Pete Seeger

Turn, Turn, Turn – Pete Seeger Is Gone

6 Comments

justpete

Today we honor Pete Seeger, the first and greatest of modern folk musicians. Pete did it all. What great talent and vision. We won’t see his like again.  Included here are a few film clips of him over the years that I think are really good.  Click Here to hear an interview I did with Pete in 2007 for Down Home Radio.

Pete Seeger invented being an urban folk singer in its modern incarnation.  All the strands that we see around us today he in a lot of ways did first, the traditional, the popular and progressive sounds, the political.  Pete was among the very first (maybe first?) people in the modern era from outside the tradition to learn thoroughly very traditional banjo playing and ballads from records, field recordings and firsthand sources in the South, and although initially an outsider ultimately give back to the tradition. He also played popular and classical music on the banjo and was very well versed in African-American music and 12-string guitar playing learned directly from Leadbelly among other sources.   He built on his experience of Woody Guthrie’s songs and style to make his own protest songs in an early modern singer-songwriter style which he invented and which also paved the way for later “Folk-Rock” stylings.  And as he broke through into the mass media with his band The Weavers and as a solo performer, Pete really invented the genre of “Folk Music” as a category within the field of Popular Music as a whole.  In fact, Pete’s father Charles Seeger, a founder of the field of Ethnomusicology, wrote on the subject, saying that in the modern era, folk and popular music would meld as isolated, local and traditional communities were brought under the influence of mass communication and rapid transit.

In the many pieces now being written in the press about Pete I often see it said that he “was a champion of justice, civil rights and the environment.”  That is very true, in addition to and in conjunction with music he was a committed and extraordinary social activist.  He was also a life long socialist, and someone who had a deep sense of compassion, fairness and respect for all people and communities.

His activities in the Civil Rights Movement, Peace Movement and Environmental Movement I have seen widely discussed.  But a major part of Pete Seeger’s legacy and the foundation of his identity as a musician and cultural worker, is his crucial involvement in and commitment to folk music.  Somehow this aspect of his life, which was of a piece with his other convictions, seems to be poorly understood in the mass media and is somehow always mentioned only in passing.  Pete Seeger CARED about folk music – music with a long history, made and perpetuated by regular rural people, played in a rough style and dealing with topics and gritty realities that pop music would never touch.

[“To Hear Your Banjo Play” – 1947 – narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring a young Pete Seeger and the only footage of Woody Guthrie in his prime.]

Pete Seeger personally did the fundamental work that popularized the repertoire and created the social context for folk music to persist in our modern mass culture society. For instance, in 1939 Pete operated the recording machine for Alan Lomax as he recorded the great banjo player Wade Ward, absolute bedrock recordings for anyone interested in playing real traditional old time banjo music.  But its much more than that…

First off, Pete Seeger invented the concept of “pop-folk,” with his band the Weavers, teaming up on their early records with producer Gordon Jenkins (who also worked with Frank Sinatra, etc… for Decca Records) to create a hybrid music of songs from the folk repertoire in a pop style that was usable by the mass culture industry of the time and became extremely popular. And secondly he pioneered the idea of mass group singing at concert events.  Pete literally sang together with millions of people over the course of his career.

Pete did the hard touring, taking him away from his wife Toshi and family, starting in the 1940’s and continuing for decades, that created from scratch the audience for Folk Music in modern post WWII America. Much of his work over the many years has been with children, at schools and summer camps, a field which few popular entertainers particularly in the early days, would touch.  These children grew up and became the folk music audience and folk musicians of the 1950’s, 60’s and on…

Urbanized or suburbanized people were and are used to experiencing music passively as commercial consumers of CDs, radio, etc.  Pete’s mass group singing at his concerts gave people who had lost a personal connection to making and experiencing music, a way to connect, feel good about their musical selves and be a part of a community.  He gave back to so many people, at least on a basic level, the chance to sing and make music together, a vital part of being human, even as “progress” has worked to alienate and isolate us.  Most were content to sing with Pete at the concerts but many many people also went home and picked up instruments and pursued making music themselves more proactively at different levels.


[Pete sings out against the Vietnam War on the Johnny Cash show with his song “Bring ‘Em Home.”]

What a talent.  That was what allowed him to breakthrough and operate in the visionary way that he did.  Pete Seeger had so much talent it was stunning.  He was completely unlike any other figure or “entertainer” in the field of American popular music.  He was and is the only person in the popular consciousness who cared about folk music, really knew what he was talking about in a very serious way and took that understanding to the stage in his performances.  He played at colleges, summer camps, big venues, benefit concerts, radio and television, everywhere.  Pete Seeger was also a founder of the Newport Folk Festival that presented so many great traditional artists and is also inextricably linked to the first and greatest independent record company devoted to American Folk Music, Moe Asch’s Folkways Records.  Without Pete, who knows if Folkways could have survived all these years?  He recorded dozens and dozens of albums for them, which remain among their biggest sellers, and have given them so much needed revenue over the years when most of their amazing recordings did not.

