Pete Seeger has a stamp
I was raised on The Weavers, the folk-singing singing group of which Seeger was an important member – that, plus Tom Lehrer, Flanders and Swann, Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado” and “HMS Pinafore”, and every Broadway musical from the mid-1940s to somewhere in the 1960s, as well as classical music through ballet class (I provided the rock and roll myself through the radio). One of the benefits (?) is that I still know just about every word of the songs involved, and that includes those of Pete Seeger, whose lilting voice I can hear in my brain’s imagination even as I write these words.
In my 2014 post when Seeger died, I observed:
My feelings about Seeger are mixed, to say the least. First, the bad: he was an activist Communist, and even a Stalinist back in the day. Let’s not whitewash that…
Liberal? Progressive? Supporting Communism to make the world a better place? Those are euphemisms, I’m afraid. And although his “time in the Communist Party” did end some time in the 50s, his time of sympathy with the Communist Party went on.
And here’s a previous post about his voice:
We had a shaky old record player on which I’d play the scratchy Weavers records that featured Seeger’s unique voice and vibrant banjo. I loved those old songs, but I especially loved Seeger’s voice.
Why? It wasn’t pretty, nor was it exceptionally musical. There are many ordinary people who can make far more beautiful sounds, although I’m most definitely not one of them. But Seeger had what I’ve noticed is a prerequisite for great voices: a unique and utterly identifying timbre, much like a fingerprint, and instantly recognizable as that person and no one else.
Seeger’s voice had an uplifting quality mixed with something indefinable, something between a lilt and a sob. Although the lilt always dominated, the sob was always present as well, much like the complexity of a fine wine with a hint of many flavors to give it a special richness and depth.
Seeger played a mean banjo, too.
Which brings us to the new Seeger stamp:
The forever stamp, which features a color-tinted, black-and-white photograph taken in the early 1960s showing Seeger in profile singing and playing his five-string banjo, went on sale at post offices nationwide, according to a US Postal Service spokesperson.
A special ceremony was planned for the evening in Newport, Rhode Island, the site of the Newport Folk Festival, where Seeger was a performer and for a time a member of the board.
“It is an honor to see a photo of my father I’d taken some 60 years ago become this wonderful forever stamp,” his son, Dan Seeger, said in a statement…
Seeger joins a long list of musical performers to appear on a US postage stamp, including Elvis Presley, Thelonious Monk, Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra.
Speaking of failed attempts at apologies for having been wrong – and my previous post today was about exactly that – Seeger issued an apology, too, and it was in line with the ones I discussed earlier today in that Seeger’s was an apology that showed that he persisted in his errors. From his Wiki page (the quote is from a memoir Seeger wrote in 1993):
At any rate, today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a “hard driver” and not a “supremely cruel misleader.”
Okay. But he immediately follows it up with this:
I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She’s part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let’s look ahead.
These were his equivalences? His apology for personally supporting someone doing evil – and obviously doing evil – in Seeger’s own lifetime? That’s analogous to today’s Christians apologizing for things that happened hundreds to almost a thousand years ago, or white people apologizing for something that happened hundreds of years ago (in most cases committed by people who were not the ancestors of those “white people” today)? Extremely false analogy.
If anything, according to the “logic” of his own rhetoric, it was Seeger who should be doing the apologizing for having been the blue-blooded descendant of colonialists:
His family, which Seeger called “enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition,” traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a doctor from Württemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during the American Revolution and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.
Seeger’s life and family were quite fascinating, by the way – at least to me. His father was a well-known academic musicologist, “a key founder of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology.” Seeger’s parents and then his father and stepmother (both women were musicians) took him around as a child and teenager to various venues featuring indigenous folk music, and that’s how he was exposed to what later became his life’s work.
Quintessential Seeger:
That was no apology. He was using his talent in the field of folk music–which carries a subliminal message of moral wonderfulness–in the service of blatant evil which he knew, approved, and wished for the rest of us.
Let me know when the Postal Service publishes a ‘forever ‘stamp of Whittaker Chambers….
I hope another musical influence on you while growing up was Allan Sherman, greatly underrrated today.
Seeger’s epitaph should read; a unique musician who substituted feelings for reason, logic and facts.
I don’t know.
I don’t like his politics, but-
I think- around the 1990s – ELVIS was put on a postage stamp.
These 2 guys on stamps aren’t a big deal to me, I guess.
