Download The Weavers For many of us who “came of age”

The Weavers
For many of us who “came of age” in the 1950s and 60s, music was an important part of our lives. In Detroit, Michigan
where I grew up, there was a wonderful mixture of music that represented the cultural mosaic of the people who
worked and lived in the city. From tin pan alley to motown, and from country western to traditional folk, there was a
musical genre for everyone. Of all the genres, folk music was more obscure, perhaps less relevant to big city life. I was
not all that aware of folk music until I attended college in the fall of 1964. As I look back, it seemed like this genre of
music spoke volumes about the 60s generation’s view of a country that was experiencing radical change. Whether it
was civil rights, war in Vietnam, corruption in government, assassination of our leaders, or simply trying to get along
with our parents, the events of the day found its voice in song--ballads that chronicled the history of an era.
The use of folksongs to express the experiences of common people has its roots in English history. Ballads were
passed down orally from generation to generation; new singers added their own touches, their own details, moving the
ballad out of its own time and making it meaningful for the singer and the contemporary audience. The folksong gained
added dimension in the twentieth century when it became more topical. The expression of people about their struggles
and hardships was heard through their songs of protest; the hard times of people, from the coal miners of Kentucky to
the textile workers in New York to Black sharecroppers of the South were related in song.
Probably the most influential folk group, who had an impact on the 60s balladeers was the Weavers.
The Weavers, 1980 Reunion
The Weavers--Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hayes and Fred Hellerman, started singing professionally in 1950.
Throughout the 50s, they introduced college kids across America to folk songs that told a story about the successes
and hardships of people all over the world. Many of the songs, old in origin, new in relevance, were political and were
meant to change the world.
Members of the Weavers were part of a bigger group of songwriters who moved to New York City to find an outlet for
their songs and to use their music to protest many of the conditions they believed American Society needed to change.
In 1945 these artist gathered in Greenwich Village to incorporate a union called Peoples Songs. They envisioned that
this union of songwriters would stage hootenannies, provide a library of protest songs for unions and other progressive
groups, and send people out to perform at union gatherings and at picket lines. Key members of the group included
Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes. They had much to sing about -- a world
without war, the end of racism and equality for everyone. Idealism, however, did not pay the bills and the group filed for
bankruptcy in 1948. Some members of the group continued to meet in Greenwich Village in the basement of Pete
Seeger’s in- laws on MacDougal Street. Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert continued to
write, to revise and to sing their songs at union gatherings. Known as the Nameless Quartet for a long time, the group
finally decided on a genre neutral name, the Weavers—meaning they were the weavers of song. Each member of the
quartet brought to the group a unique world outlook and an agreement that songs were meant to teach as well as
entertain.
The Weavers began by singing at union halls, at benefits, and at nursery schools, but received little pay; each had a
day job to tide them over. They were looking for a way to make money and their big break came at Christmas, 1949
when they sang at a jazz club in New York City called the Village Vanguard.
Audiences at the Vanguard loved their music, which prompted management to book them for a three-month
commitment. Gordon Jenkins of Decca Records “discovered’ the Weavers at the Vanguard and signed them to a 1
year contract. In that year they recorded two very successful songs, “Tsena Tsena” and “Goodnight Irene,” both songs
stayed at the top of the charts for a long time. For the next two years, the Weavers played at venues across the
country, their popularity grew and their financial fortunes gave them the financial security they did not have singing at
Union Halls. But in 1952, the Weavers were blacklisted. Unfortunately for them, their popularity grew at the same time
as McCarthyism. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigation of communist infiltration into the American government and
society targeted many groups and individuals across America who had affiliations with the Communist party. For the
Weavers, the scrutiny and newspaper banner headlines like, “Weavers Named Reds,” caused many nightclubs and
concert halls to blacklist them. Members of the group were subpoenaed before the House Committee for Un-American
Activities. Ronnie Gilbert was in California and refused to appear. Fred Hellerman and Lee Hayes took the 5th and
Pete Seeger argued his 1st amendment rights. After the McCarthy era, the Weavers did not get their momentum back;
their star began to fall. By the end of the 1950s, they played only on colleges campuses, and small clubs.
Pete Seeger is probably the most well known member of the Weavers. He has appeared on countless television show,
the 70s generation will probably remember him for his frequent quest appearances on Sesame Street. He was born in
New York City in 1919. His father was Charles Seeger, a musicologist and researcher of non-western music. Both his
parents taught at Julliard School of Music in New York City. At an early age, he was introduced to the banjo, now a
signature of his style. In 1940, Seeger joined the Almanac Singers, where he traveled the country with Lee Hayes,
Millard Lampell, and Woody Guthrie playing folk and labor songs to whoever would listen.
During World War 11, Seeger lived in Saipan and played in a country Jazz band, where he entertained U.S. soldiers at
the Island bases. After the war, he moved back to the States and worked with Alan Lomax in the Archive of Folk Music
in the Library of Congress. While traveling around the country with the Almanac Singers, Seeger continued to collect
songs, many of which he worked into the Weaver’s repertoire. Pete Seeger left the Weavers in 1958 when he started
his own professional career as a songwriter and folksinger.Along with Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes and Fred Hellerman
made a significant contribution to the success of the Weavers.
Lee Hayes began his singing career in Arkansas, where he was born and raised. He arrived in New York in the 1930s.
Besides a songwriter, Hayes wrote mystery stories and was a columnist for the Brooklyn Heights Press. Haye’s
political views were a reflection of growing up in Arkansas and seeing the effects of the 1930s economic depression on
his family and neighbors. He started reading books like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and other reading material that
highlighted the economic inequality in the country. His reading selections had an effect on his political outlook. He
admitted, “Somewhere along in there, I became some kind of socialist. Just what kind I’ve never to this day figured
out.”
Like Lee Hayes, Ronnie Gilbert saw life through the socialist political lens.
Ronnie Gilbert 1999.
