Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans

Subject: ADD: Let Me Sing You a Song (Joe Jencks)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Apr 15 - 11:16 PM

I came across a song from Joe Jencks that tells the story of Pete's appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and I really like it. Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElZr0pNu5Ow

Let Me Sing You A Song

On the morning that our beloved Pete Seeger passed away, I was inspired to write a song about his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, back in 1955. The gentle, yet somehow joyful tone of defiance Pete had in that moment was amazing. To read the full text of his testimony is I think, a great example of how to stand up to bullies with elegance and conviction.

(For Pete Seeger - Inspired by his HUAC Testimony in 1955)

You’ve asked me here to tell you
About my neighbors and my friends
To talk about the who and what
The where and how and when
Well I won’t give you anything
You don’t already know
But if you’d like
I’ll sing that list of songs before I go

Chorus:
Let me sing you a song
About the people that I love
The poets and philosophers
The workers and the wanderers
The ones who walk the picket lines
Who dare to stand and fight
And the ones who hold their babies close
And rock them through the night


V.2
Now you say it’s un-American
To do the things I do
Well I sing for justice, liberty
And Civil Rights it’s true
But I say it’s un-American
To ask me how I vote
How I pray or what I believe
But here’s a song I wrote

Chorus

V.3
If you want to send me to prison
I guess that’s the way it’ll be
‘Cause I won’t feed you fodder
For your paranoid machine
If the price of my silence is shackles
Well then fellas, take me away
For I will live to sing again
And rise with a brand new day

Chorus & Tag

© 1/28/14 - Joe Jencks, Turtle Bear Music, ASCAP

http://www.joejencks.com/index.php?page=songs

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: maeve
Date: 03 Dec 14 - 06:42 AM

Thank you for combining threads, clever mod!

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: maeve
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 10:07 PM

refresh..........

Subject: RE: book:Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans (Ed Renehan)
From: maeve
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 10:06 PM

Same book as announced in the thread Ms Wister initiated back in April, 2004, here:
Pete Seeger ...New Book . I'm glad it has gotten some good reviews- there were several in the original thread who wanted to read reviews prior to ordering the book..

Subject: RE: book:Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans (Ed Renehan)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 10:04 PM

Just got my copy. Great book!

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: book:Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans (Ed Renehan)
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 09:32 PM

Thanks for the heads up.

Subject: RE: book:Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans (Ed Renehan)
From: BanjoRay
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 08:38 PM

Thanks for pointing this one out - I'm getting it!

Subject: Pete Seeger book
From: GUEST,Monica Wister
Date: 02 Dec 14 - 01:10 PM

Ed Renehan's book PETE SEEGER VS. THE UN-AMERICANS: A TALE OF THE BLACKLIST has gotten great reviews from actor/director Steve Buscemi (BOARDWALK's Nucky Thompson), Billy Bragg and others. Check it out.

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 21 Jul 14 - 09:24 AM

On the loyalty oath, read Jessica Mitford's piece in the above-mentioned book Poison Penmanship (formerly A Fine Old Conflict) titled "My Short and Happy Life as a Distinguished Professor". The original 1974 article in The Atlantic is linked to below, but PP also includes her followup commentary about what happened afterwards. Well worth the price, sez I.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1974/10/my-short-and-happy-life-as-a

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: JJ
Date: 21 Jul 14 - 06:56 AM

Loyalty oaths... As a friend of mine used to say, "If I'm committed to overthrowing the government by force, do you think I'll shrink from perjury?!?"

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: LadyJean
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 12:32 AM

My mother was working at Chatham College when the HUAC was hunting out communists. Faculty members were being asked to sign loyalty oaths, swear they weren't communists, and of course give the names of colleagues who were. Some of the faculty had come to this country from Europe, and seen that sort of thing before. It worried them.

Mom would speak of, "That ass Joe McCarthy" By ass she meant donkey. Not quite fair to donkeys.

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:52 AM

PS: You don't have to own a Kindle - you can also buy their e-books for iPads (and no doubt Android tablets: haven't checked) and ordinary computers, via the free Kindle app. I know nothing about what's available for smartphones. (No, I do not work for Amazon...)

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:45 AM

I've just bought the Kindle edition of this book for the astonishingly reasonable price of $1.32 (until 22nd July). Remember to access Amazon through the Mudcat portal - click the fiddle-playing catfish logo at the top of the home page, then scroll down to the links at the bottom, Amazon .com and .co.uk and a couple of others.

Thomas, the Jessica Mitford book is in fact titled A Fine Old Conflict, which was her childhood mondegreen for the words "final conflict" in the anthem. The book was sub-headed something like The Making Of A Muckraker, and was one of my all-time faves. It's actually a collection of essays - exposés mostly - of which the memoir of her CP days is only one part; but all are stunning. This went out of print, but has now resurfaced - at least in some form - as Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art Of Muckraking and I think it includes that article, but only feel about 90% certain. The new release certainly contains most - if not all - of Fine Old Conflict. As Thomas says, well worth a read.

