Fare Thee WellPete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter Seeger (3 May 1919 – 27 January 2014) was born in New York, New York and was destined for a life in folk music. He became a protege of Woody Guthrie and in time he became one of the most famous American folk singers. His father was Charles Seeger, a musicologist and prothselitizer of decidedly leftist political views. Seeger’s father and mother were faculty members at the Julliard School of Music. Seeger founded The Almanac Singers in 1940 and later joined The Weavers in the 1949, but that group ran into the buzzsaw of the Red Scare in 1955. The members were blacklisted by Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Senate sub-committee on un-American Activities as Communist sympathizers. Seeger made a comeback in the 60s with several folk songs supporting international disarmament, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and environmental causes.

Seeger was a thin man, almost painfully so, but he had a strong tenor voice and a gregarious stage presence. He played the 12-string guitar and (his own modified, longneck) 5-string banjo. He sang topical songs, children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, and was always encouraging his audience to sing along. His social views were always to the He sang for the labor movement in the 40s and 50s, for civil rights and for an end to the Vietnam War in the 60s, and for environmental and international human rights from the 70s until his death.

Seeger was a mentor to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Don McClean. He eschewed stardom, seeing himself as part of a continuing folk music tradition, constantly recycling and revising music that had been honed by time.