Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 January 27, 2014)

was an American folk singer and activist. A xture on
nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of
hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the
Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's
"Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks
in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on
the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights,
counterculture and environmental causes.
A prolic songwriter, his best-known songs include
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)"
(with Lee Hays of the Weavers), and "Turn! Turn!
Turn!" (lyrics adapted from Ecclesiastes), which have
been recorded by many artists both in and outside the
folk revival movement and are sung throughout the world.
Flowers was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio
(1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English,
German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965).
If I Had a Hammer was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary
(1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while the Byrds had a
number one hit with Turn! Turn! Turn!" in 1965.

Pete Seeger (right), 88 years old, photographed in March 2008

with his friend, the writer and musician Ed Renehan

Harvard-trained composer and musicologist[4] Charles

Louis Seeger, Jr., was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to
American parents. Charles established the rst musicology curriculum in the U.S. at the University of California
in 1913, helped found the American Musicological Society, and was a key founder of the academic discipline
of ethnomusicology. Petes mother, Constance de Clyver
(ne Edson), raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris
Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later
popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also a teacher at the Juilliard School.[5]
recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists)
that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s In 1912, Charles Seeger was hired to establish the muAmerican Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer sic department at the University of California, Berkeley,
of his outspoand activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding but was forced to resign in 1918 because
[6]
ken
pacism
during
World
War
I.
Charles
and Conmeeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Comstance
moved
back
east,
making
Charles
parents
estate
mittee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS American Masin
Patterson,
New
York,
northeast
of
New
York
City,
ters episode "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song", Seeger
their
base
of
operations.
When
baby
Pete
was
eighteen
stated it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional
We will overcome to the more singable We shall over- months old they set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the
come.
working people in the American South.[7] Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art (later
1 Family and personal life
Juilliard), whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constances adoptive uncle. Charles also
Seeger was born on May 3, 1919 at the French Hospi- taught part-time at the New School for Social Research.
tal, Midtown Manhattan.[1] His Yankee-Protestant fam- Career and money tensions led to quarrels and reconily, which Seeger called enormously Christian, in the ciliations, but when Charles discovered Constance had
Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition,[2] traced its opened a secret bank account in her own name, they sepagenealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, rated, and Charles took custody of their three sons.[8] BeKarl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from Wrttemberg, Ger- ginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative posimany, had emigrated to America during the American tions in the federal governments Farm Resettlement proRevolution and married into the old New England gram, the WPA's Federal Music Project (19381940),
family of Parsons in the 1780s.[3] Petes father, the and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War
1

CAREER AS A MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of Cali- York.[17]

fornia and Yale University.[9][10]
Seeger lived in Beacon, New York. He remained enCharles and Constance divorced when Pete was seven, gaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in the
and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and Hudson Valley region of New York throughout his life.
assistant, Ruth Crawford, now considered by many to be He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there
one of the most important modernist composers of the rst in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves.
20th century.[11] Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013[14][18] and Pete died
had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg's in New York City on January 27, 2014.[19]
extremely inuential folk song anthology the American
Songbag (1927) and later created signicant original settings for eight of Sandburgs poems.[12] Petes eldest 2 Career as a musician and activist
brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and
his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s
at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the prin- 2.1 Early work
cipal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in
the Bronx.[13] Petes uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet
(I Have a Rendezvous with Death), had been one of
the rst American soldiers to be killed in World War I.
All four of Petes half siblings from his fathers second
marriage Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a
well-known performer in her own right, was married for
many years to British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City
Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married
Petes half-sister Penny also a talented singer who died
young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording
folk songs for children. In 1935, Pete attended Camp Rising Sun, an international leadership camp held every summer in upstate New York that inuenced his lifes work.
He visited it most recently in 2012.
In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline ta, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest
of his life possible. The couple remained married until
Toshis death in July 2013.[14] Their rst child, Peter ta
Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months, while
Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him.[15] They
went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and lmmaker), Mika (a potter and
muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren
Tao Rodrguez-Seeger (a musician), Cassie (an artist),
Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a lmmaker), Moraya (a graduate student married to the NFL player Chris DeGeare),
Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own
right, who sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica
with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary
lmmaker who was associate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.
When asked about his religious or spiritual views, Seeger
replied: I feel most spiritual when Im out in the woods.
I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to
say] I was an atheist. Now I say, its all according to your
denition of God. According to my denition of God,
I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything.
Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever
I'm listening to something I'm listening to God..[16] He
was a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church in New

Seeger in 1979

At four, Seeger was sent away to boarding school, but

came home two years later, when his parents learned
the school had failed to inform them he had contracted
scarlet fever.[20] He attended rst and second grades in
Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgeeld, Connecticut.[21] Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press
him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise
bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the ukulele,
becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it,
while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, Seeger enrolled in the Avon
Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut from which he
graduated in 1936. He was selected to attend Camp
Rising Sun, the George E. Jonas Foundation's international summer leadership program. During the summer

2.1

Early work

of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother,

Pete heard the ve-string banjo for the rst time at the
Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar
Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for Farm Resettlement music projects.[22] The festival took place in a
covered baseball eld. There the Seegers:
watched square-dance teams from Bear
Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks
Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and
Soco Gap; heard the ve-string banjo player
Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands,
including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments
and sang ballads. They wandered among the
crowds who camped out at the edge of the eld,
hearing music being made there as well. As
Lunsfords daughter would later recall, those
country people held the riches that Dad had
discovered. They could sing, ddle, pick the
banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and
style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies
drift over the ball park.[23]
For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music
rsthand was a conversion experience. Pete was deeply
aected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford,
spent much of the next four years trying to master the vestring banjo.[23] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at the Greenwich Village loft of painter and art
teacher Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a
lover of Americana, played Cindy and "Old Joe Clark"
with his students Charlie and Jackson Pollock; friends
from the hillbilly recording industry; as well as avantgarde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. It was
at one of Bentons parties that Pete heard "John Henry"
for the rst time.[24]
Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suered and he lost his
scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.[25] He
dreamed of a career in journalism and took courses in
art, as well. His rst musical gig was leading students in
folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond
Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and
Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary
Mexico.[26] One of their shows coincided with a strike
by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October
in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939,
Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers six-week tour
this way:

3
During the entire trip the group never ate
once in a restaurant. They slept out at night
under the stars and cooked their own meals in
the open, very often they were the guests of
farmers. At rural aairs and union meetings,
the farm women would bring suppers and
would vie with each other to see who could feed
the troupe most, and after the aair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who
would have the honor of taking them home for
the night.
They fed us too well, the girls reported.
And we could live the entire winter just by
taking advantage of all the oers to spend a
week on the farm.
In the farmers homes they talked about
politics and the farmers problems, about
antisemitism and Unionism, about war and
peace and social security"and always, the
puppeteers report, the farmers wanted to
know what can be done to create a stronger
unity between themselves and city workers.
They felt the need of this more strongly than
ever before, and the support of the CIO in their
milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in
solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a
minimum of organized eort on the part of city
organizationsunions, consumers bodies, the
American Labor Party and similar groups
can not only reach the farmers but weld them
into a pretty solid front with city folks that will
be one of the best guarantees for progress.[27]
That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his fathers, at the Archive of
American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seegers
job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "race"
and "hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the
music division of the Pan American Union (later the
Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (193853).[28]
Lomax also encouraged Seegers folk singing vocation,
and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on
Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (194041) alongside of Josh White, Burl Ives, Lead Belly, and Woody
Guthrie (whom he had rst met at Will Geer's Grapes of
Wrath benet concert for migrant workers on March 3,
1940). Back Where I Come From was unique in having
a racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at the
White House organized by Eleanor Roosevelt called An
Evening of Songs for American Soldiers,[29] before an
audience that included the Secretaries of War, Treasury,

4
and the Navy, among other notables. The show was a success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for
nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast.
During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.

