Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?
Now 92 years old, the legendary folk singer recalls his pioneering days touring college campuses and discusses his favorite songs
- By Aviva Shen
- Smithsonian magazine, April 2012, Subscribe
In March of 1960, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, a campus radio station recorded a Pete Seeger concert. The eight reel-to-reel tapes made that night have now been recast into a 2-CD set, due out April 17 from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. In The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960, the first-ever complete release of one of his community concerts, Seeger performs early versions of songs that would, in just a few years, captivate the entire nation, including anti-war ballad “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Pete Seeger reflects on his legacy in a discussion with the magazine’s Aviva Shen.
Tell me about how you got started doing college concerts?
I think it was 1953. I was singing for $25 a day for a small private school in New York City. And I was keeping body and soul together with $25 a week; maybe I’d make another $25 on the weekend. But then some students from Oberlin asked me to come out. They said, we’ve got the basement of the art department and we think if we pass the hat, we’ll make $200, so you’ll be able to pay for the bus trip out. So I took a bus out to Cleveland and they picked me up, and sure enough we made more than that passing the hat. The next year I sang in the chapel for 500 people and I got $500. And the year after that, I sang in the auditorium, which had 1000 people and I got paid $1000. So that was when I started going from college to college to college.
Actually, this is probably the most important job I ever did in my life. I introduced the college concert field. Before that only John Jacob Niles had tried to sing college concerts and he’d dress up in a tuxedo, and things were very formal. I made things as informal as I could and went from one college to another and made a good living out of it.
How did the students respond?
Oh, they’d sing along with me.
Do you have any favorite memories of the tours?
I remember introducing a young black man, who’d made up a good song in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. He was only 16 years old, but he got an ovation from the crowd. He was working for Dr. King, organizing things in Chicago. Then in Wisconsin, I’ll never forget. We were in a big arena, which holds 5,000 or 6,000 people, and they handed me a letter from one of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and said, “Would you please read this letter? He can’t come, but he wrote us a letter and we think that you could read it.” I read this with all the drama I could. Then I said “SIGNED” and just after I said it, there was a huge clap of thunder overhead. There was a rainstorm, and everybody started laughing. Because it was as though God was signing the letter.
When did you start using music as a cause?
My father was in the Communist party way back in the late 1920s, early 30s. He thought music should be part of the struggle. Although he was a classical musician and wrote a column for the Daily Worker on the world of music, he also started with the help of a few friends a group called the Composer’s Collective. They said, “If there’s going to be a new society, there must be a new music.” At any rate, the proletariat was not interested in what they were producing. But before they disbanded, he thought they might put out a fun little booklet called “Rounds About the Very Rich.” We all know rounds like Three Blind Mice and Frère Jacques but he wrote a round: “Joy upon this earth, to live and see the day/When Rockefeller Senior shall up to me and say/Comrade can you spare a dime?” I know these well because I went on a trip to the Adirondacks with my brother and a friend of his and we sang these rounds of his together as we tromped through the Adirondacks. So I was very well aware that music could be part of the whole big struggle.
Do you think there is a lot of protest music happening now?
It’s all over the place. One magazine, Sing Out, is full of protest songs. It started 30, 40 years ago. It nearly went bankrupt in New York, but one of the volunteers took out of the New York office a truckload of paper, and he started Sing Out all over again. It’s never been a big seller, but it prints. My guess is that they’re all around the world, protest songs. Of course, I usually tell people if the human race is still here in a hundred years, one of the main things that will save us is the arts. I include the visual arts, the dancing arts as well as the musical arts, you might even include the cooking arts and the sports arts—Nelson Mandela got Africa together with rugby. And China used ping-pong.
So what do you think music has had the most impact on?
Plato supposedly said that it’s very dangerous to have the wrong kinds of music in the republic. There’s an Arab proverb that says “when the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet.” I think they’re both right. Of course Plato was an extremely conservative man. He thought that democracy was next to mob rule. He didn’t approve of democracy.
Do you have a favorite song that you’ve performed or written?