…Have you [seen] an Elvis stamp, in the past 5 years?
…Have you [heard] anyone talk about an Elvis stamp, in the past 5 years?
Well, folk music isn’t supposed to sound too good, is it? Who said, “if it sounds bad, it’s authentic; if it sounds absolutely terrible and grates on your ears, it’s ethnic”? Anyway, I was a fan of the Weavers, way back before I knew they were Commies (not that it would have mattered); “So Long” was a favorite of mine. Also the New Lost City Ramblers (the other Seeger) and Tom Lehrer. I believe I still have his albums “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer” and “Another Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer” though I no longer have anything to play them on.
I don’t know-
If in 1 year or less, if you find out that 40% of the nation has gone communist, or communist-sympathizer, because of “Peety Seegy’s” songs, [then] I’ll start to worry.
I think that Woody Guthrie, ANOTHER US folk singer, was a [devout communist], but I don’t care if I, or others, sing his songs.
[Maybe I would have], when I was hot-headed at 20 or 25, but not now.
Now…[please] let me know if the film guys- Buster Keaton, or Jackie Chan, get on stamps.
If those two guys get on a stamp, I’m BUYING that! 😀
“White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks”
forgetting that more than half of white Americans came here long after vile scum like Obama and Biden were forced to give up their slaves, White people didn’t enslave blacks.
Blacks enslaved blacks and their black kings long before Castro unloaded their deplorables.
Hi bof,
On jcpenney [dot] com, Crosley [tm] makes a portable record player, aka a turntable, that goes for about $50-80 US dollars.
They’re brand new record players, but I’m sure someone has used ones, if you want to spend less than those prices.
Cheers. 🙂
Full disclosure- I do not work for the JCPenney [co.], or the Crosley [co]. I just wanted to talk about those companies.
And it wasn’t Christians who where the antagonists, but attempts to retake former lands from the Muslims who conquered it.
Got no time for Communists sympathy
“Apologies”, hmmm.
I had a friend in school, named David or something.
He liked to joke- “I’m half Polish and half German”.
“Those countries fought each other in wars.”
“…Should I go outside, and beat MYSELF up???”
😀
Pete Seeger did have a special voice. I loved his “Weavers” and solo work.
Sure, his politics turned out wrong and — surprise! — like most humans he couldn’t properly apologize or acknowledge the full depth of his error.
Today I’m watching a kinda stupid biopic on Miles Davis, “Miles Ahead.” Don Cheadle wrote, acted and directed this one. You can tell it’s from Cheadle’s particular heart, which I respect to a point.
I guess Cheadle was trying not to do a conventional hagiography on the Musical Genius, so OK, I get that.
But geez, I’m not interested in Miles Davis because some of his life he was an out-of-control degenerate. I wanted to better understand what made his music so special and deep. This film tantalized … then got back to the “chase” plot.
So here we have two deeply flawed artists who could nonetheless create deep artistic connections with their audiences. Do we focus on their flaws or contributions or try (somehow) to balance both?
I haven’t thought about Seeger for a long time. Two things come to mind. At one of the Newport Folk Festivals on the 60s he went nuts and tried to get Bob Dylan kicked off the stage for the audacity of playing an electric guitar. If I remember correctly he made quite a scene about it.
He used to sing a song by Malvena Renolds called “Little Boxes”.
Little boxes on the hillside and they’re all made out of ticky tack…
It was meant to be a condemnation of the greedy capitalists who built the development. Then one day I was in San Fransisco and drove by them. It hit me that the condescension was off scale in the song. They weren’t palaces, but they seemed to be decent affordable houses for working people. What’s wrong with that? Were they supposed to live on high rise slums or broken down shacks? It opened my eyes to what creeps the lefties really are.
forgetting that more than half of white Americans came here long after vile scum like Obama and Biden were forced to give up their slaves, White people didn’t enslave blacks.
Again, there is no indication that anyone in Ann Dunham’s pedigree owned slaves in 1860. The same is true of Joseph Biden, whose adult ancestors at that time had (bar one) town occupations (shoemaker, surveyor, cook, carpenter). The one exception lived in Seneca County, NY.
Paul in Boston:
I lived in San Francisco for over three decades. I remember learning that those houses I could see up the hill in Daly City were the “Little Boxes”!
They didn’t look bad. These days the median price is $1.23 mil.
