A music diary, and a memorial diary, because Peter Seeger, known all his life as "Pete," died on Monday in Manhattan at the age of 94. Some nice diaries have been written about Pete so far, from the announcement of his death through a lovely reminiscence about learning to play the banjo and a diary about his activism. You can't discuss Seeger without discussing his activism, and I don't intend to shirk from that. But this will be more about his place in the musical history of the United States as a singer and songwriter, because NOTHING that happened in the folk music scene in the 1960s and subsequently could have happened without Pete Seeger. Thus, the musical embeds won't all be of Pete Seeger singing, but the historical links will be there.
And about the title? The song was the soundtrack of the Civil Rights movement. Old Negro Spiritual? No, Pete Seeger wrote that too.
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Yes, there are obituaries. We'll start with the wondrous link farm that Rolling Stone put together, because, after all, they had been writing about him from the beginning. Of COURSE, the first thing they write about is the influence (Dylan! Springsteen!!), and that's unquestionable. But who influenced HIM??
Born May 3rd, 1919, in New York, Seeger had music and politics in his blood from the start. His father, Charles Seeger, who died in 1979, was an ethnomusicologist who taught at Yale and Julliard and was a very vocal critic of World War I. Although Pete attended preppie boarding schools, he discovered the banjo as a teenager and, after dropping out of Harvard in the late Thirties, worked for folklorist Alan Lomax in cataloguing and preserving traditional songs. Over the next few years, Seeger and other friends in New York formed the Almanac Singers, living in an early version of a commune in Greenwich Village. During this time, Seeger met and befriended Woody Guthrie, another member of the short-lived Almanacs.
Yes, THAT Woody Guthrie, the Okie philosopher
who got his start in Los Angeles radio in 1937 as a champion of the Okies and who honed his art as a social critic in the same way that Seeger would in the following decades. I'd embed Guthrie singing
This Land is Your Land except YouTube doesn't have him singing any of the versions that have all of the verses Guthrie wrote for it. You'll see why these have been, um, forgotten:
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me.
As I went walking, I saw a sign there;
And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing." "Private Property"
But on the other side: it didn't say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.
Yes, this is exactly how I teach it.
Anyhow, the Almanacs. After the Almanacs, the Weavers. From the obituary in the New York Times
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 Guthrie's "So Long (It's Been Good to Know Yuh)," and they sold an estimated four million singles and albums.
Their commercial success was dampened, however, when Red Channels, an influential pamphlet that named performers with suspected Communist ties, appeared in June 1950 and listed Mr. Seeger, although by then he had quit the Communist Party. He later criticized himself for not having left the party sooner, though he continued to describe himself as a "communist with a small 'c'."
The Weavers, and MAYBE Seeger's most famous composition. That's him with the banjo:
Rolling Stone gives us a capsule of the controversy after they note that The Weavers might have invented world music by regularly performing songs like Tzena Tzena Tzena (Israeli) and Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight - South African):
The Weavers' heyday didn't last long. Along with many others in the entertainment world, the group was blacklisted by the HUAC "anti-communist" witchhunt in 1952, which crippled the group financially and creatively. They reunited three years later, but Seeger left in 1958 after he refused to join them in a cigarette commercial. Seeger himself was found guilty of contempt (he refused to answer questions about his political beliefs at a HUAC hearing in Manhattan). "Dangerous Minstrel Nabbed Here," blared a New York Post headline, although Seeger's conviction was overturned on a technicality a year later.
But the songs were performed. From
The New York Times:
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.
Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Lots of people sang this: the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary, Johnny Rivers, Earth Wind and Fire, but here's Joan Baez from the celebration of Seeger's 90th birthday on PBS.
Yes, the audience knows most of the words and is singing along.
Damn, the stuff on YouTube has me in tears. I was looking for a good version of We Shall Overcome and here it is, with images. Pete Seeger singing, and NARRATING. Another song that didn't get all the verses performed, but they COULD have been. Everybody knew this, mostly, too.
And, mostly, we did.
Now, more anti-war stuff, prepared for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I'll write about this one of these days too, because here we have a show that from the second season on was a skirmish between the Smothers Brothers and the CBS censors. This wasn't the event that got them cancelled, but it could have been. The segment (they taped before a live audience) was cut before the show aired.
From the New York Times (and I KNEW I wasn't losing my mind there)
After the Smothers Brothers publicized the censorship, Mr. Seeger returned to perform the song for broadcast in February 1968.
I think he might have named the President on the show, but we were still surprised when LBJ made a speech the following month which he ended by saying he wouldn't seek another term as President. But I digress.
