Pete Seeger

Singer, songwriter, banjo player

For the Record…

Selected discography

Writings

Sources

The indomitable Pete Seeger has weathered a number of storms to become, at age seventy, the most influential folk artist in America. Seeger was instrumental in popularizing both the five-string banjo and the songs of populist America that could be played on it; his own works such as “If I Had a Hammer,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” served as anthems in the anti-establishment protests of the late 1960s. In Best of the Music Makers, George T. Simon calls Seeger “an uncanny mixture of saint, propagandist, cornball, and hero” whose “emotional generosity and companionship with his audiences around the world has invariably been returned affectionately by the… people he has entertained and inspired.”

Peter R. Seeger was born into a family “whose chromosomes fairly burst with music,” to quote Philadelphia Inquirer contributor Amy Linn. His father was an ethnomusicologist and composer, his mother a classical violinist who taught at Juilliard. While Seeger was young his parents moved from university to university across the country. He grew up longing for roots but accustomed to travel, a boarding school student who dabbled in Marx, sang in choirs, and played the ukelele.

In 1936 Seeger accompanied his father on a trip to a North Carolina music festival. As Linn puts it, during the festival “young Seeger took one look at a five-string banjo and fell in love.” Although he enrolled in Harvard University that fall, Seeger found college much less fascinating than the banjo. He practiced relentlessly until he had taught himself to play in the various Appalachian picking styles. Seeger—along with bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs—is credited with saving the five-string banjo from extinction. A line of banjos made by Vega Instrument Company bears his name.

Through his father’s friends Seeger met the finest folk singers of the Depression era, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter and Woody Guthrie. Guthrie became Seeger’s mentor, and the youth quit college to travel with him. Together Guthrie and Seeger sang for the striking workers and displaced farmers of the nation; they proudly associated themselves with the Communist Party and other left-wing groups. “I knew it wasn’t a quick way to get jobs—to sing for the Communist Party,” Seeger told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was something that you do, because you think it’s the right thing at the time. And in the long run, you realize the value in doing what you think is right.”

After wartime service as an entertainer for enlisted men, Seeger formed a quartet, the Weavers, in 1948. A full decade before the so-called “folk revival,” the Weavers placed several songs on the pop charts, including the winsome “On Top of Old Smokey” and a

For the Record…

Full name Peter R. Seeger; born May 3, 1919, in New York, N.Y.; son of Charles (a conductor, musicologist, and educator) and Constance de Clyver (a concert violinist and teacher; maiden name Edson) Seeger; married Toshi Aline Ohta, July 20, 1943; children: Daniel Adams, Mike Salter, Virginia. Education: Attended Harvard University, 1936-38.

Folksinger, banjo and guitar player, and songwriter, 1939—. Assistant at the Archive of American Folk Song, Washington, D.C., 1939-40; founding member of the Almanac Singers, 1940-41; toured the Southern and Southwestern states and Mexico with Woody Guthrie, 1941-42. Co-founder and national director of People’s Songs, Inc., 1945.

Founding member of the Weavers (folk quartet), 1948-52, other members were Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert. Cut Top 40 singles, “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Goodnight, Irene,” both 1950. Group disbanded, 1952, and re-formed, 1955. Solo performer, 1957—, appearing in concert in United States, the Soviet Union, and Europe. Appeared in movies To Hear My Banjo Play, 1946, and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, 1970. Organizer of Newport (R.I.) Folk Festivals, and co-founder of Hudson River Sloop Restoration, Inc. Military service: U.S. Army Special Services, entertained troops in the United States and the South Pacific, 1942-45.

Address: Home —Duchess Junction, Beacon, N.Y. 12508.

country favorite, “Goodnight, Irene.” The Weavers were also the first to perform “If I Had a Hammer,” and as the Cold War era dawned, the group—and Seeger in particular—faced a hostile government. Linn writes that as anti-communist sentiment rose, “simple concerts turned into melees between a rising tide of ‘patriots’ and the people who were branded as commies. Hundreds of concertgoers and singers… were caught in the violence, including Pete Seeger and his family. Cars were overturned, crosses burned, a man was stabbed. It was an omen.”

One year after compiling four million record sales, the Weavers found themselves blacklisted as communist sympathizers. Seeger was called before the dreaded House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and questioned about his communist activities. When he evoked his First Amendment rights of free speech, rather than the Fifth Amendment rights against selfincrimination, he was charged with contempt of Congress and sentenced to ten years in prison. The sentence was overturned on appeal, but the blacklisting endured. Undaunted, Seeger continued to perform wherever he was welcome, and he wrote numerous songs and books about music.

A changing political and musical climate brought Seeger back into prominence in the mid-1960s. The younger generation—many of them rootless as Seeger had been—embraced the simplicity and passion of folk music. Seeger was one of the organizers of the prestigious Newport Folk Festival, and one of its most popular performers. Having stood his ground in the McCarthy era, he finally achieved respect for his strength—and his music.