But that was a sixties song. Back in those days liberals, beats and soon hippies were bewailing how the individual was being crushed by uniformity. Which seems quaint today. We have more serious things to worry about.
As it happens, I used to go to a Writers & Artists weekend in Sonoma. Malvina Reynolds’ daughter was a regular attendee. She wasn’t special. She did her folkie songs toeing the Bay Area party line. She was another person on that circuit, as was I and most of the writers and artists I knew then.
On jcpenney [dot] com, Crosley [tm] makes a portable record player, aka a turntable, that goes for about $50-80 US dollars.
They’re brand new record players, but I’m sure someone has used ones, if you want to spend less than those prices.
That fake Crosley (it has nothing to do with Powel Crosley Jr, a pioneering industrialist in radio, broadcasting, and automobiles) is junk and will ruin your records. You’re better off going on Craigslist and buying an old Garrard, Dual, AR, Technics or similar vintage hi-fi turntable with a proper lightweight arm and decent cartridge. I just looked on Craigslist and there are a number of decent turntables for sale in the $125-$150 range that will treat your records gently and sound good with a decent cartridge (I recommend Grado). If you want new, U-Turn Audio assembles their turntables in the U.S.A. and they start at a very reasonable $199 up to about $500. All of them come with the same hiqh quality tonearm, though, and you can get them with a built-in phono-preamp so you can use an Aux input on modern stereos that don’t have their own phono-preamp. For an inexpensive outboard phono-preamp that’s audiophile quality, try Schiit Audio’s $149 Mani preamp.
I haven’t thought about Seeger for a long time. Two things come to mind. At one of the Newport Folk Festivals on the 60s he went nuts and tried to get Bob Dylan kicked off the stage for the audacity of playing an electric guitar. If I remember correctly he made quite a scene about it.
He told the PA man, “If I had an axe, I’d cut the cable.” Since Seeger was incapable of seeing himself in anything but the best light, years later he claimed that it wasn’t that it was electric, rather that it was too loud and distorted. When he told the sound man to turn it down, the guy said that’s how the band wanted it, which fits with when Dylan was heckled by the audience in Manchester, England. “Towards the end of the show, as the crowd went quiet between songs, one fan shouted “Judas!” from the audience. Dylan responded, saying to the crowd, “I don’t believe you…You’re a liar!” He then turned his back to the audience and said to his band, “Play it fucking loud” and erupted into “Like A Rolling Stone.””
Oh, and Seeger’s behavior concerning the copyright on the Weaver’s recording of Zulu , Solomon Linda’s “Mbube” as Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) which was, at best, as the kids say, problematic.
Another leftist hypocrite, but how many aren’t?
all made out of ticky tacky.
In 1945, fifteen million guys got out of the service and wanted to start families. This was the best that could be done with the resources available.
Millions of us grew up there.
Smuggest song ever written.
I’m old enough to remember Pete Seeger very well and even attended one of his concerts in the mid 70’s. He had numerous talents, but yes, Pete Seeger was a loyal Communist. He was smart and as a public figure understood the importance of statements made for public consumption. As the Wiki page quote shows, his reservations about his political religion were lip service. He was a Red until the day he died. They’re all the same.
Martin Mull summed up folk music well: “Did you hear about the great folk music scare of the 1960s?”
“That shit nearly caught on!”
Hi Johann Amadeus Metesky,
Thanks for the info.
I’ll look up the U-Turn Audio turntables, + the other products that you have mentioned. 🙂
What excellent comments, all you folks. They echo/prompt lots of memories for me (now suddenly 70), from The Weavers and Tom Lehrer to Flanders & Swann. And tone arms and pre-amps and the smell of warm hi-fi tubes. And a time when Communists were not OK.
If Seeger had never been a Stalinist – which he was – but instead had been a Nazi, would a commemorative stamp be issued to honor him?
Geez, let me think; ummmm…….
I will take a wild guess and say no, but hey, I admit I could be all wrong. After all, Stalin’s policies only resulted in 20 to 50 million dead people, while Hitler’s only produced about 12 million.
(True, Hitler started WWII, but he needed and received Stalin’s approval to proceed. Stalin gave him that approval (Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact; August 1939) ).
Just another example of the double standard applied to sympathizers of mass murderers.
It’s OK to be or have been a commie sympathizer regardless of how many people wound up dead; after all these mass killers were / are just trying to create a worker’s paradise based upon “scientific” political principles.