As the new Seeger book promises to be. I see it consistently earns 5- & 4-star reviews. Come all ye kindle-owning tightwads - you can afford a buck. Don't forget Max's cat flap.

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:08 AM

In Contempt

(Aaron Kramer / Betty Sanders / ad. Len Graham)
Build high build wide your prison walls
That there be room enough for all
Who hold you in contempt build wide
That all the bad be locked inside

The birds who still insist on song
The sunlit streams still running strong
The flowers a-blazing every hue
All are in contempt of you

When you have seized the gallant few
Whose glory casts a shade on you
How can you now go home with ease
Jangling your heavy dungeon keys

The parents dreaming still of peace
The playful children, the wild geese
Who still must fly the mountains to
All are in contempt of you

When you have seized both moon and sun
And jailed the poems one by one
And trapped each trouble-making breeze
Then you must throw away your keys

So let us hope the day will come
When man adores the rising sun
Empty jails and free to do
With no one in contempt of you

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: MartinRyan
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 04:08 AM

Does anyone know just what the hell is an UN American
- and why would Pete Seeger be versus them?

;>)>

Regards
p.s. Or then again, why not?

Subject: RE: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: kendall
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 07:10 PM

I'm old enough to remember this. Does anyone know just what the hell is an UN American?

Good old Pete, he didn't hide behind the 5th, he stood beside the 1st amendment.

Subject: Review: Pete Seeger Biography
From: GUEST,Monica Wister, New Street Communications
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 05:19 PM

In Honor of "SeegerFest" - Discount on PETE SEEGER VS. THE UN-AMERICANS

Offer ends July 22nd, 2014.

All royalties go to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater.

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 Apr 14 - 06:54 PM

It has to be remembered that Robert Kennedy was with Nixon at the HUAC hearings.
The hysteria was so great that you could get wrecked by colliding into the great wall of McCarthy by just looking the wrong way at someone.

Do you think that Issa would be any different?

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: GUEST,Monica Wister
Date: 30 Apr 14 - 10:00 AM

So far as I know there is no standard biography of Seeger that dedicates 122 pages (a full 25,000 words) expressly to this one aspect of Seeger's long life. And yes, the book (with extensive footnotes) contains a number of documented revelations, among them that none other than Robert Kennedy, upon his appointment as attorney general, insisted upon the Justice Department's proceeding with Seeger's prosecution, despite the fact that the Justice Department under under the conservative Republican administration of Eisenhower had ignored the case since (per the requirements imposed by a 1956 contempt vote by Congress) charging Seeger and others in 1957, and had intended to eventually drop the case altogether. Other prosecutions stemming from the same Congressional vote of 1956 - among them the prosecution of playwright Arthur Miller - had gone forward almost immediately after charges were brought in 1957. The story behind Robert Kennedy's deep personal involvement in the Seeger prosecution is just one of the items of "news" in the book.

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Apr 14 - 02:36 AM

We still have a leaflet in our collection advertising a concert held in London in order to raise money for the campaign to keep Pete from being sent to prison by the H.U.A.C.
The good ol' days eh?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 21 Apr 14 - 10:08 PM

Hi Desert Dancer,
Thanks for the links.
According to AMAZON, the book is available, so thought someone
out there may have read it, or seen advance galleys.

Has anyone read Jessica Mitford's IT'S A GRAND OLD CONFLICT - memoir of her years in CP-USA. A delightful read.
I've hoped that Pete Seeger would someday give similar enlightenment. Life in the Party seems to me to be very much
part of the story of Pete's stand against the UnAmerican Committee. I hope Renehan has not neglected the exposition of this aspect.

Best wishes, Thomas.

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 21 Apr 14 - 06:48 PM

Here's the Kickstarter page, for what that offers. clicky

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 21 Apr 14 - 06:47 PM

If the press release has only been issued today, you'll need to wait until anyone gets a chance to read it, Thomas. I don't think any previous biographies have dedicated that amount of space to that particular episode, even though it's certainly been highlighted.

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 21 Apr 14 - 12:46 PM

Any independent reviews of this book?
Anything in it which has not been covered in
the standard Seeger bibliography??
122 pages 6x9 seems unlikely to be an in-depth
study of this aspect of Pete Seeger's life.

Thomas.

Subject: New Pete Seeger Book
From: GUEST,Monica Wister
Date: 21 Apr 14 - 08:07 AM

I want to let folks know about a wonderful new book documenting Pete Seeger's struggles during the blacklist days: PETE SEEGER VS. THE UN-AMERICANS. Mucho thanks!

Pete Seeger vs. The Un-Americans PRESS RELEASE

- Monica Wister, office[at]newstreetcommunications[dot]com