With civil rights activists singing “We Shall Overcome” and anti-war demonstrators singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Seeger found himself compared to his former teacher, Woody Guthrie, in terms of influence. Although he did not appear on television again until 1967—some twelve years after his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee—he was a favorite at outdoor festivals and on college campuses. Beginning in 1965 he launched a campaign to save the environment, especially the filthy Hudson River. With a cad re of friends Seeger organized a series of “sloop concerts,” the proceeds from which he donated to a foundation. In 1968 the sloop Clearwater was built to carry the environmental message along the Hudson, and the river’s conditions began to improve significantly.

Today Seeger still makes at least one hundred personal appearances per year, most of them at intimate concerts in small theatres. Linn writes that the artist “is as capable as ever of getting a crowd to sing along.” Seeger has said that the term “folk music” has lost its meaning through misuse—he prefers to think of his work as aurally-transmitted music, the kind learned “by ear.” Seeger told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he relishes the participation possibilities that folk music offers the audience. “The modern world has a tendency to say, ‘Just pay your money and let the experts do it for you.’ Or, let the machines do it for you,” he said. “My father used to tell me that one must not judge the musicality of a nation by the number of its virtuosos, but by the number of people in the general population who are playing for themselves.”

Called “America’s tuning fork” and “the living embodiment of native folk tradition,” Seeger has certainly left a mark on music in the twentieth century. The motto etched on his banjo—“This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”—perhaps best sums up the essence of his musical message. Linn concludes: “For fifty of his years Pete Seeger [has] been wedding his songs to history, and making history with his songs.”

Selected discography

Singles; with the Weavers

“Kisses Sweeter than Wine,” Decca, 1950.

“Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” Decca, 1950.

“On Top of Old Smokey,” Decca, 1950.

“Goodnight, Irene,” Decca, 1950.

LPs

Cham plain Valley Songs, Folkways.

American Industrial Ballads, Folkways.

The World of Pete Seeger, Columbia.

Pete Seeger Sampler, Folkways.

Pete Seeger with Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry: Washboard Band Country Dance Music, Folkways.

American Favorite Ballads, five volumes, Folkways.

Pete Seeger Sings Woody Guthrie, Folkways.

Pete Seeger Sings Leadbelly, Folkways.

Little Boxes, Folkways.

Pete Seeger Sings American Ballads, Folkways.

Darling Corey, Folkways.

The Rainbow Quest, Folkways.

Goofing Off Suite, Folkways.

Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers: Talking Union and Other Union Songs, Folkways.

Pete Seeger and Frank Hamilton: Nonesuch, Folkways.

Pete Seeger and Mike Seeger: Indian Summer, Folkways.

Banks of Marble, Folkways.

Clearwater Classics, Folkways.

The Essential Pete Seeger, 2 volumes, Vanguard.

Gazette, Folkways.

Pete Seeger’s Greatest Hits, Columbia.

With Voices Together We Sing, Folkways.

(With Arlo Guthrie) Precious Friend, Warner Brothers.

Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie Together in Concert, Reprise.

(With Jeanne Humphries) Ballads of Black America, Folkways.

(With Ed Renehan) Fifty Sail on Newburgh Bay, Folkways.

(With others) Carry It On!, Flying Fish.

With Woody Guthrie

American Folksay, 3 volumes, Stinson.

Chain Gang, Stinson.

Southern Mountain Hoedowns, Stinson.

Newport Folk Festival recordings

Volume 1, Vanguard, 1959.

Volume 1, Folkways, 1960.

Volume 1, Vanguard, 1960.

The Evening Concerts II, Vanguard, 1963.

Evening Concerts I, Vanguard, 1964.

Recordings for children

Song and Play Time, Folkways.

Folk Songs for Young People, Folkways.

American Folk Songs for Children, Folkways.

American Play parties, Folkways.

Games and Activity Songs for Children, Folkways.

Abiyoyo and Other Songs for Children, Folkways.

Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Little Fishes, Folkways.

Children’s Concert at Town Hall, Columbia.

Birds, Beasts, Bigger Fishes and Fookish Frog, Folkways.

Song and Play Time with Pete Seeger, Folkways.

Stories and Songs for Little Children, High Windy.

Writings

American Favorite Ballads, Oak, 1961.

(With Jerry Silverman) The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, Oak, 1962.

(With Julius Lester) The Twelve-String Guitar as Played by Leadbelly, Oak, 1965.

How To Play the Five String Banjo, Oak, ca. 1965.

The Incomplete Folksinger, Simon & Schuster, 1972.

Henscratches and Flyspecks: Or, How to Read Melodies from Songbooks in Twelve Confusing Lessons, Berkeley Press, 1973.

Carry It On!, Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Abiyoyo, Macmillan, 1986.

Sources

Books

Lawless, Ray, Folksingers and Folk Songs in America, Longmans, 1960.

Simon, George T., Best of the Music Makers, Doubleday, 1979.

Periodicals

Audubon, March 1971.

Conservationist, June 1969.

High Fidelity, January 1963.

Look, August 1969.

National Wildlife, February 1970.

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 1989.

Popular Science, August 1970.

Ramparts, November 30, 1968.

Rolling Stone, March 10, 1977; October 18, 1979.

Saturday Review, May 13, 1973.

Sing Out!, May 1954.

—Anne Janette Johnson