Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94

New York Times ^ | January 28, 2014 | John Pareles

[deks]

Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.

Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

In his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall Overcome,” which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.

Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

[Covenantor]

While Ol' Pete made "Little Houses" popular it was Malvina Reynolds that penned it. Another progressive/socialist/communist who was a red diaper baby, born to San Francisco socialists prior to the Russian Revolution and rise of communism.

"Little Houses" specifically attacked the post WWII housing boom that benefited veterans and blue collar workers allowing them to become first time property owners on a scale unimagined before. The "affordable housing" the left prattles on about.

"Little houses made of ticky tack,
little houses all the same."

G.I. Loans and the Levittown model, using war time mass production techniques to pre-fabricate as many components as possible made the workers paradise purported dream come true for a whole army of working renters.

How odd that Seeger, and several generations of hard core compassionate commies and fellow travelers took up Reynolds ditty as a belittling battle song. Meanwhile in mainland Red China Mao's subjects were all clad in "ticky tack uniforms, uniforms all the same".

Old Pete disavowed Stalin, too late for the millions that suffered and died in the gulags, yet somehow remained blind to the even greater terror of the Great Helmsman, whose Great Leap forward became the Great Famine.

Burn in hell Seeger along with the rest of your fellow traveler troubadours that piped generations of the well intended but ill informed on to the road to perdition.

[miss marmelstein]

Great post, Cov! I always forget that he didn’t write that song. The mockery of the Levittown houses was incredible. Oddly enough, if you visit one today you would never know that it came out of a development. People added and subtracted to the houses, painted them wonderful colors and the gardens have all sprung up as well as the trees.

[AbolishCSEU]

Not to worry. He’ll be voting for Shillary in 2016—SEVERAL times!

[dennisw]

“Little Boxes” is a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963.

The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It refers to suburban tract housing as “little boxes” of different colors “all made out of ticky-tacky”, and which “all look just the same.” “Ticky-tacky” is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time.[1]

wikipedia

[Telepathic Intruder]

It is in fact a mostly buried truth that Hitler had many admirers among the American left prior to WWII. He was a socialist, after all.

[Covenantor]

Yeah? What’s your point?

[dennisw]

I forgot?

[a fool in paradise]

The “antiwar” movements in this country tended to be started by Communists protecting the intetests of Mother Russia.

They also led the protests against Vietnam and Bush’s Iraq war.

[Covenantor]

The mockery is the old standard Lenin/alinsky tactic.

Fear of that mockery lead the children of the wealthy to don laborers blue shirts and denims whilst parading around the East Village to show “solidarity” with the underclass.

Aside from the Polish Workers, who brilliantly stole that term from the Marxist-Leninist overlords, who the hell uses that term but the addled left?

[Covenantor]

LOL!

Stay warm, stay safe.

[dfwgator]

In 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Even Commies can quote Scripture.

[rlmorel]

When I hear someone from an Eastern Block country emotionally rail about communism and get angry that we have people in this country who even CONSIDER that it might not be bad...I listen very closely to them.

One has only to read “The Gulag Archipelago” to know all you need to know about communism, never mind the millions and millions of people murdered in its name.

Thank you for that recommendation...not that I need to read it, it is like preaching to the choir, but...I am certainly going to check it out.

[dfwgator]

Here’s the perfect song to answer Pete Seeger.

Oingo Boingo-Capitalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqXAW2snGMI

[rlmorel]

Hitler certainly had many admirers and supporters amongst American communists (and the left)especially after the non-aggression treaty was signed. Communists were the most ardent isolationists trying to keep America out of the war, but that all changed in 1941, when overnight, they became the most vociferous interventionalists.

[rlmorel]

I’ll check that out tonight, thanks for the link!

[Telepathic Intruder]

I’ll tell you something interesting about that book. It wasn’t just the gulags in the Soviet Union. There were several methods of getting rid of kulaks (those deemed disloyal to the party; land-owners and entrepeneurs). Lenin started the practice of deportation. That doesn’t sound so bad until you realize where they were deported to: the Siberian wilderness, to die of starvation, disease, or the elements. Whole towns were placed under siege and arrested, tortured, etc, for refusing to do forced labor. The Chekas were filled with cocaine addicts just to desensitize them to the attrocities they were committing. Stalin began collecting food from farmers, not even allowing them seed for the next crop season. When they moved to the nearest towns to beg for food, Stalin had them forced back to their farms again to starve to death. And then there’s the Nomadic population of Russia which served no use whatsoever to an all-controlling communist regime, so they were systematically wiped out. It just goes on and on.

The ironic thing is that Lenin and Stalin probably thought they were making the world a better place.

[Telepathic Intruder]

I assume that’s because Hitler betrayed them in a sense by attacking the Soviet Union.

[Revolting cat!]

Communist when Stalin was slaughtering millions. Communist until sometime early in the 21st century, 100 million dead later. One despicable human being.

[Billthedrill]

De mortuis nil nisi bonum. I just wish there wasn't such a long line to relieve myself on his grave.

[beelzepug]

I’ve never read “The Gulag Archipelago” but I did read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1967 while I was in Vietnam. Talk about a poor selection. I was depressed enough just being where I was; I sure didn’t need that book. Still, it was a worthwhile read and it made me appreciate all the more what I came home to.

What with all the changes to my country in the ensuing 47 years, I don’t what I would think about what I’d be coming back to today.