CAREER AS A MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and

more moderate liberals, the YCLs members still smarted
from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[32] and
the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs John Doe, accusing it
of scrupulously echoing what it called the mendacious
Moscow tune that Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war. Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album in
bad taste, though President Roosevelt, when the album
was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned
out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist
was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser
on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In
a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled The
Poison in Our System, he pronounced Songs for John
Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt (center), honored
Doe "...strictly subversive and illegal, "...whether Comguest at a racially integrated Valentines Day party marking the
opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then- munist or Nazi nanced, and a matter for the attorney
segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for general, observing further that mere legal suppression would not be sucient to counteract this type of
the Oce of War Information, 1944.[30]
populist poison,[33] the poison being folk music, and the
In 1949, Seeger worked as the vocal instructor for the ease with which it could be spread.[34]
progressive City and Country School in Greenwich VilAt that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was
lage, New York.
energetically re-arming. African Americans were barred
from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly
angered both African Americans and white progressives.
2.2 Early activism
Civil rights leader A. J. Muste and Black union leaders
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin began planning a
Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its pop- huge march on Washington to protest racial discriminaularity and inuence. In 1942 he became a member of tion in war industries and to urge desegregation of the
the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself, but left in armed forces. The march, which many regard as the rst
manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was can1949.[31]
celed after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order
In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barperformed as a member of the Almanac Singers along ring discrimination in hiring by companies holding fedwith Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, eral contracts for defense work. This Presidential act
Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and defused black anger considerably, although the United
the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and States Army still refused to desegregate, declining to parother labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late Febru- ticipate in what it considered social experimentation.[35]
ary or March and released in May 1941), the Talking
Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer Roosevelts order came three days after Hitler broke the
songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at
was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by which time the Communist Party quickly directed its
Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, members to get behind the draft and forbade participation
It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil, in strikes for the duration of the war (angering some leftthat were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented ists). Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from
peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti- sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few
[36]
war/anti-draft tone reected the Communist Party line copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.
after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which main- The Almanac Singers Talking Union album, on the other
tained the war was phony and a mere pretext for big hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A)
American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Rus- in 1955 and is still available. The following year the Alsia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument manacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support
at the timeas did many fellow members of the Young of Roosevelt and the war eort. The title song, Dear
Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members Mr. President, was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines

2.3

Spanish Civil War songs

expressed his lifelong credo:

Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always
agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all
important now. / What is important is what we
got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until
we do, / Other things can wait.//
Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I
know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday,
/ Just give us a little time. // This is the reason
that I want to ght, / Not 'cause everythings
perfect, or everythings right. / No, its just
the opposite: I'm ghtin' because / I want a
better America, and better laws, / And better
homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more
Jim Crow, and no more rules like / You can't
ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro, / You
can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"/ You can't
work here 'cause you're a union man."//
So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job
to do / Thats lick Mr. Hitler and when we're
through, / Let no one else ever take his place /
To trample down the human race. / So what I
want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry
up and get the job done.
Seegers critics, however, have continued to bring up the
Almanacs repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a
year after the John Doe albums brief appearance (and
disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war
Almanacs were still endangering the war eort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World
Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrichs 1941 article The Poison in Our System was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an
organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right-hand
man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine,
had founded "...to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacist... antiwar groups in the United States).[37]
and was shown to the Almanacs employers in order to
keep them o the air. Coincidentally, defamatory reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately
the Almanacs had to disband.[38]
His critics have also tried to downplay the sincerity of
Seegers anti-war sentiments, and even to suggest that
he was a supporter of Nazi Germany, by asserting that
Seeger was only anti-war in the early 1940s because at
the time the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with
Nazi Germany, and that he immediately became pro-war
after the USSR was invaded. They support this assertion by pointing out, incorrectly, that the Weavers album
Dear Mr. President (supporting the war eort) was released shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union
in June 1941. However, Dear Mr. President was actually
released a year later, in June 1942, six months after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States
entry into the war.[39][40]

5
Seeger served in the U.S. Army in the Pacic. He was
trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to
entertain the American troops with music. Later, when
people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered I strummed my banjo. After returning from service, Seeger and others established Peoples Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both
coasts and designed to Create, promote and distribute
songs of labor and the American People[41] With Pete
Seeger as its director, Peoples Songs worked for the 1948
presidential campaign of Roosevelts former Secretary of
Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who
ran as a third-party candidate on the Progressive Party
ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace won only in New York City, and,
in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had not been) for accepting the help
in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such
as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.[42]

2.3 Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican
forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom
Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an
album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion on
Moe Aschs Stinson label. This included such songs as
"Theres a Valley in Spain called Jarama, and "Viva
la Quince Brigada. In 1960, this collection was reissued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called
Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On
the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs
for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938
while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch
and a chorus of members of the Thlmann Battalion,
made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs
were: Moorsoldaten (Peat Bog Soldiers, composed
by political prisoners of German concentration camps),
Die Thaelmann-Kolonne, Hans Beimler, Das Lied
Von Der Einheitsfront (Song of The United Front by
Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), Der Internationalen
Brigaden (Song of the International Brigades), and
Los cuatro generales (The Four Generals, known in
English as The Four Insurgent Generals).

2.4 Group recordings

As a self-described split tenor (between an alto and a
tenor),[43] Pete Seeger was a founding member of two
highly inuential folk groups: The Almanac Singers and
the Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger cofounded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas
singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the
industrial unionization movement,[44] racial and religious
inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax

CAREER AS A MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As when the three other band members agreed to perform a
a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger jingle for a cigarette commercial.
performed under the stage name Pete Bowers to avoid
compromising his fathers government career.
In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as the Weavers,
named after the title of an 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann about a workers strike (which contained the lines,
We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). They
did benets for strikers at which they sang songs such
as 'Talking Union', about the struggles for unionisation
of industrial workers such as miners and auto mobile
workers.[45] Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his
own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and
Fred Hellerman; later Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling and
Bernie Krause serially took Seegers place. In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers repertoire
had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs
had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect languagearguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos
(unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and
their managers refused to let them perform at political
venues. The Weavers string of major hits began with "On
Top of Old Smoky" and an arrangement of Lead Belly's
signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene,[4] which topped the
charts for 13 weeks in 1950[46] and was covered by many
other pop singers. On the ip side of Irene was the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena".[4] Other Weaver hits
included Dusty Old Dust (So Long Its Been Good to
Know You by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses Sweeter Than
Wine" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly) and the South
African Zulu song by Solomon Linda, "Wimoweh" (about
Shaka), among others.

