A Pete Seeger retrospective
I noted Seeger's death the other day but didn't post anything more about it.
I found this which expresses my thoughts -- from Lauren Weiner writing at
First Things:
Pete Seeger: The Communist Consumers Loved
During the 1950s and 1960s, when Pete Seeger and Malvina Reynolds coaxed classrooms full of kids to join them in the singing of folk songs, no one paid much attention, not even those who, in the middle of the Cold War, saw America�s �singing left� as a threat to the republic. �They never thought there would be a problem with Pete Seeger singing to six-year-olds,� Seeger�s biographer, David King Dunaway, wrote. But considering the baby boom those six-year-olds turned out to be, Dunaway�s later observation made sense: What was in the offing was �an American folk music revival that I think we have to give the FBI credit for helping to establish.�
The law of unintended consequences gave a quirky twist to the relation between the Old and New Left and, in the process, lent peculiar accents to America�s musical and political culture that we can�t seem to get rid of even today. The folk revival, �a fad sandwiched between the beatniks and the hippies,� may have been brief, but it was also the baby boomers� coming of age, and its echoes have been lasting. Bruce Springsteen made a splash in 2006 with his Seeger Sessions. Ry Cooder paid homage to Woody Guthrie in the 2007 release My Name Is Buddy. Sheryl Crow told Billboard magazine that her song, �Shine Over Babylon,� is �very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan.�
It�s curious how much the postwar children of prosperity enjoyed hearkening back to hard times. Dylan�s early compositions were full of Dust Bowl references. Odetta was on television rendering the sounds of the chain gang while bathed in a glamorous cabaret spotlight. The Gordon Lightfoot song �Early Morning Rain� (1964) complained that �you can�t jump a jet plane� as easily as you hopped a freight train back in the good old, bad old days. �Green, Green,� Barry McGuire�s 1963 top ten hit, had the perky coeds of the New Christy Minstrels belting out the plea of the Great Depression: �Buddy, can you spare me a dime?�
The Appalachian murder ballads, convict songs, and Dust Bowl laments of the 1960s did prompt some debate about authenticity, but the rescuers of old-time music cheerfully exposed themselves to the charge of dilettantism. �Some of my favorite songs I�ve learned from camp counselors,� admitted Pete Seeger. Dave Van Ronk�whose disarming memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, was published posthumously in 2005�recounts that many years after he had helped popularize �House of the Rising Sun,� he actually went to New Orleans, only to learn that the original establishment was not a bordello, as he had supposed, but a women�s prison. Another staple of Van Ronk�s repertoire, �Candy Man,� had been taught to him by a master of ragtime guitar finger-picking, the Reverend Gary Davis. The straight-laced Davis was loath to join him on �Candy Man� before an audience�eventually Van Ronk caught on that the song he�d been performing was about a pimp.
Much more at the site -- this is an excellent essay and shows the damage at the heart of our generation.
Posted by DaveH at January 29, 2014 3:25 PM