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Pete Seeger born May 3, 1919 turns 90 today. He has been a driving force in the sustainabilty of folk music and activism not just in America but around the world his respect for humanity is legendary.
As Seeger recalled: "In 1935 I was sixteen years old, playing tenor banjo in the school jazz band. I was uninterested in the classical music which my parents taught at Juilliard. That summer I visited a square dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and fell in love with the old-fashioned five-string banjo, rippling out a rhythm to one fascinating song after another." Whereas most popular music seemed sappy or trivial to Seeger, these songs seemed frank, straightforward, honest. Folk music's new convert was to become its greatest proselyte.
"I liked the rhythms," Seeger said. "I liked the melodies, time tested by generations of singers. Above all, I liked the words."
Those words ring true today as well.
Born to a musicologist and a music teacher who were both faculty members at The Julliard School in New York, NY., his genes obviously produced a man with not only love of music but passion for life as well.
A singer-songwriter, leftist, pacifist, even a member of the communist party for a time, he has spoken out for organized labor, against McCarthyism, he also marched with Dr. King for racial justice and spoke about nuclear abolition when it wasn't cool. A man of the people he had a dream that we should all hope would come true.
Written by Ed McCurdy that song fit perfectly with the message Pete Seeger championed for decades. His stance against the Vietnam War was legendary and his protest songs were inspiration for millions. Here he is describing his inspiration in writing the classic Turn, Turn, Turn.
Pete Seeger has always fought for the little guy and there is no better proof than is support of organized labor. Studs Terkel wrote "Aint No One Like Him.
It is hard to think of Pete Seeger as an elderly gaffer, because the boy in him, the light, remains undimmed. It was sixty-five years ago I first ran into him. He and three of his colleagues, calling themselves the Almanac Singers, were on a cross-country jalopy tour singing and creating songs for the industrial unions aborning. The CIO had begun, and how could there be labor rallies without songs? It was in the true American tradition, like the Hutchinsons, a family of singing abolitionists during the Civil War. Some of the most heartbreaking music of that fratricidal conflict was theirs.
That night when I first encountered the four wandering minstrels was a cold Chicago beauty. At 2 in the morning, my wife heard the doorbell ring. I was away rehearsing the first play in which I had ever appeared. It was Waiting for Lefty, of course. There, at the door, were the four of them. The first was a bantam--freckled, red-haired and elfin. He handed my wife a note saying: "These are good fellas. Put them up for the night." Putting them up was a rough assignment, even for a Depression-era social worker, what with the only spare bunk being a Murphy bed that sprang from the wall. Freckles announced himself as Woody Guthrie. The second was an Ozark mountain man named Lee Hayes. The third was a writer, Millard Lampell. The fourth, somewhat diffident, more in the background, was a slim-jim of 20 or so, fretting around with his banjo. He was Pete Seeger.
Another issue where his voice has been invaluable was in the civil rights and social justice movement. Whether marching with Dr. King or singing at the rallies he has stayed in the fight for years, so the fact he was asked to sing at the inauguration of Americas first African American president was an honor well deserved.
There is another fight that Pete Seeger has been involved for years. Hudson River Sloop Clearwater is an environmental group which he helped to form to stop the polluters and teach the next generation the proper use of our planet. He's still in this fight as well.
The man has lead an amazing life and in the process made all of ours the better for it. Whether it's singing This Old Man or pickin' n grinnin' about Get Up and Go the voice may not be quite as clear, he can always hit the note that sounds best.
May we enjoy your company for many years to come.