Pete was an intellectual and a theorist, as was his father, and was very widely read.  He also made films, field recordings and started the magazines People’s Songs and then its successor Sing Out! where he wrote columns, published songs and engaged in dialogue and journalism for years.  He produced and hosted the amazing television program “Rainbow Quest” and has also written several books, song books and banjo and guitar instructional manuals.

Pete Seeger is much more than a protest singer, although he was certainly that and in great form.  He was incredibly proactive and prolific.  When did he sleep?  In the few times that I got to meet and spend some time with him I found him totally unassuming, uninterested in stardom in anyway, without ego and yet extremely charming and compelling.  He was indeed very tall and slim, he had small eyes, a ready crooked smile, he drank buttermilk and even at an advanced age seemed youthful in a way.  You realized immediately upon talking with him that he was extremely smart, focused but also a serious dreamer, whose ideas many felt were impractical!  But a lot of them caught on in big ways… I think its possible to say that without Pete those of us working in the field of folk music today might not be here at all.  If folk music means something to you, then Pete Seeger lives on.

Here is a very good article that is worth reading from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/a-folk-revivalist-who-used-his-voice-to-bring-out-a-nations.html?_r=0

Here is a photo of Pete Seeger with Geoff and Lynette Wiley, owners of the Jalopy Theatre, New York’s best folk music venue, and myself at a Woody Guthrie tribute event at Brooklyn College in 2012.


Here is an excellent interview with Pete Seeger on the news program Democracy Now!

Here’s  a very nice piece about Pete Seeger written by Jeff Place, the archivist at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings: http://www.folkways.si.edu/PeteSeeger


Jon Pareles wrote two very nice pieces for the New York Times:
Using His Voice to Bring Out a Nation’s
Pete Seeger, Champion of Folk Music and Social Change, Dies at 94

And here is a good piece on the origins of the song, “We Shall Overcome,” which was another one of Pete Seeger’s great gifts to us all: https://portside.org/2014-01-29/we-shall-overcome-honoring-pete-seeger

To Hear Your Banjo Play

Leave a Comment

Here’s an amazing 1947 film called, “To Hear Your Banjo Play.”  The story and dialogue were written by Alan Lomax.  The film is narrated by Lomax and features a young Pete Seeger guiding viewers through a brief history of the banjo, American Folk Music and its relevance to modern society.  This film features some of the best of the 1940’s New York folk music scene.  It has the only footage of Woody Guthrie performing in his prime, Margot Mayo’s American Square Dance Group is featured, along with Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Butch Hawes and others.  Texas Gladden makes an appearance as well.  This is an incredible film!

Here is some more footage of Woody Guthrie, apparently from the same session as the footage used in “To Hear Your Banjo Play.”  Woody is singing his song, “Ranger’s Command.”  Apparently this footage has only recently come to light.


And don’t forget to check out our good friends at the Old Time Herald Magazine – www.oldtimeherald.org – lots of great articles, reviews and more!

Library of Congress Field Recordings LP

1 Comment


Here is an early, influential and fantastic album issued by the Library of Congress in 1942.  It was first issued on an album of 78rpm records and then was reissued on this disc early in the LP era.  This record AAFS L2, “Anglo-American Shanties, Lyrics Songs, Dance Tunes and Spirituals from the Archive of American Folk Song,” is the 2nd in the “Folk Music of the United States” series and was edited by Alan Lomax.

There’s some pretty amazing stuff on here.  In fact, all of it is great.  It’s a great record! The field recordings on this album were newly made at the time of the album’s release.  This was the latest hot off the press stuff.  The field recordists who made these recordings, Alan and Elizabeth Lomax, Pete Seeger, Herbert Halpert, Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin are a good representation of the small group of early modern folklorists busy making field recordings of Southern music at that time.

There’s some clutch stuff on here.  These recordings were very influential early on to Pete Seeger, who made several of them, and to the members of the New Lost City Ramblers among others.  Mike Seeger has recorded his own versions of many of the song variants found on this album.

Here’s an unfair question:  How do you think this record, or better this series, of field recordings edited by Alan Lomax and issued in 1942, relates to the Anthology of American Folk Music, composed of commercially recorded 78s, which was edited by Harry Smith and issued in 1952? Contrary to some popular conceptions, there were amazing and influential compilations of folk music issued before the Anthology…
I will continue to post more volumes from this series, but I think this one is my favorite.

CLICK HERE to download the album cut up into tracks.

See below for track information and notes:

Pete Seeger Turns 90, Happy Birthday!

