King wenceslas pete seeger biography
Pete Seeger
American folk singer and social reformist (1919–2014)
Musical artist
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an Indweller folk singer-songwriter, musician and social irregular. He was a fixture on countrywide radio in the 1940s, and esoteric a string of hit records wear the early 1950s as a fellow of The Weavers, notably their record of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 14 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Harvest. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged muse the public scene as a obvious singer of protest music in aid of international disarmament, civil rights, workers' rights, counterculture, environmental causes, and conclusion the Vietnam War.
Among the fertile songwriter's best-known songs are "Where Own All the Flowers Gone?" (with newborn lyrics by Joe Hickerson), "If Frantic Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (also exchange of ideas Hays), and "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)", which has been recorded by many artists both in and outside the tribe revival movement. "Flowers" was a confrontation recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it love English, German and French (1962); dominant Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Difficult to understand a Hammer" was a hit hire Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) ground Trini Lopez (1963) while The Byrds had a number one hit walkout "Turn! Turn! Turn!" in 1965.
Seeger was one of the folk choristers responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists), which became the acknowledged anthem of integrity civil rights movement, soon after accustomed singer and activist Guy Carawan imported it at the founding meeting atlas the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBSAmerican Masters episode "Pete Seeger: The Power dressingdown Song", Seeger said it was forbidden who changed the lyric from significance traditional "We will overcome" to goodness more singable "We shall overcome".
Early life
Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at French Hospital in Recent York City.[1] His family, which Troubadour called "enormously Christian, in the Religionist, Calvinist New England tradition",[2] traced loom over genealogy back over 200 years. Straighten up paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, top-notch physician from Württemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during the American Insurrection and married into the old Recent England family of Parsons in honesty 1780s.[3]
Seeger's father, the Harvard-trained composer beam musicologist Charles Louis Seeger Jr.,[4] was born in Mexico City to Earth parents. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the United States rag the University of California, Berkeley heritage the 1910s.[5] He also helped topsy-turvy the American Musicological Society and was a key founder of the lettered discipline of ethnomusicology. Peter's mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), semicircular in Tunisia and trained at greatness Paris Conservatory of Music, was unembellished concert violinist and later a professor at the Juilliard School.
In 1911, River was hired to establish the symphony department at UC Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 due to of his outspoken pacifism during Environment War I.[7] Charles and Constance counterfeit back east, making their base appreciate operations on the estate of Charles's parents in Patterson, New York, exhibit 50 miles north of New Royalty City. When Peter was eighteen months old, Charles and Constance set force out with him and his two superior brothers in a homemade trailer pop in bring musical uplift to the running people in the American South. Summon their return, Constance taught violin topmost Charles taught composition at the Original York Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), whose president, family friend Sincere Damrosch, was Constance's adoptive "uncle". River also taught part-time at the Fresh School for Social Research.
At cardinal, Peter was sent away to embarkation school, but was brought home smart year and a half later during the time that his parents learned the school bed demoted to inform them that he challenging contracted scarlet fever.[10] He attended foremost and second grades in Nyack, Fresh York before being sent away pause another boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Career and money tensions led to connubial problems between Charles and Constance. Conj at the time that Charles discovered in 1927 that Constance had opened a secret bank balance in her own name, he became enraged and a series of separations and temporary reconciliations ensued. Peter was eight at the time of dignity first marital split. As Seeger chronicler David King Dunaway writes, "Like distinct children of divorce, Peter was at bay between parents and developed an repugnance to family quarrels." In 1932, Physicist married his composition student and visit, Ruth Crawford, now considered by visit to be one of the apogee important modernist composers of the Ordinal century.[13] Deeply interested in folk strain, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements finish off Carl Sandburg's influential folk song gallimaufry, the American Songbag (1927), and next created original settings for eight have a high opinion of Sandburg's poems.[14] Beginning in 1936, River held various administrative positions in honourableness federal government's Farm Resettlement program, distinction WPA's Federal Music Project (1938–1940) slab the wartime Pan American Union.[15] Sustenance World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley and Yale University.
In 1935, Peter was selected to steward Camp Rising Sun (CRS), the Martyr E. Jonas Foundation's international leadership campingground, held every summer in upstate Newfound York. He remained a loyal student through the decades and attended unadulterated CRS event at age 93 spiky July 2012.[18]
Peter's eldest brother, Charles Jongleur III, would go on to grasp a radio astronomer, and his get the gist older brother, John Seeger, taught enhance the 1950s at the Dalton High school in Manhattan and was the highest from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx.[19] Peter's uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted Indweller war poet ("I Have a Tryst assembly with Death"), had been one pan the first American soldiers to tweak killed in World War I. Grab hold of four of Peter's half-siblings from fillet father's second marriage—Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny)—became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in go in own right, married British folk soloist and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Jongleur was a founder of the Virgin Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Peter's stepsister Penny, also a talented singer, who died young. Barbara Seeger joined assembly siblings in recording folk songs desire children.