2.5 Banjo and 12-string guitar

In 1948, Seeger wrote the rst version of his now-classic
How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo
players credit with starting them o on the instrument.
He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This
instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is
slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned
a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the vestring banjo became known nationwide as the American
folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seegers
championing of and improvements to it. According to
an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway's
biography, by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fth
string, Pete Seeger gentried the more percussive traditional Appalachian frailing style, with its vigorous
hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of
the ngernail on the banjo head.[47] Although what Dunaways informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more
acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its
percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated
with the style.
From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican
origin that had been associated with Lead Belly, who
had styled himself the King of the 12-String Guitar.
Seegers distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular
soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28) and capo-to-key techniques that he favored
on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings,
which he played with thumb and nger picks.[48]

The Weavers performing career was abruptly derailed in

1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting
prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and
all their bookings were canceled. They briey returned to
the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall
in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced
a hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as
LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya, a Gullah
black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers
(in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campres.
2.6 Introduction of the Steel Pan to U.S.
audiences
In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latters repertoire, though with a more In 1956, then Peter Seeger (see lm credits) and his
buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream colle- wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek
giate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phe- out information on the steelpan, steel drum or Pingnomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn Pong as it was sometimes called. The two searched out
spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for a local panyard director Isaiah, and proceeded to lm the
the 1960s commercial folk revival.
construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national
In the documentary lm Pete Seeger: The Power of Song instrument of Trinidad-Tobago. He was attempting to in(2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers clude the unique avor of the steel pan into America Folk
music.

2.8

Folk music revival

7
of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to ten 1-year
terms in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May
1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be awed
and overturned his conviction.[53][54]
In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he
could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not
be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow
of the government. Seeger refused, and the American
Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the
school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. Almost 50 years later, in February 2009, the San
Diego School District ocially extended an apology to
Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.[55]

2.8 Folk music revival

Pete Seeger in 1955

2.7

The McCarthy era

In the 1950s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life,

Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights,
racial equality, international understanding, and antimilitarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace
campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could
help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing
revelations of Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. He left the
CPUSA in 1949 but remained friends with some who did
not leave it, though he argued with them about it.[49][50]

To earn money during the blacklist period of the late

1950s and early 1960s, Seeger worked gigs as a music
teacher in schools and summer camps, and traveled the
college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as ve
albums a year for Moe Asch's Folkways Records label.
As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seegers anti-war songs,
such as, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written
with Joe Hickerson), "Turn! Turn! Turn!",[56] adapted
from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poet Idris Davies[57] (1957), gained
wide currency. Seeger also was closely associated with
the 1960s Civil Rights movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall concert, featuring the
youthful Freedom Singers, as a benet for the Highlander
Folk School in Tennessee. This event and Martin Luther
King's March on Washington in August of that year
brought the Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome"
to wide audiences where he sang it on the 50-mile walk
from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. along with 1,000 other
marchers.[58] By this time, Seeger was a senior gure in
the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as
a longtime columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the
Peoples Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside magazine. To describe the new crop of
politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase
Woodys children, alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had
become a legendary gure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s
and 1940s and of Peoples Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to eect social change, a practice
that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or
Wobblies Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedishborn union organizer Joe Hill (18791915). (The Little
Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthries,
who was known to carry it around.)

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the
1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten
for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the
Fifth Amendment (which would have asserted that his
testimony might be self incriminating) and instead, as the
Hollywood Ten had done, refused to name personal and
political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical
or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted
in any election, or any of these private aairs. I think
these are very improper questions for any American to be
asked, especially under such compulsion as this.[51][52]
Seegers refusal to answer questions that violated his fundamental Constitutional rights led to a March 26, 1957,
indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he
had to keep the federal government apprised of where Seeger toured Australia in 1963. His single "Little
he was going any time he left the Southern District of Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one
New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt in the nations Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom

CAREER AS A MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

throughout the country at a time when popular music

tastes, post-Kennedy assassination, competed between
folk, the surng craze, and the British rock boom which
gave the world the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among
others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues, and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs many
of their own composing emerged in concerts and festivals, on television, and on recordings, and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia.
The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end
in the mid-1960s, when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational, folk-music television show, Rainbow
Quest. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter,
Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, the Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick
Sky, Buy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins,
Donovan, Richard Faria and Mimi Faria, Sonny Terry
and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice
Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb,
Malvina Reynolds, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine[49]
hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Newark
studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his
wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out! (Summer 2005), a magBrothers ended Seegers national blacklisting by broad- azine he helped found in 1950.
casting him singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on
their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his
similar performance in September 1967 was censored by
CBS.[59]
Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matIn November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti- ters. Two days earlier there had been a scue and brief
death penalty song Delbert Tibbs, about the eponymous exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax;
death-row inmate, who was later exonerated. Seeger and the Board, in an emergency session, had voted to
wrote the music and selected the words from poems writ- ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed o
when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also manten by Tibbs.[60]
aged highly popular draws Odetta and Peter, Paul, and
Seeger also supported the Jewish Camping Movement. Mary.[64] Seeger has been portrayed as a folk purist who
He came to Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, New was one of the main opponents to Dylans going elecYork, over the summer many times.[61] He sang and in- tric.[65] but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled
spired countless campers.[62]
his objections to the electric style, he said:

2.8.1

Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan

Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan and was responsible for urging A&R man John Hammond to produce Dylans rst LP on Columbia, and for
inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival,
of which Seeger was a board member.[63] There was a
widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the
extremely loud amplied sound that Dylan, backed by
members of the Buttereld Blues Band, brought into the
1965 Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of
what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylans manager,
Albert Grossman, and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC Peter Yarrow, and George

I couldn't understand the words. I wanted

to hear the words. It was a great song,
"Maggies Farm, and the sound was distorted.
I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted,
Fix the sound so you can hear the words. He
hollered back, This is the way they want it. I
said Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable
right now. But I was at fault. I was the MC,
and I could have said to the part of the crowd
that booed Bob, you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf
yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric
songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the
vernacular of the second half of the twentieth
century, to use my fathers old term.[66]

2.10

Pollution of the Hudson River

2.9

Vietnam War era and beyond

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the

Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President
Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album
Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler's childrens song,
"Beans in My Ears". Beyond Chandlers lyrics, Seeger
said that Mrs. Jays little son Alby had beans in his
ears, which, as the lyrics imply,[67] ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed
to continuing the Vietnam War, the phrase implied that
Alby Jay, a loose pronunciation of Johnsons nickname
LBJ, did not listen to anti-war protests as he too had
beans in his ears.
During 1966 Seeger and Malvina Reynolds took part in
environmental activism. The album God Bless the Grass
was released on January of that year and became the rst
album in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same
ideologies of nationalism, populism, and criticism of big
business.[68]
Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his
song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain
referred to in the lyrics as the big foolwho drowned
while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. With its lyrics about a platoon being
led into danger by an ignorant captain, the songs antiwar message was obvious- the line the big fool said to
push on is repeated several times.[69] In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether
the songs political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour, the nal lines were Every time I read the
paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in
the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on. The
lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the
big fool and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger.
Although the performance was cut from the September
1967 show,[70] after wide publicity[71] it was broadcast
when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers Brothers
show in the following January.[72]
At the November 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium March
on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in
singing John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" as
they rallied across from the White House. Seegers voice
carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like, Are
you listening, Nixon?" between the choruses of protesters
singing, All we are saying ... is give peace a chance.[73]
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled
This machine kills fascists,photo Seegers banjo was emblazoned with the motto This Machine Surrounds Hate
and Forces It to Surrender.[74]
In the documentary lm The Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in
1972.[75]
Being a supporter of progressive labor unions, Seeger had

