Pete Seeger Life & Music

In our opinion, Pete Seeger has had an enormous impact on the world today. Hundreds of leading musicians from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to Dar Williams trace their musical roots to Seeger's work. He has also worked tirelessly for a wide variety of social causes from better working conditions for working people to the Civil Rights Movement, and from peace to protecting the earth.

Family Roots. Seeger was born in 1919 to Charles and Constance Seeger. Charles was a noted musicologist and Constance was violist. His family was from his earliest years involved in the thick of New York City musical and radical circles. His father later divorced and remarried to Ruth Crawford Seeger. In 1948 Ruth published a pioneering collection entitled American Folk Songs for Children. Pete married Toshi-Aline Ohta in 1943. Toshi worked with Pete on a wide variety of shared causes since that time.

Pete's older brother John served for many years as a school principal and summer camp director. His half siblings Peggy and Mike are renowned musicians in their own right. Peggy is the widow of Scottish folksinger Ewan MacColl and has written many songs. Mike is a member of the bluegrass band, New Lost City Ramblers. Toshi and Pete had 3 children Danny, Mika and Tinya. Pete has often performed in recent years with his grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger. Something about singing with Tao brings out the best in Pete's voice, worn down by too many years of trying to lead countless crowds in song, often without a mike. Tao is a member of the band The Mammals.

Early performing years. At the age of 19, Pete dropped out of Harvard (which still welcomes him back as an alumnus...) to bum around the country with a little known at the time songwriter named Woody Guthrie. Woody and Pete performed at labor rallies, visited with other singers, and just soaked up a lot of the life of ordinary working people. Pete entered the army in 1942 and spent a lot of the war (once they army stopped investigating him) performing to his fellow soldiers.

After the war, Pete formed a group with Woody Guthrie called the Almanac Singers. They performed at political and union events during the post-war years. In 1949 he formed a new singing group with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert called The Weavers. The Weavers had such an infectious sound that their single "Goodnight Irene" went to the top of the charts. But these were the years of Joe McCarty and the anti-Communist "witch hunts". When the music industry discovered the group's left-wing connections, the group was blacklisted. Neither the Weavers nor Pete Seeger were allowed to perform at major concert halls or receive radio airplay through regular commercial stations for the next decade. Pete himself was called to testify before the House Un-american Activities Committee. Pete and Toshi say that for several years they expected Pete to be sent to prison for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify against his musician friends.

Political contributions, Pete was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's and played a role in the evolution of the song "We Shall Overcome" into the freedom anthem sung around the world. He was censored during a live broadcast on the Smothers Brothers Show on network TV in the mid-sixties for performing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", a satirical antiwar song about Lyndon Johnson. He performed at countless peace rallies through out the Vietnam War.

After the Vietnam War ended, Pete became deeply involved in the environmental movement. He and Toshi helped those concerned about water quality on the Hudson acquire a sloop called The Clearwater. Pete sailed up and down the Hudson River with young environmental activists and schoolchildren organizing and educating about the need to stop fouling our own waters. Pete & Toshi founded an annual festival to raise money for environmental causes called the Hudson Clearwater Revival, held each June a little north of New York City. Toshi was the main musical coordinator for the festival for many years.

Pete's songwriting. Pete is the author or co-author of scores of well-known songs including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "If I Had a Hammer", "Turn, Turn, Turn", and "Bells of Rhymney". He also adapted and introduced audiences widely to many other songs like "Wimoweh", "How Can I Keep from Singing", "Guantanamera" and (as already mentioned) "We Shall Overcome".

Pete's songs are so widely sung, that people are often unaware where the songs came from. Years ago the Kingston Trio recorded "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and assumed it was a traditional song. When Pete mentioned to the group that he had actually composed the song, they were mortified!

Unfortunately, because Pete often minimized his own role in adapting or spreading many songs, he has sometimes inadvertently undermined the musical contributions of some of his own musical friends. when "How Can I Keep from Singing" was published in Sing Out Magazine in the 1950's, Pete failed to credit Doris Plenn, a family friend, for a new verse she had written to this old gospel song. When Enya recorded the song many years later and it was a big hit, his publisher lost the suit to claim royalties for Doris. The same result happened when a popular musician wrote English lyrics to the song "Wimoweh", a song he had learned from South African singers but had popularized widely through his own signing. When the song made a fortune when it was included in the Disney movie "The Lion King" many years later, the big industry lawyers won out again and Pete's managers' lawyers were unable to win royalties for the South African musicians who originated the song.

Group singing. Part of Pete's genius has been as a songleader. He has been able to teach huge audiences around the world to learn and throw their voices into songs with him. He has been a tireless advocate of the idea that music and song and aspirations belong to all, not just to a few. As such he was an enthusiastic supporter of Winds of the People, the singalong predecessor to Rise Up Singing.

When we told Pete in the early 1980's that we wanted to make a new improved singalong collection, he helped persuade the board of Sing Out to take the project on. His publisher, Harold Leventhal, played a key role in obtaining copyright permissions from major music publishers like Hal Leonard and Warner Brothers Music. Pete helped us choose songs and wrote Rise Up Singing 's powerful introduction.

Multiculturalism. He also has worked ceaselessly in support of cultural diversity. He believes the world will only survive if people learn how to learn from each other. His concerts have always been filled with songs and stories from around the world. His own songs often have drawn on a wide variety of sources woven artfully into new creations - putting new lyrics to an old melody here, putting a poem to music there, or adapting a song to make it more powerful and singable so it gets picked up by millions of people around the world.

It has been tough to identify Pete's contributions because he has always shied away from taking credit for his own work, preferring to focus on the contributions of others. When I (Peter) worked with him as the editor of his musical autobiography, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, it was frequently challenging to get him to even claim authorship of his own songs, as when he found a melody that worked perfectly with the lyrics that someone else had put together in the song "Step by Step". Countless people have told me how deeply they were affected by Pete's ideas and vision from attending his concerts years earlier. Countless others have told me the ways he supported them and helped them develop their musical gifts.

Pete Seeger's Recordings

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