Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919.
His parents were musicologists and professors at Julliard.
His house burned to the ground when he was young.
A few years later, his brother was killed in a gas stove explosion.
By the time he was thirteen, Seeger was out on his own, as his mother was committed to an asylum and his father was ill and a heavy drinker.
When he was young he played banjo for summer camps.
He says that his biggest mistake was leaving his wife, Toshi, to raise their three kids, while he traveled around.
He plays banjo, guitar, ukelele, and a variety of other instruments, though he is mostly known for his banjo.
The first concert he performed was The Grapes of Wrath Benefit for California Migrant Workers at the Oldest Forest Theater, where he first met Woody Guthrie.
His heroes are his wife and Paul Robeson.
In 1996 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his contribution to the developement of rock. (the music, not the stone)
He has been happily married since 1943, more than 50 years.
He lives in a cabin in upstate New York near the Hudson River.
Pete Seeger attended Harvard, following his father's wishes. However, years of being on his own (since the age of thirteen) changed him, and after two years at school he dropped out to travel and collect songs with his newfound friend, Woody Guthrie. Seeger felt that unions were very positive and helpful, and his belief in this inspired many songs supporting them. Seeger and Guthrie made the Union Movement their platform and were major activists at the time, singing songs like "The Union Maid".
As a child growing up in the Dust Bowl, Pete Seeger was eventually forced out of his home during the great drought of the Depression. Years later, he recounted his tales in lyrical form, and wrote the "Dust Bowl Ballads," which brought attention to the many people still suffering in Oklahoma. The Dust Bowl Ballads were a set of fifteen songs, originally recorded in 1940.
1. The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)
2. Talking Dust Bowl Blues
3. Pretty Boy Floyd
4. Dusty Old Dust (So Long It's Been Good To Know Yuh)
5. Dust Bowl Blues
6. Blowin' Down The Road (I Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way)
7. Tom Joad (Part 1)
8. Tom Joad (Part 2)
9. Do Re Mi
10. Dust Bowl Refugee
11. I Ain't Got No Home
12. Vigilante Man
13. Dust Can't Kill Me
14. Dust Pneumonia Blues
15. Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues (alternate take)
Seeger performed on the banjo and sang in 1940 with a folk group, the Almanac Singers. The well admired artist, Woody Guthrie, joined in 1941, recording union songs and peace anthems. Seeger's devotion to the anti-war and peace movements led him on to a great run of hits with his post World War II group, The Weavers (1948).
During the 1950's, Joseph McCartney falsely accused many people of being communists, including Pete Seeger. Many people pleaded the fifth amendment during their hearings - this meant that they had the right not to say anything that would incriminate themselves. However, Seeger pleaded the first amendment as his defense, saying that he should have the right to freedom of speech in his songs. As a result, he was blacklisted from 1950-1957. This meant that he could not appear on t.v. or on radio broadcasts during this time. In spite of this ban, the Smothers Brothers aired him on their program anyway. Originally, the network cut out the song that he sang, but due to much protest, they put it back in. Ultimately, Seeger received more publicity and attention as a result of being blacklisted.
Hold the Line is the tale of a Paul Robeson concert which Pete Seeger opened for, and his family attended. Because Robeson was black and very liberally minded, members of the Klu Klux Klan arrived and began stoning the cars as people left the concert. "I saw some glass in the road," Seeger described the scene vividly in an interview in April 1999, "I said to my family 'Uh Oh, be prepared to duck; somebody may throw a stone.' Around the corner there was a young fellow with a pile of stones waist high, each about as big as a baseball, and WHAM, at close range. Around the next corner was another pile of stones, another guy, and WHAM again, at close range. Well, in the next mile and a half or two miles, there must've been ten or twenty piles of stones, and every window in our station wagon was busted...only the rear window was not broken. Two stones came through, and I was building a fireplace in our home at the time, so I cemented them in later." A true pacifist, Seeger held no grudge against the men throwing at him. "I don't believe the world will survive unless we learn to forgive each other," he states.
Pete Seeger later joined Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and many other Civil Rights Activists during the 1960s. He is credited with helping to write the song "We Shall Overcome," which many consider to be the anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement.
"This song was originally one of two African American Spirituals: I'll Overcome Some Day or I'll be All Right. In 1946, several hundred employees of the American Tobacco Company in Charleston, South Carolina were on strike. They sang on the picket line to keep their spirits. Lucille Simmons started singing the song on the picket line and changed one important word from "I" to "we". Zilphia Horton learned it when a group of strikers visited the Highland Fold School, the Labor Education Center in Tennessee. She taught it to me and we published it as WE SHALL OVERCOME in our songletter, People's Songs Bulletin. in 1952, I taught it to Guy Carawan and Frank Hamilton. Guy introduced the song to the founding convention of SNCC (student non-violent Coordinating Committee) in North Carolina.
Seeger is quoted in saying, "I started singing 'We Will Overcome' all over the country. I'd go to California or Chicago and I'd lead it but I didn't have that good a voice. I just gave it a banjo accompaniment. Chica ump chica ump...That's probably the way I sang it to Martin Luther King just six months after he won the bus boycott in 1957...I sang it for the crowd. The next day, driving back to Kentucky for a speaking engagement, King said, 'We Will Overcome'. That song really sticks with you, doesn't it?"
During the Vietnam War, Seeger wrote many songs protesting war and supporting peace. Once again, he visite the Smothers Brothers television program to sing something controversial. The song was entitled "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," and referred to the president as a fool. Because of it's anti-war attitude, the song was cut from the broadcast.
Pete Seeger lived on the Hudson River. When he began learning to sail, he noticed that the river was very polluted. During this time, he also read the book "Sloops of the Hudson." The last line of the book stated, "sloops like these will never be seen again." This book made Seeger want to build a sloop, so he found a 70 year old man in Maine who could do it for him. At the same time, he wanted to do something about the pollution problem. Seeger believed that if sloops could be revived, then so could the river, so he started the Clearwater Group, a non-profit organization dedicated to cleaning up the river. The group taught people, especially children, about pollution, and how to keep the water clean. In 1972, the Clearwater Amendment was passed, which put $5 billion towards sewage treatment plants. Today, you can fish and swim in many parts of the Hudson as a result of these actions.