Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919), almost universally known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer, political activist, and author. As a member of the Weavers, he had a string of hits, including a 1949 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" that topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. He was formerly a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and a major contributor to folk and pioneer of protest music in the 1950s and the 1960s.

He is perhaps best known today as the author or co-author of the songs "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "If I Had a Hammer", and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962), Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962), and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s.

Seeger was born in New York City. His father Charles Seeger was a musicologist and an early investigator of non-Western music. His stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was one of the most significant women composers of the 20th Century. His siblings Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger also had notable musical careers. Half-brother Mike Seeger went on to form the New Lost City Ramblers, who influenced Bob Dylan. His uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet, was killed during the First World War. In 1936 he heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Folk Song and Dance Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and his life was changed forever. Pete Seeger attended the Avon Old Farms boarding school in Connecticut and then Harvard University until he left in 1938 during his sophomore year. In both cases, he was a scholarship student. In 1943 he married Toshi-Aline Ohta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. Pete and Toshi have three children, Danny, Mika and Tinya, and grandchildren Tao, Cassie, Kitama, Moraya, Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with The Mammals.

Seeger lives in the hamlet of Dutchess Junction in the Town of Fishkill, NY and remains very politically active in the Hudson Valley Region of New York, especially in the near-by City of Beacon, NY. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949, and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves, and eventually in a larger house. Seeger joined the Community Church (a church practicing Unitarian Universalism) and often performs at functions for the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Seeger dropped out of Harvard (where he had been studying journalism) in 1939, and he took a job in Washington, D.C. at the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress. In that capacity, he met and was influenced by many important musicians such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He met Woody at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers concert on March 3, 1940 and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration.

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, and slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo.

As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor), he was a founding member of the folk groups the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and the Weavers with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman. The Weavers had major hits in the early 1950s, before being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era.

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) where he refused to name personal and political associations stating it would violate his First Amendment rights... "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957 indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial in March 1961, and sentenced to a year in jail, but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.

Seeger started a solo career in 1958, and is known for songs such as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer" (co-written with Lee Hays), "Turn, Turn, Turn," adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and "We Shall Overcome" (based on a spiritual and later became the unofficial anthem for the civil rights movement). Seeger became influential in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village. He helped found Broadside Magazine and Sing Out!. He was strongly associated with Moses Asch and Folkways Records. To describe the new crop of folk singers, many of whom were politically minded in their songs, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his former bandmate Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. He has often sung and is associated with the song "Joe Hill".

In the mid-sixties he hosted a regional folk music television show called Rainbow Quest which featured folk musicians playing traditional folk music. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Mississippi John Hurt, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Roscoe Holcomb, The Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, and many others. Thirty-eight hourlong programs were recorded at new UHF station WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi with Sholom Rubinstein.

An early advocate of Bob Dylan, Seeger was supposedly incensed over the distorted electric sound Dylan brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, especially with the inability to clearly hear the lyrics. There are many conflicting versions of exactly what ensued, some claiming that he actually tried to disconnect the equipment. He is often cited as one of the main opponents to Dylan at Newport 1965, but claimed in 2005:

"There are reports of me being anti-him going electric at the '65 Newport Folk festival, but that's wrong. I was the MC that night. He was singing 'Maggie's Farm' and you couldn't understand a word because the mic was distorting his voice. I ran to the mixing desk and said, 'Fix the sound, it's terrible!' The guy said 'No, that's how they want it.' And I did say that if I had an axe I'd cut the cable! But I wanted to hear the words. I didn't mind him going electric.

Seeger achieved some notoriety in 1967 and 1968 for his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain—a "big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. Seeger performed the song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour after some arguments with CBS about whether the song's lyrics were objectionable. Although the song was cut from the Smothers Brothers show in September 1967, Seeger returned in January 1968 and sang the entire song. It was clearly an allegory about the U.S. under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson which was in over its head in the Vietnam War.

Another slight against Lyndon Johnson can be heard in his singing of Len Chandler's seemingly juvenile song, "Beans in My Ears" from his 1966 album Dangerous Songs!? in which he accuses "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" (Alby Jay is meant to sound like LBJ) of having beans in his ears, or of not listening to the people.

In 1998 a double-CD tribute album was released - "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger". It contained contributions from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn, Judy Collins, Indigo Girls, Dick Gaughan, Martin Simpson, Odetta and others.

Pete Seeger still performs occasionally in public, and for a number of years has appeared at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough Tennessee to tell stories, these days mostly children's stories such as Abiyoyo. He performed at MerleFest April 27-30, 2006 in Wilkesboro, NC.

On March 16, 2007, the 88-year old Pete Seeger performed with his siblings Mike and Peggy and other Seeger family members at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where he had been employed as a folk song archivist 67 years earlier.

In April 2006, Bruce Springsteen released a collection of songs associated with Seeger or in Seeger's folk tradition, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Springsteen performed a series of concerts based on those sessions, to sellout crowds. Springsteen had previously recorded one Seeger favorite, "We Shall Overcome," on the 1998 "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" tribute album.