I keep reminding people that an editorial in rhyme is not a song. A good song makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think. Now, Woody Guthrie will have his 100th birthday this July 14. He wrote thousands of songs. Every day of his life he was jotting down verses on a little pad in his pocket and once his pad was full he’d get a new one. We were riding in a plane once to sing for some strikers in a union in Pittsburgh, and I was reading a newspaper or magazine. Lee Hays, the bass singer, fell asleep, but Woody was jotting down something on a piece of paper they had given him and he left the piece of paper in his seat when he got up to go. I went over to get it. He had verses about, what are these people below us thinking as they see this metal bird flying over their head, and what’s the pretty stewardess going to do tonight, where is she going to be. I said “Woody, you should know how I envy you being able to write songs like this.” He literally wrote verses every day of his life. And if he couldn’t think of a verse, he’d go on and write a new song. Quite often though, when he got his verse written, he’d think of some old melody that people knew which fit his verses.
Haven’t you done that?
There was an Irish lumberjack song, and I didn’t know I was using it or misusing it. But I was writing in an airplane, and the verse of this Irish lumberjack song, “Johnson says he’ll load more hay, says he’ll load ten times a day.” I was making up a verse: “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing.” Well, it probably will reach more people than any other song I’ve written. Marlene Dietrich sang it around the world. When her youthful glamour was gone, she had Burt Bacharach put together a small orchestra and for several years she sang around the world. If she was in an English-speaking country like Australia she’d sing it in English, but if she was in Buenos Aires or Tokyo, she’d sing the German verse. The German translation sings better than the English: “Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind.” When she went back to Germany, the old Nazis were out to run her down, “don’t listen to this woman, she sang for the soldiers fighting us!” But that very month her song was number one on the German Hit Parade.
How do you feel about your songs getting covered and interpreted by so many other people?
I’m very proud. It’s a great honor to have different people sing it—even if they sing them differently. Ani Difranco got a group of young men, I think all 10, 11, 12 years old called Roots of Music, and they have a brass band, trumpets and clarinets and so on down in New Orleans. They used a song, which I recorded; I didn’t write the song but I recorded it with my banjo and it became well known: “Which Side Are You On.” By the time they got done rearranging it, you wouldn’t think it had anything to do with my song, except the title.
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Comments (54)
I write and release lots of protest songs. The reason you think there aren't any is because the record companies/radio stations aren't interested in them. Listen to one of mine James Clay "I Wont Support Your Wars" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSifNyeMImw&feature=relmfu
Posted by James Clay on October 4,2012 | 07:42 PM
RUTH AND DON MACDOUGALL LIKE HIS MUSIC.
Posted by KIRK DOUGAL on July 10,2012 | 04:51 PM
Happy Birthday! I first experienced your talent and special way of connecting with your audience at Central School in Glencoe IL, probably in 1957 - Jeff Winkless (founder of the Banana Splits) and I attended the concert together - the last time was at Orchestra Hall in Chicago - my husband and I were in the last row of the balcony - the magic of that first experience was still as vibrant as the first time. "Pete" is still one of my favorite albums. Thanks so much for everything you so for this planet.
Posted by Sue Vardon on June 4,2012 | 11:02 PM
We sang some of the many of your songs that you taught us at tonights' rehearsal, including learning the courageous Norwegian version of Rainbow Race "Children of the Rainbow" More than teaching people music and songs, you have a natural way of getting people involved, through using singing together as a catalyst, to right wrongs, bring people together, continue a lifelong fight for peace and justice, and come to shared understanding and working together for a common cause, dissolving the bonds of fear and hatred,recognizing and appreciating the unique contribution that each person and culture has and using this understanding towards making the world a better place. We are dedicated to carrying this message and way of life on...Your birthday is a happy one for everyone on this planet!
Posted by Bracha Lieberman,Walkabout Clearwater Chorus on May 3,2012 | 12:09 AM
Summertime ! Beautifull, to hear your song from Oslo, going through the world to everyone. thanks.
Posted by henk snijders on April 28,2012 | 03:00 AM
It is wonderful that Pete is still with us and equally wonderful that his music is still available. It will outlive him and me. I listened to Pete on three different campuses from the late '50s to the '70's, and I always try to hear or see any program that includes his songs. Both his music and his message seem as relevant now as they did in 1959.
Posted by James Smith on April 20,2012 | 06:59 PM
Such an awesome interview
Priceless
Guess I have always been a flower-child
of Vietnam Era!
