For Pete's Sake: Another Legend Lost

Bob Giusti

I don't know about you, but even though Pete Seeger was a ripe 94 years old when he passed suddenly yesterday, I was still in shock to hear the news. Like his songs, an illogical part of me expected him to live through my own lifetime.

Traveling the same circuit as his peer Woody Guthrie, Seeger wrote the kind of songs that seem bigger than the humbled lanky frame that conjured them. These songs; like the anthem If I Had a Hammer to the lilting Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and the adaptation of the folk classic Turn Turn Turn (from a passage in the Book of Ecclesiastes) all seem to have been graciously given as a gift to the nation.

As gentle as he will be remembered, Seeger was a fighter against injustice and intolerant of inequality. The only time he probably ever lost his cool in public though was the infamous incident at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan decided to debut his electric ensemble. When some loud feedback screeched through the calm Summer's day, a reportedly enraged Seeger threatened to severe the power lines with an ax. As much as I'm a Dylan fan, I can see how there was a betrayal implied; a throwing back the torch the younger (then folk phenom) had just been given the year before. In the end the ax story was debunked and it was obvious that Seeger was just upset that he could not hear the lyrics.

The Pete Seeger I choose to remember starts with the late 1940's folk group The Weavers (whose collected recordings were a cornucopia of covers for the performers of the famous Greenwich Village folk revival in the early 60's) and then evolves to the champion for civil rights as he finally emerges to take his rightful throne as the grandfather of the modern folk movement. Along the way he went from selling millions of records (with the Weavers) only to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era and essentially banned from all mainstream media.

Seeger, (with the event of his passing) ironically now throws the torch back at Dylan (who we all know, will scoff at even the suggestion of it). And once again we are left with just a memorial to another musical treasure. It's refreshing to see new generations carrying on the folk traditions as they discover and revise standards that blend with their own new compositions. Fortunately Mr. Seeger leaves behind a great pathway for any eager student willing to travel through his literally 100's of recordings. We could use some activist singer/songwriters in a time where the majority of us are suffering from a new economic inequality unseen since the dust bowl days and the great depression. We need the voice of Seeger to rally us through the new repression.

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