What a life! Pete Seeger has made more contributions to American folk music than just about any other individual. Woodie Guthrie and Bob Dylan probably rival his sheer volume but I don’t think they passed it.
Msn.com reports:
With his lanky frame, use-worn banjo and full white beard, Seeger was an iconic figure in folk music who outlived his peers. He performed with the great minstrel Woody Guthrie in his younger days and wrote or co-wrote “If I Had a Hammer,” ”Turn, Turn, Turn,” ”Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” He lent his voice against Hitler and nuclear power. A cheerful warrior, he typically delivered his broadsides with an affable air and his fingers poised over the strings of his banjo.
Seeger was a political activist and a folk singer. He was married to the same woman for 70 years. His wife died just last year. Pete Seeger’s career was significantly damaged by McCarthyism.
His musical career was always braided tightly with his political activism, in which he advocated for causes ranging from civil rights to the cleanup of his beloved Hudson River. Seeger said he left the Communist Party around 1950 and later renounced it. But the association dogged him for years.
He was kept off commercial television for more than a decade after tangling with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. Repeatedly pressed by the committee to reveal whether he had sung for Communists, Seeger responded sharply: “I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.”
He was charged with contempt of Congress, but the sentence was overturned on appeal.
Seeger called the 1950s, years when he was denied broadcast exposure, the high point of his career. He was on the road touring college campuses, spreading the music he, Guthrie, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and others had created or preserved.
Pete Seeger was credited with writing the folk song and signature song of the Civil Rights movement, We Shall Overcome. Seeger says his only contribution was inserting the word ‘shall’ to replace ‘will.’
Seeger’s influence on the music of America will keep him in our hearts always. He was with us for 94 years. What a gift.
I saw him perform at the Shady Grove Music Fair in Gaithersburg in ’68. It is still one of my top 5 all time concerts. He was a gracious, gentle soul who saw good in everyone he met.
What a wonderful tribute to Pete, Ivan! A gracious, gentle soul who saw good in everyone he met.
His heart was in the right place. He sought only the good in people. Regardless of his politics, he was not an evil man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1y2SIIeqy34
As SirVivor stated above, Pete Seegar, a vocalist and musician I disliked for a long time, died today at age 94.
I never met the man personally, but I was one of many serving in Vietnam who knew all about Pete Seeger and his anti-war songs, and the way he helped rally the nation against the war.
I disliked him for those reasons…. until I grew older, and hopefully wiser, and began to understand more about the man and his music. Yes, he protested against the Vietnam War through his music and rally appearances, but I learned that he was against the war, and not the soldiers. Pete Seeger was never one of those who spit on returning troops at airports, or called us ‘baby killers’….. and he never aided and abeted the enemy like Jane Fonda did, but he helped in a mighty way to energize the nation against the war itself.
As I’ve grown older, become a parent and a grandparent, I understand now more than ever Pete Seeger’s views on war and the seemingly senseless loss of life by so many young Americans who answer the call to serve in wars started by politicians, and ended by public opinion.
While I’ve grown to understand some of Pete Seeger’s views and causes, there have been other issues through the years that found us on opposite sides of the fence….. like his politics, and whose inauguration he sang at….. but those were his choices and I had mine.
Although he was well known for singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ during the days of Martin Luther King, the song ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ symbolized Pete Seeger back in the Vietnam era….. it sends a very powerful message in a very simple, yet effective way. If you have not watched the song link that SirVivor posted above, it is worth your time.
There is no doubt that Pete Seeger was a man who cared, and who delivered powerful messages through his music…. for that, he has my respect. R.I.P. Pete Seeger, I hope they have a banjo and microphone waiting for you in Heaven.
SGT – Army Airborne, RVN ’68-’69-’70
90% SC P&T
IU to 100%
SSDI
NIce find, BS.
I always liked his music. Maybe I didn’t have to agree with him. Maybe that’s part of the growth process–we learn to appreciate people who perhaps don’t represent our ideals.