Gilbert brought to the Weavers a voice that blended well with her male counterparts, and a political ideology that fit
with that of the other members of the quartet. Gilbert was born in 1926 in New York City. Her mother was a PolishJewish immigrant and worked in the garment district of New York City. She participated in union activity and was a
member of the Communist party. Ronnie grew up in the union culture and was influenced by their politics and music;
she often sang at union forums. She also spent three years in the chorus of a children’s radio show. Ronnie left home
to work in Washington D. C. when she was 16. While in Washington, a friend introduced her to Jazz, African-American
Congregational songs and Country western music. It was in Washington where she also met her first folk group, The
Priority Ramblers. She joined the group in wartime Washington and became well grounded in the folk culture. After the
war, Gilbert went back to New York where she worked at a worker/children’s camp. At the camp she met the forth
member of the Weavers, Fred Hellerman.
Fred Hellerman was born in 1927 in New York City. His father was a Latvian immigrant who worked in the rag
business. Hellerman’s musical career started when he learned to play the guitar while in the Navy during World War
Two. After the war, he played in a folk group call American Folksay; he also attended Brooklyn College, majoring in
English. Lee Hays heard about Hellerman and his association with American Folksay and subsequently invited
Hellerman to become a member of People’s Songs. Hellerman brought Ronnie Gilbert into People’s songs, and
eventually they both joined the Weavers.
The common element that brought Seeger, Hayes, Hellerman and Gilbert together in the Greenwich Village apartment
was their concern for social injustice and the need to raise the countries consciousness of the social ills in society. The
solutions that they wrote in song often rejected capitalism and championed Unions and socialist doctrine. But in the
long run, they did not necessarily reject the Capitalist system, indeed, they benefited from it by their success as
songwriters and performers. Ironically, the song that brought the Weaver’s into national attention was not a protest
song but a Negro Spiritual adopted by Leadbelly.
Huddi Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly, was a tremendous influence on members of the Peoples Songs, especially Pete
Seeger, Lee Hayes and Woody Guthrie. Folklorists John and Alan Lomax discovered Leadbelly when the two toured
the South in the 1930s, where they collected and recorded folk songs for the Library of Congress. On a tour of the
Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1933, they met Leadbelly. Leadbelly was born in 1885 on the Jeter Plantation in
Louisiana. When he was five, his family moved to Texas. Growing up he learned to play the guitar and between
working as a laborer and a guitar player, he made a living until convicted of murder in 1918. He was able to reduce his
30 yr. term of hard labor to seven by begging a pardon from the governor, which he did in a song. But in 1930, he was
convicted of attempted homicide and sent to the Louisiana Penitentiary, where John and Alan Lomax met him.
Leadbelly told Lomax of the Texas Governor’s pardon. Lomax decided to help Leadbelly by asking the Governor of
Louisiana to pardon him; they made a record of his petition on the other side of one of Leadbelly’s favorite ballad,
“Goodnight Irene.” Leadbelly received his pardon. Lomax took Leadbelly to New York in 1935. There, he met Woody
Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes and introduced them to his songs that described the struggle of Blacks in
America.
The Weavers learned a lot from Leadbelly, but unfortunately, he died a month before the Weavers played the
Vanguard. They dedicated the last song of their concert to Leadbelly by playing his song, “Goodnight Irene.” It became
the signature closing at every Weaver’s concert thereafter.
“Goodnight Irene” is the first song I can ever remember hearing as a child. I didn’t pay much attention to the song as
an adult, until I started listening to early Weaver recordings. Besides the songs deep roots in the early folk culture, it is
a good example of the end of one musical era and the beginning of another. The early Weaver songs incorporated the
big band sound of swing and jazz, which was popular in the 1940s and early 1950s.
Click on Arlo Guthrie for clip
Beside “Goodnight Irene”, The Weaver’s “Mimoweh” also incorporated the full band sound.
“Mimoweh”, or “the Lion Sleeps Tonight” was an African Folk song written by Soloman Linda and record by Linda’s
band in 1939. Pete Seeger found the song in 1951, transcribed and copyrighted the work, it was one of his most
successful songs.
Click on Arlo Guthrie for clip
Probably one of the most recorded songs written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes is “If I Had a Hammer.” I always
associated the song with Peter Paul and Mary. Seeger and Hayes wrote the song while sitting at a one of the initial
board meetings People’s Songs. Evidently, to fill time, they passed notes back and forth to one another. When the
meeting was over, they had the lyrics to “If I Had a Hammer.” The song, as intended by the songwriters, was to warn of
the threats that existed in American society to liberty, especially warning against such agencies as the government’s
Un-American Activities Committee and the growing red-scare of the 1950s.
As luck would have it, their protest songs enabled the Weavers to live comfortably. Songs written by the groups or
individually, climbed the charts and as emerging folk groups in the late 50s and early 60s began to entertain on
Campuses and coffee houses across he country. The royalties from “If I had a Hammer”, along with “Kisses Sweeter
Than Wine,” “Lonesome Traveler,” and “Where Have all the Flower’s Gone.”
The Weaver became the prototypical folk singing group. They had all the ingredients that the 1960-generation of
songsters were looking for--radical political views that promoted the ideology of peace, equality and social welfare. The
Weavers were purest; they believed they could change the world by singing about the apparent injustices in society.
They were from a generation used to hard times, but their idealism and political philosophy did not transcend to the
future generation of folk singers. Like the Weavers, folk groups in he 60s often found that financial success often
trumped idealism.
posted by Sue schrems, Ph.D. @ 3:40 PM
Follow the Drinking Gourd:
A Cultural History
Follow the Drinking Gourd musical fragment
Cultural History
1934 to 1947
The song did not initially make a big impression. It was reprinted in 1934 in American Ballads and Folk Songs by John
A. and Alan Lomax. It inspired a well-received novel of the same name by the southern writer, Frances Gaither, in
1940. But there were no recordings, even though the Lomax book was well-known to the folk music community.
Perhaps this is owing to the Parks version – his granddaughter told me he was very unmusical. Parks described the
song as a "jerky chant" and sang it as best he could to a musicologist who transcribed it for publication.