Yep, there “may” have been “some excesses” (see Molotov’s comments), but hey, it was all in an effort to create the perfect society.
A former VP of the USA, Henry Wallace ( a communist) , along with other US officials visited the Kolyma Gulag in NE Siberia in the 1944; this death camp was probably the worst of all gulags and located in a region that records some of the coldest temperature on earth.
MILLIONS died at this camp.
Wallace came back to the USA raving about how great Kolyma was; comparing it to the TVA or other of FDRs programs.
Like everybody else, I always thought the communist witch hunts in the USA were all due to the wacko Sen Joe McCarthy; all a big fiction, a scam. The 1950s equal to the Trump/Russia baloney.
Until I read “Witness,” by Whitaker Chambers; a CPUSA member who joined up in the late 1920s .
Chamber’s escapades spying for the USSR all occurred well before anybody had ever heard of some guy named Joe McCarthy.
I have never approved of Communists, but, over the course of time, my views have evolved, and I have come to feel that the most prudent thing to do with any self-identified Communist is to shoot them on sight.
Sadly, this is not currently legal in the United States, but one can hope for change.
Pete Seeger, aside from being guilty of the sin of having prostituted his talents, such as they were, in the service of Evil, was also, in my opinion, INTENSELY BORING.
Of course, in assessing the validity of my opinion, it would be relevant to keep in mind that I consider the recording of “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen to be a far more “authentic” example of American Folk Music than anything that Pete Seeger ever sang.
Re Wallace’s visit to the Kolyma Mines. Bernie Sanders (Communist, Vermont) and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union before the collapse of Communism. They loved it. As all good members of the nomenklatura they find no contradiction between their beliefs and owning three mansions.
When CW II is over, Sanders and wife need to be made to live their commie ideal. Nationalize every fricken dime they have and nationalize as much private wealth of Vermont as we can as punishment for inflicting that commie shit bag on us.
Where was Pete Seeger’s
song “Eggs and Omelettes” or the cover for PP&M “Makebelieve Town (Potymkyn Village),” or expanding his base with workers, “Up Against the Wall, Kulak Wreckers?”
What songs do the Antifa tools sing or stream nowadays?
WLD @ 8:46AM;
Supposedly a Polish (IIRC, though could be from another E. European nation that fell under the boot heel of Stalin) freedom fighter said, when asked “how does it feel to kill people, ” responded that he did not kill people, just communists.
RE: Paul in Boston @ 9:12 AM
And don’t forget all those Yanks – Obama, Jesse Jackson, etc. – that made the trek over to Castro’s Cuba to suck up to that SOB or his brother. What’s really interesting is that Afro-Cubans constitute greater than 50% of the Cuban population , but their govt. is almost entirely white.
But hey, Castro and his bunch are communists; they can do no wrong!!
I saw some interview with him in which he claimed to have invented hammer on and pull off techniques. Wikipedia currently says he invented the terminology. I seriously doubt either is true. He’s not old enough. I heard a really old interview with some old blues player talking about it. (Which may have been part of the Lomax recordings.) I think he picked up from daddy, who was a musicologist.
That same interview… He was so full of crap about his own self importance.
More titles for the Red folkies :
“Going to the zoo (Gulag)”
Peter, Paul, and Mommy (1969)
and batista was at least half black, they always have figurehead in the politburo, but they are very white, cuba was largely african until a wave of spanish immigration in the 19th century,
yes seeger the hamburg school all hated bourgeois values, like ariel dorfman in chile, well he got his wish,
that was polish mercenary, rafal ganowitz
Listening to “Michael, row the boat ashore”, I was struck by how white it was. Seegar– guilty of cultural appropriation!
His equivalences as you described them, raises a point. How is it possible to maintain a society– to what extent is it possible to prevent the corruption of ideas, which lead to a corruption of actions?
Re-education camps? Gulags?
It seems once a society is infiltrated with contrary philosophies, a concerted propaganda effort through our institutions is sufficient– for awhile, but even that doesn’t guarantee lasting effects. There is always the problem of reality poking through the two minutes of hate.
The far-left fascists no doubt realize that sterner methods will be necessary, if they are going to fundamentally transform society.
those who were part of the causa fighting marxists in latin america, probably felt the same way, one posada carriles who was hounded, framed by the venezuelan government of cap, who’s surrepticious entry through mexico was flagged,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh8Ku8eE3S0
Brian E:
Regarding the film clip, they looked bored, unengaged, “is this ever going to be over?”
