Speechless

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?smid=gp-nytimes&_r=0


-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

RIP

Risking died last year, so that could have stuck in your brain.

And there was the big concert in 2009, which you might have assumed was a memorial.

>And there was the big concert in 2009, which you might have
>assumed was a memorial.

There hasn't been a bigger influence on me musically; there may not have been a bigger influence on me philosophically. I wrote my college entrance essay on the guy. There was never a point in my life where his music wasn't a part of it, including before I was born.

I've been meaning to write Pete a letter for years to say all that and more, and especially thanking him for being himself. I'll always regret not doing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsPzMU66N00

Guthrie/Seeger clans together. Chills.

a year or so before that the Philadelphia Folk Festival hosted a Seeger Family Concert... I only got to see about half of it (which is what turned me off from volunteering there ever again) but it was great, and Pete only lad a handful of songs. Penny, Mike and Peggy were all there with their kids as well.


*edit* LOC has the entire Family Concert up for streaming! http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Seegersymposium/concertlog.html

but yeah, a lot of the things I've looked at this morning have had me close to tears. That NYT article TBF linked up above... I knew all that stuff already, but it is amazing to see everything he did.


Also recommended is the PBS American Masters program on him from a few years back (The Power of Song).

First concert I ever was a Pete Seger (and Arlo Guthrie) concert.

I want to say around 1988... whole family went of course (except my little sister, who was into Rick Astley or some shit). Valley Forge Music Fair, actually - don't know if that was still around during your Philadelphia tie or if you would have made it there, but it was a nice little venue in the round. Perfect place for that show, certainly.

I also found out somehow about a 3-day workshop Pete was doing at a neighboring district's high school my senior year, so that was 1989. I got permission from the school (mine and the host school) to get out of class for the three days and go hear him talk about stuff. It was great, and since I didn't have to run back to class after the talks like the kids who weren't there by choice, I got to talk to him a bit afterward.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

About two years ago, Sing Out! Magazine, my employer, hit a true rough patch financially. Staff was reduced dramatically, and the possibility of publishing again was unlikely. I had suddenly found myself at the helm of the publication, now as the 60+ year old magazine's managing editor, at age 24.

I was scared shitless, and I assumed my days at the magazine were numbered. As with all magazines, ad revenue was down, sales were down, and to add insult to injury, my predecessor wasn't around to show me the ropes of managing the publication.

About two weeks into this process, my office phone rang with the ID blocked, I picked up, hoping it wasn't another collections agency.

"Hello, this is Pete Seeger. I had called a few weeks ago regarding purchasing several copies of my book Where Have All The Flowers Gone."

I was scared shitless. Two weeks in my position, and I was speaking to Pete Seeger, who founded People's Songs in 1947, which went on to become Sing Out! in 1950, a publication that he held in such high regard, he could have called it one of his own children.

After a few awkward back and forths and meaningless smalltalk, we bonded over our mutual back pain problems. He had been suffering from a slipped disk -- years of chopping wood every day will do that --, I had screwed up my hip a few years before which resulted in chronic lower back pain.

Now, after 10 minutes of discussion I figured I'd muster up the courage to ask him for advice. I was green to this game, and who could possibly be better to ask than Pete, who had brought Sing Out! from the brink of extinction multiple times before. I asked:

"Pete, we're having some troubles here. Do you have any words of advice, or what I should do?"

Pete -- essentially the Gandalf the White of folk music and American culture, who had began alongside Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Alan Lomax, who had popularized "We Shall Overcome," who had a personal relationship with Martin Luther King Jr., who had spoken to people who knew Abraham Lincoln, and who had sung at Barack Obama's Inauguration -- this legendary man, he had this advice to give me:

"Keep drinking water, there's nothing better for you."

Wow.

It took me a whole year to realize that he thought we were still talking about back pains, not life in general. But I still hold that advice near-and-dear.

thanks for sharing that!

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

as a way of talking shit when he was about to beat me in basketball or anything else.

my grandmother's name was Irene, so the song got some play in our house as well for different reasons.

On another note, my pop used to play the tenor guitar (poorly) but some of my best childhood memories are him singing old Weavers songs to us kids... Empty Pocket Blues and Drill Ye Tarriers stand out the most in my memory.

Not one of my favorite songs on the album though, I like the original much better.

wow. RIP to a real advocate of civil rights and labor.

he just adapted it, changed a few words, and taught it to a bunch of people. It's the way folk music works.

He still deserves the credit for shaping and disseminating it and for the incredible respect and selflessness with which he handled the copyright issue. Pete had a sense of honor that was unheard of in the music industry (even the folk music industry) at the time, or at any time.

http://www.folkways.si.edu/newsletter/2014_january_pete_seeger.html

and a tip of the cap to Lonesome-D and all the other Lessonheads who've flown the flag for their non-hip hop musical interests; you cats have expanded my outlook, thank you.