Pete Seeger playing the recorder

Subject: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 07:36 AM

I was just looking up the maker of a recorder I have, William Koch from Haverhill, NH, and came across a Google Books scan from Haverhill and East Haverhill by Nancy Burton, which mentions Pete Seeger dropping on on the Koch workshop in 1970 (the year Koch died) to get one of his 11 Koch recorders repaired.

Which suggests that Seeger was pretty serious about the recorder. My Koch is probably the best of all the many recorders I own, and as a handmade product made in expensive wood, it must have cost an arm and leg when it was new. Owning 11 of them means real commitment.

What did he perform on them?

Where are his recorders now?

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: maeve
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 09:35 AM

Here's a start for you, Jack: Pete's Forehead: a remembrance of Pete Seeger By Joanna Cazden January 21, 2015

"...Pete didn't look at me, focusing on an alto recorder, then a tenor, then back to the alto. "What key are you in?" he asked. "E-minor," I said, playing the accompinament that had fit my voice for years. He repeated the question several times until I realized that he was just being polite. He knew what key he wanted and would persist until we landed there!..."

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: maeve
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 09:41 AM

And listen: Pete Seeger, Recorder Improv., Singalong Sanders Theater 1980

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:08 PM

Check out the double LP he made with Arlo Guthrie on which he plays "The Tarrantella".

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:12 PM

Tarantella - PeteSeeger

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:57 PM

I saw/heard Pete play recorder about 1962, in Kansas. It was not a major part of the program, but since that was about the only instrument I played at the time, I was impressed. I 'think' he played it as part of his "Greensleeves" performance.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 04:21 PM

Thanks for the info and links. I enjoyed listening to Seeger play.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 05:16 PM

"This video is not available" for both of them. This one does work, but it's rather short:

improvisatory intro to the Internationale

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 05:28 PM

Both YouTube videos work fine here. Maybe it's just a country-related problem?

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Mark Ross
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 09:51 PM

When I met Pete it was in 1968 in D.C. on The Poor Peoples Campaign. Though I had arrived in Resurrection City with the NY contingent, somehow I found myslef living alone in a plywood shack with the folks from Appalachia, Myles Horton from The Highlander School in Tennessee, Bessie Jones & The Georgia Sea Island Singers among others. I had a shack to myself, and when Pete showed up with Toshi and Tinya it was suggested that I give them my abode. I moved into the Highlander tent and the Seeger family took over the plywood shack. One afternoon I was sitting in there visiting when Tinya(who was 9 or ten at the time) said to her father, "Peter Pops, let's play nothing." Pete then dug into a bag and pulled out 4 recorders and handed them out to me, and Bernice Reagon Johnson who was also there, and Tinya. And then we all proceeded to blow in cacophonous chorus, each of us playing nothing in particular. A joyous and unforgetttable memory.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 02:46 AM

"This video is not available"

I got that too. I guessed that it was only available as a flash video and I don't have flash. Could be the country though - I'm in the UK.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 03:39 AM

Pete Seeger, inspiring.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 04:03 AM

The 1954 Folkways album GERMAN FOLKSONGS sung by Martha Schlamme
has Pete Seeger accompanying on Recorder and Banjo.

Stinson SLP 57 Pete Seeger Concert
contains a track:
Four Recorder Melodies JPANESE IRISH ISRAELI PERUVIAN INCA
(this record was a concert for school children - anyone have
data date, where recorded ???)

Thomas.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 09:02 AM

anyone know
when did Pete Seeger first became interested in recorder
where he learned to play,
when were his earliest performances on the instrument,
what is his earliest recording with the recorder?
Thanks!

Thomas.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Cool Beans
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 12:18 PM

This is strictly from memory, may not be wholly reliable: There was a weekly folk music program on WQXR in New York in the early 1960s whose theme song was Pete Seeger playing a tune on the recorder. I can't describe the tune beyond this: it went up for a couple of bars, then went down for a couple of bars, then repeated.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Mark Ross
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 02:16 PM

I have read somewhere that when Pete was working for Alan Lomax at the LoC. He would sometimes go out late at night and sit in a tree and play the recorder quietly so as not to disturb anyone trying to sleep. That would have been around 1939 or '40. As he grew up in a musical household, his mother would leave various instruments around trying to entice him into playing anything. He preferred the ukulele, but I would think that he probably managed to pick up the recorder at the same time.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 03:09 PM

I'm surprised we have yet to hear from Frank Hamilton, respectfully speaking. The Folkways album that he recorded with Pete Seeger includes a Morris Dance tune, with Seeger on recorder and Hamilton on guitar.

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 03:47 PM

Pete's father Charles Seeger was a musicologist who would have known what was happening in the early days of the early music revival. He was also a friend of Henry Cowell, who wrote some music for recorders. (Cowell was responsible for Charles Seeger becoming a student of Ruth Crawford - they eventually married).

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger playing the recorder
From: Mark Ross
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 09:07 PM

I think it was the other way around Ruth Crawford became a student of Charles Seeger.