2 Comments

http://www.dionphoto.com/New/fullsize/PeteSeeger97copy_fs.jpg

On today’s show we honor Pete Seeger on his 90th birthday.  Pete Seeger is a man who in his person has been an incredible force in American music and social movements, both as a performer and as an organizer and well spring of good ideas.   He has been literally everywhere for so many many years, singing, playing and inspiring people around this country and around the world to sing, play guitars and banjos and take part in the social struggles that define their history.  Pete has an off the charts level of talent as a singer, song leader, banjo and guitar player, performer, songwriter, song adapter and folk music popularizer.  He’s also probably the oldest person to ever make a comeback, having won a grammy and played at the Obama inauguration concert.  Pete Seeger is impossible to keep down, I was talking with some people recently and we were recalling that even when Pete was blacklisted in the 50’s the upshot of that was that he started playing for kids at schools and summer camps and thereby played a large part in inspiring the folk music boom of the 1960’s when those kids grew up.  I was at a reunion of people who used to gather to play folk music in Washington Square park back in the 50’s and 60’s here in New York City and I recorded a bunch of short interviews with these folk musicians remembering encounters with Pete Seeger.  So many musicians and lovers of folk music from that generation remember encounters with Pete Seeger that changed their lives.  So on today’s show we’ll hear a bunch of my favorite Pete Seeger songs along with a selection of interviews with people that Pete inspired.

Click Here to listen to the Down Home Radio Interview with Pete Seeger from Oct. ’07

Also included here are the A sides of two obscure Pete Seeger albums available at Smithsonian Global Sound .

Click the 2nd play button above and you will hear:

FW03864_201
Studs Terkel’s Weekly Almanac: Radio Programme, No. 4: Folk Music and Blues featuring Pete Seeger and Big Bill Broonzy, 1956.
Love You Baby/Hush-A-Bye /Crawdad Song / John Henry/ Bach, J.S. – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring /Lonesome Valley/You Got To Stand in Judgement /The Midnight Special
followed by:
FW05702_101
Pete Seeger Sings and Answers Questions, 1968.
Opinions and Social Justice / Backgrounds to Social Songs in Europe and the USA / Social Songs from the Colonial Times to Today / Songs of the Immigrants

The 3rd play button in this post: Carly Nix interviews Eleanor Walden, organizer of a grassroots campaign to get Pete Seeger nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize via an online petition.  This is the first grassroots attempts to get someone nominated for the Nobel Prize.  Walden also talks about her personal experiences with the Greenwich Village sings, the People’s Songs Collective and the Folk Revival scene and social activism.


Here’s a film, “To Hear Your Banjo Play” from 1947, produced by Alan Lomax and featuring a young Pete Seeger as the narrator.

Pete Seeger Sings Guthrie’s Original “This Land Is Your Land” at Obama Concert

1 Comment


Bruce Springsteen got Pete Seeger invited to play at this Obamanation concert event at the Capitol yesterday.  Tao Rodriguez, the Boss and a large choir sang the song as Pete called out the lyrics to the crowd.  Pete called the song as originally written by Guthrie back when, complete with the verse about private property:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

He also got in another lesser known verse:

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?

The choir kind of messes up on the private property verse.  Was it planned to sing that one?  He sings it instead of the chorus.  I guess it was planned since it seems like the thing was rehearsed with the choir somehow, but all the same I’m amazed they let him even say the words “private property.”  That’s awesome.  He gave people a dose of the real business.

Guthrie took the melody for “This Land Is Your Land” from the hymn “When the World’s On Fire.”  Guthrie loved the Carter Family so maybe he heard their version or he just learned the song from someone he knew.  Bryant’s Jubilee Quartet does a great version, you can find that on iTunes.

I also appreciated that Rev. Lowry referenced Big Bill Broonzy’s song “Black, Brown & White Blues” at the end of the benediction he gave at the inauguration.

“They says, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”

Interview with Pete Seeger – Down Home Turns 1!

Leave a Comment

This weeks show marks the one year anniversary of Down Home Radio! Sure we’ve missed some weeks here and there, but we’ve now been broadcasting for a full year. Its been great and time has really flown by! Lots more great shows in the works, so keep listening!

This week we have a great interview with Pete Seeger, a man who certainly needs no introduction. We talk with Pete about his experiences dealing with the music industry over his long career, trying to make money as a young artist, the controversy surrounding royalties derived from the South African song he first adapted into Wimoweh / The Lion Sleeps Tonight, his Campaign for Public Domain Reform and his thoughts about the state of the world in general. We also play (almost) all the songs he mentions in the interview!

Pete Seeger Interview

Pete Seeger’s public domain reform proposal to the U.N.

“Old songs world wide now in the public domain are often adapted and arranged and the new song copyrighted. We propose that a share, either .01% or 99.99% of the mechanical, print and performing royalties go to the place and people where the song originated. Every country should have a public domain commission to help decide what money goes where.”

– Pete Seeger
The Committee for Public Domain Reform

Follow-up Interview with Mat Callahan – Mat is the person spearheading the actual implementation of this effort at the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) office of the U.N. in Switzerland. He explains Pete’s proposal as well as who the real culprits are in the rip-off scam that is the current copyright regime. Mat also addresses the controversy over the royalties from The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Alan Lomax’s copyrighting of folksongs, as well as the nature of the folk process itself. Click here for Mat’s previous appearance on Down Home Radio