9
supported Ed Sadlowski in his bid for the presidency of
the United Steelworkers of America. In 1977 Seeger appeared at a fundraiser in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In
1978, Seeger joined American folk, blues, and jazz singer
Barbara Dane at a rally in New York for striking coal
miners.[76]

2.10 Pollution of the Hudson River

The most discussed pollution of the Hudson River
is General Electric's contamination of the river with
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) between 1947-77.[77]
This pollution caused a range of harmful eects to
wildlife and people who eat sh from the river or drink
the water.[77] In response to this contamination, activists
protested in various ways. Musician Pete Seeger founded
the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and the Clearwater
Festival to draw attention to the problem. The activism
led to the site being designated as one of the superfund
sites.[78]

2.11 Reection on support for Soviet Communism

In 1982, Seeger performed at a benet concert for
Polands Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer
David Dunaway considers this the rst public manifestation of Seegers decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form.[79] In the late 1980s Seeger also
expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking
to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that the most lasting revolutions are those
that take place over a period of time.[79] In his autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone (1993, 1997,
reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, Should I apologize for
all this? I think so. He went on to put his thinking in
context:
How could Hitler have been stopped?
Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of
Nations in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those
times check out pacist Dave Dellinger's book,
From Yale to Jail ...[80] At any rate, today
I'll apologize for a number of things, such as
thinking that Stalin was merely a hard driver
and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess
anyone who calls himself a Christian should
be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition,
the burning of heretics by Protestants, the
slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders.
White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans
and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for
Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt

10

2
could apologize for his support of Somoza, of
Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain,
for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter
Moraya apologize to? Shes part African, part
European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part
Native American. Lets look ahead.[81][82]

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that 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.[83] In recent years, as the aging
Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his
lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once
again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and
1940s. In 2006, David BoazVoice of America and
NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato
Institutewrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled Stalins Songbird in which he excoriated The New
Yorker and The New York Times for lauding Seeger. He
characterized Seeger as someone with a longtime habit
of following the party line who had only eventually
parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he
quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May 1941 Songs
for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered
the war.[84][85]
In 2007, in response to criticism from a historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National ReviewSeeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, Big Joe Blues":[86] "I'm singing about old Joe,
cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to
the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance
to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead
he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big
Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I
got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I
got the Big Joe Blues."[87] The song was accompanied by
a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, I think you're
right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in
U.S.S.R [in 1965].[82]

CAREER AS A MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing
Take It From Dr. King.
On January 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandson Tao
Rodrguez-Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, and the
crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song "This Land Is
Your Land" in the nale of Barack Obamas Inaugural
concert in Washington, D.C.[89][90] The performance was
noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a private property sign
the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a
passing reference to a Depression-era relief oce.[89][91]
Over the years he lent his fame to support numerous
environmental organizations, including South Jerseys
Bayshore Center, the home of New Jerseys tall ship, the
oyster schooner A.J. Meerwald. Seegers benet concerts helped raise funds for groups so they could continue
to educate and spread environmental awareness.[92] On
May 3, 2009, at the Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden
to celebrate Seegers 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer),[93] ranging from Dave
Matthews, John Mellencamp, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Eric Weissberg, Ani DiFranco and
Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Joanne
Shenandoah, R. Carlos Nakai, Bill Miller, Joseph Fire
Crow, Margo Thunderbird, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack
Elliott and Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio
Rodrguez was also invited to appear but his visa was
not approved in time by the United States government.
Consistent with Seegers long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event beneted
the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater,[94] a non-prot organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the Hudson River. Seegers 90th Birthday was also
celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.
[95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108]

On September 19, 2009, Seeger made his rst appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, which was particularly notable because the festival does not normally
feature folk artists.

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote

and performed the song Gods Counting on Me, Gods
Counting on You with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the
2.12 Later work
Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[109] A performance of the
song by Seeger, Wyatt, and friends was recorded and
On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his
lmed on the Sloop Clearwater in August and released
brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family
as a single and video produced by Richard Barone and
members spoke and performed at a symposium and conMatthew Billy on election day November 6, 2012.[110]
cert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor
of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part
Washington, D.C.,[88] where Pete Seeger had been em- of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columployed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years bus Circle in New York City.[111] The march began with
Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space
earlier.
(95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part
In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At
of a benet for Seegers Clearwater organization. Thou89, Seegers rst studio album in 12 years. On Septemsands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they
ber 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned

11
reached Columbus Circle where he performed with his
grandson, Tao Rodrguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David
Amram, and other celebrated musicians.[112] The event,
promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was live
streamed, and dubbed by some as The Pete Seeger
March.

cial episode of Cover to Cover Live with Maggie Linton and Kim Alexander entitled Pete Seeger:The Storm
King and Friends.[117]
On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was
in New York City for the 400-year commemoration of
the Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Iroquois
and the Dutch. On an interview he gave that day to
Democracy Now!, Seeger sang I Come and Stand at Every Door as it was also the 68th anniversary of bombing
of Nagasaki.[118][119]
On September 21, 2013, Pete Seeger performed at Farm
Aid at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga
Springs, New York. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Young,
John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, he sang This
Land Is Your Land[120] and included a verse he said he
had written specically for the Farm Aid concert.

Seeger looks on as a ceremony concludes marking the raising of

the new home winter port in Kingston, New York, of the Sloop
Clearwater, September 15, 2012[113]

Seeger died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94.[121] Response and reaction to Seegers death quickly poured in. President
Barack Obama noted that Seeger had been called Americas tuning fork[122] and that he believed in the power
of song to bring social change, Over the years, Pete
used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for workers rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, and he always invited us to sing along.
For reminding us where we come from and showing us
where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete
Seeger.[123] Folksinger Billy Bragg wrote that: Pete believed that music could make a dierence. Not change
the world, he never claimed that he once said that if music could change the world he'd only be making music
but he believed that while music didn't have agency, it did
have the power to make a dierence.[124] Bruce Springsteen said of Seegers death, I lost a great friend and
a great hero last night, Pete Seeger, before performing
"We Shall Overcome" while on tour in South Africa.[125]