Musical fragment in the original 1928 article
The original song fragment has never been recorded. The version that comes closest was sung by Leon Bibb in 1962
and released decades later in Harry Belafonte's set, "The Long Road to Freedom." (Listen)?
Turning back to the Lee Hays arrangement, he took the melodic snippet in the Parks article and turned it into a fullblown song. His new lyrics were considerably more literary than the original vernacular version. He also changed the
line, "The ole man waits" to the much more overt "The old man is awaitin' for to carry you to freedom." The chorus now
conformed to the Underground Railroad mythology of the time, where whites played a pre-eminent role and slave
initiative counted for a distant second. Today one could argue that slaves who made it to and past the Ohio had
already carried themselves to freedom and didn't need an old man to do it for them.
In perhaps the ultimate compliment, the words were almost immediately presumed to be "traditional" and over a
century old. For example, the Hays lyrics are placed in pre-Civil War settings in all three children's books inspired by
the song – even though these lines simply could not have been sung as depicted because they had not yet been
written!
1949 to 1958
Folklorist B.A. Botkin included the song in his 1949 Treasury of Southern Folklore. It's very possible that later
confusion about Drinking Gourd traces back to this book. Botkin reprinted the entire Parks article, but he stripped out
most of the original lyrics and all of the music. Botkin then appended the Hays arrangement – both lyrics and music –
to the bottom of the redacted Parks text. Readers who don't check a footnote could easily miss how loosely connected
the two actually are.
In 1951, The Weavers released the song's first-ever recording on the Decca album Folk Songs of America and Other
Lands in 45 rpm, 78 rpm and LP formats.
Drinking Gourd popularizers, The Weavers
The Weavers
Hays and his fellow Weavers turned a relatively obscure fragment into a powerful, enduring folk song and launched it
to prominence. Their work forms the basis for virtually all subsequent printed versions and most recordings of the
song.
The duo of Foster and Larue recorded the first commercial version by black artists in 1958.
1960s to the Present Drinking Gourd, Ramblin'
Singer Randy Sparks went on to found the popular folk group, The New Christy Minstrels. His arrangement of
Woodum's version of Drinkin' Gourd was released on the Minstrel's fourth recording, Ramblin', in 1963. It too had a
strong impact on later performers, many of whom adopted some Woodum lines.
The song flourished in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was certainly the most popular song about the Underground
Railroad and became a mainstay of both the Civil Rights and the folk revival movements. For instance, it was included
in a mimeographed pamphlet entitled, "Songs for the March on Washington" in August, 1963 alongside Bob Dylan's
"Blowin' in the wind" and Lee Hays and Pete Seeger's "Hammer song".
The song has been recorded nearly 200 different times, and reprinted in over 75 songbooks. These recordings came
principally in the 1950s and 60s. Following a drop-off, the number of recordings has climbed from 1990 to the present.
The same publishing pattern holds for appearances in songbooks. These songbooks overwhelmingly reprint the Hays
version, and most identify the song as "traditional." For example, respected Black music researcher Eileen Southern
included the Hays arrangement and lyrics in the Third Edition of The Music of Black Americans: A History, describing
both as "traditional."
1963 Live at Carnegie Hall
Tracklisting / Additional Info:
1. When The Saints Go Marching In
2. Banks Of Marble
3. Woke Up This Morning
4. Ramblin' Boy
5. Poor Liza
6. Train Time
7. Wimoweh
8. San Francisco Bay Blues
9. Guantanamera
10. If I Had A Hammer
11. Come Away Melinda
12. Study War No more
13. Goodnight Irene
14. Round The World
Album Review
Despite having scored a series of major hits in the early '50s, starting with "Goodnight Irene," which topped the charts
for 13 weeks, the Weavers were hounded out of existence in 1953 as part of the anti-Communist witch hunts. Although
Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose scurrilous activities gave the McCarthy Era its name, had been condemned by the
Senate in December 1954, the Red Scare was still far from over in 1955 — indeed, Weavers group members Pete
Seeger and Lee Hays were both subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in
August of that year. (Seeger refused to answer questions, leading to a contempt citation, while Hays took the Fifth
Amendment.) But on Christmas Eve, the Weavers played a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, initiating the second
phase of their career and, in the eyes of most observers, inspiring the folk revival that led to the popularity of such
performers as the Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Bob Dylan. The Weavers began to perform
around the country again, and they signed to Vanguard Records, which, in April 1957, released this live recording. It's
easy to hear what all the fuss was about, and not just because of the thunderous applause. Many of the Weavers'
recordings for the major label Decca Records between 1950 and 1953 found them accompanied by an orchestra,
while here the only instrumentation was Seeger's banjo (he also played recorder here and there) and baritone Fred
Hellerman's acoustic guitar. And the group proved to be an exciting — and often humorous — live act. Their program
here is divided into four parts. "Folk Songs, Comic and Sentimental" begins the show, including their hit "Kisses
Sweeter Than Wine" (revived for a Top Five hit later in 1957 by Jimmie Rodgers) and "Rock Island Line," the Leadbelly
song they had first recorded just before their breakup in 1953 that became a Top Ten hit for Lonnie Donegan in 1956.
The "Around the World" section finds them singing in several languages and includes their hit "Wimoweh," adapted by
the Tokens into the number one chart-topper "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in 1961. "The Weavers 'Personalities'" gives
lead-singing opportunities to each of the four group members, with powerful alto Ronnie Gilbert shining on the British
folk ballad "I Know Where I'm Going" and Hellerman emphasizing the group's ties to popular music by performing
"Sixteen Tons," the number one song in the country on the day the concert was held. The show closes with "Three
Hymns, a Lullaby and Goodnight," revealing the group's roots in gospel music and, inevitably, ending with "Goodnight
Irene." It's easy to hear both the sources of the folk revival in the music of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, African-American
spirituals, and international folk songs, and the future of folk-pop music as it would be enacted by the Weavers'
successors in this show, which is what makes The Weavers at Carnegie Hall a key recording in the history of
American folk music, as well as a singularly enjoyable live performance by a remarkably talented quartet.