Posted by Patricia Jean Trussell-Mann on April 18,2012 | 06:46 PM
Happy Birthday from West Virginia! Pete Seeger's songs and his singing inspired me to learn how to play the guitar and banjo. He continues to inspire me with his commitment to the values and causes he championed in the 40's, 50's and 60's. Pete, thanks for all you've done to enrich our world and its music
Posted by Bob Kagler on April 16,2012 | 11:29 PM
Happy birthday, indeed! My first exposure to American folk music was as a schoolboy in England. The Weavers' "Tzena, Tzena!" and "Goodnight Irene" made the hit parade in London as in the U.S. of A. When we moved (back) to the U.S. and I began college, I soon started learning the guitar. When the word got around that Pete was going to appear at Columbia's International House, we afficionados would head over for the evening. I still remember the rollicking yelps and galloping banjo that punctuated Pete's "Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase." As life goes, I wound up in the U.S. Air Force, with most of my flying for air defense, first in the F-86L "Sabre" followed by ten years in the F-101B "Voodoo" — with a break for a tour in Viet Nam, flying the O-1E "Bird Dog" as a forward air controller in Kontum Province and over the (so-called) DMZ. While over there, I wrote "(Friendly) FAC and the Green Beret," a spoof that included some real events — and which gave me my "15 minutes of fame" years before I knew about it. Thirty-odd years later, I began writing more songs, mostly about my own experiences in that war, some funny, some tragic, most of them to traditional folk tunes. Like fellow-Viet vet singers, I have little use for most of the anti-war protesters, who (as history shows) gave "aid and comfort" to those we were fighting at the time and stiffened their resolve while undermining our own. The war ended badly, with 2 million more Asians killed throughout Southeast Asia in the aftermath . . . and U.S. forces constrained from providing any support to our once-allies. Still, while "politics" differ with time and circumstance, great songs endure — and Pete certainly made his share. He's one of those who inspire admiration the world over, and I remain a fan of his skill and creativity.
Posted by Jonathan Myer on April 13,2012 | 06:03 AM
Thanks Pete Seeger from Japan Downtown Tokyo Kiyohide
Posted by Kiyohide Kunizaki on April 12,2012 | 09:08 PM
The best thing I can say about Pete Seeger is that it is all his fault that I have spent the last fifty years of my life fighting for peace, love, justice and the equality and human rights of all who make up humanity. Pete Seeger inspired so many of us to fight the good fight.
Posted by Suzan Cooke on April 12,2012 | 01:47 PM
We - my children and me - listen to Mr. Seeger's wonderful music all the time. It's wonderful to see how the fussing and chattering stops with the opening strums of Clap your Hands or Alligator, Hedgehog. The songs have a simple but magical quality. Happy happy birthday!
Posted by Nicole Milman on April 10,2012 | 10:26 PM
Pete has inspired me for many years. I have sung many of his songs for myself and others over the past 40 years. I reckon I will until I'm gone. Many happy days to come, Pete!
Posted by steve brandlein on April 9,2012 | 04:49 PM
I grew up at the end of the Sixties. I became a fan of Pete Seeger's music and have been ever since. PBS did a special on your life not too long ago. I watched it with great interest. It is great toknow that you are still going! Happy Birthday!
Posted by Elizabeth Starr on April 9,2012 | 04:06 PM
Here's another one for you, Pete. http://soundcloud.com/bill-white-5/5-seconds-to-midnight
Posted by Bill White on April 9,2012 | 12:27 PM
In June 1950 we went down a lot of steps to the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village and heard the Weavers sing "Good Night Irene," Tsena Tsena," and more. After returning from a summer European hostel trip, we were mazed at the success of what we heard in that basement aand followed them until now.
Posted by Ester & Hanoch Zeitlin on April 9,2012 | 09:07 AM
I fell in love with Pete, his glorious music, his wonderful spirit when I came from 'the old country' in 1960. His songs are as fresh as ever! Happy Birthday, Pete, and many more!!
Posted by Maria Kollas on April 8,2012 | 11:55 PM
My uncle John Rody, our family friend Clarence Kailin,and Pete were in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fighting Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. From my earliest childhood days in the 50s, I was surrounded by Pete's music and stories about him. As I grew up through the Vietnam era, we would all sing Pete's songs. Even now, singing along with Pete's early recordings with the Weavers and as a soloist gives me a sense of hope and joy that's hard to find anywhere else. Thank you Pete!
