Talk:Pete Seeger/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Discussion

There should be something in here about his leftist politics, encounters with Redbaiters, disapproval of Dylan, but I can't stand him, so I leave it to another. Ortolan88

So you can't stand him. Who cares what you think? Your "I can't stand him" comment gives you away, mon ami. Give us documentation, not your political biases. Please refrain from writing subjective statements here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brobie (talk • contribs) 19:32, 1 May 2005 (unsigned, but appears to be User:Brobie 1 May 2005)

I think he has a good point. I don't know enough about him to stand him or otherwise, but the points mentioned should be included in the article. -- TimNelson 11:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

On what basis is he attributed authorship of "We Shall Overcome"? He certainly had a hand in making it well known among white people, but if you look at http://www.learnercentereded.org/Seeger/Civil%20Rights.html, which sounds on-the-mark to me, it doesn't read like a claim that he wrote the song. They describe him as "helping to write the song" and there's an extended quote from him on the site where he seems to give most of the credit to other people. -- Jmabel 01:39, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You should know that Seeger gave credit to Guy Carowan many times for "We Shall Overcome." Who are you people, anyway? Do your study before posting comments here please.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Brobie (talk • contribs) 19:32, 1 May 2005 (unsigned, but appears to be User:Brobie 1 May 2005)

Excuse me, I do know that. My remark (which you are replying to almost 4 months after the fact) was in response to someone else's false claim in the article that he wrote "We Shall Overcome".—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs) 00:06, 2 May 2005

Is there any basis for saying he "started" a solo career in 1958? By that time he had probably a dozen albums out on Folkways. Heck, I turned four in '58 and my mother used to joke I knew Pete Seeger's voice better than my father's. -- Jmabel 02:15, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"[in his recent book]"

What book? -- Jmabel 02:02, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC) It appears that bracketed "recent book" is dated; appeared in quote within NYT Magazine article 1/22/95. The book is apparently Where Have All The Flowers Gone? A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies (Bethlehem, Pa.: Sing Out, 1993) at 22 (from note 1.47 in Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 (Culture, Politics, and Cold War), Ronald D. Cohen (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).) Scrounged this from the Web; hopefully someone with access to source can straighten out the quote and cite. Jeffreykopp 09:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This still needs fixing; it looks like nonsense as it stands.
--Jerzy•t 06:05, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

CP membership

It is my understanding that Seeger was never a formal member of the Communist Party. So, he was never able to "leave it," strictly speaking. (anon)

No, actually he was. I can turn up a citation if needed; I believe he finally said so in the 1980s, explaining that he had no shame about having been so, but wouldn't admit it to HUAC: in front of them, he simply invoked the First Amendment and refused to answer on the basis that his political affiliations were none of their business. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:58, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

Found a solid citation: David Dunaway's biography of Seeger, How Can I Keep From Singing, page 42. Pretty much the standard biography. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:03, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

It says on page 52 of How Can I Keep from Singing that Pete joined the Young Communist League in 1936. This was during the period of the Popular Front when thousands of other people joined to protest conditions in Germany and Spain -- on which the Socialist party was lukewarm (and the Democratic Party AWOL). The YCL's support of the CIO, which was the only union to have a policy against segregation in the workplace, also gave it prestige among believers in human rights. On page 97 of How Can I Keep from Singing it says that Pete graduated to the membership in the Communist Party proper in 1941. He would have been 22. It also says that the Party didn't take him seriously, didn't like folk music much and that Pete was bored at meetings. As far as the Almanacs "Songs for John Doe" --- it should be remembered that the country was gearing up for war and the big corporations were soliciting and getting big defense contracts. The fact that African Americans were officially debarred from being hired in defense plants, at a time when so many people were unemployed, made right-thinking Americans indignant. There was so much anger among black Americans that in the spring of 1941 A. Philip Randoph began to organize a huge march on Washington. This is regarded by most people as the official beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The march was called off at the last minute when FDR issued an executive order banning discrimination in companies having government defense contracts (June 21, 1941). It is against this background that the Almanac's album, with songs like "I don't want to fight for Dupont" (issued March, 1941) should be seen. With Hitler's attack on the USSR (also in June)the Hitler-Stalin pact became a non-issue. (Stalin had also had for 10 years a non-aggression pact against Hirohito). How Can I Keep From Singing omits mention of any of this background and is a rather superficial book in my opinion. Particularly as it is focussed primarily on politics and not music. (The author seems to have little understanding of or liking for folk music -- he dismisses Carl Sandburg as "romantic"). Dunaway has a degree in American Studies and is an adviser to National Public Radio.

Dunaway tends to disparage and marginalize Pete Seeger's courage and accomplishments, when he writes:

In the twenty-first century, the appeal of Pete Seeger is akin to that of a nineteenth-century Romantic figure, the rustic innocent with the magic flute, who appeals to those unable to live fully for the frantic quality of their lives. --Dunaway (2008), p. 421.

Many of the positions Seeger took -- in favor of civil and labor rights, desegregation, a social safety net, opposition to nuclear proliferation, racism, and pollution -- are now so universally accepted that it is hard to appreciate how lonely it formerly was to hold them, and how vigorously they were opposed by those in power.

Dunaway follows conventional Cold War orthodoxy in marginalizing grass-roots vernacular music as "romantic" "unrealistic" and therefore out-dated and unimportant. During the Cold War the musical comedy, a top-down European importation, was held up as the most truly American music, particularly triumphalist productions such as "Oklahoma" (though that show did have very innovative use of ballet). Jazz was also privileged, because in the Cold War it was important to show Europeans that Americans valued black contributions, so African-American jazz artists were sent overseas by the CIA to impress the foreigners -- though did they play on TV? I don't think so. But at the same time the connection of jazz to grass-roots genres such as folk music and blues was downplayed while its link to to pop "standards" and musical comedy highlighted. Also downplayed was the fact, pointed out by Denning, that almost all the jazz greats were enthusiastic members of the Popular Front. Lead Belly's funeral was a veritable who's who of jazz artists, including Dizzy Gillespie. (Denning himself, however, like Dunaway, also disparages folk singers such as Pete Seeger as being without influence, in his opinion). During the cold war, the native string band tradition was forcibly suppressed by means of blacklisting, but in the 1960s it came back with a vengeance via Skiffle, through Lonnie Donnegan's Lead Belly hits, and the British Rock invasion.96.250.132.71 (talk) 03:53, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Author?

Is this the same pete Seeger who wrote Abiyoyo? I believe it is but am not sure.

• Pete released an LP in the early 1960s with many memorable children's songs. One was the song, "Abiyoyo" which I believe had African origins, or some such thing. Some others I remember included "Let's go riding in the car", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", and one that began, "What did you eat in the woods all day, Henry my son?" Great memories for me at age 5 in 1965 to play over and over. --leahtwosaints (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Why I am reverting the bulk of the recent anonymous edit (again)

I reverted a recent anonymous edit a few hours ago. I see it has been restored. The edit is a POV mess (and in some cases a factual mess). I hoped my original revert would stick, or at least the person would think twice about the specific issue I called out (deletion of factual material), but I can see that won't be the case, so I'll take it up in detail. Not everything it this edit was bad, and I will try to keep what I can (I was hoping not to waste my time, and that the writer would spend some of his/hers, but that clearly isn't going to happen).

• The anon removed the following: "A classic example of Seeger’s pro-Stalin/Soviet attitude can be seen during the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. His anti-war record Songs for John Doe, released in 1941, where he calls President Roosevelt a warmonger who worked for J.P. Morgan, expressed his displeasure about FDR's increasingly confrontational attitude with Nazi Germany." I think there are some problems with the wording (I'll happily get rid of "classic", and the mention of Stalin is egregious) but the substance is significant: Seeger's work demands that he be thought of as a political figure, not just a singer, and writing Songs for John Doe out of his history is, effectively, to lie about that history.
• The anon changed "communist beliefs" to "socialistic beliefs" is, in this case, a euphemism. Seeger was a CP member; he left that party, as did so many people, but has repeatedly said that he still considers himself a communist. Why on earth should we doubt his word?
• I do agree with the insertion of the phrase "[beliefs]… forged before the crimes of Stalin came to light". A second mention of it in the same paragraph, though, is simply silly.
• The inserted statement, "Pete Seeger fought in the Pacific to defend the United States in war, unlike more recent U. S. presidents," is pure POV. Taking pot-shots at the lack of military experience of recent U.S. presidents is completely unrelated to the topic of this article. This sentence was the main reason that I did not originally even read the edits closely, and just reverted.
• The existence of right-wing opposition to WWII is beside the point. Certainly Seeger never identified with right-wing America Firsters and German-American Bundists, and it is a calumny to suggest that he did.
• "It can not be denied…" is a phrase that has no place in an encyclopedia article.
• The songs that were added as evidence of Seegers patriotism—as if any were needed—are songs he sang, but none are his own. "My Land Is a Good Land" is by Erik Anderson. "Going Across the Mountains" is a traditional song from the Northern side of the Civil War. "The Power and the Glory" is by Phil Ochs. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:25, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Jmabel, If I may add a comment, I think there needs to be much more about Seeger's music. All of this seems to be just shallow politics. Seeger is not a political philospher. In the end, he is a simple man. His main contribution is in preserving a classic form of Old Time banjo picking (up-picking vs frailing). And this is intimately connected with the North-South (Yankee/Confederate) divide still remaining in the United States, up-picking now having Northern, progressive connotations primarily because of Seeger. And what about his love for the 12 string? Seeger influenced the K-Trio and did videos with many greats of US folk music, including Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson and above all Mississippi John Hurt. Anyway, I'm not satisfied with this entry. This has got to present the full complexity of the man. I'm not saying that politics has no place here. I'm only saying I am cautious of the simplistic dichotomy of "conservative" vs "liberal" prevalent in the current US. Heaven knows, as an individualist. I do not agree with Seeger's politics, nor Robert Owen's. Yet, I appreciate his contribution to American folk music, and recognize a pure and decent man when I see one. Thus, I revere both Owen and Seeger -- though I'm not saying Seeger is in the same universe as Owen. - fm Brobie.

• I'd love to see much more about Seeger's music. And yes, I agree that his 5-string banjo book and his picking would all alone make him a major figure. So would his song-leading all alone. Please, add this. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:26, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Pete Seeger is a tremendous performer, with an energy and showmanship that are up there with the best. He also knows a great deal about music, in part thanks to the advantages of growing up surrounded by composers and performers, in part to his continuous, almost obsessive, practice and study. When you see him perform the instrumental polyphony of "The Bells of Rimmney" you realize how musically and rhythmically virtuosic he can be. However, he disdains being thought of as an "artist" let alone a virtuoso and conceals or downplays his abilities -- when he talks about how hard it is to be simple, he means what he says: he works at it. It is truly, an "art that conceals art." In her memoir, Sing It Pretty (2008), former Almanac singer Bess Hawes maintains that Almanacs and the Weavers were extremely influential because they invented a new, driving, informal vernacular style that, inspired by country/ballad singing and African American music, "fostered a kind of 'everybody sing in' audience participation" (p.45). In any case, the excitement of Pete's performing doesn't always come across on record. My guess is that he didn't bother to do second takes sometimes, as part of his studied anti-professionalism. Perhaps, too, he needs the stimulus of an audience to be part of his act.

Also, writers like Yale Professor Micheal Denning in The Cultural Front (1997) maintain that the Almanac's folk music was alien to urban audiences and that Blitzstein's Cradle Will Rock better fulfilled the Communist ideal of a cabaret-style topical entertainment that answered to working people's needs, The Almanacs and Weavers's content-rich repertoire, however, which changed from week to week with changing conditions (to their cost in the case of John Doe) and their unintimidating, audience-involving performance style also responded to the needs and desires of the audience. They were informally dressed at a time when performers and audiences routinely wore tuxedos (though the Weavers wore tuxedos, too, in the early 1950s). The fact that the Weavers inspired so many grass-roots groups to imitate them, from the Tarriers to the Kingston Trio (and even the various skiffle groups in the UK, arguably), to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and that these groups had such tremendous popular success, is a testament to the effectiveness of their performance innovations.

Doctrinaire Marxists insistence that "Cabaret" constituted the true workingman's art was absurd in an American context, where working men never had a cabaret tradition (as in Weimar Germany), yet scholars such as Denning continue to insist on it, and, ironically, it became a Cold War dogma among those purportedly opposed to Marxism.