Pete Seeger
"Singer-songwriter Pete Seeger is, along with Woody Guthrie,
one of the pioneers of folk music. Seeger is synonymous with
the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and helped to
transform folk from an orally transmitted body of traditional
songs found mainly among rural dwellers to a mass-market
form of entertainment, popular on college campuses and in
New York coffeehouses. Pete Seeger was born on May 3,
1919 in New York City, the son of Julliard musicologist Charles
Seeger, one of the first researchers to investigate non-western
music. Pete Seeger was educated at a series of exclusive
private schools, including Harvard, where he majored in
sociology. Seeger had begun playing banjo in his teens, and
developed an intense interest in folk music that only grew over
time. In 1938 he shocked his parents by dropping out of
college to hitchhike across the U.S., meeting many legendary
folk musicians along the way, including Ledbelly and Woody
Guthrie. When he returned to New York in 1940, Seeger
formed the Almanac Singers, a rotating cast of folk singers (at
times including Woody Guthrie) that merged politically
Pete Seeger with Henry Wallace 1948
progressive lyrics with folk tunes. They performed mainly at
union rallies, strikes, and similar events. The Almanac Singers
disbanded during World War II, when Pete Seeger was drafted.
After serving in the military for several years, Pete Seeger
returned to New York in 1948 and formed the Weavers, the
first mainstream American folk group. The Weavers scored
several big hits in the early 1950s, including 1948's "Goodnight
Irene," which stayed a No. 1 for weeks on end, setting a chart
record not broken until the 1970s. During the McCarthy-era
Red Scare the Weavers -- less political than the Almanac
Singers, but still outspokenly socialist -- suffered boycotts that
severely curtailed their success. In 1955 the group bounced
back with a legendary performance at Carnegie Hall, setting
the stage for the urban folk boom of the late 1950s. Though a
somewhat controversial figure for his radical politics and
shocking refusal to testify before the Un-American Activities
Pete Seeger with the Weavers 1950
committee, Seeger elected to begin a solo career in 1958, and
quickly became a star in his own right. Known for songs such as "If I Had a Hammer" (a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary),
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Turn, Turn, Turn" (later popularized by the Byrds), "Guantanamera" and, most
famously, "We Shall Overcome," Seeger became a fixture at civil rights rallies, college campuses, labor strikes and
anti-war prot ests, where audiences would often sing along so loud that Seeger himself could hardly be heard. In 1961
Seeger signed to major-label Columbia Records, and as his popularity grew even further over the next few years,
many younger "message" singers, such as Phil Ochs, accused him of selling out his politics for mainstream success,
citing his involvement with the commercialized Newport Folk Festivals.
Toward the end of the 1960s, Seeger shifted away from typical American folk, embracing African music, LatinAmerican folk songs and other forms of world music. He wrote several famous "how to" books on acoustic guitar and
banjo, and became active in the nascent environmental movement, drawing attention to pollution of the Hudson River
through boating trips; he later formed the activist group Clearwater, which teaches schoolchildren about water
pollution. Pete Seeger continued performing into the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, most often at charity shows and benefits.
Seeger currently lives in upstate New York."
Weavers Biography
The Weavers had the most extraordinary musical pedigree and pre-history of any performing group in the history of
folk or popular music. More than 50 years after their heyday, however, their origins, the level of their success, the
forces that cut the group's future off in its prime, and the allure that keeps their music selling are all difficult to explain
— as, indeed, none of this was all that easy to explain at the time. How could a song as pleasant and tuneful as
"Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" be subversive?
The quartet went from being embraced by the public, and selling four-million-records, to being reviled and rejected
over the political backgrounds of its members, and disbanding after only four years together. Yet, despite the
controversy that surrounded them, and the fact that their work was interrupted at its peak, the Weavers managed to
alter popular culture in about as profound a manner as any artist this side of Bob Dylan — indeed, they set the stage
for the 1950s folk revival, indirectly fostering the careers of the Kingston Trio, among others, and bridging the gap
between folk and popular music, and folk and the topical song, they helped set the stage for Dylan's eventual
emergence. And the songs that they wrote or popularized, including "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Wimoweh,"
"Goodnight Irene," "Wreck of the John B," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," and "On Top of Old Smoky," continued to get
recorded (and occasionally to chart) 50 years after the group's own time.
The Weavers bear a striking resemblance to an earlier group called the Almanac Singers. Pete Seeger (born May 3,
1919) and Lee Hays (born 1914) had worked together for the first time in 1940 as part of the Almanac Singers, who
had enjoyed brief but notable success on radio, and as a recording outfit doing topical songs in a folk idiom, until their
leftist political views became an issue; the group members had been caught in the uncomfortable position, as
dedicated Communists, of having pushed pacifism and American neutrality during 1940 and early 1941, and then
reversing themselves after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In the intervening years, during and after World
War II, Seeger and Hays had both been involved in various causes involving international peace, civil rights, and
workers' rights, and late in 1948, Hays had suggested trying to form an ensemble similar to, but better organized than
the Almanac Singers. The notion went through some evolution, including the idea — later abandoned — of a
multiracial sextet, before it settled on Seeger, Hays, Fred Hellerman (born May 13, 1927), and Ronnie Gilbert (born
September 7, 1926). The Brooklyn-born Hellerman and New York-born Gilbert had first met Seeger and Hays through
People's Songs, a loosely knit assembly of songwriters and musicians formed in the basement of Seeger's house in
Greenwich Village in 1946, which was intended to bolster the postwar union and social activism. People's Songs
started with a great deal of promise but faltered two-and-a-half years later, along with the left in general, after the
election of 1948, in which the leftist presidential ticket of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor ran last in a four-way race. It
was just after the election that Hays had suggested a new singing group, and he, Seeger, Hellerman, and Gilbert,
along with a fifth member named Jackie Gibson, who dropped out soon after, had initially performed that Thanksgiving.
