This review at The Atlantic online,

"Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie: More Politicians Than Musicians",

is a combination of a review of the performances on

Appleseed Recordings 2-cd "Pete Seeger: Pete Remembers Woody" set

and an essay that maybe merely reflects one person's distaste for "short shelf-life" (Tom Paxton's term) political songs that are past their sell-by date.

The article is subtitled, "Seeger's latest ventures reveal the dirty secret of Popular Front folk: Their tunes weren't that great."

Halfway down the review, writer Noah Berlatsky provides his bona fides, saying, "My parents were folk-revival fans, and I've been listening to Pete and Woody as long as I've been listening to anything", and he also says, "Political art doesn't have to be lousy art. James Baldwin's essays are some of my favorite prose writing ever, and I'll happily swear by Black Sabbath's "War Pigs.""

But he goes on to say, "... while politics and art can go together, the bland bonhomie of Popular Front folk music is tied closely to its didacticism."

He says that on this set, "those politics are front and center, as Seeger provides what is essentially a two hour hagiography for his friend and mentor. "

This review doesn't tease apart a few different strands here: Woody as a songwriter, Woody as a performer, and the difficulties of combining politics and art.

He says, "would anybody in their right mind rather listen to him than to his influences like the Carter Family or Jimmy Rodgers? Or his contemporaries like Bill Monroe and Rosetta Tharpe? Or acolytes like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell? Guthrie may have been a decent performer, but he was never incandescent."

And then, "[Woody's] legacy is due not to the power or depth of his music, but rather to his lyrical facility—and perhaps most of all, to the sensational and unusual match between his more-or-less working-class background and his definitively Marxist politics. For middle-class leftists like Seeger or Alan Lomax, an Okie hillbilly Communist singer seemed like the holy grail of working class authenticity: a validation of their politics, their music, and of the connection between the two."

This set has only a couple of performances from Woody's era, and only one or two of him. Seeger mostly contributes audio reminiscenses, rather than singing (given his vocal limitations at age 93). Several tracks are done by Work O' the Weavers, whose singing Berlatsky calls "soulless" and compares to the performances in the spoof movie, "A Mighty Wind". (See the Appleseed link above for the full track list and performers.)

Berlatsky concludes with this statement -- about Seeger [I thought we were discussing Woody's songs here??]: "He's a man of great conscience, integrity, and spirit whose songs are, nonetheless, filled far too often with joyless platitudes. Maybe that's something else to blame Communism for, I don't know. But I do know that, as much as I admire him personally, and as much as I wish there were more dedicated men and women like him now riding around singing union songs, I don't much want to listen to these CDs again."


It does look to me like this set does have a different audience in mind than others that have come out in recent years that either are seeking new audiences for Woody using contemporary performers who are not naturally associated with him or thrilling collectors with comprehensive new releases of his original recordings. Given the amount of spoken word (maybe more than a third of the tracks) and the use of performers who are folk festival favorites but not so commercially known, maybe it's meant for the hard-core but relatively folkie who looking to learn more about the era or for the hard-core Woody/Pete fan who will enjoy hearing Seeger's stories.

I look forward to reading further reviews elsewhere and here at the 'Cat.

~ Becky in Tucson