Ironically both Marxists and Anti-Marxists were united in opposition to anything "populist" (i.e., that sprang from the grass roots). The Bismarkian "realist" Political Science guru Karl Friedrich, who taught Kissenger and Bryzynski, was an example of this -- populism for him equaled poison, whereas for Bolshevik Marxists populism conjured up memories of nineteenth-century Romantic upper class dabblers and dilettantes who had admired the Russian peasants instead of adhering to supposedly more "realistic" Marxist theories of economic determinism which privileged the industrial proletarians (non-existant in 19th C. Russia, but nevermind). Marx himself disparaged "the rural idiocy" of the agricultural mind. For Yale Pofessor Michael Denning and David Dunaway (Seeger's not very admiring biographer), both of them bizarrely disconnected from American history, it didn't matter that the string band and folk music itself went back to Lincoln, Higginson, and Walt Whitman -- it (and they, and presumably the nineteenth century as a whole) were "Romantic" and therefore irrelevant.24.105.152.153 (talk) 18:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Ps: your comments: "The inserted statement, "Pete Seeger fought in the Pacific to defend the United States in war, unlike more recent U. S. presidents," is pure POV. Taking pot-shots at the lack of military experience of recent U.S. presidents is completely unrelated to the topic of this article. This sentence was the main reason that I did not originally even read the edits closely, and just reverted. "It can not be denied…" is a phrase that has no place in an encyclopedia article." Okay, I'll never say "it can not be denied" again. And I appreciate the insertion of "honorably" regarding to Seeger's war service, which I think is fair. But I think the tenor of this article presents Seeger unfairly. For one thing, the distinction between Communism and Socialism here is obscured. I disagree with saying that Seeger "is" a communist, given modern connotations of the word. Change this to the past tense: "was." We could get into a big political discussion here about how Conservatism (and Seeger said he was more conservative than Goldwater) and Communisim (or Socialism) are just different kinds of collectivism, but that is another topic.... And if we want to present the political views of a person so old, we've got to understand the world he was living in at the time. The connotations of these words have evolved in recent years. This article is read by modern readers. Also, I also would appreciate more documentation. I think the sources of all our statements should be noted within the article. (Brobie)

• Yes, I'd love to see expansion of the context on Seeger's politics rather than a focus on a few regrettable episodes. Seeger came to Communism in the midst of the Depression, at the height of the Popular Front, when the slogan of the day was "Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism". He stood up to HUAC about as well as anyone, and really took it on the chin for doing so. As for whether he still is a communist... I've heard him say so, on and off, for a long time. Every time I've heard an interviewer venture to ask him, he's pretty direct about that. As far as I know, he has always continued to consider himself at least a small-c communist, and who are we to argue with the man himself?

Please understand, I have enormous respect for Seeger. I've seen him in concert probably 20 or 30 times, had a few conversations with him (though none in the last 15 years), read probably the majority of his writings in Broadside, Sing Out and the like as well as well as Dunaway's biography of him (How Can I Keep From Singing), learned what little I know about playing a banjo from his book and the 10-inch record that came with it, learned many songs from his records (including no small number of his own songs) and still perform some of them; as I say above, my mother used to joke I knew Pete Seeger's voice better than my father's. I don't have a ton of time right now or I'd work on your request about citations, but I'm pretty sure that 100% of what is in the article now (except maybe some quotations) could be cited out of Dunaway's book. If there is something in particular that you doubt, single it out and I'll search for citation, but I don't have time to work out what page is a citation for each fact.

Part of the history of this article is that User:TDC, clearly hostile to Seeger, added a lot of material. As you can see if you examine the edit history, I kept pruning him back to what was encyclopedic. I would love to see someone who does not have an axe to grind do some equally solid legwork and add more genuinely encyclopedic material to the article. But adding fluff and POV that happens to be pro-Seeger, or removing the (definitely accurate) material about Songs for John Doe is not the way to get to a more balanced article. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:26, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but like anyone involved in the "popular front" during that time, Seeger did not fight because America was attacked or because freedom was threatened by tyranny, he fought because the vanguard of the proletariat, the Soviet Union, was under attack. People like Seeger deserve no respect, and I will not give them any.

Well, tens of millions of men were drafted during the war. Did Seeger join the military or was he drafted? If he didn't join, then he fought because he was ordered to.... Hayford Peirce 19:52, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So, yeah, I suppose I am a bit hostile to Stalinists. TDC 14:17, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

++++++++++++++

TDC - Brobie here. No need to apologize. Who likes Stalin? The point you don't seem to get is that Seeger, along with many of the Old Left, rejected Stalinism after Khrushchev exposed his crimes. Who was the guy who published Guthrie's original records in NY who actually committed suicide after Khruschev's revelations. -- Which is why I added Khrushchev's name here. (Also, Jmabel, I think you'll find the period should be inside the quotation marks.) So if you're hostile to Stalinists, we're all with you. The point is, we have to be fair to Seeger. You say: "Seeger did not fight because America was attacked or because freedom was threatened by tyranny, he fought because the vanguard of the proletariat, the Soviet Union, was under attack." Is this your opinion? Or a fact? If a fact, please give us the grits. Yes, Seeger was ideological. I'm personally an individualist and Seeger's collectivism, like all socialist collectivism, rubs me the wrong way. But this was an age when many people who believed in communism thought that freedom was compatible with communism. They were mistaken.

And Jmabel, if Seeger says he is a communist with a small "c," then it means he is talking about a "free" communism -- which, nowadays, is commonly called socialism. That was my point. This whole article is misleading. No wonder people like TDC are so mixed up. I am an advocate of citations within articles. Otherwise, this article is far too political. For example: His anti-war record Songs for John Doe, released in 1941, where he called President Franklin D. Roosevelt a warmonger who worked for J.P. Morgan, expressed his displeasure about FDR's increasingly confrontational attitude with Nazi Germany. What is this: "...expressed his displeasure about FDR's ... confrontational attitude with..." the Nazis? So was Seeger a Nazi? That is what this sentence implies. Any innocent person reading this couldn't tell Pete Seeger from Lindberg, the DAR, or other "conservative" rightists isolationists who opposed action against Hitler -- who were and are far closer to the Nazis than Seeger ever was or ever will be. This sentence makes it sound like Seeger actually _supported_ Hitler. ...which is why I assumed someone from the House Committe on Keeping Up the Persecution of Pete Seeger is in charge of this page... ...sorry, but let's be fair. Let's cite our sources. All of us. In the text. And no misleading, biased sentences. -- Brobie.

• As I remarked above, "certainly Seeger never identified with right-wing America Firsters and German-American Bundists, and it is a calumny to suggest that he did." Seeger's (brief) opposition to war with the Nazis was precisely because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. And I certainly have no interest in "persecuting" Seeger, I quite admire the man, but my admiration is based on a warts-and all assessment. Also, again, I agree that this particular episode gets disproportionately much coverage in the article, but the cure is not to shrink the solid information on this episode, it is to expand the article with equally solid material on other aspects of the man. This often happens in articles that TDC has touched: he adds a lot of material that happens to reinforce his views; sometimes it's not encyclopedic (or not even very well documented) in which case I fight to get it out of there, but when it makes the cut (and this does) it should be retained. When we finally end up with the amount of material we should have on Seeger, clearly this will be part of it. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:33, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
• On the socialist/communist point: ultimately, I don't really care that much, but I can't remember ever hearing Seeger use the word "socialism", only "communism". I'm not saying he hasn't, just that I can't recall it. I agree with you about the connotations of that word in contemporary America, and I can't imagine Seeger being unaware of them, but as far as I can tell, he's continued to be consistent in his own choice of word. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:33, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
• BTW, Wikipedia style is period outside of quotation marks, unless you are quoting an entire sentence. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:34, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Brobie here. TDC, it is so easy to wrap yourself in the flag. If you love the flag so much, then join the army and go to Iraq. Otherwise, keep your $%^#^& mouth shut. I am so &$%#^ sick of seeing that piece of rag. You need to have the guts to travel around the world and meet people with different colored flag-toys and see why they hate the US. I'm pessimistic about the fate of Wikipedia... "I think there needs to be much more about Seeger's music. All of this seems to be just shallow politics. Seeger is not a political philospher. In the end, he is a simple man." What a load of crap. Seeger was always about politics and music was nothing more than a tool for him to effect the goals of the Popular Front, which specifically targeted the publishing, movie, and music industries in their bid to gain political influence. Seeger's "simple man" routine was and is pure affectation. Forget about the fate of Wikipedia, I'm worried about the fate of the world with so many "useful idiots" running around. (SgtP_USMC)

How true, anyone with one God damn iota of common sense or honesty knows that that Seeger is nothing more than hack who just uses his music to shill for left wing thugs. so save the peace and social justice bullshit for the choir. TDC 20:31, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Amen to that. To wit: he has jumped on the antisemitic BDS bandwagon.

Moorsoldaten

Dear friends and music lovers, I was born i post-war Germany but have been living in Sweden since 1969. I just wanted to tell you how much Pete Seeger ment to my generation - I grew up i Western Berlin. One of my dearest memories is a concert Pete Seeger gave in the 1960s and we had no possibility to buy tickets, as he was singing for union members only and I was a teenager attending school. But my boyfriend and I waited outside the concert hall together with large crowd of people until the gates finally were opened and we all were allowed to get in! I will never forget this nor him and one special song I never had heard before nor since: Die Moorsoldaten, which he sang, at least partly, in German. Pete Seeger and his music, the Weavers' too, (and many others) have brought hope and love of life to many of us in difficult times. If you'd like, you may find me in the German Wikipedia where I write using the nick-name Elchjagd. Love and peace to you all! --217.211.23.24 11:34, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

• Interesting. I grew up with the Weavers' recording of "Das Lied der Moorsoldaten" (which they called "The Peat-Bog Soldiers"). It should actually be quite available, I believe most of there recordings are in print. (For those who don't know, it is a song by and about concentration camp inmates.) -- Jmabel | Talk 00:49, May 18, 2005 (UT

Elchjagd, thanks for your kind contribution. Please tell us more about your experiences. I never saw the Weavers, so I envy you.

Funny, the tricks memory plays. I don't think the Weavers ever recorded the "Moorsoldaten", it was sung by Ernst Busch and chorus and was on the flip-side of the Almanacs' Songs of the Spanish Civil War album. With "Los Cuatros Generales" (also performed by Busch, not the Weavers), it also had an important place in the wonderful Fireside Book of Folk Songs, which was the folk song bible for many of us. The book explained that "Peat Bog Soldiers" was sung by concentration camp prisoners at a time when it was taboo to speak of the camps because it might offend our loyal Cold War ally, West Germany. The Weavers were prohibited by their producers from singing anything too directly political, believe it or not. Even "Good Night Irene" was a sort of coded message because people knew it had been written by, or was inextricably associated with, Lead Belly, a black man; also a coded message was the flip side of "Irene", "Tzena Tzena", an Israeli song -- in 1950 Israel's existence was embattled, to say the least. I also grew up with Songs of the Spanish Civil War-- that is, I bought it as a high-school student in the late fifties when it was re-issued by Folkways. The Fireside Book of Folk Songs was my childhood bible, however, and literally never far from my sight, whether sitting on the piano at home, at school, and at people's houses. I still cherish my tattered and yellowed copy. Mballen (talk)

Brobie here. Pete Seeger's classic "HOW TO PLAY THE 5-STRING BANJO taught by Pete Seeger" is now out on DVD. Yes folks, you can learn from the master on your PC. Am I allowed to put in a plug for the great folks at Elderly Instruments? (No biz connections I promise.) The link is: elderly.com/videos/items/300-DVD85.htm

Flowers Gone?

"He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 song Where Have All the Flowers Gone." Hmm. Having been already steeped in his music long before that song was written, I'm not in the best place to judge, but what is the basis for this claim? Is that really better known than "The Hammer Song (If I Had a Hammer)" or "Turn, Turn, Turn"? I'd have thought they were all on an equal footing. And, for an older generation, he was probably best known for his work with the Weavers, including a number one hit with Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene". -- Jmabel | Talk 18:34, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I just sorta assumed that of course "Where Have" was his best known thing since that's the song one still hears and sees references to. But I just did a Google search associating "Seeger" with the names of each of the songs. For "Where Have" I got 13,800 hits. For "Hammer" I got 747 (The Hammer Song) and 10,800 (If I Had), for a total of 11,547, not all that far behind. For "Turn" I got 5,920. For "Irene Goodnight" and "Goodnight Irene" I got 191 and 4,810, for 5,001. In any case, I think most people who even know "Irene" think of it primarily as a Weavers song, not as a Seeger-Weavers song. How many people think of "Tom Dooley" as a Dave Guard-Kingston Trio song? If you want to do some rewriting and add "Hammer" to "Flowers" go right ahead. I looked it up and both Peter, Paul & Mary and Trini Lopez had hit versions of "Hammer".... Hayford Peirce 19:46, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your Google search seems like decent evidence that you are basically right on this (although the margin between "Where Have" and "Hammer" seems small). You are right that "Irene" is emphatically a group performance, and in any event, a Leadbelly-authored song, not one of Seeger's own. I suspect that the Weavers achieved a greater level of fame circa 1950 than Seeger has ever had as a solo performer; needless to say, Google is useless to answer a question like that, because it is so biased in favor of the relatively recent. I guess I'll leave things as they are in the article, at least until such a time as this article might merit a lot more work, which eventually it certainly does. Sorry about tangled syntax, I must be tired. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:43, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

If there were any justice...