On December 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along with

Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne, Common and others, 3 Discography
at a concert to bring awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal
of Native American Activist Leonard Peltier. The concert
Main article: Pete Seeger discography
was held at the Beacon Theater in New York City.[114]
On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitled Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories,
Narratives, Poems. This two-CD spoken-word work was
conceived of and produced by noted percussionist Je
Haynes and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his
life against a background of music performed by more
than 40 musicians of varied genres.[115] The launch of
the audiobook was held at the Dia:Beacon on April 11,
2013 to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred
people, and featured many of the musicians from the
project (among them Samite, Dar Williams, Dave Eggar
and Richie Stearns of the Horse Flies and Natalie Merchant) performing live under the direction of producer
and percussionist Haynes.[116] April 15, 2013, Sirius XM
Book Radio presented the Dia:Beacon concert as a spe-

God Bless the Grass (1966)

Dangerous Songs!? (1966)
Rainbow Race (1973)
American Folk Songs for Children (1990)
At 89 (2008)[126][127]

4 Tributes
A proposal was made in 2009 to name the Walkway
Over the Hudson in his honor.[128]

12

7 NOTES

A posthumous suggestion that Seegers name be applied to the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge being
built over the Hudson River has been made by local
town supervisor, Paul Feiner.[78][129] Seegers boat,
the sloop Clearwater, is based at Beacon, New York,
just upriver from the bridge.[130]
Oakwood Friends School located in Poughkeepsie
New York, not far from Seegers home, performed
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? at one of their
worship meetings. The collaboration was with three
teachers (playing guitar and vocals) as well as a student harmonica player and a student vocalist.
A free ve-day memorial called Seeger Fest took
place on July 17 to 21, 2014, featuring Judy Collins,
Peter Yarrow, Harry Belafonte, Anti- Flag, Michael
Glabicki of Rusted Root, Steve Earle, Holly Near,
Fred Hellerman, Guy Davis, DJ Logic, Paul Winter Consort, Dar Williams, DJ Kool Herc, The
Rappers Delight Experience, Tiokasin Ghosthorse,
David amram, Mik + Ruthy, Tom Chapin, James
Maddock, The Chapin Sisters, Rebel Diaz, Sarah
Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Elizabeth Mitchell,
Emmas Revolution, Toni Blackman, Kim & Reggie Harris, Magpie, Abrazos Orcchestra, Nyraine,
George Wein, The Vanaver Caravan, White Tiger
Society, Lorre Wyatt, AKIR, Adira & Alana Amram, Aurora Barnes, The Owens Brothers, The
Tony Lee Thomas Band, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, Ney York Sity Labor Chorus, Roland Moussa,
Roots Revelators, Kristen Graves, Bob Reid, Hudson River Sloop Singers, Walkabout Clearwater
Chorus, Betty & The baby Boomers, Work O'
The Weavers, Jacob Bernz * Sarah Armour, and
Amanda Palmer.[131]

Awards

Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including:
Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
(1972)[132]
The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
The Letelier-Mott Human Rights Award (1986)
The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
(1993)[133]
The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
Kennedy Center Honor (1994)
The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (1996)[134]

Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

(1996)
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of
1996 for his record Pete (1997)
The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for
his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the
environment and against racism (1999)
The Schneider Family Book Award for his childrens
picture book The Deaf Musicians. (2007)
The Mid-Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame
(2008)- Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the
rst public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York
not-for-prot family entertainment venue, close to
Seegers home, in 1976. Grandson Tao RodrguezSeeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf
of his grandfather.
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of
2008 for his record At 89 (2009)
The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience
Award[135] for his commitment to peace and
social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist,
and environmentalist that spans over sixty years.
(2008)
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)
Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children of 2010 for his record Tomorrows Children,
Pete Seeger and the Rivertown Kids and Friends
(2011)
George Peabody Medal (2013)
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album of
2013 nomination for Pete Seeger: The Storm King;
Stories, Narratives, Poems (2014)[136][137]
Woody Guthrie Prize (2014) (inaugural recipient)

6 See also
List of banjo players
List of peace activists
Tom Winslow Clearwater singer and songwriter

7 Notes
[1] Clapp, E.P. (September 14, 2013). Honor Pete Seeger.
The Hungton Post. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
[2] David King Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing (New
York: [Random House, 1981, 1990], revised edition, Villard Books, 2008), p. 17.

13

[3] See Ann M. Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life in American

Music (University of Pittsburgh, 1992), pp. 45.
[4] Pete Seeger interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
[5] Dunaway (2008), p. 20.
[6] According to Dunaway, the British-born president of the
university all but red Charles Seeger (How Can I Keep
From Singing, p. 26).
[7] Ann Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life In Music, 8385.
[8] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 32. Frank
Damrosch, siding with Constance, red Charles from Juilliard, see Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composers Search for American Music (Oxford University
Press, 1997), pp. 22425.
[9] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 22, 24.
[10] Winkler (2009), p. 4.
[11] See Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composers
Search for American Music (1997).
[12] David Lewis, ''Ruth Crawford Seeger Biography in 600
Words' on website of her daughter, Peggy Seeger. Peggyseeger.com. February 14, 2005. Retrieved August 28,
2012.
[13] John Seeger Dies at 95. WordPress.com. January 18,
2010. Retrieved November 5, 2010.
[14] Martin, Douglas (July 12, 2013). Toshi Seeger, Wife of
Folk-Singing Legend, Dies at 91. The New York Times.
Retrieved July 12, 2013.
[15] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 131.
[16] Wendy Schuman. Pete Seegers Session. Beliefnet, Inc.
Retrieved August 16, 2013.
[17]
[18] Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006), pp. 4748.
[19] Pareles, Jon (January 28, 2014). Pete Seeger, Songwriter
and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94. The New York
Times. Retrieved January 28, 2014.

[26] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 6163.

[27] Emery, Lawrence, Interesting Summer: Young Puppeteers in Unique Tour of Rural Areas, quoted on Pete
Seeger website
[28] The resultant 22-page mimeographed List of American
Folk Music on Commercial Recordings, issued in 1940
and mailed by Lomax out to academic folklore scholars,
became the basis of Harry Smiths celebrated Anthology
of American Folk Music on Folkways Records. Seeger
also did similar work for Lomax at Decca in the late
1940s.
[29] Folk Songs in the White House, Time, March 3, 1941
[30] From the Washington Post, February 12, 1944: The Labor Canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers
of America, CIO, will be opened at 8 p.m. tomorrow at
1212 18th st. nw. Mrs. Roosevelt is expected to attend at
8:30 p.m.
[31] He later commented Innocently I became a member of
the Communist Party, and when they said ght for peace,
I did, and when they said ght Hitler, I did. I got out in '49,
though.... I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of
me not to. My father had got out in '38, when he read the
testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they
were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though,
and I didn't examine closely enough what was going on....
I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no
idea how cruel a leader he was. Wilkinson, The Protest
Singer (2006), p. 52; see also The Protest Singer: An
Intimate Portrait (2009), p. 114.
[32] Dallek, Robert (1995). "'Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 19321945"'. Oxford University
Press. p. 180. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
[33] The Poison in Our System (excerpt from the Atlantic
Monthly) by Carl Joachim Friedrich. Note: Dunaway
misses the signicance of military propagandist Carl
Joachim Friedrich, when he mistakenly refers to him as
Karl Frederick, an error other writers who relied on
Dunaway repeated.

