|
He is a folk-singer and political activist that was born
in New York
City. His father, Charles, was a
musicologist and investigated non-Western music. He is the half-brother of Mike
Seeger who formed the New Lost City Ramblers and influenced Bob Dylan and
Peggy Seeger, who is a folk singer who lived with the songwriter Ewan
MacColl for over 30 years. His
uncle Alan Seeger was a known poet who was killed during WWI. He was a scholarship student
at Avon Old Farms and Harvard University
where he studied journalism.
He worked at the Archives of American Folk Music in New York where he met Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie,
with whom he would collaborate.
He had seen the five-string banjo played in 1936 and in 1948 he
wrote the first version of his book How
to Play the Five-String Banjo.
He married Toshi-Aline Ohta in 1943 and they have three children and
6 grandchildren. His grandson
Tao is a folk musician with The Mammals. He was a founder member of The
Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers which had major hits in
the 1950s prior to being blacklisted during the McCarthy years. He was instructed to testify before
the House Un-American Activities Committee but refused stating that it
would violate his First Amendment rights. This led to an indictment for
contempt of Congress and he was forced to keep the federal government aware
of his movements. After
attending trial in 1961 he was sentenced to a year in jail but this was
overturned at appeal. He began
his career as a solo artist in 1958 and wrote songs such as "If I Had
a Hammer" and "We Shall Overcome". He was a co-founder of Broadside
Magazine which Bob Dylan made several recordings for, but he was unhappy by
the electronic sound that he had incorporated into his act at the 1965
Newport Festival. He
hosted the regional show Rainbow
Quest in the mid-'60s and his guests included Johnny Cash and
Judy Collins. In 1966 he funded
the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater which works to highlight pollution in the
Hudson River and clean it. He performed several songs in the
late 1960s which were deemed unsuitable for broadcasting and had a
performance of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" cut from the
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
He still performs in public and has appeared in a National
Storytelling Festival in Tennessee. In 2006 Bruce Springsteen released
the album We Shall Overcome: The
Seeger Sessions. His awards
include the National Medal of the Arts, Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement
Honor, Harvard Arts Medal, a Grammy Award for
"Pete" and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1996.
Joan Baez
recordings
Guantanamera (Jose Marti/Pete Seeger/Hector
Angulo)
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger
|