Pete Seeger would have starved to death in the "Great Man's" gulags like so many millions of his truly innocent victims. Instead he made quite a bit of money (dare I say he became rich?) off of the very system he still claims to hate; capitalism. What a hypocrite! The bit about small "c" communism is a hoot too. Do you really believe that garbage? Call it whatever you like; communism, socialism, fascism etc..., it all adds up to misery, slavery, and death. They all share one thing in common and that is an abridgement of property rights which is the most fundamental of all "human rights." The extent to which a man's right to own and control property is truncated, that man becomes property.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[Special:Contributions/{64.136.196.77 (talk · contribs) }|{64.136.196.77 (talk · contribs) }]] ([[User talk:{64.136.196.77 (talk · contribs) }|talk]]) 06:49, :39, & :51, 5 August 2005

The previous comment is anonymous (surprise!) and was made 4 Aug 2005. And other than that, I'm not feeding the troll. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:01, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I figured that someone needed to bluntly state just what Pete Seeger's greatest "contribution to society" actually was and what its (all too predictable) results were. He certainly isn't the only one, but still his aid and support of despots from Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao, to Pol Pot, and most recently to Hussein in some way helped those murderous bastards do their vile work by giving cover to them and by blunting and/or delaying the efforts of those who could have stopped or mitigated it.

Someone who is that consistently wrong and apparently so callous to the effects of his actions deserves no better than the fate that I described. Anyone can be mistaken, but Seeger and his fellow travelers display a wanton disregard for the truth, and then seek cover under the lame "I MEANT well" excuse.

Seeger has stated that he wants us to go back to the time when we lived in small villages and “took care of each other.” Just because he lacks the mental capacity to understand his place in the extended order in which we live and the benefits of that order, he thinks that there must be something inherently superior to that primitive life when people died from simple infections and daily scratched their sustenance from the soil. Such a world view is so warped that it makes me wish that he could have his wish, as long as others who don’t share his views aren’t forced to live in the utopia (hell) that he would create. Then we could watch the idiots destroy themselves and get on with the business of life in the real world.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[Special:Contributions/{204.253.151.250 (talk · contribs)

}|{204.253.151.250 (talk · contribs) }]] ([[User talk:{204.253.151.250 (talk · contribs) }|talk]]) 16:06, 10 August 2005

Aug 10, presumably the same person. This is not your blog. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:06, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

And now he has jumped on the antisemitic BDS bandwagon. What a surprise ... and no mention of it in the article ... what a surprise. Seeger has supported every fascist cause beloved of the brown-black-red so-called 'left', from the gulags to the BDS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:35, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Recently added link

City Journal article on "America's Most Successful Communist" is certainly hostile to Seeger in tone, but well researched and actually a pretty decent article, whatever its politics. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:15, September 7, 2005 (UTC) It's decent enough when it covers Seeger himself, but the author clearly doesn't have much of a clue about political protest song before the mid-thirties. His claim that there was no tradition of social protest in American song before Lomax and Seeger contradicts the available evidence - such as the recorded output of Blind Alfred Reed, Haywire Mac, or Uncle Dave Macon in the 1920s, to name but three. That there was greater comercial interest in this kind of material from the late 1930s is clear, but the assumption of the author that it *started* then seems unsustainable. This rather invalidates the writer's entire thesis. A distasteful attempt at rewriting history, IMO.--84.69.84.133 12:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Not to mention the Wobbly bards. Someone researched Seeger, but didn't research history. Still, this is probably the pick of the anti-Seeger links that have been placed in the article at various times, and we should have at least one, so I think until something better comes along it should be kept. And, frankly, I suspect that the chance of finding an anti-Seeger article by someone who has done their research on the level typical of people who feel attached to the tradition is relatively slim. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Joe Hill

We say, "He has often sang and is associated with the song 'Joe Hill'." (Words by Alfred Hayes, music by Earl Robinson, by the way.) Certainly one of the (thousands of) songs in his repertoire, and I suppose that most people who know the song today learned it directly or indirectly from him, but the same could probably be said for 100 other songs, including "Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)", Cisco Houston's "Way Out There", and Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes". Heck, without him there's a fair chance almost no one would know the song "Erie Canal" or (in the English-speaking world) "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". Is he really particularly identified with this one song? Can someone give a citation for that? If this was just an excuse to get Joe Hill's name into the article, we can mention him singing this song and mention him singing Hill's parody of "Casey Jones". -- Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I've tampered with that paragraph

I’m sorry but I was just not comfortable with that political paragraph, and I don't seem to be the only one. It just felt too objective, The whole Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact scenario was given too much prominence and seemed designed to paint Seeger as some sort of notable Nazi appeaser. It was out of proportion. I would rather ditch this episode from the entry, but to compromise I have re worded the paragraph. I also shaved a couple of points within the paragraph such as "old left" (an undescriptive term)and the mention that Seeger personally pulled the release, I read it differently here http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/doe.html User:Zleitzen 11 Feb 2006

"Too objective"? How on earth is that a problem? - Jmabel | Talk 06:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Ooops, I wrote objective when I meant to write subjective! User:Zleitzen 17 Feb 2006

Birthdays?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website has Pete Seeger's birthday as May 19th, 1919. Is there a question as to his birthdate, or is that just a mistake? Yalith 18:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Dave Dunaway's well-researched biography How Can I Keep From Singing gives May 3 (p.33 in the 1990 trade paperback). I'd be astounded if he's wrong. And he doesn't mention any doubts about the date. - Jmabel | Talk 18:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Big Muddy

A recent anonymous edit now says that in January 1968 Pete Seeger sang "The Big Muddy" through the whole way on the Smothers Brothers show. I'm pretty certain that is wrong: I was watching that night and already familiar with the song. I'm quite certain he did not get to sing the verse that begins "Now I'm not going to point any moral…" Does someone have a decent citation on this? I've left a note on the anonymous user's page, an IP address with only a few edits, but they all relate to Seeger or other members of the same family; as usual, that's a bit of a crapshoot in terms of reaching the person. - Jmabel | Talk 02:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Here, from You Tube: [1] Pete Seeger - Wimoweh & Flowers Gone

This is from a controversial episode of the Smothers Brothers. Originally, Pete sang his song "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy" in between these two songs but CBS deemed it too political to air and deleted it from the broadcast. However, he did perform the song on a subsequent broadcast and this time CBS allowed it to air. That version is available on Youtube: [2] You can also see the full seven minute performance here: [3] I hope this is helpful!! --leahtwosaints (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Very helpful, especially the last one in that it gives the full context of the broadcast performance (and shows that my memory was wrong: the key last verse is there). Can anyone work out how we cite that? YouTube itself is not a "reliable source"; can we even provide this as a "convenience link" in a citation, given that this YouTube clip is probably a copyright violation? Has this been legally published on DVD somewhere (which would be citable)? - Jmabel | Talk 19:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The Smothers Brothers were on CBS, right? I can't help but notice the "E" for what?--Entertainment tonight? Owned by who? Also, yes, YouTube would be against policy if I read correctly, not to mention that whomever posts video clips can be shut down, etc, so generally, it's not a reliable permanent source.. (you can hear Pete beginning absentmindedly beginning to play the first strain of the tune on the first performance, before backing out. A shame) --leahtwosaints (talk) 08:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

You would cite it to the episode number, and I guess the original date of broadcast. Seeger appeared on these episodes: 10 September 1967 (Season 2, Episode 1) and 25 February 1968 (Season 2, Episode 24). You don't need to link to IMDB, though. The Smothers Brothers website also has this, but the episodes are listed there in order of production, not broadcast. The Youtube link would generally go against policy.--Pharos (talk) 19:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

This would clearly be the second one: the first is the censored appearance earlier in the season. - Jmabel | Talk 01:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I mentioned both of them, in case you wanted to know about the censored appearance too.--Pharos (talk) 01:21, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm really sorry, since I'm pretty much a newbie here. What I did do was put Seeger's name and "Big Muddy" in the You Tube Search Engine. I found the results like this: [4] However, one of the users, "2old2rock" has now had this clip on You Tube for nearly a year, and she does always place a copyright disclaimer on the clips she posts. I KNOW that often, after years of non-use of TV clips of all kinds, most major companies put them up for bid. If we email the people who uploaded it, (simple enough), there's always a slim chance that they've heard from the owner OR, have bought the rights, as a friend of mine did for a series of Little Feat concerts for next to nothing. Last thought: Pete worked as an archivist of folk music in D.C. If he was so rare a guest on TV in the 1960s is it possible that a copy of the performance might have been placed there? Grasping at straws, granted... --leahtwosaints (talk) 08:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Rainbow Quest

I added a few details to the paragraph about Seeger's TV show. A complete index of these programs are on [5] but I did not want to link it from the article as the VHS copies offered on that page are no longer available. I cannot determine how widely it was carried other than "various educational stations," so I don't know if NET distributed it, but presume they did. It was seen in Oregon, so it went a bit further than "regional." I saw one mention of it being seen in Canada although whether that was the CBC or cross-border reception is also unknown. A New York Times article of 1/23/66 describes the program but the personal page where it was reproduced is gone; it can be fished out of Google's cache [6] or Wayback [7] (I describe the program as "hourlong" though all the sources I found who mention a length specify 52 minutes. Perhaps commercial spots were hoped for in syndication.) Jeffreykopp 19 April 2006

• There's quite a few clips of Rainbow Quest on Youtube.com if anyone is interested. Just go there and do a search for Rainbow Quest or Pete Seeger. Hanako 19:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Current Political Affiliation

Obviously this has been discussed a great deal, and I don't normally work on music pages, but I noticed a user had added "Communist" to the front end description, unlinked. Given the body of the article itself, and the debate over "communism with a small c," I removed it for now. Thought I'd make note of it, though, should anyone care to reword or place back in in a clearer context. I pulled it both because it seems to be in question and because articles for other artists with known Communist ties like Dashiell Hammett don't insert that as a description in the first sentence. Aleal 01:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Category edit war

There seems to be a slow edit war afoot. Various editors move this article either from Category:American communists to Category:American socialists or vice versa. Can we reach some consensus on this? Does anyone have a source revealing how Seeger self-identifies his politics in recent years? Is it possible he belongs in both categories? Niether category? -MrFizyx 15:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that the problem is poor definition of categories. As I remarked above

On the socialist/communist point: ultimately, I don't really care that much, but I can't remember ever hearing Seeger use the word "socialism", only "communism". I'm not saying he hasn't, just that I can't recall it. I agree with you about the connotations of that word in contemporary America [that not being affiliated with any party, he is what most people would call a socialist, not a communist], and I can't imagine Seeger being unaware of them, but as far as I can tell, he's continued to be consistent in his own choice of word.

He is a former member of the CPUSA; he has not been a member in over 50 years.

If the category were decently defined, we could resolve this. Until then, we are counting angels on the heads of pins. - Jmabel | Talk 06:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Alan Seeger

It should also be noted that Pete Seeger was related to the American Trench Poet Alan Seeger, who was his Uncle or some other relatively close relation. --V. Joe 20:05, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Granddaughter

I assume that "Issablle" is a misspelling, but what is the correct spelling? - Jmabel | Talk 18:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

All Family

Since the page for Toshi Seeger was deleted for non-notability, could more information be placed here? I admit tha a quick look around gave me nothing but perhaps others know of good places to look. While you are at it, further information on the rest of the family, father, mother, and children, could also be added. His father, Charles Seeger, has his own page and was professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA when Tinya attended there. I only know the latter because I read short notice in the Golden Bear at the time. JimCubb 21:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Where he lives

We've been back and forth about half a dozen times as to whether his property is in the Town of Fishkill or the City of Beacon. Does someone have a citation on this, or is there just going to be a slow edit war? - Jmabel | Talk 07:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

According to most publications, for example The Nation, Pete and his wife, Toshi, live in a house he built in Beacon, New York, an upstate town along the Hudson River. Whether it's technically Fishkill or technically Beacon may still be debatable. I always thought it was Beacon. --Yalith 05:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

And, for what it's worth, in "Sailing Up My Dirty Stream", he sings, "I live right at Beacon here". to the best of my knowledge, he has never mentioned Fishkill in a song. - Jmabel | Talk 04:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

And, in one of the articles in Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground a quote is prefaced by something like, "Speaking from his home in Beacon, New York..." I think the article was a reprint of a 1995 Bosoton Globe piece. -MrFizyx 12:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Dutchess Junction, where Pete Seeger lives is a small area just south of Beacon just before the Putnam County Line. It is outside the City Limits of Beacon, officially in the Town of Fishkill. It has no ZIP code, and mail is received using the Beacon 12508. What makes it confusing is the separation from the rest of the Town of Fishkill. Children living in Dutchess Junction go to school in the Beacon School District. A GOOGLE map will show Dutchess Junction, Fishkill, NY. Lola0718 (talk) 00:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)Lola0718

Weavers

Was Fred Hellerman not a founding member of the Weavers along with the three listed?71.145.157.54 18:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)jomo