The surviving group, known informally as "the No-Name Quartet," performed at various venues around New York and
once on radio, courtesy of folk singer Oscar Brand, before settling on the name the Weavers, derived from a play of
the same title by Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann.
The Weavers' first year was spent avoiding starvation. Their intention had been to help support union-sponsored
events and other progressive causes, but the members discovered that, in the wake of the collapse of the Wallace
campaign, there were hardly any events at which they were welcome, or which could pay them anything. If 1948 had
been a disastrous year for the left, 1949 was nothing short of catastrophic, as the forces of reaction, emboldened by
Wallace's defeat and with an angry, obstructionist Republican minority in Congress to give them a national platform,
went on the attack. In some instances, the attacks were literal — during the late summer of 1949, rioting broke out at a
concert in Peekskill, NY, in which hundreds were injured by members of veterans groups infuriated by the presence of
singer and leftist political activist Paul Robeson, who was also the target of an aborted assassination attempt.
Challenges became commonplace, to the loyalties of any visible folk singers with a topical edge to their music, or to
that of the people who would hire or record them.
Pete Seeger, the most well-known member of the Weavers, was able to eke out fees of as much as $15 at some
venues — there were still schools that would book him to sing for children — but that was as good as the money got,
and it couldn't be increased for the quartet. The Weavers did make a handful of recordings in the late summer and
early fall of 1949 for Charter Records, a tiny label run by former People's Songs supporter Mario Casetta, but most of
them were never released, and the undercapitalized label closed in 1950.
Fate took a hand when the group, as a last-ditch effort to keep going, auditioned for a spot performing for the
Christmas week of 1949 at the Village Vanguard, a New York club owned by Max Gordon, which was most closely
associated with jazz. They went over so well that the gig was extended through the winter and then the entire spring,
for $250.00 a week split four ways. Their six months at the Vanguard changed the group's fate. Though the club was
virtually empty on the four weeknights, on weekends it filled up, and audiences loved the simple, unaffected
enthusiasm that the quartet brought to their music. Folk singing by then had become something of an "art," an elitist,
academic activity attuned to scholars, but the Weavers came off completely the opposite of this — guileless and
honest, literally four hay seeds without any experience of playing in clubs. Their presentation and popularity, coupled
with the visibility of the Vanguard, soon led to reviews in newspapers and trade journals, and these were almost all
positive.
It was from the Village Vanguard shows that the group first hooked up with Harold Leventhal, a young music publishing
executive. He loved their work but was also honest enough to admit that, at that point in his career, he didn't know
enough about business to represent them adequately, so he recommended someone who did, a manager name Pete
Kameron. In the meantime, they'd also attracted the attention of Gordon Jenkins, who was then one of the top
arrangers and bandleaders in the music business. Jenkins brought them to Decca Records, where he was under
contract, and had the group perform for label chief Dave Kapp — by the time the audition was over, the entire
production staff was listening and singing along, but at first no one knew what to do with four white singers, whose
repertory ranged from traditional gospel, work songs and children's songs, so Decca passed. It was only when Mitch
Miller at Columbia Records offered the quartet a contract that Jenkins got adamant; he had a contract written and a
session booked, and the group was signed to Decca.
The first result of their Decca contract was a collection of Christmas songs issued on a 10" LP, which didn't attract
much attention. But their second session yielded a pair of songs, "Tzena Tzena Tzena," which got to number two, and
"Goodnight Irene," which hit number one and stayed there for 13 weeks, and ended up selling two million copies as a
double-sided hit single. Cut just before the group left the Vanguard in June of 1950, the two songs caught everyone by
surprise with their sudden success. Ronnie Gilbert had just gotten married and was planning on an extended
honeymoon out west. As the newly married couple drove across the country, however, they were astonished to find
"Tzena Tzena Tzena" being played on jukeboxes at the eateries where they stopped, and also turning up on the radio.
Gilbert received a telegram urging her to cut short her honeymoon and return to the group to help fulfill the bookings
that were pouring in, and for the next year the world seemed to be at their feet. There were as many bookings as
Kameron could accept, all for top dollar, and offers of television appearances as well, and Decca Records was eager
to record anything by the group in order to keep the success of the first single going. In later years, purists would
criticize Jenkins' use of string arrangements and a big band brass sound to accompany the group on the original
recordings of "Goodnight Irene," "Midnight Special," and "Wimoweh," but the public never objected and the members
themselves all felt that Jenkins had done his best to keep their sound intact while putting them into the commercial
context of the time. Certainly, they had no objection to the idea of selling several million copies of a song like
"Goodnight Irene," written and taught to them by their friend Leadbelly, who had struggled for decades for success and
recognition and, alas, had died the year before. The label tried their sound in different formats and combinations, even
teaming the Weavers with Terry Gilkyson, a beautiful baritone-voiced folk singer, on "On Top of Old Smoky."
It was all too good to last; they knew, and it didn't. Ever since the breakout of the first single as a hit, the members had
expected that somewhere down the line their past political affiliations would be thrown back in their faces. Their
manager did his best to downplay any political associations by the group — they were never booked into potentially
controversial events, such as union meetings or political rallies, and avoided doing songs that were overly
controversial. From the very start, the group's repertory had been put together on the fly; at the Vanguard, when they
realized that the handful of songs that they'd prepared weren't enough to cover the lengths of the sets that the
audience wanted from them, they would propose and spontaneously do songs right there on-stage, all material that
they knew well from their own respective pasts and all of it considered "safe" and appropriate for a club audience,
rather than a political meeting — Hays' background as the son of a Methodist minister gave him a rich trove of religious
songs to draw on, and the others, with Seeger as the dominant figure after Hays, chose what they thought were the
best and safest songs they knew.