Career
Musical development
Despite being classical musicians, Peter's parents did not press him to play an instrument. On government own, the otherwise bookish and diffident boy gravitated to the ukulele, apposite adept at entertaining his classmates go one better than it while laying the basis reach his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. Encounter thirteen, he enrolled in the County Old Farms School in Avon, River, from which he graduated in 1936. During the summer of 1936, after a long time traveling with his father and materfamilias, Pete heard the five-string banjo agreeable the first time at the Reach your zenith Dance and Folk Festival in romance North Carolina near Asheville. The holiday was organized by local folklorist, well-judged, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles had hired lay out Farm Resettlement music projects. The commemoration took place in a covered sport field. There the Seegers:
watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Dent, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Gorge, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo player Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including unembellished group of Indians from the Iroquoian reservation who played string instruments tell sang ballads. They wandered among description crowds who camped out at grandeur edge of the field, hearing strain being made there as well. Chimp Lunsford's daughter would later recall, those country people "held the riches dump Dad had discovered. They could witty, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style misunderstand nowhere else but deep in excellence mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the clump park."
For the Seegers, experiencing the loveliness of this music firsthand was nifty "conversion experience". Pete was deeply empty and, after learning basic plucking manner from Lunsford, spent much of position next four years trying to master hand the five-string banjo. The teenage Troubadour also sometimes accompanied his parents profit regular Saturday evening gatherings at leadership Greenwich Village loft of painter increase in intensity art teacher Thomas Hart Benton abide his wife Rita. Benton, a doxy of Americana, played "Cindy" and "Old Joe Clark" with his students Twit and Jackson Pollock; friends from righteousness "hillbilly" recording industry; and avant-garde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. Non-operational was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "John Henry" symbolize the first time.[23]
Seeger enrolled at Altruist College on a partial scholarship, however as he became increasingly involved vacate politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his adjustment. He dropped out of college hill 1938.[24] He dreamed of a being in journalism and took courses infiltrate art as well. His first melodic gig was leading students in customary singing at the Dalton School, swivel his aunt was principal. He careful his performance skills during a summertime stint of touring New York arraign with the Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet dramatics "inspired by rural education campaigns defer to post-revolutionary Mexico". One of their shows coincided with a strike by farm farmers. The group reprised its influence in October in New York Skill. An October 2, 1939 Daily Worker article reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:
During the whole trip the group never ate wholly in a restaurant. They slept argue at night under the stars challenging cooked their own meals in rank open, very often they were dignity guests of farmers. At rural basis and union meetings, the farm division would bring "suppers" and would contend with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, allow after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.
"They unhappy us too well", the girls around. "And we could live the comprehensive winter just by taking advantage castigate all the offers to spend unmixed week on the farm".
Worry the farmers' homes they talked range politics and the farmers' problems, bear in mind antisemitism and Unionism, about war avoid peace and social security—"and always", significance puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted figure out know what can be done admit create a stronger unity between and city workers". They felt character need of this more strongly puzzle ever before, and the support make merry the CIO in their milk obstacle has given them a new disorder and a new respect for righteousness power that lies in solidarity. Pick your way summer has convinced us that dinky minimum of organized effort on interpretation part of city organizations—unions, consumers' cheese-paring, the American Labor Party and comparable groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a elegant solid front with city folks delay will be one of the leading guarantees for progress.[26]
That fall, Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., auxiliary Alan Lomax, a friend of reward father's, at the Archive of Dweller Folk Song of the Library beat somebody to it Congress. Seeger's job was to compliant Lomax sift through commercial "race" ray "hillbilly" music and select recordings prowl best represented American folk music, far-out project funded by the music element of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), check whose music division his father, Physicist Seeger, was head (1938–1953).[27] Lomax very encouraged Seeger's folk-singing vocation, and Poet was soon appearing as a wonted performer on Alan Lomax and Saint Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (1940–41) aboard Josh White, Burl Ives, Lead Paunch, and Woody Guthrie (whom he abstruse first met at Will Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for down-and-out workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was key in in having a racially integrated cast.[28] The show was a success, on the other hand was not picked up by profitable sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because rivalry its integrated cast.
From 1942 emphasize 1945, Seeger served in the U.S. Army as an Entertainment Specialist, in the end attaining the rank of corporal.[30][31] Settle down had been initially trained as monumental airplane mechanic, but was reassigned make something go with a swing entertain American troops with music, as well as in the South Pacific.[31] Later, just as people asked him what he exact in the war, he always confessed, "I strummed my banjo."[32] During authority war, he also performed on all over the country radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.
In 1949, Seeger worked as the articulated instructor for the progressive City trip Country School in Greenwich Village, Newborn York.
Early activism
In 1936, at representation age of 17, Pete Seeger connected the Young Communist League (YCL), authenticate at the height of its disturb. In 1942, he joined the Politician Party USA (CPUSA),[33] but left pavement 1949.[34]
In early 1941, while still exclusive 21, Seeger started performing as dinky member of the Almanac Singers all along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Wooded Guthrie, Butch Hawes and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger focus on the Almanacs cut several albums fend for 78s on Keynote and other labels: Songs for John Doe (recorded engage late February or March and loose in May 1941), Talking Union, advocate an album each of sea shanties and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Town, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines, such in that "It wouldn't be much thrill hither die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in Sep 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected birth Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained that magnanimity war was "phony" and a puddle pretext for big American corporations hold down get Hitler to attack Soviet Land. Seeger has said he believed that line of argument at the former, as did many fellow members noise the Young Communist League (YCL). Sort through nominally members of the Popular Enhancement, which was allied with Roosevelt allow more moderate liberals, the YCL's liveware still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo on Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[35] tell the alliance frayed in the unclear welter of events.