Seeger is known for his ardent political beliefs and his involvement with leftist political organizations, including the Communist Party. An article written in 2006 by an official of the American libertarian Cato Institute reported that in the early years of World War II, political opponents called him "Stalin's Songbird". His supporters called him "America's Tuning Fork" and "A Living Saint". Seeger's anti-war record Songs for John Doe, released in 1941, took the Communist Party's non-interventionist line after (Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact in 1939). At that time Seeger was also strongly anti-Franklin D. Roosevelt, owing to what he considered the President's weak support of workers' rights. After Germany’s breaking of the pact and its attack on the Soviet Union, the pacifism of Songs for John Doe were an embarrassment to the new "patriotic" line of the Communist Party and copies were quickly removed from sale. The remaining inventory was reportedly destroyed. Only a few copies exist to this day. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, Seeger and the Communist Party became strong proponents of military action against Germany; he was drafted into the Army, where he served in the Pacific. He did not serve in a combat unit, his job was to entertain the American troops with music. (Originally the Army had trained him as an airplane mechanic.) When people later asked him what he did in the war, he always answered 'I strummed my banjo'. Seeger left the Communist Party in 1950, five years before Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech revealed Stalin's "crimes" and led to an exodus from the Party. "I realized I could sing the same songs I sang whether I belonged to the Communist Party or not, and I never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization." He became an anti-Stalinist but remained a Socialist, in 1955 recording an album entitled Union Songs for Folkways Records (FH 5285A).

Seeger has made his rejection of Stalin explicit several times. Among these are his 1993 book Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, and a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine. In 2007, he wrote a song condemning Stalin, “Big Joe Blues” and also a letter to historian Ron Radosh, an anticommunist critic of his, apologizing for being blind to Stalin's failings. “I think you’re right," wrote Seeger, "I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R.”

Seeger has long been interested in the music that came out of the Spanish Civil War. In 1944, he was invited by Moses Asch (later of Folkways Records) to record a collection of Spanish Civil War songs. These included "Valley of Jarama" and "Peat Bog Soldiers". In 2006, he sang eight songs for the CD "Canciones de Las Brigadas Internacionales". These are: * "Valley of Jarama" (El Valle del Jarama) * "Cookhouse" (El Hornillo) * "Young Man from Alcala" (El Joven de Alcalá) * "Quartermaster's Song" (La Canción del Intendente) * "Viva la Quince Brigada" * "El Quinto Regimiento" * "Si Me Quieres Escribir" (Spanish Marching Song) * "Si Me Quieres Escribir" * "Venga Jaleo"

Seeger is involved in the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he founded in 1966. This organization has worked since then to highlight pollution in the Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of that effort, the sloop Clearwater was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down the Hudson River to South Street Seaport Museum in New York City. The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for Clearwater's construction.

Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including : * The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993) * The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994) * Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Honor (1994) * The Harvard Arts Medal (1996) * Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996) * Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record "Pete" (1997) * The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999) * The Schneider Family Book Award for his children's picture book "The Deaf Musicians." (2007)

* "I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other." * "My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around '38. I drifted out in the '50s. I apologize [in his recent book] for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader." * "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail." * "Plagiarism is the basis of all culture." Seeger quoting his father. * "Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple." * "Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I." *"Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."

Jim Musselman, (founder of Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger: :"He was one of the few people who invoked the First Amendment in front of the McCarthy Committee. Everyone else had said the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, "I'm gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association...." "

:"...I was actually in law school when I read the case of 'Seeger v. United States''', and it really changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, "We're all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn't matter who we associate with." That's what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it's an important part of history that people need to remember."<i>

*Seeger, Pete. </i>How to Play the Five-String Banjo, 3rd edition. New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 0-8256-0024-3. *Dunaway, David K., How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger, McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990), ISBN 0-07-018150-0, ISBN 0-07-018151-9, ISBN 0-306-80399-2 * Wilkinson, Alec, "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music", The New Yorker,<i> April 17 2006, p. 44–53. *

* Pete Seeger Appreciation Page * "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" documentary filmmaker Jim Brown interview on The Alcove with Mark Molaro, 2007 * "To Hear Your Banjo Play" a movie at archive.org narrated by Pete Seeger * "We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" (Democracy Now!) * On Point Radio : "The World According to Pete Seeger" * "Pete Seeger Is 86", Studs Terkel, </i>The Nation'', May 16, 2005 * Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back - National Public Radio interview *Peter Seeger interviewed by Australian composer Andrew Ford (MP3 of interview first broadcast in 1999) * Essay on Seeger's Americanism by Seeger's friend, the author Edward J. Renehan Jr. * Pete Seeger, Folk Singer and Song Writer by Thomas Blair. Part of a series of Notable Americans * 1 Hour Internet Radio Interview with Pete Seeger August, 2007. Pete talks about his experiences dealing with the music industry over his long career, trying to get by as a young artist, music in the public domain and the world in general.

* Tom Winslow