Skip to main content

So Long Pete

By


It is hard to feel sorrow for a man who lived such a long wonderful life and brought so much joy to so many people along the way.  Pete Seeger is an American icon, a figure that straddled no less than five generations of music, keeping the spirit of Woody Guthrie alive for a younger generation of folk singers to revel in, including Woody's son, Arlo, with whom Pete often sang.  Pete gave a young Bob Dylan entry into the folk music world beyond the village, although he too felt betrayed when Dylan went electric at Newport in '65.  And, Pete was there for Bruce Springsteen as well, who did perhaps the most marvelous tribute to the old master in the Seeger Sessions a few years back, giving folk music a sense of pure joy, as in this recording at St. Luke's.  But, perhaps the warmest moment of all was Pete Seeger being honored by Arlo and others at Kennedy Center, singing his classic If I Had a Hammer.

The thing about Pete is that he welcomed everyone into his midst.  Larger than life seems an understatement in his case, as the songs he sang kept the promise alive through difficult times stretching back to the labor movement of the 40s.  He helped create an awareness far outside the United States, drawing on folk ballads from all around the world to highlight injustices far and wide.


While he was outspoken in his political views, earning him many enemies, his music reached deep into the American repertoire, defying Congressional movement who felt his protest ballads were somehow "Un-American."  Work songs had long been part of American folk and Pete simply transformed them into labor songs.  This ability to invert traditional ballads and give them a political charge is probably what made him seem "dangerous" to conservatives in the 50s.

By the 60s, Seeger was enjoyed record contracts with Columbia and other major record companies, but he didn't allow himself to be commercialized.  He used his success to champion his causes, touring the world and bringing American folk music to whole new audiences.  There is even a version of Goodnight Irene in Lithuanian.


It's hard not to love Pete today, even if you are an old Bircher.  The guy never really softened with age, but his durability is something anyone can respect.  At nearly 90, he sang with Bruce Springteen at Obama's inauguration in 2009.  Appropriately enough, This Land is Your Land.

Comments

  1. TripplerFebruary 4, 2014 at 7:02 AM


    Pete Seeger - a true giant in the music world and a patriotic American. Will be sorely missed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonFebruary 4, 2014 at 11:08 AM

    It is a great loss. I really enjoyed the relationship he forged with Bruce. The Boss took a moment to recognize Pete Seeger in concert,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ6xXNwwLxc

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more