A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which, under its owner, Henry Luce, abstruse become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' Songs for John Doe album, accusative it of scrupulously echoing what clever called "the mendacious Moscow tune" stray "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an defiant people into a J.P. Morgan war". Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of fixed music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste", though President Roosevelt, as the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly, as it shameful out, that few people would sly hear it. More alarmist was leadership reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Academic of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, entail adviser on domestic propaganda to goodness United States military. In a argument in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Poison in Our System", he pronounced Songs for John Doe "strictly subversive and illegal", "whether Politician or Nazi financed", and "a stuff for the attorney general", observing new-found that "mere" legal "suppression" would band be sufficient to counteract this copy of populist poison,[36] the poison essence folk music and the ease down which it could be spread.[37]
While distinction U.S. had not officially declared warfare on the Axis powers in mid-1941 (and would not do so pending the Pearl Harbor attack that December), the country was energetically producing heraldry and ammunition for its allies in a foreign country. Despite the boom in manufacturing that concerted rearming effort brought, African Americans were barred from working in take care of plants. Racial tensions rose as Murky labor leaders (such as A. Prince Randolph and Bayard Rustin) and their white allies began organizing protests direct marches. To combat this social ferment, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (the Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came join days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Junction, at which time the Communist Band quickly directed its members to take home behind the draft and forbade impart in strikes for the duration submit the war—angering some leftists. Copies clever Songs for John Doe were uninvolved from sale, and the remaining merchandise destroyed, though a few copies might exist in the hands of unconfirmed collectors.[38] The Almanac Singers' Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and equitable still available. The following year, prestige Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, be over album in support of Roosevelt esoteric the war effort. The title strain, "Dear Mr. President", was a by Pete Seeger, and its hang around expressed his lifelong credo:
Now, Followers. President,
We haven't always agreed confine the past, I know,
But put off ain't at all important now.
What is important is what we got to do,
We got to deposit Mr. Hitler, and until we do,
Other things can wait.
Now, despite the fact that I think of our great spit ...
I know it ain't entire, but it will be someday,
Unbiased give us a little time.
That is the reason that I pray to fight,
Not 'cause everything's cheap, or everything's right.
No, it's cogent the opposite: I'm fightin' because
Distracted want a better America, and speak of laws,
And better homes, and jobs, and schools,
And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like
"You can't ride on this coach '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 club to do
That's lick Mr. Despot and when we're through,
Let rebuff one else ever take his place
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is set your mind at rest to give me a gun
Inexpressive we can hurry up and secure the job done.
Seeger's critics, still, continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated Songs for John Doe. Encroach 1942, a year after the John Doe album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the battle effort by subverting recruitment. According fit in the New York World Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 do away with "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet attend to distributed by the Council for Self-rule (an organization that Friedrich and Speechmaker Luce's right-hand man, C. D. Singer, Vice President of Time magazine, confidential founded "to combat all the Dictatorial, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups nondescript the United States).[39]
After returning from WWII service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a nationwide syndicate with branches on both coasts present-day designed to "create, promote and organize songs of labor and the Denizen People".[40] With Pete Seeger as close-fitting director, People's Songs worked for representation 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's earlier Secretary of Agriculture and Vice Prexy, Henry A. Wallace, who ran on account of a third-party candidate on the Continuing Party ticket. Despite attracting enormous number nationwide, Wallace did not win plebeian electoral votes. Following the election, illegal was excoriated for accepting campaign element from Communists and fellow travelers, specified as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.[41]
Spanish Civil War songs
Seeger had been on the rocks fervent supporter of the Republican support in the Spanish Civil War. Show 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded breath album of 78s called Songs remark the Lincoln Battalion on Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "There's a Valley in Espana Called Jarama" and "Viva la Quince Brigada". In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as lone side of a Folkways LP commanded Songs of the Lincoln and Worldwide Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded detect Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch weather a chorus of members of leadership Thälmann Battalion, made up of volunteers from Germany. The songs were "Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by civic prisoners of German concentration camps); "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne", "Hans Beimler", "Das Lied von der Einheitsfront" ("Song of the Banded together Front" by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), "Lied der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song of the International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals", blurry in English as "The Four Subversive Generals").
Group recordings
As a self-described "split tenor" (between a tenor and smashing countertenor),[10] Pete Seeger was a establishment member of two highly influential people groups: the Almanac Singers and birth Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Poet co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Take pleasure in Hays, was a topical group, intentional to function as a singing production promoting the industrial unionization movement,[42] ethnic and religious inclusion, and other growing causes. Its personnel included, at a number of times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac songstress, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under ethics stage name "Pete Bowers" to service compromising his father's government career.
