MEMORIES OF PETE SEEGER
The last three postcards from Pete Seeger were signed ‘Old Pete’, though the handwriting was quite graceful and still verging on miniscule as in his first letter in 1961. After one of his concerts, back then, I’d handed him a folk music periodical I was publishing and he’d responded. “They look good, but try to include as many points of view as you can, or else you’ll just have a house organ”. These words came from a man who, at that very moment, was facing prison for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee and demanding the right to speak his own views.
But then, Pete’s having the guts to be a man of his principles had long made him a hero to so many. I still own a 78 rpm recording by his group the Weavers from 1950. One side is Banks of Marble with the ever relevant chorus “Then we’d own those banks of marble/with a guard at every door/and we’d share those vaults of silver/that we have sweated for”. In the wake of Joe McCarthy, Pete was blacklisted for a long time in the “land of the free,” where he lived, for such views. No wonder, years later, he’d remark, “I never dreamed I’d receive a Kennedy Centre Award”.
The flip side of Banks of Marble was The Hammer Song, whose inspirational lyrics were sung at the March on Washington by Peter, Paul and Mary. If Pete was surely the most influential folk singer of his time, he was also a very passionate activist against segregation, pollution, the Vietnam War, exploitation of workers, racism, sexism, even cultural complacency. “Judge a nation by the number of people who can make music themselves,” he said.
A dozen years ago, in a lengthy interview with Pete, I confirmed that, inside this icon we’d loved for years, was a private and feeling man. “I’m normally a fairly cool person who doesn’t get emotionally involved,” he said, “but sometimes with a song that I’ve done numerous times, I’m surprised to find myself choking up.” There was a reason for his studied folksiness too, I found: “I prefer not to sound like an academic with words that are too involved. I’d rather talk the same words that rank and file people talk.”
The master mover of audiences turned out to be an inward guy who explained, “I have been socially backward most of my life and could easily retreat into books. I suppose that’s a contradiction.” He was married to Toshi for almost seventy years when she recently died and he acknowledged that, without her, the Pete Seeger we knew couldn’t have happened. He also told me, “People feel truths even if you can’t prove them, like it’s good to look into someone’s eyes and be in love.”
We sometimes forget how innovative, imaginative, self-demanding and technically impressive a musician Pete Seeger was. He was dedicated to folk tradition and remembered: “If somebody could have taught me to sing like Leadbelly, I’d have studied with them, but they all wanted me to sing bel canto”. About the performer’s responsibility, he felt “the audience needs to be shown something and it’s rather trivial just to demonstrate how original you are”.
Banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck once told me that the next thing he bought after his instrument was the Seeger classic manual “How to Play the Five String Banjo”. It made the instrument immensely popular and a delighted Pete recalled “I needed some words to show someone what to do, so I invented to terms ‘pulling off’ and ‘hammering on’ and even rock musicians now use these terms.”
Singing along with Pete meant that we’d keep folk music going after his concert and that we’d take on issues addressed in many of them. The man who built his own house by hand wouldn’t accept that “the USA is a nation of couch potatoes in many ways and our main exercise is transferring our asses from one seat to another.” He still voiced optimism, albeit guarded, about his hope for humanity’s survival, because he wanted to get people involved. When I once sent him my bleak book of poems on human cruelty to animals, he sent me his own latest book inscribed “with admiration” but also a brief note saying that we shouldn’t forget to have some Dr. Seuss in our lives.
Recently, on discovering that an elevator operator was Spanish, I started singing Si Me Quieres Escribir, from the Spanish Civil War, and he joined in right up to the fifth floor. But that’s the thing about Pete Seeger songs: they’re from everywhere and about everything and they fit right back into our lives. When our governments vindictively persecute the average worker or when financial institutions screw the rest of society, we have a relevant song to sing because Pete Seeger taught it to us, in three-part harmony, no less.
And, after all these years, I still make a lousy attempt to frail my five-string as well as Pete on Sally Ann because, as he proved with his life and his music, “you don’t give up, you keep on going”.
James Strecker of Hamilton is a writer, poet, consultant in human development and in creativity, and author or editor of many books