Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive

Subject: Questions about Pete Seeger
From: GUEST,sass
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:10 PM

Forgive my ignorance...but is Pete Seeger still alive? I can't seem to find out.

And was it HIM that wrote "If I Had a Hammer"? Or was that somebody else (somebody told me Peter, Paul and Mary wrote it, but I don't think that she had it right).
sass

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance
From: Beer
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:23 PM

Alive
Date of Birth:05/03/1919
Current Age:86

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:47 PM

Hi, Sass - If I Had a Hammer (click) was written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. The date shown in the Rise Up Singing songbook is 1958, but I'd swear it was earlier. The same date is given in the songbook titled Travelin' On With the Weavers, which was published in 1966.

A year or so ago, Pete Seeger announced that he would not be doing concerts any more because of a medical condition that affected his presence of mind. Well, it seems he HAS done a few concerts since then, so I'm still hoping I will get to hear him once in my life.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST,sass
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:50 PM

Thanks, beer and Joe Offer!

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST,sassi
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 09:55 PM

Oh, sorry! I just discovered that there is somebody else with that name and it was an accident! I didn't mean to start using somebody else's name!
SassI

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST,nameless guest
Date: 18 Feb 06 - 10:43 PM

Hi, Sass - If I Had a Hammer (click) was written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. The date shown in the Rise Up Singing songbook is 1958, but I'd swear it was earlier.

If I had a Hammer was published in the very first issue of Sing Out! The Folk Song Song Magazine. That was May 1950, so I too would swear it was earlier.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: artbrooks
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 12:36 AM

According to Sing Out, If I Had a Hammer appeared in v. 25 #1. I don't have originals back that far, but it isn't in my Reprint of volumes 1-6.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: kendall
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 08:14 AM

Whenever I write to him he writes back, so I think he is still around. He appeared at the Town Crier not long ago. However, his memory isn't what it was.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Emma B
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 08:20 AM

He was interviewed recently on a BBC radio 4 programme commemerating the Southern Freedom Movement "Playing Rosa's Tune - Music of the Civil Rights Struggle" This should still be available to play back and is well worth a listen.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:03 PM

The Hammer Song did indeed appear in Sing Out! Vol.1, no.1. The magazine came out in May 1950. In the issue it says "Lee Hays, co-author with Pete Seeger of the Hammer Song, introduced it last year with his familiar wise-crack: "We will now sing an old folk song that we wrote last night".   The song was one one of the "new" folk songs that came out of the People's Songs movement, so it would have been written in 1949.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: artbrooks
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:16 PM

Thanks, Ron. And now I will have to wonder why it didn't make it into the Reprint!!

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:20 PM

That is odd.   A few years ago, Sing Out! reprinted the entire first issue.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Emma B
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:29 PM

The Hammer song is also printed in "Carry it On" - A history in song and picture of the working men and women of America published 1985 which gives the music copyright (Ludlow Music) as 1958.

Pete Seeger's notes to this song state

"This song never went anywhere till Peter, Paul and Mary changed my original melody.But I've discovered that you can sing my old melody, or theirs, or half a dozen others, all at the same time, and they harmonize with each other. There's a moral there somewhere, - I think"

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Duane D.
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:33 PM

Pete lives in Beacon, NY, next to the Hudson River. I presently live about 1/2 hr east of him. About 4 or 5 years ago, the Dain family, owners of a hardware and lumberyard business, in Peekskill, NY, celebrated their 150th yr anniversary of their business with a concert in front of their business on Water St. in Peekskill, NY. The main act was Pete Seeger, who is, not only a friend of the owners, but a regular customer as well. When Pete was done singing, he walked off the stage and into the lumberyard to unwind and I followed him there, got to shake his hand, and chatted with him for awhile, a most memorable meeting, indeed.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 01:48 PM

Duane, I am not surprised that Pete is close friends with the hardware store family. Pete built his own cabin in Beacon so I would bet he made more than a few trips to the lumberyard!   I had the pleasure of visiting Pete a few years ago for an interview, and the view from his cabin is spectacular. He is an amazing man.

By the way, concerning the copyright, it is very likely that they never got around to filling out the forms for the copyright until 1958!

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: GUEST,Margey
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 05:38 PM

Praise be to folk like Pete and Toshi. Beautiful, beautiful people. I wish there were more like them around. Our planet wouldn't be in the state it is.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Lady Hillary
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 10:36 PM

Wait a minute! Under current rules, doesn't the copyright date to first commercial publication, rather than when the paperwork was filed?
As of a few days ago, EBarnacle spoke with him about letting a friend use one of his songs for a labor film.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 11:45 PM

I corresponded with Mr. Seeger last year. His letters were short but clear and to the point. He signed them "Old Pete."