[24] Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 235. According to

John Szwed, Jackson Pollock, later famous for his drip
paintings, played harmonica, having smashed his violin in
frustration, see: Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the
World (Viking, 2010), p. 88.

[34] Friedrichs review concluded: The three records sell for

one dollar and you are asked to play them in your home,
play them in your union hall, take them back to your people. Probably some of these songs fall under the criminal
provisions of the Selective Service Act, and to that extent
it is a matter for the Attorney-General. But you never can
handle situations of this kind democratically by mere suppression. Unless civic groups and individuals will make
a determined eort to counteract such appeals by equally
eective methods, democratic morale will decline. Upon
United States entry into the war in 1942, Friedrich became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council for Democracy, charged with combatting isolationism,
and had his article on the Almanacs reprinted as one of
several pamphlets which he sent to radio network executives.

[25] According to Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006), p.

51, after failing one of his winter exams and losing his
scholarship.

[35] The Army cannot change civilian ideas on the Negro.

The army is not a sociological laboratory. The Armys job
is to train soldiers. To address itself to racial problems

[20] Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006) p. 50 and Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 32.
[21] Alec Wilkinson, The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait
of Pete Seeger (New York: Knopf, 2009), p. 43.
[22] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 4849.
[23] Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 239.

14

7 NOTES

would be to endanger eciency and morale, Colonel

E.R. Householder speaking to a conference of AfricanAmerican editors on December 8, 1941, quoted by Roy
Wilkins in The Old Army Game?" The Crisis (December, 1945), pp. 13031.
[36] Although the Almanacs were accused both at the time
and in subsequent histories of reversing their attitudes
in response to the Communist Partys new party line,
Seeger has pointed out that virtually all progressives reversed course and supported the war. He insists that no
one, Communist Party or otherwise, told the Almanacs to
change their songs. (Seeger interview with [Richard A.]
Reuss 4/9/68)" quoted in William G. Roy, Who Shall
Not Be Moved? Folk Music, Community and Race in
the American The Communist Party and the Highlander
School, p. 16.
[37] Blanche Wiessen Cook, Eisenhower Declassied (Doubleday, 1981), page 122. The Council was a limited affair, Cook writes, "...that served mostly to highlight Jacksons talents as a propagandist.
[38] See: Singers on New Morale Show Also Warbled for
Communists, New York World Telegram, February 17,
1942
[39] See: " Totalitarian Troubadour, National Review Online,
by John Fund, January 29, 2014. Fund writes Just one
month after the album was released, Hitler invaded the
Soviet Union. The album was quickly withdrawn from
circulation, and Seeger and his buddies immediately did a
180-degree turn and came up with new songs...

[48] Acoustic Guitar Central. Acousticguitar.com.

trieved November 20, 2012.

Re-

[49] Pete Seeger: The Power of Song PBS American Masters, February 27, 2008
[50] , Pete Seeger Interview PBS American Masters.
[51] Pete Seeger to the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955. Quoted, along with some other
exchanges from that hearing, in Wilkinson, The Protest
Singer (2006), p. 53.
[52] United States. Congress. House. Committee on UnAmerican Activities (August 1718, 1955). Investigation
of Communist Activities, New York Area Part VII (Entertainment). Hearings Before the Committee on UnAmerican Activities, House of Representatives, EightyFourth Congress, First Session, August 17 And 18, 1955.
pt. 7. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. O. pp. Testimony
of Peter Seeger, p. 24472459.
[53] United States v. Seeger, 303 F. 2d 478 (2d Cir. 1962).
[54] Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006), p. 53.
[55] Dillon, Raquel Maria. School board oers apology to
singer Pete Seeger. Sign on San Diego. Retrieved February 13, 2011.
[56] Pete Seeger interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
[57] BBC News South East Wales. Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved
November 20, 2012.

[40] See: " Pete Seeger, Troubedour for Tyranny, is Dead

at 94, Yahoo Voices, by Mark Whittington, January 29,
2014. Whittington writes "...Seeger was a supporter of
some of the worst mass murderers of the 20th Century.
As a Communist Party member in the 1940s he was a
supporter of Adolf Hitler after the Nazi/Soviet Nonaggression Pact, even going so far as to pillory Franklin Roosevelt in song for opposing Nazi Germany up until the very
day Hitler invaded Russia. Then he changed his tune, as
it were, without missing a beat and became a supporter
of war against Germany, obedient to the dictates of the
Communist Party.

[58] Whitehead, John. Pete Seeger: Changing The World

One Song At A Time. Waxahachie Daily Light. May
30, 2013. Rutherford Institute. Accessed on October 14,
2014.

[41] Peoples Songs Inc. Peoples Songs Newsletter No 1.

February 1946. Old Town School of Folk Music Resource
center collection.

[61] Turton, Michael (August 14, 2011). Surprise Lake

Camp: Rich History, Big Presence. Philipstown.info.
Retrieved January 28, 2014.

[42] American Masters: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

KQED Broadcast 2-27-08.

[62] Bank, Justin (January 28, 2014). Pete Seeger, Neil Diamond and me. Washington Post. Retrieved January 28,
2014.

[59] Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers

Brothers Comedy Hour, by David Bianculli, Touchstone,
2009.
[60] Songwriter Pete Seeger and Writing For Freedom.
Peteseeger.net. July 28, 1976. Retrieved September 5,
2012.

[43] Wilkinson, The Protest Singer (2006), p. 47.

[44] See Wikipedia entry on the CIO.
[45] Ingram, David. The Jukebox in the Garden: Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960. Humanities Source. 2010 Vol. 7. Retrieved October 14, 2014.
[46] Alec Wilkinson, The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and
American folk music, in The New Yorker (April 17,
2006), pp. 4453.
[47] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 100.

[63] Fellow Newport Board member Bruce Jackson writes,

Pete Seeger, more than any of the other board members, had a personal connection with Bob Dylan: it was
he who [in 1962] had convinced the great Columbia A
and R man John Hammond, famous for his work with
jazz and blues musicians, to produce Dylans eponymous
rst album, Bob Dylan. If anyone was responsible for Bob
Dylans presence on the Newport Stage [in 1965], it was
Pete Seeger. See Bruce Jackson, The Story Is True: The
Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2008), p. 148.