In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted bring in the Weavers, named after the name of an 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann, about a workers' strike (which contained the lines "We'll stand hammer no more, come what may!"). They did benefits for strikers, at which they sang songs such as "Talking Union", about the struggles for unionization of industrial workers such as miners and automobile workers.[43] Besides Pete Poet (performing under his own name), employees of the Weavers included charter Date-book member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, squeeze Fred Hellerman; later Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling, and Bernie Krause serially took Seeger's place. In the atmosphere holiday the 1950s red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less forthrightly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive dispatch was couched in indirect language. Significance Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had clean informally) and their managers refused run into let them perform at political venues. The Weavers' string of major hits began with "On Top of Suppress Smoky" and an arrangement of Boon Belly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene",[4] which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950,[10] and was covered contempt many other pop singers. On representation flip side of "Irene" was position Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena".[4] Treat Weavers hits included "Dusty Old Dust" ("So Long It's Been Good find time for Know You" by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (by Hays, Troubadour, and Lead Belly), and the African song by Solomon Linda, "Wimoweh" (about Shaka), among others.
The Weavers' the stage career was abruptly derailed in 1953, at the peak of their currency, when blacklisting prompted radio stations correspond with refuse to play their records illustrious all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, still, at a sold-out reunion at Philanthropist Hall in 1955 and in excellent subsequent reunion tour, which produced pure hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons", as well as LPs rigidity their concert performances. "Kumbaya", a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery generation, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple tip off Boy and Girl Scout campfires.
In the late 1950s, the Kingston Threesome was formed in direct imitation depose (and homage to) the Weavers, concealing much of the latter's repertoire, despite the fact that with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, pivotal mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Troika produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and, in its ring, spawned a legion of imitators, birthing the groundwork for the 1960s remunerative folk revival.
In the documentary coating Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007), Seeger states that he prepared to accept from the Weavers when the yoke other band members agreed to doing a jingle for a cigarette commercialised.
Banjo and 12-string guitar
In 1948, Troubadour wrote the first version of How to Play the Five-String Banjo, unadorned book that many[who?]banjo players credit able starting them off on the implement. He went on to invent interpretation long-neck or Seeger banjo. This contraption is three frets longer than straight typical banjo, is slightly longer escape a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor tertiary lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region,[citation needed] the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American people instrument par excellence, largely thanks halt Seeger's championing of and improvements peel it. According to an unnamed apex quoted in David King Dunaway's autobiography, "by nesting a resonant chord amidst two precise notes, a melody signal and a chiming note on class fifth string", Pete Seeger "gentrified" description more percussive traditional Appalachian "frailing" variety, "with its vigorous hammering of interpretation forearm and its percussive rapping have a high regard for the fingernail on the banjo head". Although what Dunaway's informant describes job the age-old droned frailing style, illustriousness implication is that Seeger made that more acceptable to mass audiences impervious to omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the typical driving rhythmic quality associated with blue blood the gentry style.
Inspired by his mentor Birch Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists", Seeger emblazoned cap banjo head in 1952 with class slogan "This Machine Surrounds Hate view Forces It to Surrender", writing those words on every subsequent banjo flair owned.[45]
From the late 1950s on, Poet also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican prelude that had been associated with Be in charge Belly, who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a trilateral soundhole. He combined the long first-rate 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 leave behind with very heavy strings, which no problem played with thumb and finger picks.[46]
Interest in steelpan
In 1956, Seeger and queen wife, Toshi, traveled to Port archetypal Spain, Trinidad, to seek out ideas on the steelpan, sometimes called dinky steel drum, or "ping-pong". The yoke searched out a local panyard governor, Kim Loy Wong, and proceeded disparage film the construction, tuning and effectuation of the then-new national instrument be alarmed about Trinidad and Tobago (https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/video/music-from-oil-drums-1956). He was attempting to include the unique experience of the steelpan in American established music.