Elmer

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 20 Feb 06 - 03:32 AM

He was in London last year for Peggy Seeger's 70th birthday concert. I understand it was the first time he Mike and Peggy had played together in this country and jolly good it was too.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 09:50 PM

There's a website that keeps track
of which public figures are still with us & which ones aren't.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 09:52 PM

Who's Peggy Seeger?

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 09:59 PM

Pete's cabin is actually in Fishkill, a tiny little berg south of Beacon on the Hudson. He lives up the hill from a friend of mine. Last time I was there (a long time ago) there were Bermashave-like signs on the trees going up the hill toward the house. We were out walking around, and stopped to talk to her friend Toshi. After she left my friend said "Do you know who Pete Seeger is? This is his house" and we finished our walk.

SRS

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: PoppaGator
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 11:05 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Peggy, Mike, and Pete Seeger, all notable singers and intrumentalists, are siblings.

Another bit of Seeger-family trivia, something of which I'm much more certain: the incomparable Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten, composer of "Freight Train" and "Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie" and the greatest upside-down-and-backwards lefthanded fingerpicker of all time, was once employed as a domestic by the Seeger family. Had she been cleaning up anybody else's house, it's very likely that she would never have been "discovered," and only her family and friends would ever have witnessed her artistry. Amazing!

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 11:53 PM

Pete Seeger is the son of ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger and Constance Seeger, a concert violinist and teacher. Clicky 1

Peggy Seeger—and Mike (a member of the New Lost City Ramblers and a song collector and ethnomusicologist in his own right) Penny, and Barbara—are the children of Charles Seeger and his second wife, Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer of note. Clicky 2.

I've seen both Pete and Peggy in concert several times. In October of 1954, after a concert, Pete and about a dozen of us sat around on the floor of Carol Lee Waite's living room in Seattle's University District and swapped songs until about 4:00 a.m. I met Peggy at the 1960 Berkeley Folk Festival, then some years later, then met her again at another informal post-concert songfest at John and Sally Ashford's house in Seattle. I never had an opportunity to meet Mike.

Treasured memories!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: artbrooks
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 11:54 PM

GUEST, Peggy Seeger is Pete Seeger's half sister and was Ewan MacColl's wife.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: open mike
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 12:25 AM

yes he is alive, and he is still inspiring many!
not too long ago i saw him on the cover of
an environamentally friendly magazine
(mother earth news? home power?)
on the roof (his roof?) with
an array of solar panels..
what a guy! and Peggy's
most well known song
is probably the
one about the
woman who
wants to
be an
en-
gin-
eer.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 05:30 AM

Seattle? You saw Peggy Seeger in Seattle? Oh, I'm so jealous! (I'm close to Seattle)

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: EBarnacle
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 03:05 PM

Spoke to him again on Monday, just to chat about music and copyright.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 04:15 PM

Peggy Seeger in Seattle? Yeah, twice that I know of. The first time, in the early Eighties, she and Ewan MacColl came together. MacColl had recently had a heart attack and he was looking a bit peakéd, but his voice was as strong as usual. The second time was a few years later and Peggy came alone. Both times, the concerts were in the theater in MOHAI (the Museum of History and Industry), just south of the ship canal from the University of Washington. After the first concert, there wasn't a reception/party because MacColl was feeling tired, but after Peggy's concert later, she wanted to meet and hear some of the local singers, so we had a a get-together at John and Sally Ashford's, north of the U. of W.

One of the songs I sang was Gordon Bok's Herring Croon. She had never heard it before and was particularly taken with it, so I told her who wrote it and gave her all the info I had on it. Don't know if she ever learned and sang it.

GUEST, do I know you? Do you know me?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: Maid in Cyberspace
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 10:01 PM

No, I don't think so. You must have me mixed up with someone else. (This is the guest, I just joined) Sorry!
MIC

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still aliv
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 06 - 10:41 PM

How come Pete Seeger never recorded Farewell To Nova Scotia?

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: Celtaddict
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 03:04 AM

Last month Liam Clancy said he recently went to see Pete Seeger, more or less expecting to interview him in his bed, and instead Pete met him on the porch saying, "I found a great new song to chop wood to; listen to this!" and started chopping and singing.

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 14 - 08:38 AM

Now, sadly, Pete is dead--January 27, 2014. Rest in peace!

Barbara

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Jan 14 - 08:48 AM

Essentially the answer to the question is "Pete lives!"

Subject: RE: Forgive my ignorance-is Pete Seeger still alive
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 14 - 08:53 AM

He's alive in this house. RIP, Pete.

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Obit thread for Pete