Pete Seeger came from a musical family. His father Charles was a composer, musicologist and ethnologist, his mother Constanze a concert violinist and music teacher, and his stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger, a student of his father, became an influential composer whose work was deeply rooted in the folk tradition. Pete wanted to be a journalist, went to Harvard, founded a radical newspaper and joined the Young Communist League. He dropped out after two years and went to New York, where folk archivist Alan Lomax introduced him to singer Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly.
Shortly thereafter, he met Woody Guthrie, with whom he hitchhiked and traveled across the United States on freight trains, immersing himself deeply in the American song tradition. For Seeger, music, country and people were closely connected. For him, a lively folk tradition was the sign of a lively community characterized by tolerance and solidarity. At his concerts, the voices of the audience were more important to him than his own. Listeners were also sing-alongs. With the Almanac Singers, which included Seeger and Guthrie as well as Millard Campbell and Lee Hays, he performed songs that dealt with current socio-political issues and sang against war, fascism and racism.
After the war, Seeger, who had an aversion to commerce and the American star system, stormed the US charts with the folk quartet The Weavers, named after Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die Weber. Her version of the lead Belly song “Goodnight, Irene” became a #1 hit. Seeger’s own tunes, “If I Had A Hammer” and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone,” became folk standards and were later popularized by the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Pete Seeger was disappointed in Bob Dylan
The Weavers had already been blacklisted by America’s Communist hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Seeger was banned from appearing on television, but continued to release albums on Columbia Records, collect folk songs, tour with banjo and 12-string guitar, and teach American folk traditions to audiences around the world.
He became one of the key figures of the folk revival and was understandably disappointed when the movement’s most talented young songwriter, Bob Dylan, opened up to pop and left community behind in favor of introspection and individualism. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the story goes, he tried to cut the power cord that fed Dylan’s electrical band.
Seeger continued to campaign for a good cause, protesting against Vietnam and environmental destruction, organizing benefit concerts and singalongs and touring with Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo. At the age of 89 he recorded another album, sang on “Letterman” and took the stage with Bruce Springsteen, who named an album after him.
He last performed at Farm Aid in 2013, singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” alongside Wille Nelson and Neil Young, ending with a new verse against New York State’s fracking schemes added: “New York is my home, New York is your home/ From the upstate highway to the ocean foam/With all kinds of people/ Yes, we’re polychrome/ New York was meant to be frack free”.
Pete Seeger was at the heart of American folk tradition until his death in 2014.