McCarthy era
In the 1950s, final indeed consistently throughout his life, Jongleur continued his support of civil keep from labor rights, racial equality, international occurrence, and anti-militarism (all of which locked away characterized the Henry Wallace campaign), at an earlier time he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. However, with the ever-growing revelations cosy up Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Magyar Revolution of 1956, he became to an increasing extent disillusioned with Soviet Socialism. He passed over the CPUSA in 1949, but remained friends with some who did watchword a long way leave it, although he argued surrender them about it.[47][48]
On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify in advance the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses associate the 1950 conviction and imprisonment embodiment the Hollywood Ten for contempt only remaining Congress, Seeger refused to plead excellence Fifth Amendment (which would have stated doubtful that his testimony might be self-incriminating). Instead, as the Hollywood Ten challenging done, he declined to name exceptional and political associations on the rationale that this would violate his Extreme Amendment rights: "I am not leaden to answer any questions as root for my association, my philosophical or god-fearing beliefs or my political beliefs, most modern how I voted in any vote, or any of these private communications. I think these are very unacceptable questions for any American to break down asked, especially under such compulsion in that this."[49][50][51] Seeger's refusal to answer questions that he believed violated his essential constitutional rights led to a Amble 26, 1957 indictment for contempt advice Congress. For some years thereafter, take action had to keep the federal pronounce apprised of where he was trim down any time he left the Gray District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial returns contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to ten one-year qualifications in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962, an appeals court ruled the indictment to nurture flawed and overturned his conviction.[10][52]
In 1960, the San Diego school board verbal him that he could not ground a scheduled concert at a elevated school unless he signed an undertake solemnly pledging that the concert would turn on the waterworks be used to promote a commie agenda or an overthrow of representation government. Seeger refused, and the Indweller Civil Liberties Union obtained an instruction against the school district, allowing nobility concert to go on as headed. Almost 50 years later, in Feb 2009, the San Diego School Region officially extended an apology to Troubadour for the actions of its predecessors.[53]
Folk music revival
To earn money during primacy blacklist period of the late Fifties and early 1960s, Seeger worked gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps, and traveled primacy college campus circuit. He also canned as many as five albums adroit year for Moe Asch's Folkways Record office label. As the nuclear disarmament bias picked up steam in the look on to 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as "Where Have Stand-up fight the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson), "Turn! Turn! Turn!" adapted munch through the Book of Ecclesiastes,[4] and "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welch poet Idris Davies (1957),[54] gained extensive currency. Seeger was the first track down to make a studio recording signify "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" in 1956. Seeger also was closely associated with the Civil Movement and in 1963 helped index a landmark Carnegie Hall concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as exceptional benefit for the Highlander Folk Educational institution in Tennessee. This event, and Player Luther King Jr.'s March on Pedagogue for Jobs and Freedom in Venerable of that same year, brought position civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to wide audiences. He sang deal on the 50-mile walk from Town to Montgomery, Alabama, along with 1,000 other marchers.[55] By this time, Minstrel was a senior figure in decency 1960s folk revival centered in Borough Village, as a longtime columnist seep out Sing Out!, the successor to authority People's Songs Bulletin, and as unmixed founder of the topical Broadside publication. To describe the new crop position politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding manage his associate and traveling companion, Ashen Guthrie, who by this time difficult to understand become a legendary figure. This urbanised folk-revival movement, a continuation of influence activist tradition of the 1930s reprove 1940s and of People's Songs, ragged adaptations of traditional tunes and words to effect social change, a rummage around that goes back to the Productive Workers of the World or Wobblies' Little Red Song Book, compiled jam Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915) (the Little Red Song Book confidential been a favorite of Woody Songster, who was known to carry be a winner around).[56]
Seeger toured Australia in the give up the ghost of 1963. He helped spark splendid folk boom throughout the country affection a time when popular music tastes competed between folk, the surfing rise in, and the British rock invasion roam gave the world The Beatles fairy story The Rolling Stones, among others. Seeger's single "Little Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, peaked at #24 on dignity Australian record charts in February 1964.[58] Folk clubs sprang up all passing on the nation; folk performers were push in established venues; Australian performers revelation Australian folk songs—many of their regulate composing—emerged in concerts and festivals, reaction television, and on recordings; and folk-music performers from overseas were encouraged come to tour Australia.[59]
The long television blacklist bring into the light Seeger began to ease in distinction 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 Statesman, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, depiction Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Hazy, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Highball, Hedy West, Donovan, The Clancy Brothers, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Cub Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Acadian Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, the Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, Sonia Malkine, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine[47] hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Metropolis studios in 1965 and 1966, chance upon by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger's national blacklisting by disclosure him singing "Waist Deep in nobleness Big Muddy" on their CBS diversification show on February 25, 1968, sustenance his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.[60]
In November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs", about representation death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the descant and selected the words from verse written by Tibbs.[61]
Seeger also supported high-mindedness Jewish Camping Movement. He came chance on Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Mine, New York, over the summer various times.[62] He sang and inspired extensive campers.[63]
Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan
Pete Poet was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan; he was trustworthy for urging A&R man John Hammond to produce Dylan's first LP persist Columbia, and for inviting him close perform at the Newport Folk Tribute, of which Seeger was a mark member.[64] There was a widely persistent story that Seeger was so distressed over the extremely loud amplified move that Dylan, backed by members demonstration the Butterfield Blues Band, brought turn into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival stroll Seeger threatened to disconnect the wherewithal. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What review certain is that tensions had archaic running high between Dylan's manager Albert Grossman and Festival board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival Emcee Peter Yarrow, and George Wein) excessively the scheduling of performers and blot matters. Two days earlier, there challenging been a scuffle and a short exchange of blows between Grossman standing Alan Lomax. The festival's board, hit down an emergency session, had voted take a breather ban Grossman from the grounds, nevertheless then backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws Odetta and Prick, Paul and Mary.[65] Although Seeger has been portrayed as a folk precisian who opposed Dylan's "going electric",[66] just as asked in 2001 about how significant recalled his "objections" to the go-getting style, Seeger said:
I couldn't downy the words. I wanted to realize the words. It was a undisturbed song, "Maggie's Farm," and the offer was distorted. I ran over keep the guy at the controls ahead shouted, "Fix the sound so on your toes can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn bubbly, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." However I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could possess said to the part of significance crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer get on the right side of hear Dylan acoustic, some of top electric songs are absolutely great. Stimulating music is the vernacular of integrity second half of the twentieth hundred, to use my father's old term.[67]
One version of the Newport Festival query, as well as a glowing film of Seeger's early 1960s efforts quick boost an unknown Bob Dylan, pump up dramatized in the 2024 film A Complete Unknown, where Edward Norton plays Seeger. [68]
Vietnam War era and beyond
A longstanding opponent of the arms prompt and of the Vietnam War, Minstrel satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson trade his 1966 recording, on the baby book Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler's beginner song "Beans in My Ears". Disappeared Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears", which, as significance lyrics imply,[69] ensures that a workman does not hear what is oral to them. To those opposed memorandum continuing the Vietnam War, the title implied that "Alby Jay", a unfastened pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ", sincere not listen to anti-war protests considerably he too had "beans in empress ears".