Hmm. I can't swear he was "present at the creation", but he was certainly in the group by the time they recorded. - Jmabel | Talk 06:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any appeciable contribution to make, but have been Seegar/Weavers fan since I was a kid. I wanted to thank the people who have put the effort into this page, and also comment that the talk pages, on Wikipedia, are one of the great benefits. One can come to them to see more information than is properly in the article, and see the discussions that lead to the content. Boomcoach 18:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Spanish Civil War songs

The Spanish Civil War songs Seeger is listed here as recording in 2006 seem to be exactly the list of what he recorded for Moe Asch (a recording I grew up with). Were there really any 2006 recordings? (His singing voice is pretty nearly gone.) Or were these just a reissue of old material? Either way, it seems to me to get disproportionate mention in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 05:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Months have gone by and this has not been addressed. - Jmabel | Talk 07:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I just removed the entire mention. It seemed very out of place and out of proportion. Then noticed your comment. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 22:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Most Recently

The last thing I heard this musical titan sing was "Bring Them Home." In 2003 he did an updated version of the original written in 1965. He prefaced his singing with spoken prose about putting his life on the line to defend his country and would do so again, in a heartbeat, if he believed her to be in peril. But just as in Viet Nam, the invasion of Iraq has proven to be foolish in the extreme, and appears to be having the opposite effect of its intended objective. What in the HELL is the difference whether or not he was drafted? I graduated from high school in 1965. My 19th birthday present that year was, "Greeting: You will report to Fort Wayne for induction into the United States armed forces in three weeks." I had one brother on Navy active duty and another who was E3 reservist. I visited the Naval Armory and was sworn into the USNR the next day. I went to school, spent a year at sea and saw some real combat as throttleman on a Fletcher class destroyer, USS Mullany (DD-528) in the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club. Although only on active duty for 18 months, I served the whole six years on drills before and after active duty and on the USS Bauer (DE-1025). So who was the bigger draft-dodger, Bill Clinton, who ran off to England, or GWB who took an oath and put on a uniform? As military veterans, Seeger, GWB and I have earned the right to a political opinion about war. Junior makes me hurl, but that is MY problem. That is why I sometimes listen to his speeches through the Spanish translation on Univision, or listen later to someone with a more functional brain. Matt Watroba played some of "We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert [LIVE]" on his radio programme on WDET-FM. Matt spoke about how you can hear every sound that the audience makes--as close as they could get our ears into that concert. He also said, "If you want to learn how to work an audience, listen to this album." It was recorded in 1963, five months before JFK was killed, and the 60's exploded. It runs for over 2 hours constantly and leaves in Pete's introductions and mistakes. If you listen to this album, and then say that, "I hate him!", you have a hole in your soul. Since wiki hardly mentions him, visit my page, and I will tell you more about Matt Watroba.--W8IMP 02:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Musical titan? LOL. You mean, supporter of every fascist cause for the past 80 years, surely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:38, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Removed unencyclopedic POV & unsourced material

I removed the following sentences and paragraph:

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.

The first sentence is clearly editorializing and thus violates the NPOV policy. If it were written as something like "many believed the song to have been an allegory about Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War." And, to be included in an encyclopedia there needs to be a source for something like this. Otherwise, it's just the editor's opinion. The same applies to the following paragraph about "Beans in My Ears". Everything written about it may be--probably is--true but it needs to be sourced. The sentences need to be re-written and sourced. I don't have time, at the moment, to give the rest of the article a thoroughly vetting but these two examples demonstrates that the entire article needs to be closely scrutinized. PainMan 07:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

These interpretations are self evident and don't constitute editorializing; further qualifying the statements with phrases like "many believe" runs counter to avoid weasel words. So I've returned the material to the text and added "needs citation" tags. I hope this solution works for you as well. --Osbojos 10:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Osbojos: If the meanings are "self-evident" then there is no reason to spell them out. The original editor's goal is clear: to skew perceptions of those--'specially those of yung 'uns--who know little about Seeger and are probably fed a load of felgercarb by their socialist high school and college instructors.

Also, there is NO way that a phrase like " Lyndon Johnson [who] was in over [his] head in the Vietnam War" is anything but POV and therefore strictly verboten. The sentence is as glaring an example of a violation of NPOV as I can think of.

Good point on the weasel words thing; obviously a sourced quote would have to be found. E.g. an article surveying critical reaction to Seeger's work.

However, I stand by my analysis and my reversion. So I am reverting your revert to my revert.

To be clear: I'm no fan of Johnson. He was a liar and criminal as well as one of the nation's worst Chief Magistrates. He went to Congress is 1937 without a penny in his pocket. When he left in 1969 he had $42,000,000 (in 1969 dollars!!! At least $250,000,000 in today's emaciated currency) as well as a highway off-ramp that leads straight to his front door. I know: I've driven by it on I-20!

I hope we can avoid an edit war. I feel my position is the correct one. And I will therefore have to revert any future reverts. Perhaps we can work out a compromise on the wording?

I do respect your professionalism & politesse. A breath of fresh air. If only everyone disagreed so cordially.

PainMan (talk) 01:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

If you don't have time to improve on such imperfect passages, your compliments do nothing to remedy your revert-war tactics. The context-setting is accurate, even tho it is not obvious, especially until stated, to those who weren't around for the first run. I'm restoring the material , warts and all, and will be one of those working out the right wording, rather than one of those blindly trashing others' good-faith contribs.
--Jerzy•t 05:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm done for now, but i'm unsure about some aspects of this passage. One issue is that Seeger has a musical side and a political side -- always has. This passage is more about the political side, but appears in a section that purports (or that i would expect) to be more about his musical side. So some refactoring may be in order, and further massaging of the text to accommodate that, even in the unlikely case that i've avoided all the PoV pitfalls. Also to be evaluated: whether i have identified (by my specific placement of the {{cn}} tags) the crucial facts yet to be verified, and what sources will do the job, which i'm assuming probably go beyond the two new refs that i provided at the end of the References section.
--Jerzy•t 07:29, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

@Jerzy

Despite your snarky slap at me, you improved the factual presentation of this section. I thought you did a good job properly removing the POV whilst avoiding the ever-dreaded "weasel words" (or something else to offend the Page Police). So, golf clap there.

However, stylistically the writing needed improvement. One of my claims to fame is my facility with the English language. If that sounds immodest I don't really care; I don't believe in false modesty. (If you've got a batting average of .330, why be shy about it?) So I employed my gift to improve aesthetically what you improved factually.

Also, I felt that your using a break in the paragraph to present two lines from Waist Deep in the Big Muddy was not only a stylistic foul--the only time one should really do that is if one is quoting a large section of a song or a poem which would be difficult to read if integrated into the text--but it also broke up the flow of the writing. So I worked them in.

The sections biggest problem, as you realize, is the complete lack of sources/references.

I thought about posting the section itself along with my changes but that would make this discussion page unmanageably large.

As an aside, until almost the very end, according to opinion polls, 80% of Americans supported the Vietnam War. So Seeger was not speaking to a "vast" anti-war audience. The anti-war "movement"† was really an anti-draft movement. When Nixon cancelled the draft in '73, the "movement" disappeared virtually overnight.

†It's funny how many of those "credit card revolutionaries"--as my father called them--became stock brokers or corporate shills: witness Dennis Hopper shilling for an investment house!!

PainMan (talk) 11:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is not the place to discuss degrees of support for the Vietnam War, let alone "credit card revolutionaries" (whatever your father may have meant by that). It is a place to discuss Seeger's many approaches to songwriting, and both the playful reworking of "Beans…" and the extended allegory of "Big Muddy" are relevant to the topic at hand. And yes, it would be good to find better citation for anything that is undercited. - Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

"To be clear: I'm no fan of Johnson. He was a liar and criminal"

Juvenile nonsense.

"He went to Congress is 1937 without a penny in his pocket. When he left in 1969 he had $42,000,000".

Wow. The man managed to make some money during those 32 years. Clearly, he was EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Quote re Dylan

I've been researching, analyzing, and writing for hours re the passage quoting Seeger abt his role at Dylan's Newport appearance. Suffice it for the moment to say that

1. despite some overlap, the source cited doesn't come close to supporting the quote,
2. a very similar quote at Maggie's Farm has a {{cn}} tag, and has "the young people" where this one has "they",
3. no page except perhaps some mentioning "Wikipedia" appears to support the Maggie's Farm,
4. the quote (with the Pete Seeger wording) is supported only by 2 sites, apparently wording the quote identically to each other, and sourcing it with the same apparently identical, and apparently hopelessly vague Spanish sentence:

   Les dejo un fragmento que encontré de Pete hablando sobre aquel rumor:

   (Per Google translation:) I leave a piece I found Pete talking about that rumor:

5. I'm replacing the quote with the quote that is supported by the existing citation in the Pete Seeger article.

More later.
--Jerzy•t 09:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
My only source of information on this issue is Joe Boyd's book "White Bicycles" (2005), page 104:

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. 'They're looking for you backstage'. Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger and Theo Bikel were standing by the stairs, furious. 'You've got to turn the sound down. It's far too loud.' I told them I couldn't control the sound levels from backstage and there was no walkie-talkie system.

This clearly contradicts Seeger's 2001 version of events. But perhaps Joe Boyd has an agenda to tarnish Seeger's reputation. He was no friend of what he called "The New York school" of political, stripped down singing. Boyd does not actually attribute the words to Seeger. I suspect that it was Alan Lomax who said it was too loud. Ogg (talk) 10:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

IMO

It's far too loud.

and

Fix the sound so you can hear the words.

not only could be consistently uttered by the same person, but also could easily be, without even any unconscious attempt to spin the situation, the respective remembered paraphrases of the speaker and a listener, even far less than 40 years after the fact.

I would hope nothing is being made of Seeger's omitting to mention Lomax and Bikel: even if these less controversial figures were equally disapproved by the folk-rock enthusiasts, they were much less well-known to young fans, i think much less seen as political activists, and presumably were not such attractive targets even if they were equally critical of BD's move. And even if they were equally or more responsible or reviled, it would have been petty for him to "shift blame" to them, and risk dragging them further into his troubles if he combined defending them with defending himself.

So if i follow, what "clearly contradicts" Seeger is his saying that he "ran over to [or to within earshot of] the guy at the controls and" was able to shout and be understood, and Joe Boyd seeming to imply, 40 years later in White Bicycles, that there was a physical layout incompatible with the one Seeger describes. (If you're not 60 or over, ask someone who is, and is not that full of themself, who much you forget in 40 year as an adult, even if you aren't yet saying

The legs are the second thing to go, but i can't remember what the first is.

That aside, if the difference were self-serving to Seeger (am i missing something?), we'd have to ask whether it is substantial enuf for the article.
--Jerzy•t 23:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

'I ran over to the guy at the controls' - Pete Seeger.

Boyd's version is as follows:

'Where are the controls? How do you get there?' Bikel demanded. I told him to walk out to the parking lot, turn left, follow the fence to the main entrance, come back down the centre isle and he would see it there around row G - a journey of almost a quarter-mile. They looked daggers at me. 'I know you can get there quicker than that,' said Lomax. I admitted that I usually climbed the fence. for a brief moment we all contemplated the notion of one of those dignified and, barring Seeger, portly men doing the same. Then Lomax snarled, 'You go out there right now and you tell them the sound has got to be turned down. That's an order from the board'. OK I said and ran to the pile of milk crates by the lighting trailer. In a few seconds I was standing beside the sound board.... (a few sententences omitted) ...Grossman, Yarrow [Peter Yarrow, a member of the Board], and Rothchild were sitting behind the board, grinning liker cats. I leaned over to convey the message from Lomax. 'Tell Alan the board is adequately represented at the sound controls and the board member here thinks the sound level is just right,' said Yarrow. Then he looked up at me, smiled and said, 'And tell him ...' and he raised the middle finger of his left hand.

If you wish to remove the phrase 'There are many conflicting versions', then that's fine by me. I am happy for Seeger's version of events to stand as the definitive version.
--Ogg (talk) 07:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Now i see why you found it compelling enuf to mention; thanks for all the details!

