42.ISBN9780806193588.
^Wilkinson 2009, pp. 116–117: Seeger 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."
^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 United States entry into the war in 1942, Friedrich became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council for Democracy, charged with combatting isolationism, and had hisarticle on the AlmanacsArchived June 3, 2013, at theWayback Machine reprinted as one of several pamphlets which he sent to radio network executives.
^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."
^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.
^Ingram, David. "The Jukebox in the Garden: Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960."Humanities Source. 2010 Vol. 7. Retrieved October 14, 2014.
^Pete Seeger to the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955. Quoted, along with some other exchanges from that hearing, in Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 53.
^United States Congress - House Committee on Un-American Activities (August 17–18, 1955).Investigation of Communist Activities, New York Area— Part VII (Entertainment). Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Fourth Congress, First Session, August 17 and 18, 1955. Vol. pt. 7. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off. pp. Testimony of Peter Seeger, pp. 2447–2459.
^Navasky, Victor S. (1980).Naming Names. New York: Viking. p. 421.ISBN0670503932. Seeger later explained to Navasky: "Look, the Fifth means they can't askme, the First means they can't ask anybody."
^Whitehead, John. "Pete Seeger: Changing the World One Song at a Time."Waxahachie Daily Light. May 30, 2013. Rutherford Institute. Accessed on October 14, 2014.
^Briley, Ronald (2006). ""Woody Sez": Woody Guthrie, the "People's Daily World," and Indigenous Radicalism".California History.84 (1): 34.doi:10.2307/25161857.ISSN0162-2897.JSTOR25161857.
^"Every AMR Top 100 Single in 1964". Top 100 Singles. February 9, 2013. "Little Boxes" was Seeger's only solo tune to make the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 70.
^Fellow Newport Board memberBruce 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 greatsWillie Dixon,Son House,Memphis Slim, and a prison work group from Texas, along with bluegrass pioneerBill 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)" inAlan Lomax: Selected Writings, Ronald D. Cohen, ed. (London: Routledege), p. 192.
^Rock criticGreil 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 asThe Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (New York: Holt, 2001), p. 12. Marcus's apocryphal story was elaborated byMaria Muldaur andPaul Nelson inMartin Scorsese's filmNo Direction Home (2005)
^"Beans in My Ears". Sniff.numachi.com.Archived from the original on May 1, 2013. RetrievedNovember 20, 2012.
^Ingram, David (2008). 'My Dirty Stream : Pete Seeger, American Folk Music, and Environmental Protest',Popular Music Vol. 31, pp22. Routeledge Taylor & Francis Group. October 14, 2014
^Gibson, Megan. "Songs of Peace and Protest: 6 Essential Cuts From Pete Seeger."Time.com, January 28, 2014. p.1 Business Source Complete. October 14, 2014.
^Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode 1, September 10, 1967.
^Dickens, Hazel (2008).Working girl blues : the life and music of Hazel Dickens. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.ISBN978-0-252-09097-4.OCLC809471478.
^David T. Dellinger,From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993ISBN0-679-40591-7).
^Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography, edited by Peter Blood (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Sing Out Publication, 1993, 1997), page 22.
^Jennings, Jennifer. "Pete Seeger: The environmental side of his activism."Atlantic City Natural Health Examiner. January 28, 2014. Atlantic City Examiner. Accessed on October 5, 2014.
^The phrase "America's tuning fork" is usually attributed to poetCarl Sandburg, for example, see Corey Sandler,Henry Hudson: Dreams and Obsessions (New York: Kensington Books, 2007), p. 203. It is unclear when and where Sandburg, who thought highly of the Weavers, said this. Studs Terkel, who introduced Seeger as "America's tuning fork" at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival (see George Wein, Nate Chinen,Myself Among Others: A Life in Music [Da Capo Press, 2009], p. 314), later wrote that he had seen the phrase inDownBeat jazz magazine (see Terkel,Hope Dies Last: Keeping The Faith In Troubled Times [New York: The New Press], p. 249). The phrase was picked up in aphoto spread on Seeger inLife magazine, October 9, 1964, p. 61. See also Ronald D. Cohen,Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–70 [University of Massachusetts Press, 1970], p. 223.
Dunaway, David K.Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing. three one-hour radio documentaries, Public Radio International, 2008
Dunaway, David K.The Pete Seeger Discography. Scarecrow Press: Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.
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.ISBN0-8256-0024-3.
Tick, Judith (1997).Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. Oxford University Press.
Briggs, John,Pete Seeger: The People's Singer, Atombank Books, 2015,ISBN0990516075
"The Music Man" (profile and interview). InSomething to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America, text by Richard Klin, photos by Lily Prince, Leapfrog Press, 2011.
Seeger, Pete (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz),The Incompleat Folksinger, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.ISBN0-671-20954-X (excerpts) Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.ISBN0-8032-9216-3.
.jpg)