15

[64] John Szwed, Alan Lomax, 'The Man Who Recorded the
World (Viking, 2010), p. 354. The Buttereld Blues
Band, a new, integrated Chicago-based electric band, was
the closer in an afternoon blues workshop entitled Blues:
Origins and Oshoots, hosted by Lomax, that had included African-American blues greats Willie Dixon, Son
House, Memphis Slim, and a prison work group from
Texas, along with bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe and the
Bluegrass Boys. Lomax, upset that Butterelds group
had been shoehorned into his workshop, reportedly complained aloud about how long they took to set up their
electrical equipment and introduced them with the words,
Now, lets nd out if these guys can play at all. This infuriated Grossman (who was angling to manage the new
group), and he responded by attacking Lomax physically.
Michael Bloomeld stated, Alan Lomax, the great folklorist and musicologist, gave us some kind of introduction that I didn't even hear, but Albert found it oensive. And Albert went upside his head. The next thing
we knew, right in the middle of our show, Lomax and
Grossman were kicking ass on the oor in the middle of
thousands of people at the Newport Folk Festival. Tearing each others clothes o. We had to pull 'em apart.
We gured 'Albert, man, now theres a manager!'" quoted
in Jan Mark Wolkin, Bill Keenom, and Carlos Santanas,
Michael Bloomeld: If You Love These Blues (San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books), p. 102. See also Ronald
D. Cohens introduction to Part III, The Folk Revival
(1960s)" in Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, Ronald D. Cohen, ed. (London: Routledege), p. 192.
[65] Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote: Backstage, Peter Seeger
and the great ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax attempted
to cut the bands power cables with an axe. See Greil
Marcus, Invisible Republic, the Story of the Basement
Tapes [1998], republished in paperback as The Old, Weird
America: The World of Bob Dylans Basement Tapes (New
York: Holt, 2001), p. 12. Marcuss apocryphal story was
elaborated by Maria Muldaur and Paul Nelson in Martin
Scorsese's lm No Direction Home (2005).
[66] David Kupfer, Longtime Passing: An interview with Pete
Seeger, Whole Earth magazine, Spring 2001. Accessed
online October 16, 2007.
[67] Beans in My Ears.
November 20, 2012.

Sni.numachi.com.

Retrieved

[68] Ingram, David (2008). 'My Dirty Stream : Pete Seeger,

American Folk Music, and Environmental Protest', Popular Music Vol. 31, pp22. Routeledge Taylor & Francis
Group. October 14, 2014
[69] Gibson, Megan. Songs of Peace and Protest: 6 Essential
Cuts From Pete Seeger. Time.com, January 28, 2014. p.1
Business Source Complete. October 14, 2014.
[70] Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode
1, September 10, 1967.
[71] How Waist Deep in the Big Muddy Finally Got on
Network Television in 1968. Peteseeger.net. Retrieved
November 20, 2012.
[72] Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS, Season 2, Episode
24, February 25, 1968.

[73] See, for example, this PBS documentary and this

recording on YouTube.
[74] Pete Seegers banjo. Flickr. Retrieved September 5,
2012.
[75] Brown, Jim (Director) (2005). The Power of Song (DVD).
Genius Products LLC. ISBN 1-59445-156-7.
[76] The Pete Seeger Reader edited by Ronald D. Cohen,
James Capaldi Page. 209
[77] Hudson River PCBs Background and Site Information. United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Retrieved 2007-12-31.
[78] Harrington, Gerry (2014-01-31). Movement afoot to
name bridge after Pete Seeger. United Press International. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
[79] David King Dunaway (2008), p. 103.
[80] David T. Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a
Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993 ISBN
0-679-40591-7).
[81] Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography, edited by Peter Blood (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A
Sing Out Publication, 1993, 1997), page 22.
[82] Daniel J. Wakin, This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced
Stalin Over a Decade Ago, New York Times, September
1, 2007. Accessed October 16, 2007.
[83] The Old Left. New York Times Magazine. January 22,
1995. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
[84] Boaz, David (April 14, 2006). Stalins songbird. London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved
March 27, 2009.
[85] Boazs article is reprinted in his book, The Politics of Freedom (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 2008) pp.
28384
[86] Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 422.
[87] Seeger turns on Uncle Joe, NewStatesMan, September 27,
2007.
[88] How Can I Keep from Singing?": A Seeger Family Tribute. 2007 symposium and concert, American Folklife
Center, Library of Congress (web presentation includes
program, photographs, and webcasts).
[89] Tommy Stevenson, "'This Land Is Your Land' Like
Woody Wrote It, Truthout, January 19, 2009. Accessed
February 3, 2014.
[90] Maria Puente and Elysa Gardner, Inauguration opening
concert celebrates art of the possible, USA Today, January 19, 2008. Accessed January 20, 2009.
[91] Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial on YouTube. Accessed December 3, 2014.

16

7 NOTES

[92] Jennings, Jennifer. Pete Seeger: The environmental side [114] Simon Moya-Smith, Celebrity Activists Harry Belaof his activism. Atlantic City Natural Health Examiner.
fonte, Pete Seeger, Common and Michael Moore Come
January 28, 2014. Atlantic City Examiner. Accessed on
Together for Leonard Peltier"". indiancountrytodaymediOctober 5, 2014.
anetwork.com. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
[93] Web site announcing Seegers 90th birthday celebration. [115] Hachette Book Group, HACHETTE AUDIO AND
JEFF HAYNES INTRODUCE PETE SEEGER: THE
Seeger90.com. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
STORM KING STORIES, NARRATIVES,POEMS:
Seegers Spoken Word Set to All New Multi-Genre Mu[94] Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Clearwater.org. Resic"" (PDF). www.hachettebookgroup.com. Retrieved
trieved November 20, 2012.
March 17, 2013.
[95]
[116] Barry, John, Seeger Legacy Grows With Release of
New Album 'Storm King'; DIA-Beacon Event Oers
[96]
a Taste of Folk Singers Spoken-Word Recordings"".
[97] Linda Allen - Itinerary. Lindasongs.com. Retrieved
Poughkeepsiejournal.com. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
2015-07-22.
[117]
[98] Folk Music Society of Huntington - 46 Years Presenting
the Best Local, Regional and International Touring Per- [118] Shows featuring Pete Seeger. Democracy Now!. Retrieved September 20, 2013.
formers - Ocial Home Page. Fmsh.org. 2014-06-20.
Retrieved 2015-07-22.
[119] Pete Seeger & Onondaga Leader Oren Lyons on Frack[99]
[100] http://www.jimharpermusic.com/forpetessakesing.html
[101] The Camel. The Camel. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
[102] Yahoo. Upcoming.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2015-07-22.

ing, Indigenous Struggles and Hiroshima Bombing.

Democracy Now!. August 9, 2013. Retrieved September
20, 2013.
[120] Pete Seeger This Land is Your Land (Live at Farm Aid
2013)". YouTube. September 21, 2013. Retrieved 201312-05.