The irony was that their concerts — usually at clubs, or in hotel venues where big bands were the norm — were so
innocuous politically, that the Weavers were derided by the leftist press, even by their former colleague Irwin Silber in
the pages of Sing Out!, a journal then known for its strong editorial positions. They were sneered at as sellouts. And
then, in the summer of 1950, just as they were being offered a 15-minute weekly television show of their own, the antiCommunist journal Red Channels denounced the Weavers. The offer of the program disappeared — though the group
did do a series of spots for Snader Television, an early syndicator in the new medium — and soon bookings began
drying up, though not immediately and not completely. The records kept selling, with another two million copies of their
music purchased in America in 1951, spearheaded by "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," their adaptation of an old Irish folk
song that they'd learned from Leadbelly. By that time, however, they were under FBI surveillance and the pressure
was on — it's impossible for someone born after the 1950s to appreciate the stigma, coupled with the threat, attached
in those days to the very notion of being seen doing business with someone under FBI surveillance, or being called to
testify before a Congressional committee; it could end, or at least severely compromise careers, and split up friends
and families; in those days, teachers were being fired from their jobs and students were being threatened with
expulsion from colleges for refusing to sign loyalty oaths.
For two years, from the middle of 1950, when the first accusations of the group's alleged disloyalty surfaced, until the
summer of 1952, Kameron had been able to keep securing the group some work, in smaller, more out of the way
venues and from promoters, especially in the northeast, who were willing to risk the protests, hate mail, and threats
that inevitably followed the announcement of a Weavers concert. Part of the problem was the group's sheer visibility —
with "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," as innocuous a song politically as one could imagine, getting a huge amount of
airplay, they were a constant source of offense, like a red flag (literally) being waved in the face of rabid antiCommunists. The fact that the Republicans had retaken control of Congress in the 1950 elections, transforming the
most rabid anti-Communists from an angry minority into a nasty majority, caused the behavior of their allies around the
country to become only more virulent as the military stalemate in the Korean War dragged on through 1951 and 1952.
On some subconscious level, it was as though, helpless to defeat the North Koreans (or the Soviets backing them) on
the battlefield, the political right transformed any alleged domestic Communists into valid targets, and the Weavers
were out there singing, selling lots of records, and making lots of noise. The fact that the group was making money by
getting Americans to buy their records, and that a company like Decca Records was earning hundreds of thousands of
dollars in profits from their work, only meant that the Weavers were a corrupting force. The very fact that they'd
sneaked into their success so suddenly, virtually "under the radar" of the political right, was an offense. And the fact
that no member of the group had ever uttered a word in public (or, for all anyone knew, in private) about the Korean
War was, curiously, irrelevant amid all of the controversy.
By the end of 1952, the group had called it quits. Decca no longer wanted to record them because it was difficult, if not
impossible, to get their records into the stores, and it was no longer possible to get their music played on the radio.
The label kept paying them for the duration of their contract until it ended in 1953, and by then each of the members
had moved on to other activities. Another key factor, even if the political and business climate had been more
favorable, was Pete Seeger, who was never wholly comfortable working in a group context due to the limitations it
placed on his repertory, and who liked even less the compromises that the Weavers had made in pursuing their work.
The group was seemingly forgotten by the public over the next three years, their music banished from the airwaves
and their records withdrawn — Ronnie Gilbert and her husband moved to California, Fred Hellerman became a music
teacher, Seeger performed as a solo act at whatever schools would book him, and Lee Hays wrote radio commercials.
In 1955, however, Harold Leventhal proposed a reunion concert for the four. They tried to book Town Hall in New York
but weren't allowed to rent it, so controversial were they still. Instead, in a move that anticipated Brian Epstein's
boldness in booking the hall for the Beatles nine years later, Leventhal rented Carnegie Hall — the irony was that
Carnegie Hall's management, involved in the relatively rarefied world of classical music, was totally unaware of any
controversy surrounding the Weavers and had no objections. (Similarly, when Brian Epstein called to book the Beatles
years later, on the eve of their breakthrough in America, the Carnegie Hall management had no inkling of who they
were and assumed that a "quartet" meant four string players and not a rock & roll group, who would not have been
allowed to book the hall.) The Weavers reunion event proved to be a sellout and then some, with hundreds turned
away; equally important, it was captured on tape, and the tape was then sold to Vanguard Records.
Vanguard at that time was a small but enterprising label specializing in classical music, run by two brothers, Maynard
Solomon and Seymour Solomon, a pair of music lovers and scholars. They had no shareholders to answer to and no
corporate structure, and even in the world of classical record distribution were fiercely independent. Vanguard released
the reunion concert and did very well with it, they followed it up with a second volume, and suddenly Vanguard and the
Weavers had a new recording contract. It was through the Vanguard releases, the reunion concerts, and the
recordings that followed, that most of the Weavers' baby-boom audience, and virtually any enthusiasts acquired during
the folk revival of the late '50s and early '60s, and at any time after, discovered the group and its music.
Their Vanguard recordings were stripped down, very basic productions, just the group members playing with no
dubbed-on accompaniment; these recordings are usually regarded more highly than the Decca material which, in any
case, wasn't available for many years in any comprehensive form. Seeger left the re-formed group in 1958, preferring
to pursue a solo career on his own. By that time, ironically enough, the stage had been set for just such an opportunity
by the Weavers themselves. They may not have survived the blacklist intact, but the interest in folk songs that they'd
fostered, along with the proof, in the form of millions of copies of "Goodnight Irene" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine"
that had been sold, wasn't lost on the public or the music business — by 1956, groups like the Easy Riders (led by
Terry Gilkyson and featuring a pair of lesser-known People's Songs alumni, Frank Miller and Richard Dehr), had
charted a few huge national hits in a distinctly folk-like idiom with "Marianne"; big record labels were looking at folk
music, and smaller ones were recording it, and when the Kingston Trio broke out with the two-million-selling "Tom
Dooley" in 1958, the dam burst. Collegiate folk groups were in, and even controversial "old" Pete Seeger was able to
get a contract with Columbia Records. By the end of the '50s, the anti-Communists were also in retreat, having been
discredited by their woefully flawed national icon, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his fall from power — nobody
especially wanted to take them on if they could help it, but they weren't winning any new battles or new friends, either.
