I was just thinking about Pete Seeger the other day. I’ve always thought, ‘Man, I can’t believe he’s still alive!’ whenever I’ve thought of him. I frequently look up songs and song lyrics, and it’s amazing how many were his.
I’ve been alive 64 years, yet Pete Seeger was a famous activist singer long before I was born, and also sang very recently while marching with Occupy Wall Street. I’d never heard of the Weavers until I saw a documentary about their final reunion concert in 1980. (Lee Hays was in a wheelchair and dying, and was the star of that concert.)
As a collector of albums from the Early '60s Folk Music Scare, I say R.I.P.!
Probably the last of the great folk singers from the era of Woody Guthrie, and a name that I remember for as long as I’ve been aware of music. When I got into folk back in the 60s, Seeger was the first person I heard about, but by then Baez, Dylan, the Clancy Brothers and others had co-opted the genre. Still, they paid tribute to the greats. He was truly influential and is missed.
We shall live in peace.
He’s been my hero since I was four years old – no joke. I grew up not far from his Beacon, NY home, wore out his “Greatest Hits” LP by seven, and always loved his pioneering efforts in environmental awareness and American roots/world musical “educating” – both of these things taught through fun and joy.
He was so modest: Once my mother took the Hudson Line train to NYC, and sat next to someone she thought was a homeless man. At some point (maybe it was the banjo case) she realized it was Pete.
In* The Mayor of Macdougal Street*, Dave van Ronk reminisced about early folkie days in The Village. He was very political & recalls at which cafe you could witness the weekly fistfight between the Stalinists & the Trotskyites. Van Ronk considered himself a very different sort of Leftist than Seeger & satirized his politics mercilessly. But, in those fevered days, long before he mellowed, he also wrote this:
Van Ronk died before he finished this excellent book; his collaborator gathered his notes & published it. I last saw Seeger in a film about John Cohen–one of the New Lost City Ramblers; Pete’s half-brother Mike was a Rambler & died a few years back. Now Pete’s gone, too. But he had a wonderful life.
They said on the news that he was just out chopping wood about a week ago. That’s how I want to live out the end of my days if I make it that far.
RIP to one of the greats.
I grew up listening to [Smithsonian] Folkways Records stuff and we always added 3 or 4 albums a year. I do know that my Mom used to go to the small coffee houses and bars when she went on shopping trips to NY for the music.
Looking through my music collection, I seem to have a lot of Seegar, both Guthries, Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs … mrAru also shares my liking for the same recordings and we have frequently joked that we were born 20 years too late. I have a folk music playlist of around 300 songs that we consider our favorites from the early part of the 20th century - Anthology of American Folk Music being a great source and one that my family has actually worn out 2 sets of the records and are now working on the CD set 
I can really recommend a really long and involved podcast on American Folkways for more great samples of recordings, and Smithsonian Folkways for a great source of Seeger family music.
You’re right. I have always got the two mixed up. They are both great folk singers.
Another great icon from my youth gone.
And I once heard him, in a PP&M concert on TV, insist – singing – that there is absolutely no subtext or hidden meaning in that song.
RIP Pete! Say Hi to Woody and to Lee Hays. I’ll be along to see y’all eventually, although I’m in no hurry. A few more decades, if I’m lucky. In the meantime, I and the rest of us down here will just have to depend on memories. And your music. And your social contributions. And… well, everything you’ve meant to so many of us. I miss you already.
I grew up listening to and singing folk music in my house. He wrote a lot of my favorite songs.
I read the Washington Post article about his passing, and his life. Married when he was 23, in 1943, and the marriage lasted for seventy years, with Mrs. Seeger dying just last year, in 2013.
This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.
A man of principles, who influenced so many.
Here is my thread about the Clearwater Concert, a celebration of Seeger’s 90th Birthday.
He was an American icon, and his influence on music is immeasurable. It is safe to say that today’s music would not exist as it does without Seeger’s input. He was also a fine human being, never letting fame get to him.
Godspeed wherever you are, Pete. And thank you ever so much.
Actually written by Tom Paxton, another person influenced by Seeger. It’s often credited as a “traditional American folk song,” which Paton considers to be the highest honor a folk song can achieve.
Thanks for this.
Other posters have already expressed a lot of my feelings… I’m not a person who has a lot of heroes, but Pete Seeger has been one of them for a long time. Just knowing about his life makes me feel a little better about the human race. I’m sad he’s gone, but not in the way I feel sad about some others, because he had such a long and full life… what else could one ask for?
I saw him (along with his grandson and a couple of other folk musicians) in concert about four years ago. As he was 90, I wasn’t expecting him to do much more than smile and wave, but he sang (in the same quavery voice he’d had for about 30 years), played, and told stories like a spry 60-something. When he walked out on stage with his banjo, rail-thin in his blue jeans like always, beaming, I immediately got choked up and kind of stayed that way for the whole show.
I know he wasn’t perfect, and right-wingers have always had their criticisms, often heated. But there’s one thing for sure… over the course of his life, he probably got more people to sing along with him than anybody else in the history of the human race.