Certainly the older I get the more horrified I become by war and its casualites. It’s very easy to detach and make an enemy faceless the more advanced our weapons become. If you are baynonetting someone in the gut and that person looks pretty much like you, it gets real personal. If you drop a bomb from a mile high on men, women and children, not so much.
Regarding the above posts by me. I did not make the video but thought it appropriate. I also posted a comment from another site that expresses the attitude change of Americans as they gain wisdom.
Thank you so much for putting the video up on the blog, BS. Yes, I wept.
For such a simple song, there is so much there to think about.
Thank you BS for posting this. I have already stated my views about war and its consequences. It also took me some time to understand what Pete was saying and now I see he was spot on. Many think “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” is Pete’s legacy song, but as I grow older, “Turn, Turn, Turn” keeps running through my mind and it seems a fitting closure to his long and illustrious life. He gave us such beautiful music and so much to think about.
http://youtu.be/9Y7P4n2uT0w
I cannot say which one I like the best either. I think I probably like Turn Turn Turn best. To everything there is a season…
Flowers just depresses me.
I can’t remember who it was that described Pete Seeger as “the richest commie I know”
Note: Seeger described himself as a “small c communist” into the 1990s, so it’s not exactly a criticism he’d object to.
But as someone else said, he had great musical talent, whatever his politics were.
I think he was more for ‘everyman’ than a commie.
I’m not sure how rich he really was, Furby. He lived very modestly.
I know a lot of people who knew him, being someone who fell in with a lot of the folk singing crowd of the 1960s. I saw him perform, but never met him personally. But he seems like a very gentle, kindly man who did a lot with a banjo and a few tunes.
Scout, do you perform yourself? Or did you? I can no longer carry a tune in a bucket.
I’m going to have to tread carefully here since it looks like Pete Seeger is another of the anointed. My comment wasn’t meant as an attack on the man, just repeating an old joke about him.
Pete Seeger was to use his words a “small c communist” See his January 22, 1995 interview with the New York Times. “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”
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/22/magazine/sunday-january-22-1995-the-old-left.html
As for his net worth, it’s estimated at $4.2 million. I think most people would consider that rich. He’s not a billionaire but $4.2 million puts him right on the cusp of the dreaded 1% he was protesting against during the Occupy Wall Street protests.
http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/singer/pete-seeger-net-worth/
I don’t see calling him a communist as an attack. He freely said he was one, so he clearly didn’t see it as a negative. As for his wealth, I can’t begrudge the man for his success using his talent.
If the idea of Pete Seeger being a multimillionaire communist is troubling, just think of him as an extreme limousine liberal.
Furby,
Actually, you haven’t said anything I haven’t said at some time in my life. I always loved his music though and I was one of those people who could divorce someone’s politics from their art.
He probably rarely rode in a limo. He was very much a man of the people and he probably gave away more money to causes I might not approve of than the average bear.
No, he isn’t one of the annointed here. You can check out that list on the tab up top, far right.
I just recognize a long, life, filled with the spirit of America. I was also very into folk music and did some cotton picking of my own back in the day. Those who like folk music and the American folk music movement are naturally drawn to Pete Seeger, for obvious reasons.
He clearly was a communist, both in the small “C” sense that he owned up to, and in the more ideological sense back in the 1930s, when a lot of idealistic people left their analytical corrective lenses on the table. He repented of the latter delusion, and, as Furby said, cheerfully owned up to the more nebulous collective philosophy. As Furby notes, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t doubt he had money. He created many beautiful things. Our society rewards that (sometimes). but he lived in a small home he built himself. He chopped his own wood until just recently. He wasn’t just putting out an image for media purposes.
I think I read that he was out chopping wood ten days before his death. He also died in his sleep. What a way to go! We should all be so lucky.
He and his wife did a great deal to clean up the Hudson River. Perhaps he was a man for all seasons.
The real shame is on McCarthyism.