Posted by Jennifer Ondrejka on April 8,2012 | 07:26 PM
Before my late husband passed last January, he burned CD's of all your work he had collected over the years, music, photos and articles, and made little Pete Seeger libraries for each of his grandchildren. GO PEACE PRIZE for PETE! And Happy Birthday from Colorado.
Posted by Terry Mitchell on April 8,2012 | 11:45 AM
Congratulations from Sweden. We heard you all the way over the ocean. The strong message from your songs couldnt be misstaken. We agree in hearts and minds and we send you all our love. Have a nice day.
Posted by Lisbeth Lindgren on April 8,2012 | 11:30 AM
Happy Birthday Pete! You've always been a favorite of ours since way back in the sixties when we used to watch you on our first TV. We always split one of those BIG Hershey bars - they were bigger then than they are now and we called them Pete Bars. There were seven of us and there was enough for all. I'm hanging on at 81 and I'm glad you are too. Cheers!
Posted by Hildy Schultz on April 7,2012 | 01:28 AM
I grew up on Pete Seeger recordings in the 1940s and 50s, attended his concerts in Palo Alto, at Stanford, and Marin County, and then heard him perform often at Oberlin College when I was a student there in the 1960s. He is a part of my life, my inspiration, and my hero. He will life forever!
Posted by Eric A Seitz on April 7,2012 | 06:20 PM
I remember Pete Seeger when a student at Manumit School near Pawling, NY back in the forties and still hum "There was a Union Maid" today. His brother John was one of our teachers and like Peete was a terrific guy to be acquinted with as a fifteen year old. Wish you a very happy birthday and many more. You and your music are great.
Posted by John Elkan on April 7,2012 | 05:03 PM
Sing Out! magazine still doesn't seem to be as "full of protest songs" as it was when Irwin Silber edited the magazine in the 1950s and early 1960s or like Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen's Broadside magazine was during the 1960s. Perhaps Smithsonian Magazine should also consider interviewing younger protest folk songwriters like David Rovics and some of the protest folk songwriters who (like Woody Guthrie) tended to get excluded from the U.S. corporate media conglomerate and npr/pbs airwaves for many more years than Pete was excluded during most of their lives (like some of the People's Music Network protest folk songwriters, for example)?
Posted by protestfolk on April 7,2012 | 12:30 PM
Here's one for you Pete. http://youtu.be/UDVlGUHyyQ8
Posted by Eric Meiers on April 6,2012 | 11:13 PM
On Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1983, Pete was participating in a candlelight vigil at the Chautauqua Institution in New York after a concert with Arlo Guthrie. Pete was surrounded by many fans, but he saw me in the crowd because I was wearing a tee shirt from the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. He said he really liked my shirt and what it stood for. I asked him if he would like to have it. He said yes, but only if I would take his shirt in exchange. So, we swapped shirts that night. Live long and keep singing, Pete.
Posted by Alan Frost on April 6,2012 | 09:28 PM
What today Americans now know as labor songs, protest songs and, more recently, world music, was in large part introduced, especially from the 1950s to the 1990s, by Pete Seeger. In the early 1940s with the Almanac singers, in the late 1940's and 1950s, with the Weavers, then on his own in the 1950s and 1960s,through childrens' concerts, concerts in African American churches and union halls in cities like Detroit where I grew up, especially through the difficult McCarthyism period when Pete was blacklisted, this American treasure has relentlessly introduced us to the folk music of the world, to the music of our own American cultures, and most generously, to great musicians who might not otherwise have had the opportunity to be discovered. Pete deserves recognition by the huge number of people whose lives he has enriched, and for the community of activism for social change he has helped to build, through his music.
Posted by David J. Rosen on April 6,2012 | 07:50 PM
In the early 50s Pete Seeger visited my college (Allegheny College in Meadville, PA), invited by my friend Bill Crofut for an evening "Hootenanny". We were a small group, about 15 students, just sitting around on the grass and singing. I'll never forget it.
Posted by Marilyn Hesse on April 6,2012 | 06:07 PM
Listening to Pete Seeger In concert and at co-ops at Oberlin from '54-'58, and in recordings made an indelible impression on my life and how I live it. One recording I don't have is "Passing Through."
Posted by David Robinson on April 6,2012 | 02:28 PM
Dear Pete Seeger, You have been an inspiration to me since my early adolescence when I heard recordings by The Weavers. Then a few years ago you came to give a concert at the high school here in Brattleboro, Vermont -- an amazing occasion! Thank you, thank you, for all you and your music have done and continue to do for more people than you can even imagine...and a heartfelt Happy Birthday to you!