Jeez ! Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann do not musically belong anywhere close to the commie Seeger’s category of largely falsely labeled “folk” music. Musically and inventively there is no comparison.
Bluegrass music, which Neo does not mention, was born in the late 1940s thanks to Bill Monroe and his mandolin (!) and thrives to this day with a Sirius channel dedicated to Bluegrass music 24/7. It is a totally conservative musical form, with emphases on love, forlorn love, regret, independence, and Appalachian geography. It was born of the Scots-Irish, independent self sufficient folk who were the leading edge of the American frontier as it moved westward.
How about the “The Modern Folk Quartet”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CADVROW_Acg
When I looked into Pete Seeger more deeply, I discovered:
(1) Seeger came from a seriously elite, musical family — his father went to Harvard, went on to establish the music department at UC Berkeley and taught at Julliard. Pete Seeger himself went to Harvard.
(2) Seeger more or less invented “folk music” as the politicized form we came to know in the 60s based on the black and hillbilly music he fell in love with in the 30s, in order to further Seeger’s leftist convictions.
Um, er, Woody Guthrie….?
Barry-
How about the Carter Family, headed by mother Maybelle, with lyrics and music all created by them in the 1930s, Johnny Cash’s future mother-in-law. He married her daughter, June.
And I bet no one here has heard of the Blue Sky Boys, a 1939-40 instrumental and vocal duo from Asheville, NC. Which is now a costly, gay haven! But I have their vinyl!
Well certainly….
(But didn’t JC have about a half-dozen MILs?)
Barry, you check out the origins of John Cash’s MILs songs. He learned from Mother Maybelle and sang a goodly amount of her songs.
And check out “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” which Seeger and many other pro-union leftists performed in the ’60s.
Will do.
Thanks for the tip!
(BTW, as far as you know, did anyone ever choreograph a ballet to one—or a set—of JC’s ballads?)
Cicero:
Of course their music wasn’t similar. I certainly didn’t for a moment say it was.
I said I was raised on all their music, plus Broadway musicals.
Related:
‘Country star John Rich bypasses woke labels, releases song on Truth Social and soars to No. 1;
‘Conservative singer says experiment shows “you can beat the machine that’s been put in place to keep people like me shut down.” ‘—
https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/country-star-john-rich-bypasses-woke-labels-releases-song-truth-social-and-soars-no
https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-07/JohnRichAppleChart.pdf
– – – – – – – –
Plus some bonuses:
“Backlash against progressive, Soros-backed DAs continues as violent crime soars”—
https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/backlash-against-progressive-soros-backed-das-continues-violent-crime-soars
“Families flee Pennsylvania school after boys ‘encouraged to wear dresses’ during Pride Month: report”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/families-flee-pennsylvania-school-after-boys-encouraged-wear-dresses
“Big Court Win For Parents’ Right To Attend And Speak Out At School Board Meetings”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/big-court-win-for-parents-right-to-attend-and-speak-out-at-school-board-meetings/
Gonna be a reckoning.
Talk about cultural appropriation! Folk music, the art form of the poor and isolated, becomes a vehicle for the upper classes (mother was composer Ruth Crawford Seeger) to espouse socialism.
Greg:
Good one!
Neo: I responded to you with my 3:23pm comment. My other comments were more broadly directed, but thanks.
Bela Bartok spent his life immersed in folk music, collecting, preserving, arranging, adapting, and celebrating it to the heavens; became a naturalized American citizen; lived his last day in America and is interred here in NY.
There is no American stamp of Bela Bartok.
But we can listen to his student Gyorgy Sandor play Bartok’s Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csik, a thing far better than any whimsical stampery.
Or alternatively, listen to the master himself playing his Romanian Folk Dances.
WWW and Joe Hill. The Copper Barons (vs Phony Joanie and communists). Now in league with the wokesters. Eggs for omelettes, put to a catchy tune.
sdferr:
Wow! You just changed the way I hear Bartok.
I had heard a few of his less melodic pieces which I assumed were advanced modernist stuff not for my plebian taste.
I’m reminded of Khachaturian, whom I fell in love with for his “Piano Concerto in D-Flat Major”. I looked him up and discovered his work, as spacey and weird as it sounded, was based on Caucasian folk melodies.