Even the Tokens' 1962 hit single, another version of the Weavers' hit "Wimoweh," entitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight,"
only helped sustain the Weavers' reputation.
Seeger's first replacement in the Weavers was Erik Darling (born September 25, 1933), a former member of the
Tarriers who lasted with the group until 1961 when he left to pursue a solo career and, eventually, to form the Rooftop
Singers; he was succeeded by Frank Hamilton (born August 3, 1934), who stayed until 1963 and was succeeded by
an acquaintance of Lee Hays', Bernie Krause, who worked with the group during their final year together, including the
1964 Carnegie Hall concert which featured a composite of all the group members working together. The group
members went their separate ways, each of them remaining in music to varying degrees, although Ronnie Gilbert also
pursued a degree in psychology; Pete Seeger helped introduce Bob Dylan to the established folk audience, and later
showed that he had lost none of his flair for controversy, challenging the popular media with new songs such as "Waist
Deep in the Big Muddy," dealing with Vietnam; Lee Hays saw a song that he had co-written with Carl Sandburg as
"Wreck of the John B," retitled "Sloop John B," turned into a huge rock & roll hit by the Beach Boys, and he later
became a mentor to Don McLean (who also performed with Pete Seeger). In November of 1980, a pair of reunion
concerts at Carnegie Hall became the final appearance of the original quartet and the focal point of the film Wasn't
That a Time, a documentary that chronicled the Weavers' history. Hays passed away the following summer, thus
ending the active history of the group. Since then, two box-set collections of the group's work — Wasn't That a Time
on Vanguard, covering their history from 1950 through 1964, and Goodnight Irene: The Weavers 1949-1953 on Bear
Family, devoted exclusively to their first four years together — have appeared on CD; and Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,
a double-CD of previously unreleased live performances from the years 1950-1953 on Omega Records, the successor
label to the Solomon brothers' Vanguard Records. Additionally, most of their Vanguard albums have reappeared on
compact disc, and a pair of compilations of their Decca work have been issued in England and America. Listening to
their material today, the great irony is the sense of timelessness in the performances. The avoidance of controversy,
which made the group such pariahs to their compatriots on the left and utterly infuriating to their opponents on the
right, gave the Weavers' music a universality that topical songs of the era would have sorely lacked ten or 20 years
later. At the same time, the group's unaffected style, partly a result of their sheer inexperience, gave the recordings an
honesty and directness that was lacking in the more scholarly approach to folk music that was more typical of the era.
The result is a body of songs several hundred strong that have stood the test of time for a half-century or more.
We have discovered a lost cache of TOGETHER AGAIN, the last CD recorded by the original Weavers (Pete Seeger,
Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman).
The album was recorded at Carnegie Hall on November 28, 1980 during the concert that was the basis of the award
winning film: THE WEAVERS: WASN'T THAT A TIME.
These CD's are the very last of them and are not available in any stores or anywhere else on the Web.
Songs include: Darling Corey, In A Jocular Vein, Get Up and Go, Tomorrow Lies In The Cradle, Wasn’t That A Time,
Dark As A Dungeon, Hay Una Mujer, Venga Jaleo, Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, When I'm Down For The Count, All
Night Long, Something About The Women, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Wimoweh, and Goodnight Irene.
***
One day while chopping wood Pete Seeger thought "It would be good to assemble the Weavers and have a concert.
So, calling the Weavers together, Pete said, "Why don't we have a concert?" And the Weavers' manager responded by
saying, "We'll have two concerts!" And so it came to pass that on the fifth and sixth day of a Thanksgiving week the
Weavers gave concerts. Throngs of people attended, good time was had by all. The morning after the second concert
three of the Weavers slept late.
On that seventh day Pete Seeger got up and chopped more wood.
-Lee Hays
By 1951 the Weavers had come from doing gigs at union protests and obscurity to worldwide fame on the back of
some lovely old folk songs turned into juke-box friendly – not to mention capitalism friendly – unit shifters thanks to the
orchestral arranging abilities of one Mr Gordon Jenkins, who was not only a major orchestra arranger but also in
charge of Decca’s A&R, which explains how he got his way in signing up Communist folkies during the Cold War. They
were rapidly becoming the biggest band in the world. But they were running in a race against time...
Or at least they were running a race against Senator Joe McCarthy. If you don’t know who Joe McCarthy is, then
seriously, what do they teach you at school?
Senator Joe McCarthy was essentially a paranoid US Republican Senator (for Wisconsin) who, starting in February
1950, started seeing Communists everywhere, and decided to initiate a witch-hunt, which largely involved trying to
prove that everyone in power, or who was famous, was essentially, a Communist. And then to try and destroy their
lives. It started with the State Department. It kept going with President Truman. Then the Army. Somewhere along the
way he decided to aim at the entertainment industry, amongst whom, it was well known, pretty much everyone had
leftist sympathies. Many of them had been members of the Communist party during the Depression, when most people
who cared a all about politics were trying to figure out a solution. Most famously, Charlie Chaplin had to leave the
United States, after McCarthy had accused him on being a Communist.
As soon as they made it big, the Weavers realized that they were a target, and as long as they could they tried to avoid
anything that smelled like controversy. Just look at the songs they released, and try to see if you can find anything
subversive in there.
The Weavers first non-Gordon Jenkins hit was “On Top Of Old Smokey” - No.3 in August 1951 – which I remember
being taught at school when I was a kid. Or maybe it was Scouts. Some highly respectable institution anyway. Surely
there is nothing Communist about that song?
Or maybe there is. Check out these lyrics…
“Courting 's a pleasure
And parting is a grief
But a false hearted lover
Is worst than a thief.”
I can just imagine the Committee On Un-American Activities.