Posted by Maggie Cassidy on April 6,2012 | 12:40 PM
My Mother was a Democrat, my Father a Republican. When I attended the University of Illinois, I heard your music and learned to think outside the box. Happy Birthday to you...
Posted by Wilma Wilson on April 6,2012 | 11:05 AM
Happy Birthday Mr. Seeger. Your music still brings tears to my eyes and I too wonder where have all the flowers have gone.
Posted by Mary McDonald on April 6,2012 | 07:55 AM
Pete, I was present at a demonstration at Shoreham, Long Island to stop a nuclear plant from being built. You were there to support us. I'll never forget it. We did stop this insane idea from being built. Thank you! Happy birthday.
Posted by Alice Ashman on April 6,2012 | 07:47 AM
Happy Birthday from a little girl who once was chosen to sit on your lap when you were visiting the college in Plattsburg, NY in the mid 1950's. Congratulations and good luck on getting that Nobel Prize!
Posted by Nancy Fisher on April 6,2012 | 07:37 AM
1966--the day following UNH's first peace march, Pete Seeger sang before a packed auditorium, dedicating his show to those first thirteen marchers. His message added more than a few of us to the next day's march and we haven't looked back. He shuns the title of "hero," but he is one anyway. A life supremely well-lived.
Posted by Ted Whittemore on April 6,2012 | 06:57 AM
Pete Seeger is a National Treasure!
Posted by Mike Rollo on April 6,2012 | 06:21 AM
Soundtrack to our lives, and the influences that made a difference to the world. Thanks Pete - how can we ever say that enough? Your songs will last down the generations I am certain. Go peacefully - knowing you have made a difference. And we all hope to see you there past the pearly gates.
Posted by Mary on April 6,2012 | 04:00 AM
1958 - The Kingston Trio - the folk revival. Fortunately, a college classmate redirected me to the Weavers, leading to my appreciation of Pete Seeger. My life was never the same thereafter. I learned to play the guitar, banjo and mandolin, in that order, and committed to memory more than 150 folk songs, many of protest, thanks to Pete's influence. Living in NY, I was privileged to see, and hear, him several times during the turbulent 60's. He never failed to inspire me. While at Virginia Tech, in 1960, I put together a band that performed "Strontium 90," a song about radioactive fallout from nuclear testing that I learned from "Sing Out," which I subscribed to for many years during that period. I believe that Pete Seeger had an incredible influence on the lives of countless Americans, for decades. I once sat at a table in a Greenwich Village Coffee House, no more than 10 feet from Pete, wanting desperately to speak to him, and finding nothing compelling to say. Sigh. Happy Birthday, Pete, I love you and everything you've done.
Posted by Ed Kingsley on April 5,2012 | 02:57 AM
Growing up in the South (in the Carolinas), I struggled with the question "which side are you on?" beginning in first grade, which, of course, I attended in a White segregated school in the 1950s. I walked to school with Blacks; then we parted company, to go our separate ways. I knew there was something wrong with that picture. Later, I struggled with union issues. When I could vote, I began to question our electoral process--how on earth could some of our Presidents ever get elected. Through it all, I could count on you, Pete. You are a beacon, and we are so lucky to have you. You are willing to share your enormous talent. I attended your concerts whenever I could (Berkeley, on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County). Just a couple of years ago in San Francisco, I took my two oldest grandchildren to hear you perform. They HAD to see the one and only Pete Seeger. Now I carry around your songs in my pocket (on my mobile phone), and if my 3-year-old granddaughter is cranky, I can change her mood in a moment with "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly...." Thank you, Pete! Happy 93rd Birthday on May 3.
Posted by Beverly Wright Coleman on April 5,2012 | 01:20 AM
My (then) fiancé and I heard Pete Seeger & Woody Guthrie sing at the St. John Tyrell tent in Lambertville, NJ. This would have been during the summer of either 1953 or 1954.
This is still the most memorable concert I've ever attended. I ultimately became a teacher, and like Pete, I don't want to retire. I teach a full load at Doane-Lincoln College in Lincoln, Nebraska and have recently celebrated my 79th birthday.
I use his music as well as Woody's music in my course titled: The Arts in Times of War & Protest. I wrote this course in response to the Iraq war, which I was hard pressed to understand or accept.