[121]
[103] The Folk Song Society of Greater Boston. Fssgb.org.
2015-06-20. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
[122] The phrase Americas tuning fork is usually attributed
to poet Carl Sandburg, for example, see Corey San[104]
dler, Henry Hudson: Dreams and Obsessions (New York:
Kensington Books, 2007), p. 203. It is unclear when
[105] Rhonda H. Rucker. Sparky and Rhonda Rucker: Tour
and where Sandburg, who thought highly of the Weavers,
Schedule. Sparkyandrhonda.com. Retrieved 2015-07said this. Studs Terkel, who introduced Seeger as Amer22.
icas tuning fork at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival (see
George Wein, Nate Chinen, Myself Among Others: A Life
[106]
in Music [Da Capo Press, 2009], p. 314), later wrote that
he had seen the phase in Down Beat jazz magazine (see
[107] Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations.
UnionTerkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping The Faith In Troubled
song.com. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
Times [New York: The New Press], p. 249). The phrase
was picked up in a photo spread on Seeger by Life Maga[108]
zine (October 9, 1964), p. 61 (see also Ronald D. Cohen,
[109] Patrick Doyle, Video: Pete Seeger Debuts New BP
Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American SoProtest Song: Songwriter talks inspiration behind Gods
ciety, 194070 [University of Massachusetts Press, 1970],
Counting on Me, Gods Counting on You, Rolling Stone
p. 223).
online, July 26, 2010. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
[123] Obama memorializes Pete Seeger. USA Today. January
28, 2014. Retrieved January 28, 2014.
[110] Pete Seeger - Gods Counting On Me, Gods Counting
On You (Sloop Mix) (feat. Lorre Wyatt & friends)".
[124] Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger: folk activist who believed muYouTube. 2012-11-05. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
sic could make a dierence, The Guardian, January 28,
2014.
[111] Moynihan, Colin (October 22, 2011). Pete Seeger Leads
Protesters in New York, on Foot and in Song. The New [125] Diane Vadino, Bruce Springsteen Honors Pete Seeger
York Times. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
With a Stirring 'We Shall Overcome, Rolling Stone, January 29, 2014.
[112] Pete Seeger and Occupy Wall Street Sing 'We Shall Overcome' at Columbus Circle (10/21/11)". Youtube. Re- [126] Pete Seeger Discography at www.discogs.com".
trieved November 20, 2012.
Discogs.com. May 3, 1919. Retrieved November 20,
2012.
[113] News 12 Westchester - News, Trac & Weather | News
12 Westchester. Newyork.newsday.com. Retrieved [127] Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways. Folk2015-07-22.
ways.si.edu. Retrieved November 20, 2012.

17

[128] Alan Chartock, New York has a chance to honor an

American hero, Legislative Gazette, April 24, 2009,
found at Legislative Gazette website. Accessed April 29,
2009.

Seeger, Pete. How to Play the Five-String Banjo,

New York: Peoples Songs, 1948. 3rd edition, New
York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 08256-0024-3.

[129] Pete Seeger should have new Tappan Zee Bridge named
for him, downstate politician says. January 28, 2014.
Retrieved January 29, 2014.

Tick, Judith. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composers

Search for American Music. Oxford University
Press, 1997.

[130] Clearwater. Retrieved January 29, 2014.

Wilkinson, Alec. The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger

and American folk music, The New Yorker, April
17, 2006, pp. 4453.

[131] Folk singer, activist Pete Seeger dies in New York..

September 18, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
[132] Songwriters Hall of Fame Pete Seeger Exhibit Home.
songwritershalloame.org. 1972. Retrieved January 28,
2014.

Wilkinson, Alec. The Protest Singer: An Intimate

Portrait of Pete Seeger. New York: Knopf, 2009.

[133] Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards. Grammy.org.

Retrieved August 28, 2012.

Winkler, Allan M. (2009). To everything there is a

season: Pete Seeger and the power of song. Oxford
[Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press.

[134] Awards and Medals: 1996. Smithsonian Institution.

Retrieved January 29, 2014.

Zollo, Paul (January 7, 2005). Pete Seeger Reects

on His Legendary Songs. GRAMMY Magazine.

[135] Courage of Conscience Award Winners Retrieved August

7, 2012.
[136] Pete Seeger: The Storm King Project. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
[137] 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards Winners & Nominees:
Best Spoken Word Album. grammy.com. January 2014.
Retrieved January 29, 2014.

References
Dunaway, David K. How Can I Keep from Singing:
The Ballad of Pete Seeger. [McGraw Hill (1981),
DaCapo (1990)] Revised Edition. New York: Villard Trade Paperback, 2008 ISBN 0-07-018150-0,
ISBN 0-07-018151-9, ISBN 0-306-80399-2, ISBN
0-345-50608-1. Audio Version

9 Further reading
Seeger, Pete, (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz),
The Incompleat Folksinger, New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1972. ISBN 0-671-20954-X (excerpts)
Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1992. ISBN 0-80329216-3
The Music Man. (prole and interview) In Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America, text by Richard Klin, photos by Lily Prince
(Leapfrog Press, 2011).
Renehan, Edward, Pete Seeger vs.
the UnAmericans: A Tale of the Blacklist, New Street Communications, LLC, 2014. ISBN 978-0615998138

Dunaway, David K. Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep

From Singing. three one-hour radio documentaries,
Public Radio International, 2008

Seeger, Pete (Edited by Rob and Sam Rosenthal),

Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, Paradigm Publishers, 2012. ISBN 1612052185. ISBN 9781612052182

Dunaway, David K. The Pete Seeger Discography.

Scarecrow Press: Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 2010.

Seeger, Pete (Edited by Ronald D. Cohen and James

Capaldi), The Pete Seeger Reader, Oxford University
Press, 2014. ISBN 9780199862016

Forbes, Linda C. Pete Seeger on Environmental

Advocacy, Organizing, and Education in the Hudson River Valley: An Interview with the Folk Music 10 External links
Legend, Author and Storyteller, Political and Environmental Activist, and Grassroots Organizer. Or- 10.1 Films
ganization & Environment, 17, No. 4, 2004: pp.
513522.
Pete Seeger at the Internet Movie Database
Gardner, Elysa. Seeger: A 'Power' in music, politics. USA Today, February 27, 2008. p. 8D.

The short lm To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947) is

available for free download at the Internet Archive

18

10

The short lm Music from Oil Drums (1956) is available for free download at the Internet Archive
Memory and Imagination: New Pathways, Library
of Congress documentary
Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger
Turns 90, Thousands Turn Out for All-Star Tribute
Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bernice
Johnson Reagon and Dozens More on Democracy
Now!, May 2009 (video, audio, and print transcript)

10.2

Interviews

The Pop Chronicles interviewed Seeger on February

14, 1968;Archived June 15, 2011 at the Wayback
Machine he appears in shows 1, 18, 19, 31, 33, 34,
52, and 54.
Australian composer Andrew Ford (1999). Peter
Seeger interview. The Music Show.
Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back. Weekend
Edition Saturday (National Public Radio). July 2,
2005.
[chriscomerradio.com/pete_seeger/pete_
seeger12-31-1996.htm Pete Seeger Radio Interview 1996]
Interview with Pete Seeger Down Home Turns
1!". Down Home Radio Show. August 2007. In 1hour Internet radio interview, Seeger discusses the
music industry, the world in general, and more.

10.3

External links

David Dunaway (Seeger biographer and original site

creator). Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From
Singing?". peteseeger.org.
Jim Capaldi (original site creator). Pete Seeger Appreciation Page. peteseeger.net.
Matthews, Scott (August 6, 2008). John Cohen
in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and
the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival. Southern Spaces.
Pareles, Jon (January 28, 2014). Obituary: Pete
Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music,
Dies at 94. The New York Times.
Peter Seeger b. 3 May 1919 d. 27 January 2014
Full Tree. rodovid. Retrieved January 2014.

EXTERNAL LINKS

19

11
11.1

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VoABot II, Scanlan, Websterwebfoot, JNW, Arno Matthias, Geozapf, Waacstats, Robertbanks, Froid, IMLK, Cgingold, Virginia Dutch,
Ashadeofgrey, Lunkwill42, THEMlCK, Coldlullaby, Bjbeamish, Ididerus, Garik 11, Flami72, Mrathel, Wassupwestcoast, FisherQueen,
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