Pete Seeger on NPR & new album

Subject: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 01:06 PM

At 93, Pete Seeger Keeps The Fire Burning Low

by Karen Michel
NPR (audio at the link above)
October 27, 2012

As he often does when the weather's decent, Pete Seeger recently played a free show outdoors in Beacon, N.Y. A few dozen people packed around the stage that held Seeger, his ever-present banjo and a small band; a group of kids in red T-shirts clustered down in front, singing along. The emcee for the afternoon was Susan Wright, the music teacher at Beacon Elementary School, where Seeger visits regularly.

"Friday, he came in and we worked with the kids," Wright says. "He's kind of like having a great elder musician-historian come to visit — a combination grandfather and Santa Claus, but really skinny. They know, when he comes, we're gonna sing together. We're gonna do stuff together. They really get him."

Seeger has been singing for anyone who'll hear him throughout what he refuses to call his "career." There's good reason for that, says David Bernz, who produced two new Seeger albums.

"Almost every time that Pete interacted with the mass media, on some level they spit him back," Bernz says. "The Almanacs [Seeger's 1940s folk group], they got on the radio, and then immediately, people criticized their politics and they were off. The Weavers were on the radio; they got blacklisted. He gets a Columbia Records contract, but then he finds out they're keeping his records in the warehouse. The Smothers Brothers want to edit him out.

"The great thing about Pete is ... he would never let that stop him," Bernz says. "He sang at every little church, little school, summer camp, gathering — year in, year out, to kids and adults alike. And when you look back on it after these decades, you realize that Pete has been heard."

Woody's Way

Tall and lean, in faded Levi's and corduroy shirt, Pete Seeger still pretty much looks like he did when the young Harvard dropout met the man who helped him find his life's work: Woody Guthrie.

"I was working in Washington, D.C., at the time with Alan Lomax, the folklorist," Seeger says. "And in Alan's house I met Woody, and he found that I could follow him in any song he played. I had a good ear and I stayed in tune, played the right chord, didn't play anything too fancy. So pretty soon, I was tagging along with him."

Seeger says Guthrie taught him not only lots of songs but also how to play in saloons, get paid first, how to ride the rails — carefully — and that no matter the consequences, to stick with your beliefs.

In a spoken-word track on his new Guthrie tribute album, Pete Remembers Woody, Seeger tells the story of Guthrie's famous slogan.

"He went through WWII with a piece of cardboard pasted to the top of his guitar: 'This machine kills fascists,' " Seeger says on the recording. "He really wanted his guitar to help win the war against Hitler. When Woody went into a hospital in 1952 ... I put something similar on my banjo: 'This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.' "

'We'd Like People To Sing Our Songs'

Seeger has written that on every banjo he's had since then, including the one he used to compose the tunes on his other new album, A More Perfect Union, which features the guitarist Lorre Wyatt.

"I occasionally get together with a good songwriter and work with him or her, because I can't do what I want all myself," Seeger says. "I knew Lorre Wyatt when he was in his early 20s."

Wyatt is now in his 60s and occasionally makes the four-hour drive from his home in Massachusetts to Seeger's place, which overlooks the Hudson River. He recalls the genesis of their recent collaboration, a phone conversation in which Seeger unwittingly spun a poetic line.

"Pete called up one time — this was a couple winters ago, when it was a really hard winter and [he was] running low on wood," Wyatt says. "He said to me, 'The elm, you skip; it's the devil to split. Stick with maple, ash and oak.' And I grabbed my pen, and we continued to talk about wood."

Like the wood Seeger still splits, most of the songs he's written come from his life. On the new album with Wyatt, there's one about cats howling for their supper, a song about old apples, and another another about the Hudson River, whose preservation has become Seeger's latest cause. Though his voice is a little lower now, the key to the songs remains the same: Make the lyrics accessible, and try to keep the words no more than two syllables long.

"We'd like people to sing our songs. We don't want a melody that's so difficult, an ordinary person couldn't sing it," Seeger says. "I think Lorre and I would agree 100 percent on that."