In the 1970s and after, Seeger toured with Woody Guthrie's son, Arlo. From the Times again:
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 he received a Kennedy Center Honor and, from President Bill Clinton, the National Medal of Arts, America's highest arts honor, awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1999 he traveled to Cuba to receive the Order of Felix Varela, Cuba's highest cultural award, for his "humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism."
Mr. Seeger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in the category of early influences, in 1996. Arlo Guthrie, who paid tribute at the ceremony, mentioned that the Weavers' hit "Goodnight, Irene" had 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.
Plus, activism. From the Fox News Channel:
The Hudson River was a particular concern of Seeger. He took the sloop Clearwater, built by volunteers in 1969, up and down the Hudson, singing to raise money to clean the water and fight polluters. He also offered his voice in opposition to racism and the death penalty. He got himself jailed for five days for blocking traffic in Albany in 1988 in support of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager whose claim of having been raped by white men was later discredited. He continued to take part in peace protests during the war in Iraq, and he continued to lend his name to causes.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, eh? I wish I could resist things like this, but I can't.
Important man, great singer, influenced lots of people (as I noted above, his song Turn Turn Turn became a major hit for the Byrds, who last we met in a diary about the Mamas and the Papas). Importantly, another activist as well, for another important occasion, and I'll leave you with this:
A giant has passed. Let's keep his memory fresh.
And now for the stuff that makes this Top Comments:
TOP COMMENTS, January 29, 2014: Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU when you find that proficient comment.
From BlackSheep1 and from serendipityisabitch:
gooserock tells it like it is in EastCoastProgressive1963's diary about the timewasting that single payer would have avoided.
From
CV lurking GF:
From DataBob's high-volume diary, here's Stevemb's answer to who Bette is.
From
DallasDoc:
Kuvasz wins the Internet today for calling shameless GOP toady Chuck Todd by his true name for the first time. Forevermore he shall be known as Chuck Toad. Amen
From
Eyesbright:
DoLooper makes a comment that's appropriate for the topic while being nicely witty - the best kind of comment - in Meteor Blades's latest diary about the chemical spill in West Virginia
From
greenbird:
LeftHandedMan can fly, and he reads things, and remembers what was read. Regarding Grimm-The-Assaulter, this will curl your hair/feathers/fur. In Billionaires for Wealthcare's diary.
From
LOrion:
karmsy got it absolutely right in Joan McCarter's diary about the "official" Republican response to SOTU.
From
Puddytat:
Please swallow whatever is in your mouth (I'm cleaning off my monitor now) when you read Trix's response to the latest revelations on Chris Christie and his brother's real estate deals in Harrison, NJ. In ericlewis0's diary.
From
your stalwart diarist:
Puddytat shared a very funny acronym from tech support lingo in her Top Comments diary from last night.
TOP MOJO, January 28, 2014 (excluding Tip Jars and first comments):
1) If he were given 250k marines.. by Le Champignon — 198
2) I believe he is hard of hearing by Ex Con — 122
3) Yep, it's an impeachment threat. by zenbassoon — 116
4) No, we have just begun. by TomP — 104
5) Drip, drip, drip by Paleo — 98
6) without clinics.... dark times by ERdoc in PA — 88
7) Damn right WE are!! by bearsguy — 86
8) Very Profound letters by The Sheeping of America — 85
9) HUAC was garbage by BOHICA — 85
10) OMG! Please tell me, Rep. Kathy Rogers by TigerMom — 81
11) MOJO on Pete by jimstaro — 81
12) Neither would former Marines. by IndieGuy — 77
13) 250,000 Marines? by leftykook — 77
14) This is what made Seeger a hero. by CwV — 76
15) 195,000 active duty Marines... by aisb23 — 74
16) We always knew Christie by Youffraita — 73
17) Tragically..... by dweb8231 — 72
18) Thank you for posting this by Hugh Jim Bissell — 71
19) My daughter in law has MS by Desert Rose — 69
20) Voting lines 30 minutes or less by NCJan — 67
21) Typical older sister: by Cali Scribe — 65
22) I think the redirection of Sandy funds is going to by blue aardvark — 65
23) America, fuck yeah! by One Pissed Off Liberal — 63
24) Pete Seeger was "just a singer" kind of like by willyr — 63
25) They will both be in TV ads for their mom by Hesiod — 61
26) Laura Bush is giving the response? by citizenx — 60
27) Women stuff by gchaucer2 — 60
28) The comparison to Ellsberg IS entirely apt though, by PhilJD — 59
29) Words cannot adequately express how diminished by MrJersey — 58
30) The legislature passed a bill for more reporting by ahumbleopinion — 58
31) Thanks by a2nite — 58
32) Just saw this. by Kitsap River — 58
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