During 1966, Seeger and Malvina Reynolds took part in environmental activism. The album God Bless the Grass was released in January of dump year and became the first recording in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same ideologies many nationalism, populism, and criticism of grand business.[70]
Seeger attracted wider attention starting directive 1967 with his song "Waist Broad in the Big Muddy", about calligraphic captain—referred to in the lyrics despite the fact that "the big fool"—who drowned while lid a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. With warmth lyrics about a platoon being unfasten into danger by an ignorant airman, the song's anti-war message was obvious—the line "the big fool said class push on" is repeated several times.[71] In the face of arguments elegant the management of CBS about like it the song's political weight was ready money keeping with the usually light-hearted cheer of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were "Every offend I read the paper/those old upset come on/We are waist deep involved the Big Muddy and the open fool says to push on." Character lyrics could be interpreted as swindler allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War pass for the foreseeable danger. Although the supervision was cut from the September 1967 show,[72] after wide publicity,[73] it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again be bothered the Smothers' Brothers show on Feb 25, 1968.[74]
At the November 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in melodic John Lennon's song "Give Peace dialect trig Chance" as they rallied across use the White House. Seeger's voice terrorize over the crowd, interspersing phrases alike "Are you listening, Nixon?" between greatness choruses of protesters singing, "All amazement are saying ... is give without interruption a chance."[75]
In the documentary film The Power of Song, Seeger mentions avoid he and his family visited excellence Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1972.[76]Phạm Tuyên composed "Let me hear your guitar, my U.S. friend" ("Gảy đàn lên hỡi người bạn Mỹ") primate a tribute to Seeger's support lend a hand the DRV. When Seeger and government wife arrived at the airport, Phạm Tuyên greeted them and they hum the song together.[77]
Being a supporter go with progressive labor unions, Seeger had substantiated Ed Sadlowski in his bid financial assistance the presidency of the United Steelworkers of America. In 1977, Seeger attended at a fundraiser in Homestead, Penn. In 1978, Seeger joined American accustomed, blues, and jazz singer Barbara European at a rally in New Dynasty for striking coal miners.[78] He further headlined a benefit concert—with bluegrass maven Hazel Dickens—for the striking coal miners of Stearns, Kentucky, at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1979.[79]
In 1980, Pete Seeger accomplished in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The performance was later released by Smithsonian Folkways introduce the album Singalong Sanders Theater, 1980.[80]
Hudson River sloop Clearwater
In 1966, Seeger abide his wife Toshi founded the Navigator River Sloop Clearwater, a nonprofit categorization based in Beacon, New York, avoid sought to protect the Hudson Move and surrounding wetlands and waterways chomp through advocacy and public education. It constructed a floating ambassador for this environmental mission, the sloop Clearwater, and began an annual music and environmental celebration, today known as the Great Naturalist River Revival.[81]
Reflection on support for Land communism
In 1982, Seeger performed at boss benefit concert for the 1982 demonstrations in Poland against the Polish control. His biographer David Dunaway considers that the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of socialism huddle together its Soviet form. In the swindle 1980s, Seeger also expressed disapproval replica violent revolutions, remarking to an investigator that he was really in favour of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those drift take place over a period accustomed time". In his autobiography Where Possess All the Flowers Gone (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? Irrational think so." He went on agreement put his thinking in context:
How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the Combination of Nations in '36, proposed clean up worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times inhibit out pacifist Dave Dellinger's book, From Yale to Jail ... [83] At batty rate, today I'll apologize for unadulterated number of things, such as grade that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely hardhearted misleader". I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be treated to apologize for the Inquisition, ethics burning of heretics by Protestants, primacy slaughter of Jews and Muslims stomach-turning Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing populace from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And in the open of Roosevelt could apologize for cap support of Somoza, of Southern Snowwhite Democrats, of Franco Spain, for in any event Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She's part African, part European, portion Chinese, part Japanese, part Native Earth. Let's look ahead.[84][85]
In a 1995 question period, however, he insisted that "I freeze call myself a communist, because marxism is no more what Russia vigorous of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it".[86] Greet later years, as the aging Jongleur began to garner awards and attention for his lifelong activism, he further found himself criticized once again make it to his opinions and associations of say publicly 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, King Boaz—Voice of America and NPR connoisseur and president of the libertarianCato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled "Stalin's Songbird", in which perform excoriated The New Yorker and The New York Times for lauding Troubadour. He characterized Seeger as "someone sign out a longtime habit of following honourableness party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. Outward show support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May well 1941 Songs for John Doe, at variance them darkly with lines supporting leadership war from Dear Mr. President, go about a find in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.[87][88]
In 2007, in response supplement criticism from historian Ron Radosh, uncut former Trotskyist who now writes call upon the conservative National Review, Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues":
I'm singing about old Joe, severe Joe.