A More Perfect Union, Pete Seeger & Lorre Wyatt, at Appleseed Records

A More Perfect Union is a newly-recorded 16-song collaboration between Pete and longtime friend and fellow singer-songwriter Lorre Wyatt, on which the duo is joined by newer generations of socially conscious musicians Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Dar Williams, among others.
...
Seeger's abiding mission – to inspire sociopolitical involvement and personal inclusiveness through song and example – shines through the 14 songs newly co-written with Wyatt. The duo addresses recent and ongoing political, economic and environmental issues alongside gentler appreciations of life's good moments, meditations on the future, and exhortations to individual action.
...
There's more to this CD than political commentary. Among the more lighthearted songs are the delightfully self-deprecating "Old Apples" ("…still can make good sauce") and "Howling for Our Supper," a pet's-eye view of Pete and Lorre writing "another pointless ditty" when it's feeding time. On the heartwarming side, there are "Wonderful Friends," a different version than found on one of Seeger's two Grammy-winning Appleseed CDs, At 89 (2008), "A Toast to the Times," and the closing "Bountiful River." Throughout the CD, Pete and Lorre share and split vocal duties; Pete plays banjo and acoustic 12-string guitar, while Lorre handles the six-string acoustic and additional banjo. Providing a varied, acoustic-based instrumental bed are co-producers David Bernz (guitar, banjo, vocals, harmonica), engineer-percussionist Jeff Haynes, and a host of musicians based near Pete's Beacon, N.Y., home. The use of a wide variety of percussion adds an atmospheric, throbbing Third World tinge to many of the songs.

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 02:18 PM

Thanks for posting that, Becky. I heard it this morning. We wake up to NPR news on our clock radio, but I was about half asleep when it came on. Thanks for providing the link so I can listen to it again.

Good item!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 02:29 PM

There is a question as to whether the Smothers Brothers tried to edit Pete out at the beginning stages of their program. MKAldin seems to think this is inaccurate and needs fact checking. It seemed to me that the Smothers fought hard to get Pete on their show.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 02:56 PM

I think CBS was behind any Smothers Brothers editing, that sounds like it wasn't fully researched or the reporter mis-spoke about it. The whole performance of "Big Muddy" was a politically charged battle that the Smothers Brothers fought and won - but it seems to me CBS did something drastic like edited the song or blocked the entire program from broadcasting or cancelled them. It wasn't edited out by the brothers. I'll have to think about the source where I read or heard about that, and I am sure it has been discussed here on Mudcat. I found some about it on Wikipedia.

SRS

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Nancy King
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 02:56 PM

It does seem out of character for the Smothers Brothers to try to edit Pete out, but I wouldn't put it past their producers.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Mark Ross
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 03:09 PM

No, it was CBS that fought against Pete's appearance in the first place.
Then they edited out the song. The Smothers Brothers fought to get him on the show.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Mary Katherine
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 04:56 PM

That's correct, Mark. CBS did *not* want Pete Seeger on their airwaves, but the Smothers Brothers, who at that time were riding high with the #1 show in the country and had a lot of clout, insisted. The network agreed, but later claimed that the *sponsors* had insisted that Pete's footage be yanked. There is, nevertheless, some of it on Youtube, so maybe they only pulled part of it?

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: LadyJean
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 05:04 PM

He used to come to Pittsburgh every July Fourth and sing with the American Wind Symphony. Even my Republican mom loved those concerts! I miss them still. The river was the perfect amplifier, and he reminded us how Pittsburgh was made.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 12:46 AM

a friend of mine remembers Pete visiting Fox Meadow primary school in Scarsdale NY annually circa 1956-59 (I think there was some complaint to the school board after that? and that he was a friend of teachers Fern Olson and Dorothy Irvine). He used to sit on the gym floor and play. She says he always played "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly". Amazing Pete is still visiting schools over half a century later, though I don't suppose he sits on the floor nowadays.

In fact I heard saw him play in NY on a recent visit and his voice is rather weak (but audible), but he was still playing banjo with remarkably nimble fingers. I did ask him about Fox Meadow school and Fern Olson, but I thought he either didn't hear me (fiddled with his hearing aid) or didn't understand me.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 01:51 AM

when I "visited" the NPR site (clickable link at the beginning of the thread), I saw the page okay but my computer froze. I restarted the computer and the same thing happened. It could be a problem with my computer but I would like to know whether anyone else reading this thread experienced the same problem with the NPR webpage.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:13 AM

I had no trouble with the NPR page

sandra

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 12:22 PM

The Smothers Brothers show on which Seeger performed was cancelled
by the network.
There are DVD's available containing Seeger perfomances on the show.
SMOTHERED-The Censorship Struggle of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR - Best of Season 2.

readily available at the usual sources and secondary markets.

Best wishes, Thomas.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: GUEST,C. Ham
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 01:53 PM

Mike Regenstreif has reviews of the two new Pete Seeger CD's on his Folk Roots/Folk Branches blog.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger on NPR & new album
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:10 PM

On Pete's collaborator, Lorre Wyatt, from Mike Regenstreif's blog:

Singer and songwriter Lorre Wyatt is best known for such songs as the anthemic "Somos El Barco/We are the Boat," which has been recorded by such artists as Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul & Mary, and for a number of songwriting collaborations with Pete dating back to the early efforts to clean up the Hudson River. In 1996, Lorre suffered a debilitating stroke that kept him on the sidelines for about 15 years. He has recently begun making music again and is again writing songs with Pete, who, at the age of 93, remains a remarkably vital musical artist.

~ Becky in Long Beach