RIP Pete Seeger

Smithsonian Folkways tribute page: text & links to Pete audio (incl. podcasts), video, slideshows, tribute playlist, more http://www.folkways.si.edu/PeteSeeger

Pete Seeger, Musician
By Richard Brookhiser
January 30, 2014 10:11 AM
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The admirers of Pete Seeger have had their say, and so have the record keepers (see John Fund’s piece yesterday). One point I haven’t seen anywhere is that, when you came right down it, he wasn’t a very good musician.

Oh, he could play his instruments and carry a tune and he had an ear for good old songs. But he made everything bland and boneless. He was the ideal leader of happy-clappy sing-alongs — the Mitch Miller of the folk revival. Musically, the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary were his children.

This style of performing crippled Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen brothers movie about a fictional folk singer. I must be the only person who saw it who liked the movie better than the music. The songs were good, but the performances were anodyne.

The irony is that the movie was loosely based on Dave Van Ronk, who was anything but. Van Ronk moaned, roared, chuckled, and sometimes seduced. To hear him sing “Motherless Children,” “He Was a Friend of Mine,” “Come Back, Baby” or “Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her” is to enter another world.

something is happening here but richard brookhiser doesn't know what it is

i will always treasure the time i was in a roomful of people that pete led in "somos el barco, somos el mar" - the lyrics of which i remember TO THIS DAY

Dave Marsh's tribute:

If nothing else, Pete Seeger made me understand how far behind enemy lines I was living—he showed me the road that had to be traveled, if I really wanted to live. He did this the same way that James Baldwin and Elvis Presley and John Coltrane did it: by example, and with the same generosity and the same sense that the world was packed with a load of insurmountable cruelty and that, nevertheless, the truth was that something better had managed to survive within it. Which meant, for each of us, a choice and a chance.

Seeger's songs were sung to me as lullabies by my mother (or played via cassette tape when she was too busy or tired), and are the first songs I remember hearing as a child.

I always marveled at how full of joy, love and energy he was, even in his recent performances over the last few years as a nonagenarian, and deep down hoped he would make it at least another 10-15 years.

To me, he represented endless, boundless love and, most importantly, hope. RIP, Pete. You are a TRUE American Hero and legend. I can only hope that someone comes along who has even a fraction of your heart and your constitution to show this country true inspiration again.

that farm aid clip is amazing!

and uncle neil loves is, doing air banjo and all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt9jWoXmrLw

http://www.wtop.com/551/3663046/Lincoln-Center-to-stream-Seeger-memorial-concert

Sunday

The free concert will be held Sunday at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park. It will feature artists and speakers who had a close personal relationship with the Seegers. They include Judy Collins, Harry Belafonte, Dar Williams, Peter Yarrow, Holly Near and Tom Chapin.

Lincoln Center notes that Seeger loved to lead singalongs. In that spirit, it's inviting audiences to take part in a global online singalong.

you ppl r rather quiet about Ronnie Gilbert

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/412805143/ronnie-gilbert-voice-of-folk-band-the-weavers-dies-at-88

:( Saw her with HARP at the Greek back in the 80s...