If i seemed to be coming on strong for a change of wording, i regret that. I was assuming there probably are at least a few versions, and while it wouldn't surprise me if i put the {{fact}} tag on "many conflicting versions", i don't see the tag at all as a call for quick removal, but as a solicitation to editors to bring forward refs: . Ogg has given a title and p#, which suffices for a ref, and indeed demonstrated Seeger at least unmistakably describing grossly different circumstances. When we have a one-sentence summary on that conflict, i'd prefer to add it, and move the fact tag from following "versions" to following many -- and i hope that sounds thorought without being snarky!
--Jerzy•t 08:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Moe Asch

Barely a mention of Moe Asch here, but during the lean years of the late 1950s Seeger recorded numerous albums of American folk songs for Asch's Folkways label. Probably deserves more mention: not a particularly commercial part of his career, but a significant body of recording, and all still in print from Smithsonian Folkways. - Jmabel | Talk 07:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

HUAC

I don't immediately have a source for this, which is why I'm bringing it here rather than straight into the article, but Seeger's use of a First Amendment defense before HUAC was unusual to the point of being either unprecedented or nearly so. For the most part, those who refused to testify pleaded the Fifth Amendment: that is, they refused to make statements that might incriminate them. Seeger made the very different argument that whatever he had done was entirely legal, and that it was simply not the government's business whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. - Jmabel | Talk 08:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Finding sources on his taking the 1st is easy, you can read his testimony in several places. Finding a good source stating that no one else did the same is a little harder. The current text of this article isn't badly sourced, so I'm not concerned. While we're on the topic, doesn't anyone know if there was an audio/video recording made of his testimony. I'd love the hear the inflections on exchanges like:

Mr. TAVENNER: Did you sing this song, to which we have referred, “Now Is the Time,” at Wingdale Lodge on the weekend of July Fourth?

Mr. SEEGER: I don’t know any song by that name, and I know a song with a similar name. It is called “Wasn’t That a Time.” Is that the song?

Chairman WALTER: Did you sing that song?

Mr. SEEGER: I can sing it. I don’t know how well I can do it without my banjo.

Chairman WALTER: I said, Did you sing it on that occasion?

Mr. SEEGER: I have sung that song. I am not going to go into where I have sung it. I have sung it many places.

I love the offer to sing it for them. --Ahc (talk) 05:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that what is currently in the article is well sourced. What I'm saying is that there is nothing in the article explaining that his defense was unusual, and we would do well to try to track down a citation for that and say so. - Jmabel | Talk 06:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The Hollywood Ten took the first amendment in 1947. Some prominent figures -- Humphrey Bogart, William Wyler -- formed a Committee for the 1st Amendment which circulated petitions signed by many against the HUAC hearings. In 1950, after the start of the Korean War, the original Hollywood Ten were all jailed for contempt of court. People who were called up by HUAC then adopted the strategy of taking the 5th. There was retaliation (in the form of blacklists), for those who (like Pete Seeger) had supported the Progressive Presidential Candidate, Henry Wallace, former vice president and secretary of Agriculture under Roosevelt. Stalin was our ally during the war and without him Hitler would not have been defeated. Those Bolsheviks who had supported Trotsky over Stalin for the leadership of the Soviet Union in the 1930s subsequently were understandably enraged by Stalin's murder of Trotsky. These people had (and still may have) an abiding and unquenchable hatred for those who did not share their views. The most extreme branded all other leftists -- communists (Bolshevik and generic), democratic socialists, and even liberals -- as "Stalinists." Some of these people were employed/secretly funded by our government as professional "anti-communists" during the Cold War as a way of destabilizing the American left. An example is Irving Kristol. Pete Seeger's use of the First Amendment as late as 1955 was an act of unusual defiance. The blacklist, however, might never have worked if key figures in the entertainment industry -- above all television and film had not met together and officially in 1950 and decided to go along with it voluntarily as a group and not employ anyone who appeared tainted with the suspicion of controversy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.183.181.230 (talk) 13:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Sing Out! Magazine

When I was a toddler, in the very early 1960's, my mother, who was a folk singer had acquired a lot of Sing Out! Magazines from the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. They appeared quarterly, I think, always with a little floppy recording of a folk song featured that could be placed on a 45 RPM record, as well as other various songs, etc. She kept those magazines like a treasure trove, (I remember new ones arriving as late as 1969, but am unsure after that..) until she died when I was 20. I was told that Pete was the person who used the familiar pen name of "Johnny Appleseed" to comment on political happenings, because he had either been blacklisted by McCarthyism, or because he feared it would happen, I'm not clear on which. Just something I thought was meaningful, if anyone is familiar with it. --leahtwosaints (talk) 08:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Nobel Prize

Pete Seeger for Nobel Peace Prize: http://www.nobelprize4pete.org/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.200.212 (talk) 14:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Absence of discography

I notice that the Japanese Wikipedia has a very thorough discogrphy of Pete Seeger

• http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%A9%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85:Mahopa/%E7%B7%B4%E7%BF%92%E5%B8%B3

while you have none. why? Ogg (talk) 14:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Plenty of good Seeger discographies out there; not sure it's a terribly valuable addition for us to duplicate that. - Jmabel | Talk 05:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a ton of great Dylan discographies out there, but wikipedia has one. Somebody should include a Seeger discog. Friendship hurricane (talk) 17:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Siblings Charles and John

I've added mention of two other brothers, Charles (an astronomer, who was a colleague of mine) and John (I do not know his profession).Bill Jefferys (talk) 21:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC) I have received email from Judith Tick, a professor at Northeastern University, and from Anthony Seeger, John Seeger's son, that confirms that John Seeger was an educator. I have added this information to the article. Bill Jefferys (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, John Seeger was also principal/headmaster at the Fieldston school - I've added that with a cite. Tvoz/talk 20:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Revision as of 23:56, 28 February 2008

... by "Why can't I pick a unique username?" ... citing: (this is pretty contentious material, and the sources are terrible (only a year for a weekly magazine?) so removed as BLP concern; removing impunged motivatons) I could tease out three main sections of content removed:

1. ... took the Communist Party's non-interventionist line after Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. Seeger routinely referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "warmonger beholden to the likes of J.P. Morgan" and expressed his displeasure about FDR's increasingly confrontational attitude with Axis Powers.
2. Time Magazine said that Seeger's album "echoed the mendacious Moscow view". (ref-to:John Bush Jones. The Songs That Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front. 2006 )
3. (ref to: Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley. Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry During the 1930s and 1940s) 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 Seeger "Stalin's Songbird". (ref to: David Boaz, Stalin's songbird, Comment is free, Guardian Unlimited. April 14, 2006. Accessed online 16 October 2007.)

I WAS able to corroborate source #2 above as being on p. 62 of the book referred to: Time magazine (of the WW2 era) was the source the quote was attributed to by the book cited, rather than the source itself. I base this on the on-line access of the text of the book at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=NlUVOC70BCEC

... the citation of which, rather than Time magazine, would really be to something along the lines of:

   "THE SONGS THAT FOUGHT THE WAR; Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939-1945", by 
   John Bush Jones, Brandeis University Press; Waltham, Massachussetts; Published by 
   the University Press of New England; Hanover and London, p. 62, etc.

It's worth noting that the tone of bullet #2's wiki content and its original passage was not nearly as subjective in tone as the rest of the wikipedia entry section it was tossed out with was. I could not find basis for the content of bullet sections #1 and #3 in the Jones book. Mention of "JP Morgan" and "Stalin's songbird" are from the Boaz opinion piece and nothing more I can discern without more investigation. Based on that source alone, the content should probably only be included in a section dedicated to criticism of Seeger, if any. I think the "mendacious Moscow view" reference might be well-sourced and even-toned enough to be included though limiting it to a criticism section might also be in order. There is also a bibliography on p. 295 of the Jones book. Other than that it happens to be the one cited here, and be easily accessible, I don't know how much more or less authoritative this book is than others. There was also a "citation needed" tag inserted more recently. To what to attribute the qualifier "to this day" may very well merit its own citation, but there is also reference in the Jones book to the destruction of those pressings so I am left wondering if the sentence before the tagged one may also have been based on the Jones book if not the Billingsley book, mention of which was also deleted. Maybe another pass by the original respective wikipedia editors is in order? ... just wanted to clarify those few things around that edit. -thanks, Onceler (talk) 09:22, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

FWIW - and I say this as a big fan of Seeger's, with not dissimilar politics - I think what was removed was pretty accurate, and that if people think the citations are inadequate, we should seek better ones.

I assume no one would consider David King Dunaway's How Can I Keep From Singing to be biased against Seeger. Here's his recounting of some of this; page numbers are from the 1982 paperback edition, which is what I have at hand. This is by no means comprehensive of what Dunaway has to say on the topic, but I think it is entirely representative:

p. 73: ...the Communist party—and most of Pete's friends—had broken with Roosevelt over his refusal to support the Spanish Republic and over his preparations for war. All summer Pete had read about the fat defense contracts given at Ford and other companies... Pete had never been enthusiastic about fighting, even in Spain. Now, like many Communist radicals in 1940, he opposed Hitler but denounced war as "imperialist," a provocation to get the Nazis to fight the Soviet Union.

p. 79: ...at a party in Greenwich Village... He had been finishing up an anti-war song poking fun at Winston Churchill when "a drunk guy came up and, WHAM ... socked me right in the eye" ... The assault only made Pete more outspokenly anti-war; he hated to be told what to sing.

p. 81: (from Songs for John Doe, a to the tune of "Jesse James"):

Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt.

We damned near believed what he said.

He said, "I hate war and so does Eleanor, but

We won't be safe 'till everybody's dead ....

- "Ballad of October 16"

Full lyrics are online at http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/oct16.html, part of a site based at http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/doe.html about the album. The site is probably in a bit of a copyright limbo (in that it is the reproduction of so much material under a claim of fair use), but I see no reason to think it is inaccurate. The line about J.P. Morgan can be found there. Another line about Morgan is in "Washington Breakdown".

p. 84: (at the time of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union) For two years the Communist Left had followed Russia's lead in opposing the war. Now partisans of the Soviet Union were cut adrift, hesitant either to go to war or to desert Russia. How could the Almanacs go on singing peace songs while the Soviet Union fought for its life?

p. 84: (quoting Dorothy Millstone of the New York Post): "After hearing that Russia had been invaded, I hung up the phone, and the first think I did was to break my Almanac Records."

p. 85 mentions a song title "Franklin D. You Ain't Gonna Send Me Across the Sea".

p. 85 Many would later criticize [Seeger's and others'] flip-flops as cold-hearted, overlooking the deep roots of both anti-Nazi and anti-war instincts in the thirties.

p. 86 ...a Harvard professor, Carl Frederick, called the Almanacs "Poison in Our System" in an article in the June [1941] Atlantic.

Also, not on this specific shift but on his being perceived as a Party follower, on p. 123, quoted from Bosses' Songbook (1959) by Pat and Dick Ellington; the lyrics are to the tune of "The Wreck of the Old '97":

Well, they gave him his orders / Up at Party Headquarters / Saying, "Pete you're way behind the times. / This is not '38, this is 1947 / and there's been a change in that old party line. // Well, it's a long, long haul / From "Greensleeves" to "Freiheit"...

And the following; no longer accurate, but presumably so at the time of writing (1981). On p.184, after quite a bit of material about his drift away from the CPUSA, his relying on the First Amendment rather than the Fifth, etc., He did not criticize the Party, however. ... To date, Seeger has never publicly criticized Soviet intervention in Hungary or Czechoslovakia.

- Jmabel | Talk 06:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC) updated 06:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a citation for "Stalin's songbird" that comes from the WWII era, but here is an article from New Statesman about "Big Joe Blues", which also references the epithet. Hardly a source hostile to Seeger, although this article also seems to derive, at least in part, from Ronald Radosh's remarks, so it's not clear that its author did any research of his own. - Jmabel | Talk 06:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I found a reasonably good online source for the Time "mendacious" quote and the Atlantic "poison" quote. They both at peteseeger.net, the "Pete Seeger Appreciation Page" that Jim Capaldi started around 1996 and which his daughter continues today. The June 1941 Atlantic article is excerpted there, the short Time piece appears to be quoted in full and is dated precisely: the June 16, 1941 issue of Time. - Jmabel | Talk 07:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC) The sentence from Time is "Professionally performed with new words to old folk tunes, John Doe's singing scrupulously echoed the mendacious Moscow tune: Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war." - Jmabel | Talk 07:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The articles from the Atlantic and Time are available on the web and it is easy to see that the author of the Atlantic "Poison" one is Carl Friedrich not Carl Frederick as Dunaway and Billingsley write. Friedrich was the son of a Prussian Countess, and his brother was a Nazi industrialist in the rubber business. Carl Friedrich was a naturalized American citizen and was himself quite liberal or at least centrist. He was a big shot as an adviser to US military intelligence and was to be instrumental in setting up the post war government of West Germany. During the war, he was an expert on propaganda and morale. His papers are deposited at Harvard and probably have much of interest in them.

With regard to Pete Seeger and the Almanacs, Friedrich didn't seem to be aware that the USA is not Prussia or the Kaiser's Germany and doesn't have a Lèse majesté law. Eleanor and Franklin were not unduly upset by the Almanac's album, though they didn't like it, naturally, but it is not illegal to criticize the President or to say "I don't want to die for Du Pont in Brazil" (especially when the country was not yet even at war). Friedrich seemed to regret this and organized his own Freikorps to engage in a witch hunt against the Almanacs. He had the "Poison" article printed up as a pamphlet and shown to the Almanac's prospective employers, causing all their bookings to be canceled (according to a contemporary article from the NY World Telegram available on the Pete Seeger appreciation site). It makes one wonder if the publication Red Channels, similarly distributed to employers, wasn't his brainchild.

