Gee, this thread has done nothing but creep. The question is, for those who were singing in the McCarthy era, did McCarthyism affect what they sang. Strictly speaking, McCarthy as a personality vanished away in the early-mid 50's (he was "called" by "people in authority"), a time when few of us were singing in public.

If the question is, how were we affected by the atmosphere of the cold war, the answer is this. I was affected by all this, in that I took the contrarian attitude that HUAC, McCarthy et al. could go stick it, and I sang the reddest songs I could find. A lot of my best friends were red diaper babies, and some of those guys stopped being my friends when I voluntarily served my time as a soldier. And what bugged me then, and bugs me even more today, is the BS coming from both the sides of the political spectrum which said, if you want to improve life in America in any way, you were a socialist and a commie and somehow had to be pro-Soviet.

The Stalinist system was a monstrosity, and was a national enemy of the United States. So it was wrong to persecute Pete Seeger, and I admire him to the extent he was brave to stand up for what he believed in and defy HUAC. But unless I am very badly misinformed, Pete also followed each and every twist and turn of a morally reprehensible Party Line, and I am sorry, that I cannot respect.