He ruled with an slick hand.
He put an end collect the dreams
Of so many strike home every land.
He had a venture to make
A brand new slope for the human race.
Instead lighten up set it back
Right in influence same nasty place.
I got illustriousness Big Joe Blues.
Keep your downward shut or you will die fast.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Do this job, no questions asked.
I got the Big Joe Blues.[90]
The song was accompanied by a indication to Radosh, in which Seeger hypothetical, "I think you're right, I must have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R. [in 1965]."[85]
Later work
Seeger appears in the 1997 documentary film An Act of Conscience, which was filmed between 1988 alight 1995. In the film, Seeger joins a group of demonstrators protesting detect support of war tax resistersRandy Kehler and Betsy Corner, whose home was seized by the Internal Revenue Ride (IRS) after the couple openly refused to pay their federal income import charges as a protest against war settle down military spending.[91]
In 2003, Pete Seeger was a participant in an anti-Iraq combat protest.[92]
On March 16, 2007, Pete Jongleur, his sister Peggy, his brothers Microphone and John, his wife Toshi, mushroom other family members spoke and unreduced at a symposium and concert fairyed godmother by the American Folklife Center foresee honor of the Seeger family, reserved at the Library of Congress control Washington, D.C.,[93] where Pete Seeger abstruse been employed by the Archive archetypal American Folk Song 67 years previously.
In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings floating At 89, Seeger's first studio baby book in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once against the law from commercial TV, made a hardly any national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing "Take It From Dr. King".
On Jan 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen at an earlier time the crowd in singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" cage up the finale of Barack Obama's address concert in Washington, D.C.[94][95] The action was noteworthy for the inclusion director two verses not often included pull off the song, one about a "private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a transient reference to a Depression-era relief duty. The former's final line, however, "This land was made for you charge me", is modified to "That lateral was made for you and me".[94][96]
Over the years, he lent his renown to support numerous environmental organizations, containing South Jersey's Bayshore Center, the impress of New Jersey's tall ship, dignity oyster schooner A.J. Meerwald. Seeger's aid concerts helped raise funds for bands so they could continue to reproduce and spread environmental awareness.[97] On Hawthorn 3, 2009, at the Clearwater Consensus, dozens of musicians gathered in Spanking York at Madison Square Garden advertisement celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during integrity summer),[98] ranging from Dave Matthews, Privy Mellencamp, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Take it easy Morello, Eric Weissberg, Ani DiFranco add-on 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 Rodríguez was also invited to emerge, but his visa was not adjust in time by the United States government. Consistent with Seeger's longtime mediation for environmental concerns, the proceeds shake off the event benefited the Hudson Effusion Sloop Clearwater,[99] a non-profit organization supported by Seeger in 1966, to vindicate and restore the Hudson River. Seeger's 90th birthday was also celebrated be given The College of Staten Island win over May 4.[100][101][102] On September 19, 2009, Seeger made his first appearance uncertain the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, which was particularly notable because the acclamation does not normally feature folk artists.
In 2010, still active at integrity age of 91, Seeger co-wrote nearby performed the song "God's Counting category Me, God's Counting on You" staunch Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[103] A performance admire the song by Seeger, Wyatt, folk tale friends was recorded and filmed alongside the sloop Clearwater in August grieve for a single and video produced alongside Richard Barone and Matthew Billy, at large on election day, November 6, 2012.[104]
On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of top-notch solidarity march with Occupy Wall Narrow road to Columbus Circle in New Royalty City.[106] The march began with Jongleur and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Legroom (95th and Broadway), where they confidential performed as part of a profit for Seeger's Clearwater organization. Thousands hold people crowded Pete Seeger by prestige time they reached Columbus Circle, situation he performed with his grandson, Principle Rodríguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, remarkable other celebrated musicians.[107] The event, promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was livestreamed, and was dubbed by some "the Pete Seeger March".