Hi. Thanks for the additional material and links. Speaking as a great fan, I still think this article shouldn't shirk the more difficult stuff. It can be done fairly and respectfully. Learning from the past is the best course and the more objective and broader the treatment, the better. I haven't been contributing to wikipedia too much recently but will add other updates here if I come across sources. -regards, Onceler (talk) 22:38, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think David King Dunaway's book is not exactly hostile to Seeger, but that it doesn't really "get" Seeger, or his politics, either. In this it is indeed subtly hostile to Seeger and lazy in its attitude to folk music. The albums "Songs for John Doe" and "Talking Union" both came out in 1941 and there was a strong pro-union context for both. The big corporations who were getting defense contracts had sworn to keep black people out of those new jobs, which were for whites only. Don't forget that many of these very same corporations had also given material support to Hitler, who had the support of large segments of the wealthy classes in both England and the US. Don't forget, too, that the army itself was segregated and would remain so until the time of Truman. Time magazine's hit piece and cries of treason against the Almanacs had more to do with the Almanac's pro-Union and anti corporate sentiments than with conditions in the USSR, that's for sure! If they could support Hitler's concentration camps, which were well known even before the "final solution" was put in place, they would not have a problem with Stalin's gulags. What they did have a problem with was the nationalization of industry and worker's rights. A decent biography of Seeger has yet to be written. It is quite anachronistic to call Seeger, or anyone else in that period, a "Stalinist." Mballen (talk) August 10, 2008

It is curious that Dunaway claims Seeger had to conceal his fondness for pop songs like "Gershwin's" [sic] "Blue Skies" from his mother and father. It is odd that Dunway who worked on his biography of Pete for over ten years and boasted that he had thoroughly combed Seeger's huge FBI dossier, couldn't even get right the basic musical information that Irving Berlin wrote "Blue Skies", still a staple of Seeger's repertoire. It seems highly uncharacteristic, to me, anyway, that someone who so stubbornly defied the Congress of the United States to defend free speech and was willing to go to jail, and who braved the mob at Peekskill, would trouble to conceal his musical preferences, even from his parents. It's also odd, too, that Dunaway devotes so much space in the final section of his book, to Pete's neocon critics, such as Radosh and the New Republic's David Hajdu, who aren't exactly fans of either of Seeger or of folk music. There are also many gratuitous and nasty mentions of other people in the field, which are not sourced in a way that makes it possible to know who said them.96.246.15.155 (talk) 02:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Mother

Who is Pete Seeger's mother? No mention of who she is, only his step mother. Friendship hurricane (talk) 17:33, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

His mother's name was Constance. She was a noted classical violinist. I do not have a maiden name at the present time. Bill Jefferys (talk) 19:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

With help from one of Charles L. Seeger's grandchildren, I have learned that Constance Seeger's maiden name was Edson; a New York Times clipping confirms this, and I've included that in a new reference. Bill Jefferys (talk) 13:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

According to Dunaway (who mocks her for this) Constance was a moderate Socialist who voted for Norman Thomas. She was also interested in theosophy Dunway states that some of her young violin pupils were Jewish and it was through his friendship with them as a boy that Pete, first became aware of Hitler's persecution of the Jewish people. Pete's father was more politically radical. He was fired from his job as a professor in California for opposing our entry into WWI. He was no feminist. Dunaway says that he divorced Constance when he found out she had opened a separate bank account. 96.250.29.54 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 18:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC).

Toshi Seeger

I see that the page for Pete's wife, Toshi Seeger, was deleted for non-notability. I think she probably would make the notability threshold if someone did their research to show why, but as an alternative is there any reason not to make that page redirect here, and possibly add more about her in this article? - Jmabel | Talk 17:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC) Toshi is an interesting person. Her father was a political refugee from Fascist Japan who fought in China with Sun Yat Sen and translated Marx into Japanese. Pete greatly admired the way he put his life on the line for his beliefs. Toshi's mother was an American from an established family in Virginia. Pete believes that it was because he received mail on Toshi's father's Japanese stationery while in the army that he was not given a combat position. Toshi has fiercely protected all aspects of Pete's career, at times playing the heavy to his good guy persona. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.250.29.54 (talk) 18:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Belated reply to this - I agree that a credible article could be written about Toshi, and would be interested in helping out with it. I missed the previous article and deletion. There are admins who will provide copies of deleted articles for this purpose - Joe, do you know any off hand? If not, I'll find one. Meanwhile, I created a redirect to Pete, as I can't see why that would be objectionable. And yes, if we can get some sourcing, some of the material above from IP96 would be suitable for adding into Pete's article pending a separate piece on Toshi. Tvoz/talk 21:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Story Songs

Might want to add a mention of his album Story Songs and possibly an article on the album itself. I've always (well, since it came out in the early 1960s) considered it a standout of his solo career. - Jmabel | Talk 17:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Weavers.jpg

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• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --01:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Discography: American Favorite Ballads

I see that our selected discography lists a couple of the Smithsonian American Favorite Ballads CDs. No objection to that, but shouldn't we list the original (and I would think more significant) 1950s American Favorite Ballads and Frontier Ballads LPs? The Smithsonian series are not straight re-issues, they overlap but do not exactly duplicate the original LPs. - Jmabel | Talk 16:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC) I was surprised to see "Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children" listed as 1991, since I remember listening to it as a child around 1980. Looking at the entry on Amazon for this album, it appears that the 1991 release is a straight re-issue of the 1966 release. If some other the other Smithsonian series have different track listings than the original releases, maybe they could be noted, but it would seem better to have the original issues instead of the Smithsonian reissues.192.104.39.2 (talk) 20:01, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Quotes

The quotes should be moved to wikiquote, and just a link to wikiquote left here. DrKiernan (talk) 14:02, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Egregious POV

Removed several POV remarks which I found inappropriately "suck-up." I will blockquote them all.

Seeger's adoption of the twelve-string guitar doubtless inspired other folk performers to follow his example, ensuring its survival and contributing to its popularity in the 1960s and 70s.

Something of such importance needs a citation, it also makes P.S. sound like a visonary (which he more or less is,) but which isn't NPOV

Seeger continued his principled support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism

Removed "principled" as needlessly POV.

But it is Pete's infectious enthusiasm, tireless energy, lifelong commitment and ability to "teach" audiences of any size, age or background that has raised him above his contemporaries.

Seriously POV, and completely unneeded. Pete did this, Pete did that, the reader can decide for himself whether PS is "great" or "not great."

He did not mention that Pete had not been a Communist Party member for 57 years, or that many other Americans had changed their minds in similar fashion.

Opinion. The intelligent reader can do math. Somewhere in the article it should say. "PS left the CPUSA on X date" The writer of the guardian article is or is not mendacious, but the reader can decide. A lie of omission, all Jesuitical remarks aside, is not as good as an absolute lie, and this not an op-ed about how great a person/songwriter/politician PS really is/isn't. Thanks for your patience. V. Joe (talk) 17:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC) KINGSTON TRIO Mention of the Kingston Trio as "pale imitation" of the Weavers is also POV, of the kind we want to avoid. Do we have to build up the Weavers at the expense of other groups? Let's just say that Kingston Trio was "collegiate" in image, where the Weavers had been populist. Let's face it, the Weavers were also a commercial group, and there's nothing wrong with that. The fact of the matter is that no imitation is ever going to be as good as the original. The Kingston Trio was very important however and did a good job of bringing the folk repertoire back into public consciousness in a way that was acceptable at the time. This sentence: "In contrast, Pete and his siblings Mike and Peggy continued to infuse their interpretations with a more scholarly approach and respect for the original sources and song carriers that they had been brought up with" adds little. It is somewhat debatable and, in any case, irrelevant to the topic, belonging more properly on the pages of Mike and Peggy Seeger respectively.Mballen (talk) 19:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

90th birthday

The list of 90th birthday events is getting bloated. It is certainly non-encyclopedic: worth at most one sentence, not a screen's worth of listings. I'm not interested in fighting about it, though. Can we just agree to cut this way back next week, when it's no longer a current event? - Jmabel | Talk 04:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, next week is fine. Perhaps they could all be placed into one footnote. Bearian (talk) 18:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I moved it into a footnote - maybe still too much, but that's better than in the text. (PS-Hi Joe! It's been a while!) Tvoz/talk 20:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Spanish Civil War

'Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain' - Churchill was neither prime minister nor foreign secretary at the time of the Spanish Civil War. I'm not a historian - I don't know if British policy in this area can be attributed to a particular politician (or indeed American policy to Roosevelt). I suggest 'the American and British arms embargo to loyalist Spain'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.40.101 (talk) 00:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Only an ignoramus doesn't know that Churchill was in the political desert at the time, firmly on the backbenches, his calls to rearm sufficiently so as to be ready for Germany's inevitable attack going largely unheeded. Indeed, he was called a 'warmonger' for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

A memorable concert needs rewrite or omission

The section " a memorable concert " sounds more like a piece of slightly fawning journalism than 'pedia-like. Words like "unfortunately" and other colour commentary have no place here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.15.65.130 (talk) 14:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was just coming here to say something similar. I'm sure it was a wonderful and healing concert - aren't all of Pete's? - but unless there is a third-party source describing it and talking about some special significance that particular concert had, it's really not appropriate to include a whole section to it. It's one of many, and it has way too much weight in this article - I think we have to bring it down to a sentence or two in the activism section, and find a source that speaks about its significance. I would guess there are such sources. Meanwhile, regrettably, I think it has to be removed. Tvoz/talk 20:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Problem with the lead and the criticism sections

Hi All: I have been keeping a watch on the P.S. article for sometime... and I think the lead is especially pufferish. I shall go over my obejctions point to point.

First Sentence- "Peter Seeger is an American folk singer" (The first part is great. Its factual and objective.) The second part is a lot more puffery. "A Key figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival I happen to agree, but let the reader figure that out with the facts. P.S. was a key figure is not nearly as useful as, "P.S. was the best selling folk artist from the year 1959"

Second Sentence: I think this sentence does a much better job of showing rather than preaching. P.S. was important because he was popular on the radio during the war and sold a lot of records.

Third Sentence: This is where I believe the most absurd puffery occurs.

"In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a pioneer of protest music, in support of international disarmaments & civil rights & more recently as a tireless activitst for environmental causes. " This sounds like it was written by an admirer of P.S. and someone who agrees with him on everything. It clearly implies that P.S.'s beliefs are both widely held & laudable. Perhaps needless to say, this this is not the case. Nobody would find it acceptable if someone wrote in an article about Elvis "E.P. was a stalwart supporter of the War on Drugs and gave valuable and important aid to the cause of battling heroin addiction." It would be equally unacceptable to write "as a supporter of International Communism, Pete Seeger took political stands which were exactly identical with the Commitern and with the Soviet Union. This included a mission to undermine American support for the democratically elected Republic of South Vietnam & support for unilateral American disarmament in the face of the Soviet peril". The ideal rewrite of this sentence would be "P.S. supported the international disarmament movement, civil rights and more recently environmental causes." I am going to make this so. The reader can determine whether P.S. was a hero, villain, dupe or whatever. 00:13, 9 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Valentinejoesmith (talk • contribs)

The changes implemented were garbled and not an improvement - there's no implication of anything other than an accurate summary of the rest of the article. Nothing in those sentences suggests agreement with his positions - they are a factual summary of his life. He was blacklisted in the 50s and re-emerged on the public scene in the 60s; he is indisputably a key figure in the folk revival; he is known for his support of disarmament and civil rights; and at age 90 he is still out there rallying and working for environmental causes - I'd say calling that "tireless" is an apt description. I'd like to hear from other editors about this before gutting a summary lead that seems acceptably neutral to me. [[User:Tvoz

|blp=yes|Tvoz]]/talk 06:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

As I posted on Tvoz's talk page, I had been sloppy that night and fixed the lead so that it is a replacement and not an additional sentence. Cheers V. Joe (talk) 19:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Um, Joe, actually nothing is posted on my talk page from you, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. Can we try for a dialogue here rather than unilateral changes please? I do not think the original was implying anything other than what is historically correct, and frankly don't see that the words were peacock or weasel. Let's not throw terms around - what is your objection, specifically? My revert was to restore long-standing wording, so please discuss this so we can come to some kind of consensus. Would you prefer if I added a citation for "tireless" - the man is 90 and is still working for causes he believes in - to me that's tireless, and not peacock or weasel. Maybe others disagree, but can we please discuss? thanks. Tvoz/talk 21:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tvoz. It seems to me that without the lead that was deleted, the rest of the section sounds abruptly introduced. There needs to be some background so that the announcement of the specific criticism doesn't seem so abrupt. I've no problems with restoring what was deleted, but if Joe has specific suggestions for rewording that would remove his objections, that's fine too. But something has to go there. The section as it stands is not satisfactory. Bill Jefferys (talk) 22:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Bill - I forgot to mention my objection to the change in the criticism section as well as to the intro section. I am generally opposed to such sections as it is better writing to incorporate criticism into the body of the article - this is a common discussion on the politician articles as well. So in fact I'd like to see the "criticism" section removed and the material integrated into the rest of the article, which would make that intro sentence unnecessary. But if we have a separate section I think we need to place it in historical context. I didn't revert again to avoid edit warring, but I don't agree with the last reversion or the logic of its edit summary. If too much attention is being given to one op-ed, we shouldn't include it at all, not remove the sentence that explains its historical position. Tvoz/talk 22:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me add, I am rather puzzled that Boaz's criticism is singled out for inclusion here. Seeger has been criticized most of his life, by many people (not only from the right). What is special about this particular rather late comment that merits inclusion in the article?