–“Khachaturian Piano Concerto in D-flat major – JY Thibaudet”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQVuQLCk9o
I was listening to Khachaturian at the same time I was discovering mid-sixties science fiction. It sounded, to me, like the perfect music for meeting an alien race.
Khachaturian also wrote “Gayane” which Kubrick used to wonderful effect in “2001”.
–“Aram Khachaturian – Gayane: Adagio (as used in 2001: A Space Odyssey)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRD43FAiHPY
Really, folks, give Khachaturian a try. He wrote the “Sabre Dance” (also part of “Gayane”) which you already know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI
Check out Alan Hohvaness while yer at it: https://youtu.be/zQZBrJmzsrc
And back to Khachaturian, a personal fave: Masquerade Waltz, https://youtu.be/fPp3Qh-GRqs
Got to say I watched that Khachaturian piano concerto performance and it was one of the most enthralling experiences of classical music I’ve ever had.
The French pianist, JY Thibaudet, is something special. According to wiki:
________________________
Thibaudet’s virtuosity is such that he even impressed the great Vladimir Horowitz, who called a performance he heard on the radio of Thibaudet playing Liszt “amazing”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Yves_Thibaudet
________________________
The performance was well-shot with many lingering sections on Thibaudet’s brilliant play.
He went open collar, no tie, with a large black, jeweled medallion at the notch of his throat. Wiki says his concert outfit was designed by Vivienne Westwood, whom even I’ve heard of.
I’ll have to listen to more Thibaudet.
I was disappointed, however, that the performance did not include the musical saw, which Khachaturian wrote a part for in the concerto. I’ve heard the saw in a few recordings and it adds an eerie tremolo on top of the violins. But I’ve never seen it.
http://www.singende-saege.com/khachaturian-piano-concerto.html
I attended a Seeger concert in Houston when I was a kid. He had the audience divide itself up into parts to sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” along with him. I don’t remember ever having more fun in my life.
Oh, the early 60’s when the rage was decolonization of Africa and Communist backed liberation of the oppressed black masses. Funny how that equally oppressive solution (Communism) “worked.” BLM still working that con but Pete is now gone to his reward. May he be stamped.
Paul in Boston….”He used to sing a song by Malvena Renolds called “Little Boxes”
It has struck me that that song (circa 1963, I believe) marked the transition from a Left which *favored* higher living standards for average people (or at least said they did) and the present-day Left, much of which thinks average people live too darn well.
See the remark by Fabian socialist Sidney Webb, in praise of what he called The Machine Age:
“It is, indeed, to the so-called unskilled workers of London and Berlin and Paris, badly off in many respects as they still are and notably to their wives and children that the Machine Age has incidentally brought the greatest advance in freedom and in civilization.”
Longer excerpt from Webb in comments here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60956.html
Seeger certainly had a unique and easily recognizable voice, but he always seemed like one of those dorky school teachers or camp counselors who always wanted to sing and who the kids made fun of. His anger at Bob Dylan going electric — supposedly Pete had an axe and was ready to chop the electric cables — was what you’d expect from the teacher who wanted to be “cool” and down with the kids, but who was an authoritarian at heart.
The Seeger family was ahead of the curve. Harvard in the Thirties wasn’t a noticeably left-wing place, or not so much as it is now. There was always a wealthy radical fringe, but they didn’t yet run the place. Pete’s uncle was the poet Alan Seeger, killed in the Great War.
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Springs brings back blue days and fair.
Flanders and Swan were cute. Harmless little comic or satirical songs, often about animals. Plus “The English are Best.” They weren’t folk singers or leftists, but Flanders’ wife was related to Britain’s leftwing Cockburn dynasty. Hence his daughter, Laura Flanders, who is a left-wing broadcaster in the states. She would be better off if she were more of her father and less of her mother.
M Smith:
Indeed. See this.
Re Khatchaturian: Listen to his cello concerto. Technically very challenging, but also musical.
Wonder how he and Shostakovich made it in Stalin’s era without being sent to Kolyma.
Here is the song for Pete Seeger:
“Progress”
https://youtu.be/LMEECbKOH7Q
https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/07/23/country-music-superstar-john-rich-blisters-the-woke-with-patriotic-1-hit-takes-out-biden-in-the-process-n600387
The world is better off without his ability to spread communism with a happy face
According to Shostakovich, Khatchaturian was a Party tool.