Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger.
If you’re in New York City today, you can swing by Madison Square Garden and help celebrate his 90th birthday.
Pete Seeger has been presence in my life since childhood with his records, and I still recall one marvelous autumn day when we got to meet him and listen to him sing at South Street Seaport (I think I remember a pier covered with pumpkins, and while I don’t remember the sloop Clearwater think it must have been there as well), well before it was fixed up and turned into a “destination”. We were also fortunate to live down the street from Pete Seeger’s old friend, Brother Kirk (the Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, who died in 1987), who would sit on the sidewalk with his guitar and give impromptu sidewalk concerts. Together the friends collaborated on a 1974 children’s album, “Pete Seeger & Brother Kirk Visit Sesame Street”.
As fascinating as Pete Seeger’s life story and career is his family. He is the son the musicologist and composer of Charles Seeger and violinist Constance Edson; his stepmother was the noted composer Ruth Crawford Seeger; his uncle Alan Seeger was the celebrated poet killed in World War I; his eldest brother Charles was a pioneering radio astronomer; his brother John, a longtime teacher at New York’s Dalton School also founded Camp Killoleet in the Adirondacks; his half-sister is the singer Peggy Seeger; his half-brother is singer Mike Seeger.
No childhood should be complete without Pete Seeger — for the music he has sung and written, his family’s place in the history of American music, for his sense of history, and his environmental and political activism. You can listen to his music and listen to songs about America as it was, and America — and the world — as it should be. Here’s a list, not nearly complete or comprehensive, of some of our favorite Pete Seeger records, books, and more.
Music especially for children:
“Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children”
“American Folk, Game and Activity Songs”
“Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big)”
Pete Seeger’s “Children’s Concert at Town Hall”
Music for the entire family:
“American Favorite Ballads”, on five CDs
“Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs”
“If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle”
“Love Songs for Friends and Foes”
“Sing Out!: Hootenanny with Pete Seeger and the Hooteneers”
“Traditional Christmas Carols”
Pete Seeger/The Weavers 3 CD box set
A Pete Seeger discography at Smithsonian Folkways. By the way, SF has a new publication, “Folkways Magazine”, just debuted with the Spring 2009 issue, and the main article is “Pete Seeger: Standing Tall”
A Pete Seeger discography and biography at Appleseed Records
Books (many of which are children’s picture books based on his songs):
Abiyoyo with accompanying CD; and Abiyoyo Returns
Turn! Turn! Turn! with accompanying CD
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Musical Autobiography
Pete Seeger’s Storytelling Book
His memoirs, Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer’s Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies
The biography How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger by David King Dunaway, the companion volume to the radio series produced by Dunaway (see below)
Audio and Video:
PBS’s American Masters episode: “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”; now available on DVD
How Can I Keep from Singing?, the three-part radio series produced by David King Dunaway
“To Hear Your Banjo Play” (1947)
“How to Play the 5-String Banjo” DVD, Davy’s favorite; there’s also an accompanying book (not on film, but also instructive and instructional is Pete Seeger’s “The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide”)
At NPR; and today’s NPR appreciation, “Pete Seeger At 90” by Lynn Neary and Tom Cole. At the latter link, you’ll find a little orange box on the left with The Pete Seeger Mix, a “five-hour mix of Pete Seeger classics and covers” put together by NPR Music partner Folk Alley
Pete Seeger at the pre-inaugural concert for Barack Obama
Websites:
Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, where Pete Seeger worked as an assistant in 1940
Clearwater, the organization Pete Seeger established in 1969 to preserve and protect the Hudson River
Bits and bobs:
Studs Terkel’s 2005 appreciation, in The Nation, of Pete Seeger’s 86th birthday
The New Yorker‘s 2006 profile, “The Protest Singer”, by Alec Wilkinson, recently released in hardcover
Pete Seeger’s biography at the Kennedy Center, where he was a Kennedy Center honor recipient in 1994
Filed under: American history, Art & Culture, Books, Celebrations, Children's Books, Civics, Commemorations, Education, History, Knowledge & Wisdom, Movies, Music, Onward & Upward, Raising Children, World history
There were pumpkins and Pete and you and your sister on the South Street pier, and somewhere there is a photograph to prove it that may turn up one day.
I was flicking around on the TV the other night, and lo and behold they had, on one of those PBS fund drives, a Celebrate Pete show on. He was playing with his grandson (I think) and one of our old loves: Arlo Guthrie. I sat and watched and I think there might have been tears even, it was so sweet and moving. Whadda guy.
We’ve got a burned copy of “Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big).” I like it as much as my toddler son does!
I must admit to jealousy that you’ve met Pete Seeger. Happy belated birthday to a wonderful man.