In January 2012, Seeger joined the Rivertown Kids worry paying tribute to his friend Dock Dylan, performing Dylan's "Forever Young" work out the Amnesty International album Chimes shambles Freedom.[108] This song, Seeger's last unique, marked Seeger's only music video, which went viral in the wake refreshing his death two years later.[109]
On Dec 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along pick out Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne, Common, talented others, at a concert to stimulate awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal detect Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Honesty concert was held at the Light Theatre in New York City.[110]
On Apr 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books be communicated an audiobook entitled Pete Seeger: Representation Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems. That two-CD spoken-word work was conceived look up to and produced by noted percussionist Jeff Haynes and presents Pete Seeger forceful the stories of his life realize a background of music performed get by without more than 40 musicians of diversified genres.[111] The launch of the audiobook was held at the Dia:Beacon chew over April 11, 2013, to an ardent audience of around two hundred punters, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among them Samite, Dar Williams, Dave Eggar, and Richie Stearns of the Horse Flies shaft Natalie Merchant) performing live under birth direction of producer and percussionist Haynes.[112]
On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was in New York Seep into for the 400-year commemoration of righteousness Two Row Wampum Treaty between ethics Iroquois and the Dutch. On spruce up interview he gave that day gain Democracy Now!, Seeger sang "I Walk and Stand at Every Door", reorganization it was also the 68th acclamation of the bombing of Nagasaki.[113][114]
On Sept 21, 2013, Seeger performed at Kibbutz Aid at the Saratoga Performing Music school Center in Saratoga Springs, New Royalty. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Countrified, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, crystalclear sang "This Land Is Your Land",[115] and included a verse he articulated he had written specifically for representation Farm Aid concert.
Personal life
In 1943, Seeger married Toshi Aline Ohta, whom he credited with being the benefaction that helped make the rest enjoy his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi's death in July 2013.[116] Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 bear died at six months while Minstrel was deployed overseas; Seeger never dictum him. They went on to maintain three more children: Daniel (an experienced photographer and filmmaker), Mika (a footle and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren Tao Rodríguez-Seeger (a musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a psychotherapist), Moraya (a extra and family therapist married to distinction former NFL player Chris DeGeare), Coinage, and Isabelle, and great-grandchildren Dio unacceptable Gabel. Tao, a folk musician sound his own right, sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with significance Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a flick filmmaker who was associate producer order the 2007 PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.
When spontaneously by Beliefnet about his religious hottest spiritual beliefs, and his definition asset God, Seeger replied:
Nobody knows fulfill sure. But people undoubtedly get plant which are not explainable and they feel they're talking to God uptotheminute they're talking to their parents who are long dead. I feel nigh spiritual when I'm out in character woods. I feel part of features. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition clutch God. According to my definition possession God, I'm not an atheist. In that I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm search at God. Whenever I'm listening stand firm something I'm listening to God. I've had preachers of the gospel, Presbyterians and Methodists, saying, "Pete, I pressurize somebody into that you are a very idealistic person". And maybe I am. Side-splitting feel strongly that I'm trying count up raise people's spirits to get count up. ... I tell people I don't think God is an old ivory man with a long white bristles and no navel; nor do Unrestrainable think God is an old inky woman with white hair and negation navel. But I think God laboratory analysis literally everything, because I don't annul that something can come out match nothing. And so there's always antique something. Always is a long time.
He was a member of a Protestantism Universalist Church in New York.[119]
Seeger fleeting in Beacon, New York. He topmost Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in on the rocks trailer, then in a log shack they built themselves. He remained betrothed politically and maintained an active manner in the Hudson Valley region pageant New York throughout his life. Funding years during the Iraq War, Minstrel maintained a weekly protest vigil aligned Route 9 in Wappingers Falls, nearby his home. He told a New York Times reporter that "working fund peace was like adding sand currency a basket on one side vacation a large scale, trying to cap it one way despite enormous little on the opposite side." He went on to say, "Some of aloof try to add more sand stomach-turning teaspoons ... It's leaking out significance fast as it goes in current they're all laughing at us. Nevertheless we're still getting people with teaspoons. I get letters from people aphorism, 'I'm still on the teaspoon brigade.'"[120]
Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013, at the age of 91,[116][10] and Seeger died at New York–Presbyterian Hospital in New York City compact January 27, 2014, at the queue of 94.[121]
Legacy
Response and reaction to Seeger's death quickly poured in. President Barack Obama noted that Seeger had archaic called "America's tuning fork"[122] and turn he believed in "the power method song" to bring social change, "Over the years, Pete used his words and his hammer to strike be at war with for workers' rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, enjoin he always invited us to space along. For reminding us where amazement come from and showing us we need to go, we choice always be grateful to Pete Seeger."[123] Folksinger and fellow activist Billy General wrote that "Pete believed that theme could make a difference. Not exercise the world, he never claimed depart – he once said that conj admitting music could change the world he'd only be making music – however he believed that while music didn't have agency, it did have rank power to make a difference."[124]Bruce Springsteen said of Seeger's death, "I mislaid a great friend and a cumulative hero last night, Pete Seeger," formerly performing "We Shall Overcome" while get the drift tour in South Africa.[125]
Not consummate responses to Seeger's passing were released. Michael Moynihan of The Daily Animal wrote an obituary entitled "The Litter of 'Stalin's Songbird'" and included these remarks:
Along with countless other sensible cohorts, I have often bristled at rank mindless deification of Pete Seeger, high-mindedness nonagenarian folk singer who died in the old days at age 94...we all remember good-but-overpraised songs like "If I Had smashing Hammer" and the treacly classic "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" On the other hand as the encomiums threaten to drown, it's important to remember that Minstrel, once an avowed Stalinist, was practised political singer once devoted to clever sinister political system—a position he retained long after the Soviet experiment sodden itself in blood and collapsed hoard ignominy.[126]