I thank you, Pete, and your great friend, Woody, for the rich and ever important body of work that I now introduce to my 21st century students. Bless you,
Kit Voorhees
Posted by Kit Voorhees on April 5,2012 | 09:30 PM
Pete Seeger was a major inspiration in my younger days and remains just as awesome now. I second the nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize for him. Thank you, Pete, for so much to so many.
Posted by Dawn Hamilton on April 5,2012 | 07:41 PM
I still have the original Weavers album that I bought in the sixties. Between Pete Seeger and the HUAC I was politicized and awakened. Thank you, Mr. Seeger!
Posted by Judidth Maier on April 5,2012 | 06:37 PM
My life was changed for the better by the performances of Pete & Arlo, together and individually. Kinda my moral compass, sometimes -- What would Pete & Arlo do?
Posted by Cliff McCarthy on April 5,2012 | 06:21 PM
Pete's concert at Franklin & Marshall College in 1961-62 utterly changed my life--and gave it a hint of meaning. I had listened to recordings of him since the Weavers' 78 rpm "Tzena" record, back around 1951, but the live concert was simply astonishing. I can still hear every song in my head and the musicians he brought with him, too--Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee and Hobart Smith. But the most astonishing part was that Pete immediately had the whole audience singing along with him in four part harmony. Jaded, post-Beat college students, many of them dutiful pre-med majors, all transformed, all singing along with Pete and loving it. It was the best musical experience I've ever had. Thanks, Pete, for everything!
Posted by Don Maxwell on April 5,2012 | 05:37 PM
I was young and ignorant. I let the cause go by. Thank you Pete Seeger, for fighting the good fight for me. If I had it to do over again, I would be there. You were right. I was self-centered. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And happy birthday. (And still, I love your music.)
Posted by Marcia Chesnicka on April 5,2012 | 04:34 PM
Mr Seeger sent me a postcard almost 24 years ago when my daughter was ill. I still have it and my daughter. She shocked her college professor when she knew the words to Keep you eye on the prize. Her license plate is IONPRZ. Your music got me through a very hard time and helped me establish a relationship with my daughter I am still amazed with. Happy Birthday
Posted by Margaret Brewer on April 5,2012 | 04:12 PM
Pete Seeger embodies the American spirit that will prevail over all the "isms", past present and future. I first heard him in person at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. His long-necked banjo and 12-string guitar, plus the lyrics of his songs, motivated thousands that day to fight injustice anywhere. So, let's hear it from the rooftops: "Nobel Prize for Pete Seeger!"
Posted by B. J. Roberts on April 5,2012 | 03:10 PM
Pete Seeger has been near and dear to my heart from day one of my knowledge of his existence--1970? I was a skinny naive and impressionable child of 15 soon to be matured to a like-age of 35 in the space of months. Indeed, where have all the flowers gone?
Posted by Kat Wynne-Roberts on April 5,2012 | 02:39 PM
I learned "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" as a child in the sixties and I've always loved it. In my late teens I finally found the original Russian folksong on which it was based. I have to admit I like Pete's version better!
Posted by Diana Gainer on April 5,2012 | 02:24 PM
Happy Birthday Pete!!! Your music is always an inspiration.
Posted by Elizabeth R Hallett on April 5,2012 | 11:52 AM
My family and friends have had Pete Seeger and his music with us since electricity was invented. Hard to know which was better - the lights or Pete's stuff. I trust he's looking at the new season of green trees and warm sunlight coming 'round again. Maybe these days he can hang around see it from day to day instead of sitting in some cramped airplane, zooming from town to town. Glad to see Smithsonian has a story about Pete and a new issue of music release. Most of the time I think of long gone folks and animals in the Smithsonian. It's good to see a living force there - one who carried a hell of a lot of folks forward and with pleasure in life. When I think of a tune or concert by Pete, nothing seems to be better from all the days. Indeed, wasn't that a time!
Posted by John Bradford on April 1,2012 | 07:32 PM
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR PETE SEEGER!!
Posted by Daria Joseph on March 30,2012 | 12:02 AM
My art mentor, spiritual mother, equal rights and environmental activist claimed "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" as her favorite song. Her name was Odie McReynolds and she was a Civil Rights activist back in the fifties.
Posted by gloria lovel brewster on March 27,2012 | 11:58 AM