I think that if you are going to have an article on "criticism", you really need something much more substantial than this one that includes comments from many sources. Criticizing the deleted lead for being POV seems strange, as the inclusion of Boaz's criticism in its current isolation might be construed by some as an attempt to include something equally POV, but from another political side.Bill Jefferys (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Tvoz. This section would be better deleted, and material about criticism included elsewhere in the article, in context. Bill Jefferys (talk) 22:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with BillJeffreys that the criticism section would be better off removed. I am the one who removed the introductory sentence in criticism section; portraying Mr. Seeger as a saint places a qualifier on any following criticism, however laudible Mr. Seeger's goals are. I tried to keep the rest of the section intact, as I think everything in the rest of the article makes the case for Mr. Seeger's deeds. After reading the section once more, and after reading Bill's comments, I don't see how the section brings any value to the article at all. I think removing it in favor of, perhaps, later edits to the body of the article, would be a good change to this article. mwb0916([[User talk:mwb0916|talk}}) —Preceding undated comment added 16:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC).

Done. Tvoz/talk 04:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with these changes. It makes it seem as though Pete Seeger joined the communist party because of his support for Stalin and not because of his support for unions and civil rights and his opposition to fascism and anti-Semitism. Most people who joined the communist party in America during the late 1930s and early forties joined for these reasons, not because they admired Stalin. This was the time of the American Communist Party's greatest popularity. Other left-wing groups, including Socialists, were seen as not sufficiently opposed to fascism or anti-Semitism. Leon Blum, the socialist Prime Minister of France joined FDR in refusing to give aid to Loyalist Spain. Putting something that happened in 1995 cheek by jowl with something that happened in 1939 is extremely misleading. Pete Seeger was criticized by Boaz and Radosh (who were childhood friends) in the late 1990s because of complementary things that were being written about him in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Seeger responded, naively or not, by giving them the public repudiation of Stalin they were demanding. This is important context and it is no longer here. A suggestive circumstance was that the criticisms were published from overseas, which suggests that they were instigated elements of US military intelligence that are legally prohibited from engaging in stateside propaganda. Whatever the case, readers deserve to know this information so they can draw their own conclusions. In sum, to avoid an editorializing impression the material about 1995 should go back into chronological order where it belongs. I am fine with incorporating it into the text instead of having it in a section marked "criticism." By the way, we are dealing with a living person here.Mballen (talk) 17:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Pete Seeger's 1997 apology for having been naive about Stalin during world war 2 was misquoted. He never apologized for "having followed the party line so slavishly" as the article falsely claimed, but rather for having been mistaken about Stalin. POV appears to have crept in. I moved the apology to the period of his life at which it occurred -- 1997 -- and added more of the context of the actual apology, which can be found in his autobiography Where Have all the Flowers Gone? and not in the NYTimes as was erroneously cited here. Radosh and Boaz appear to work together and I think it is indeed relevant to state that fact.Mballen (talk) 02:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

The article currently has "In his autobiography (Where Have All the Flowers Gone, 1993; reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, 'Today I'll apologize...' etc". Was it actually the 2nd (3rd?) edition of his autobiography (1997) where he first says this? If so, the article could be edited to reflect the correct year.... Valerius Tygart (talk) 13:58, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

It was the first edition, of which I possess a copy (although not with me at the moment). Mballen (talk) 00:37, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Addendum. My edition is says copyright 1993, 1997. It is a reprint, contrary to what I remembered, but there is nothing to indicate that Seeger or his editor revised the book or changed the text in the four years between 1993 and 97. I provided a link to the Updike story "Licks of Love" that readers can check out for themselves. The protagonist is not meant to be based on Seeger but is described rather as a fan of Seeger and the Weavers.Mballen (talk) 20:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, if a book's copyright page has more than one copyright year (not to be confused with a reprint year), then something has changed between the 1st & 2nd (...& 2nd & 3rd, etc) years... I have actually found this to be pretty reliable. Thus, Seeger may have made his "apology" only in 1997, not 1993... Only comparing copies of the different editions would tell for sure... Valerius Tygart (talk) 04:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not at all clear to me what you mean by these insinuations (which seem to be contradicted by the words of Seeger's biographer, among other things) but if you think that it is the case that Seeger made deviously surreptitious changes to his autobiography between 1993 and 1997 and that it would be relevant, then by all means go to the library and look it up for yourself and come back with the proof. Otherwise it is mere speculation on your part.Mballen (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC).

People make changes from one edition of a book to another all the time... It would not be "deviously surreptitious changes" if Seeger changed his autobiography between 1993 and 1997 to apologize for having supported Stalin. How would an apology in 1993 differ significantly from one in 1997? Not much. Still, getting the exact year right would be important to someone following the evolution of his thinking over time. Is this "mere speculation" on my part? Yes, and so what? I have not suggested changing the article until proper referencing can be done. Your suggestion of comparing the versions is a good one (& one that I already made previously...). Cheers! Valerius Tygart (talk) 14:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

It is much more likely that if there were any changes they would have been additions of new songs. Only the redbaiters are interested in the minutia of the supposed "evolution" of Seeger's self-criticism. Mballen (talk) 20:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who generally disagrees with his politics, I think that most would agree that he is the patriarch of the modern folk era / folk revival, and has produced the largest body of notable folk music of anyone. Of course politics was also a framework of his life, and needs to be correctly covered, but IMHO let's keep it in perspective.North8000 (talk) 20:20, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing Text

This article appears to have some missing text following the fragment "In a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine,". I examined the four most recent edits, but the problem does not occur there. I don't have time to fix this, perhaps someone else can? David spector (talk) 03:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

iconic vs. important

In the first paragraph an editor has replaced "iconic figure" with "important figure", on the grounds that "iconic" is a meaningless word. Iconic is not a meaningless word, there is even an entry in wikipedia Cultural icon, which discusses the use of the word iconic. The objection people make is that it is overused, not that it is not a word. As I recall "iconic" got into the article because someone objected to another word as "overly positive". Pete Seeger is certainly an iconic figure, love him or hate him. Important is not quite the same thing. He is perhaps "the most important figures" actually, in the folk revival, I think almost everyone would agree. I am not going to change this yet, but "important" is even more vague and meaningless than iconic, and I recommend that someone try to come up with a more precise term or put iconic back.Mballen (talk) 04:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

According to NPR:

In honor of the iconic troubadour's 90th birthday, NPR Music partner Folk Alley has put together a five-hour mix of Pete Seeger classics and great covers. Hear the stream here:

The Guardian UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/apr/30/pete-seeger-birthday-90-music

Happy birthday Pete Seeger--by Richard Silverstein

As the iconic folk singer turns 90, we can say that America is a far better country for his having shared his music with us. Pete Seeger, the American troubadour and balladeer of the common man, will be 90 years young this weekend. Seeger is the grand old man of American folk music. Though he has lived a long, full life, he possesses a kind of ageless magic that enables his to appeal to audiences aged from three to 93. And much of American traditional and popular music has been profoundly influenced by his songs and their message of solidarity with the poor and oppressed

Seeger is America's Homer. He travelled from town to town through the heartland for decades telling the nation's story. At times he sang of the America that was. At times he dreamed what America could be. He was never happy with the status quo and always envisioned a country that realised the American dream of equality and justice for rich and poor alike.

Here's another:

Reputational change can occur both posthumously and within a person's lifetime. Championed by reputational entrepreneurs, reputations emerge from competitive fields of interpretive possibilities. The purification of Pete Seeger's image, from vilified Communist to national hero, lets us study both reputational change and the relationship between art and politics. An objectivist model suggests that reputations simply reflect truth. An ideological model claims that Seeger's redemption is shaped by a biased media. Neither sufficiently explains the competitive nature of reputational politics. Our constructionist model takes into account both the role of reputational entrepreneurs and the structural constraints they face. We chart Seeger's reputation through four historical periods: recognition among his peers on the Left (1940s), ruin in the McCarthy period (1950-62), renown among sympathetic subcultures (1960s), and institutionalization as a cultural icon. While it has clear advantages, institutionalization can also have a dampening effect on an artist's oppositional potency. --Minna Bromberg and Alan Fine, "Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purificaton of Difficult Reputations", Social Forces, Vol. 80 (June 2002), No. 4, pp. 1135–1155.

Agreed and you have made your case. I'll put it back if you add the cite(s). North8000 (talk) 12:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

iconic vs. something else

Further to the above section, I agree that "important" is mundane, but the original changee surely had a point about the loss of meaning of "iconic" which has become thoroughly secularized in the same way that "myth" has come to mean a demonstrable falsehood.

I cannot find the sources, but I think Clive James made this argument for his Point of View essays on BBC Radio4. Yes, the term could be applied to a non-religious object, but only to those which elicited similar psychological responses when looking at them.

And it should be an *object*, notably a picture/poster. I am simplifying greatly, but Orthodox ikons developed from the Eastern Church's opposition to graven images and/or statues (some truth in that, as anyone who has felt fear at the Weeping Angels will understand); so religious experience was seen in two dimensional drawings.

Andy Warhol's pop art is iconic in the sense that it took immediately recognizable cultural motifs, and reproduced them in two dimensional terms. *That* image of Che Guevara is iconic for the same reasons, as well as his Christ-like posture (making no comment on his politics).

Truly iconic faces are featureless making them translate well into such two dimensional representations, such as Grace Kelly's.

AlexanderMacpherson (talk) 12:25, 16 November 2010 (GMT)

There are other definitions of the word. Here's a couple from Websters:

• an object of uncritical devotion

• emblem, symbol (given example:) the house became an icon of 1960's residential architecture

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, but those arguably derive, in part at least, from the same confusion of the meaning. I see even dictionary.com considers "blatant" and "flagrant" to be interchangeable; whilst the former means an obvious and public display of the relevant behaviour, and the latter means sweet smelling sin.

Or "classic" coming to mean a mediocre song/book/film which has been out only for a few years, and the only merit of which is high sales.

Calling Seeger an American Homer is a good one, but I would not describe Homer as iconic. I guess what I am saying is that the term has lost meaning. AlexanderMacpherson (talk) 13:16, 16 November 2010 (GMT)

I don't have any strong feeling about the use or non-use of the term here. But to me it looks OK. North8000 (talk) 14:57, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Facebook fanpage

Readers may be aware of a direction which the Facebook fanpage for Seeger has taken. I get the feeling the creator was involved with this Wiki page as well. Is anything being done to halt it,and return it to discussion of Seeger?

AlexanderMacpherson (talk) 12:25, 16 November 2010 (GMT)

Not sure what you are saying here....could you clarify? North8000 (talk) 12:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Blimey, that was quick! Here is the page in question. Two days ago, Seeger preformed as part of an online concert relating to a regional conflict at the eastern end of the Mediterranean (obviously I am being tongue 'n cheek here, but also I do not intend to help drag this Wiki page down into a slanging match).

