Folk Singer, Activist
Previously Aired On: August 7, 2007 - Listen to this Show!
Also Our Guest On: October 3, 2006 - Listen to this Show!
Sixteen-year-old Pete Seeger, enrolled at the Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut, decided to become a hermit. His life since has been one social cause after another, buoyed by an almost indefatigable career as a self-described “sing-along leader.” During the 1930s he attended Harvard, from which his father the musicologist Charles Seeger (a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and a conscientious objector during World War I) had graduated in 1908. As an alternative to his major, Sociology (which he disliked), he played tenor banjo (failed to make the Harvard Jazz Band) and participated in the pacificist, communist Harvard Student Union so much that he lost his scholarship, leaving Harvard in 1938.
In 1939 actor/folksinger Will Geer organized the “All-American Left-Wing Folk-Song Revival Movement,” a benefit concert for migrant workers in California. It was there that Pete met Woody Guthrie and began touring with him. In 1940 he started the Almanac Singers with Lee Hays, Pete Hawes, and Millard Lampell; during his tours with this pro-union, anti-war group the FBI began a file on him. The group broke up at the start of World War II (Seeger enlisted in the Army; Guthrie entered the Merchant Marine).
After the war he started People’s Songs (later Sing Out!), and in 1949 formed a new group, The Weavers, with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert. For years he had trouble with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and was, effectively, blacklisted. He recorded dozens of albums (Columbia, Folkways) and wrote thousands of songs, among which are “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “If I Had a Hammer,” and “Turn, Turn, Turn.” He helped start the Greenwich Village music magazine Broadside in the 1960s and reorganized the Newport Folk Festival.
In 1996 the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance awarded him its first Lifetime Achievement Award. He helped start Clearwater, an organization which sails a 106-foot boat along the Hudson River to show children the dangers of pollution. Pete remains active, giving performances, interviews, speaking out and ever the activist singing and working on behalf of the rights of the average ordinary citizen.
August 8th, 2007
--Previous Guests--, Pete Seeger |
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