For the past six or eight weeks, there has been a very vocal discussion with lurid descriptions of political events which have little place on a fanpage. This has continued, I think, because of lack of oversight and moderation. AlexanderMacpherson (talk) 12:45, 16 November 2010 (GMT)

I read about 50 posts there, none had any mention of Seeger or what they are saying he did. Looks like just a nasty debate forum / boxing ring for Arab/Israeli issues. North8000 (talk) 15:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Quite. I'm there as Ailig Mac a Phearsain (Gaelicized version of my name) suggesting that everyone desist. My point here was that if the Facebook page owner is involved with this Wiki page (I get the impression s/he is because of common information on both), they could go in and clean-up. AlexanderMacpherson (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2010 (GMT)

This article has been very stable....maybe 1% changed in 6 months. North8000 (talk) 15:58, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Israel

If we are having a section on Israel, we should also mention his support for Israel in its early years. He is, after all, the man from whom most Americans who know the song "Tzena, Tzena" learned it. - Jmabel | Talk

I think so. North8000 (talk) 10:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Good item on "Tzena" at http://www.jewishhumorcentral.com/2011/01/how-tzena-tzena-made-its-way-to-2-on.html. - Jmabel | Talk 18:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

There's a big WP:WEIGHT or WP:UNDUE issue here. A whole paragraph about one concert, and one possibly controversial comment (out of a lifetime of such), doesn't seem appropriate in a biography covering 70-plus years in the public eye. PhGustaf (talk) 20:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd have no problem with removing it entirely. What I do have a problem with is presenting it as if this one concert and comment fully characterized Seeger's views on Israel over time. - Jmabel | Talk 06:24, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that you are both agreeing. (?) Either way, we should try very hard to avoid overblowing/overcovering brief moments here. North8000 (talk) 11:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we are agreeing with one another, but disagreeing with the article. Either the section should be dropped (which I would favor) or should show some balance. If no one edits it accordingly within a few days, I will take my preferred solution, which is to cut it entirely. - Jmabel | Talk 05:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure exactly what you are planning to do, but IMHO you should give it a try. Right now that whole three paragraph section looks not only overblown but also confusing. IMHO that entire Israel section needs condensing and summarizing. North8000 (talk) 10:14, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Then feel free to condense and summarize (and preferably add some balance, as suggested). Because if it is left to me, I will simply remove the section. - Jmabel | Talk 16:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with dumping it. PhGustaf (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm also fine with dumping it. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Come to think of it, if this issue resurfaces, "Tzena" wasn't a fluke. He also recorded "Shalom, Chaverim" and "The Road to Eilat". - Jmabel | Talk 23:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

And now he has jumped on the antisemitic BDS bandwagon. If there was a fascist cause that he hasn't supported, it must have been an oversight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Archiving

Can someone here please archive the really old connents here on this talk page? It's insane having to pick through discussions which took place in 2005, 2006, etc.! Thanks. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 03:29, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Problems with the lead

I just surfed in here and the first paragraph of the lead section is good, but then it seems to focus on a little part of Seeger's work instead of the broader scope about him. Does anyone else with perhaps "fresh eyes" see that -where it then focuses upon a couple of Seeger's notable songs, and then all the cover bands who recorded it? Seriously, I feel that part could be mostly moved to another part of the article, or placed on the song pages instead. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 03:38, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that you are right the the lead could use a lot of work, right now it's sort of a list of music related items. Also I think that the first sentence in the second paragraph (essentially that he is best known for those three songs) is wrong and OR. But we also have to keep in mind that his music is the main reason he is famous. Also, there are many readers that don't really know who he is, and seeing that he either wrote or is behind so many of those things is useful to give a reader and understanding of his place in things. North8000 (talk) 12:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Coming edits

Hello I have long had my eye on this article as an interesting one to improve, particularly sourcing and citing, and perhaps some expansion in some areas. So this is just heads up to regular editors here of my plans. I will be going slowly, and will endeavour to use edit summaries or talkpage comments to explain my changes; but please feel free to bring any concerns or suggestions too, and if anybody would like to help, that would be great! --Slp1 (talk) 14:36, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Cool. One suggestion would be any wording regarding his place in history, or more specifically, in the 40's material here we are looking at the beginnings of and possibly the founder of the folk revival. Also to me the discussion of his/their music should be expanded a bit....it's mention seems more like just brief notes in a biography type section. I'd help more except that I do not have the expertise on this to do it. North8000 (talk) 15:43, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Seeger v. United States

The last section states that Jim Musselman read case Seeger v. United States and it changed his life, yet I cannot find such a case. There is the 1965 case United States v. Seeger, which deals with a different person, Daniel Andrew Seeger, a Quaker and conscientious objector who refused to enlist for military service, but does not appear to have anything to do with free speech or the Freedom of assembly clause of the First Amendment. What case is Musselman refering to? — Loadmaster (talk) 17:30, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The source it cites includes a conversation that included Pete Seeger where he acknowledged it, so it appears to be real. But it did not describe it. North8000 (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

"Union Boys"

This Wikipedia entry redirects from "Union Boys" -- yet has not one mention of "Union Boys" when describing Pete Seeger. What happened? More importantly, shall we begin adding content on the Union Boys ASAP?

"Iconic" in lead

Noticed that "iconic" it has been taken out and put back in a few times recently. I agree with Xenophrenic that it should stay in. It IS sourced, not that that alone is an argument for keeping it in. One objection could be that the term is POV / laudatory, but thee are two other meanings of the term which are more applicable here. One could refer to his importance in the stated field (the American folk usic revival) which I think few would disputee. It also has a specific meaning (sort of representative, stereotypical or emblematic) which I think is very useful information for the article. In fall 2010 there was also a discussion of this (though not brought to a conclusion), see above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:27, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Went out again and I put it back in. We should discuss this here to get it settled. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Iconic means that you think he is wonderful. If that isn't POV, nothing is. Oh, and: A periodical calling him 'iconic' isn't 'sourced'. It means only that some hack thinks he is wonderful. Some hacks think that Gaddafi was wonderful. No doubt you will now refer to him as 'iconic'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.17.50 (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

The rudeness of the response aside.... first, a correction, a wp:RS periodical calling him that is sourced. That doesn't mean that it is above question (or even right) but such constitutes sourcing in Wikipedia. Second, don't know where the "wonderful" came from but the definition I had in mind (from dictionary.com) is "a person or thing regarded as a symbol of a belief, nation, community, or cultural movement" and there is a preponderance of info/sources which indicate that Seeger is this with respect to the 20th century folk revival. I'm not wedded to any particular outcome on this, I just think that we should discuss it intelligently and then implement the decision in the article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:18, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Dunaway's Biography

Someone removed note about Pete Seeger's opinion of Dunaway's biography of him on the grounds that the author revised it and therefore Pete's opinion was now irrelevant.

Deleted sentence read: "Pete Seeger was not pleased with Dunaway's biography. Reviewing it in his column in Sing Out! (1980) he wrote: "I say it's spinach and the hell with it. . . . He makes some good points, in between a couple hundred factual errors" ("Appleseeds", Sing Out! 28[6]:38).

In my opinion, Seeger's judgement is particularly significant in view of the fact that such negative public criticisms are quite out of character for him. While Dunaway may have revised the book, a lot of the "couple of hundred factual errors" clearly remain. Some people on Amazon also noticed that the book was rather objectionable. If the sentence is not to be restored (say, in order to avoid giving offense), then perhaps not citing it quite so much would be in order. A good biography of Seeger, one that puts proper emphasis on his work as an artist and performer (as opposed to his politics), has yet to be written. Mballen (talk) 05:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello. I don't know if you've read the foreword to the second (2008) edition? Seeger says " I never expected to be writing a foreword for this book. I read the first edition only after it came out. But then I spent many days going over each page with David, pointing out what I felt were mistakes in that edition. Now I congratulate him for years upon years of research and more research, rechecking, rethinking his book." I don't know what you think the "couple of hundred factual errors" are, but that doesn't seem to be Seeger's opinion anymore, and Amazon reviewers and personal opinion notwithstanding, formal reviews of the latest edition of the book have been positive. (e.g [8]) The older edition may be more questionable given Seeger's earlier comments, but the second edition clearly isn't, and the outdated comments about the older book needed to go.

All to say that I disagree that the second edition of this book isn't a good source. It actually seems to be one of the best out there. --Slp1 (talk) 12:46, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

O.K., o.k., I stand corrected. I guess I let my personal opinion of the book color by judgment, since, honestly, I didn' t care for it very much at all, myself, either in the first or second editions. I will say this, Pete is remarkably good natured and accommodating. I guess that is one reason he is so well liked.Mballen (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

More on urban legend about "cutting the cable"

Pete Seeger's memory is almost certainly confused, as he describes himself as the MC. The MC at that concert was certainly not Pete Seeger at all, but Peter Yarrow. I think Pete had forgotten all the details and was actually giving an ad-hoc explanation for what "might" have happened. Bruce Jackson even says that the audience was booing Yarrow, not Dylan, and they were upset that the Dylan/Butterfield set was too short not that it had been electric (though Dylan appears to have believed the latter). The whole festival seems to have become rather disorganized. John Cohen, Pete's brother-in-law, says that Pete was upset over the sound because it really bothered the elderly Charles Seeger, who wore a hearing aid. John Szwed says that earlier that day while Dylan was rehearsing, Texas folklorist Mack McCormick really did pull the plug on Dylan and his electric band because they wouldn't relinquish the stage, which he (McCormick) needed to rehearse his own group of black ex-convicts. "I pulled the plug, and that got their attention", he recounted. So there really was a grain of truth beneath all the hype. It is all on the Wikipedia page about Dylan going electric (now an inline citation). Mballen (talk) 05:38, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Sources belong here, not in external links!

These sources do not belong in External links. I have moved the link farm from there to this talk page where they do belong. Warning: I didn't check them to see if they follow criteria per WP policy, so be careful in choosing any potential references I've moved here. Thank you! --Leahtwosaints (talk) 01:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

• Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways
• "Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing?" Website by Seeger biographer David Dunaway
• Pete Seeger Appreciation Page, a site originally created by Jim Capaldi
• How Can I Keep From Singing?: A Seeger Family Tribute, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. Online presentation of the March 2007 symposium and concert
• "Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger Turns 90, Thousands Turn Out for All-Star Tribute Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Dozens More" on Democracy Now!, May 2009 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• PBS's American Masters site for "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"
• "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" documentary filmmaker Jim Brown interview on The Alcove with Mark Molaro, 2007
• The short film "To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)" is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
• The short film "Music from Oil Drums (1956)" is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
• "We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" on Democracy Now!, September 2006 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back - National Public Radio interview, July 2, 2005
• Peter Seeger interviewed by Australian composer Andrew Ford (MP3 of interview first broadcast in 1999)
• Pete Seeger, Folk Singer and Song Writer by Thomas Blair. Part of a series of Notable American Unitarians
• 1-hour Internet radio interview- Seeger discusses the music industry, the world in general, and more (August 2007).
• Works by or about Pete Seeger/Archive 1 in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Matthews, Scott (2008-08-06). "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival". Southern Spaces.
• Pete Seeger 90th birthday cake cutting at the Beacon Sloop Club.
• Pete Seeger, aged 93, interviewed on the Colbert Report
• [chriscomerradio.com/pete_seeger/pete_seeger12-31-1996.htm radio interview with Pete Seeger 1996] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.133.105.219 (talk) 19:54, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
• A Nobel Prize for Pete Seeger.org

Agree that we need to do something, but moving all of the external links to the talk page is not a good idea. And there is a LOT of good academic material in these links. Where possible they should get worked in as cited references, but that will take time. Possibly some should be "for further reading" and others should stay in as external links. North8000 (talk) 12:36, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

There is no severe issue, and this will take time to evolve, especially working some in as references. Most of that material is very substantive. I'm going to put it back in and then we can evolve it to a shorter list over time. North8000 (talk) 12:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Done, and I got it down to 11 North8000 (talk) 19:42, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Top picture

Pete Seeger

Thomas Arnold swapped in a different picture. I think that the previous one (with green background) was a better for the top (most prominent place) I did not revert but restored the deleted picture elsewhere in the article North8000 (talk) 20:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

What do others think. North8000 (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think both portraits are good, and both worth having. I'm not fussed about which is at the top. Unfortunately there is a question about the copyright status of the black and white one. The metadata says it is copyright Corbis[9] (which I wouldn't necessarily trust) but some seemingly careful sites are crediting "Terry Cryer/Corbis"[10][11] and I think Terry Cryer is a plausible attribution. The file description on Commons credits Library of Congress (which in itself is also credible) but I have not found it there, particularly at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=pete%20seeger where other good portraits include the 1955 one in this article. I shall ping the uploader and will likely seek opinions on Commons. Thincat (talk) 09:55, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I work with a local folk department at my university and was told that is where the photo derived from. I don't have any actual proof of it so, just oral accounts and recollections. Feel free to revert the photo back, but I feel like it's worth having the main photo as something from his more iconic and recognizable years. edited by Thomas Arnold (talk) 23:37, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

(added later) There are a lot of musician articles which I wish would follow what you just said. But I tend think that because of that nature of what he does that Seeger is in his prime as much in the green picture as in the gray picture. North8000 (talk) 12:59, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, your information may be correct but I can't see how to prove it. Corbis are certainly claiming rights to Cryer's photos[12] (including this one) though I can't see him acknowledging their involvement.[13] Cryer seems to have started this sort of photography in 1956 so it may reasonably be one of his early photos. I picture Seeger as he was in the early sixties (probably when I first would have seen a photo of him) but I think he still looks good! I'll go to Commons where someone might turn something up though I expect it will be deleted. Thincat (talk) 09:34, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Pete Seeger.jpeg Thincat (talk) 10:01, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

It has been deleted from Commons, Thincat (talk) 16:34, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I guess that makes this discussion moot and our decision easy. North8000 (talk) 17:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Messy article structure

The structure of this article is very messy. Under "Musical career", it skips from the late 1950s to "recent work" in the 2000s, with no mention of what he did in the 40+ years in between. Some of his musical career seems to be covered in the section on "Activism", but again that section goes all over the place, in terms of any chronological or logical order. It would be better if the sections on "Solo career and the folk song revival" and "Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan" were taken out of that section and put (back?) in the "Musical career" section. I'm happy to do some work on the article myself, but I thought I'd check here first to see if any regular editors of the article have any strong views on the matter. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)