“I’d like to bring the Houses attention to some of the here lyrics, of “On Top Of Old Smokey”, a pop recording currently
being played by young people in jukeboxes across the land. Particularly I’d like to emphasize these lyrics, in which
they clearly demonstrate an empathy with thieves. It is clear, as I expect it is clear to all right-thinking Americans of
substance, that this is because they have no respect for private property.”
The Weavers next single “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” - No.13 in March 1952 – really was an adorable little number,
again based on a Leadbelly version of an Irish song about a farmer and his dead cow. This dead cow is not
mentioned at all in The Weavers version, and possibly thank God for that. Instead it explains that if you fall in love with
someone and start kissing them, sooner or later you are going to end up with kids. Clearly they missed out a crucial
step in this procedure, but that probably would have got them into more trouble. Surely this song shouldn’t have been
too leftist. Although during the song they don’t seem too happy about their predicament, at the end they look back
upon their lives and agree that they “would do it again.” So they could hardly have been considered anti-family.
Old American and Irish folk songs were one thing. For their next hit the Weavers looked to an old tune from South
Africa, specifically the Zulu tribe, famous for being the best dressed African tribe of them all. For this they needed help
from their old friend Gordon Jenkins to deliver the big production required for something like this which was clearly out
of their reach. “Wimoweh” – No.19 in Sept 1952 – would eventually become “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Amazingly,
given that the song is not in English, and it mostly made up of chanting, The Weavers did not come up with alternative
lyrics. It is instead, just African chanting, as done by New York liberals. Weird. It also took the side of the defeated
Zulus, and particularly its king, against the colonial powers. This clearly was political, and since it was sung in a foreign
language, even more clearly, subversive.
Then came “Ay-Round The Corner” which was Number One for 3 weeks in August-Sept 1952. The Weavers tended to
encourage sing-a-longs at their gigs (clearly such a collective group-oriented musical act could only be Commies) and
this song would have brought the house down. Ronnie (that’s the girl in the group) sings it mostly, and to be honest,
it’s a little bit irritating. I suspect it’s because it’s a polka. Almost as big was “Gandy Dancers Ball” which reached No.4
in October 1952. They were pretty much officially the biggest band in the world by this stage. Big enough to grab
Senator Joe McCarthy’s attention, or at least the House On Un-American Activities Committee which had been set up
in ….. but in the era of McCarthyism, felt as though perhaps it should actually do something. A guy called Harvey
Matusow announced that The Weavers were Communists and suddenly the group was blacklisted from radio playlists.
This was big news. Big news enough for the newspapers to meet them at the airport for a press conference. The first
question was “It is alleged that you delivered the oration at the funeral of Robert Reed, an alleged Communist
organizer” to which the only response could possibly be “No, that isn’t quite accurate. Bob Reed was not an alleged
Communist organizer, he was a well-known Communist organizer. Secondly, I didn’t deliver the main funeral oration. I
delivered one of many.” To read between the lines he essentially said: “Yep, what are you going to do about it.”
The answer was destroy The Weavers career, right then and there. And of course turn them into martyrs and legends
amongst the folk community. Folk music had been demonstrated to be commercially successful. By the end of the
decade – after that pesky McCarthy had been gotten out of the way – the world would seem to be full of folk singers.
The Weavers had started something.
In Search of Gordon Jenkins -The Weavers
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The Weavers' Misery (c. 1850)
The year 1844 saw the famous "Weaver's Revolt," part of the pre-history of the revolution of 1848/49. The revolt of the
Silesian weavers, a response to acute poverty and dire living conditions, was violently suppressed by the Prussian
military, and the situation of the weavers remained unchanged. Wood engraving, c. 1850.
Little Bruce Springsteen (Aw)
Not since the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Seeger’s own group the Weavers hit the top of what was then called
“The Hit Parade” with songs like “Goodnight Irene”, “On Top of Old Smokey”, “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” and “Wimoweh”
(later to become a hit by the Tokens and be featured in The Lion King)—not since then has traditional folk music had
such a wide audience. The early Sixties saw the start of what became “the great folk revival”, when “Seeger’s
children”, as those who learned his music at left-wing summer camps in Chicago, California and New York were called,
formed their own groups when they got to college. At the same time, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, the
Tarriers and others managed to bust the charts with number one hits. In those years, ABC aired a weekly series called
Hootenanny, in which many of these groups were featured (although Seeger himself, still suffering from the residue of
the 1950s blacklist, was not allowed to appear).
Springsteen started playing guitar after watching this program. He
quickly made the switch to rock and roll and electric guitar just as
rock washed the folk revival out of sight and mostly off the
airwaves. Folk thrived on a smaller scale, with a growing number
of venues around the country near big cities—places like the
Mainpoint in suburban Philadelphia and the Cellar Door in
Washington, DC. A new generation of folk-influenced singersongwriters honed their craft, built up a small but solid audience
and actually managed to make a modest living with their music.
In the ensuing years, folk transmogrified into the short-lived folkrock movement, when groups like the Byrds and the Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band revved up the sound using folk standards.
The Weavers of Stonehouse
Pete Seeger (on banjo) and the Weavers in 1948
© Getty Images
A gathering of weavers photographed around 1880.
BACKGROUND
The Stonehouse Weavers date back to the mid 1700's with the production of mainly plain weave products. Wives also
played their part by garnering, dressing and spinning of fine threads from the natural fibres grown at the Linthaugh
(beside the River Avon). This was followed by the processing of imported Dutch flax into linen. Tambouring and
flowering of muslin, embellishing of gingham, and fine stitching of hand-sewn silk goods, brought revenue to the
village.
Hargreaves and Arkwright's inventions (spinning machines) in 1767 revolutionised the preparation of yarn. Jacquard
machines furthered the art and brought it to the pinnacle of attainment. It gave total control and manipulation of the
warp yarns allowing patterns to be evolved. The Jacquard could be fitted to the iron frame of almost any type of loom.
The Agricultural Revolution which started in the late 18th century brought great changes to certain areas. The result of
these changes was depopulation and the abandonment of upland settlements; these were the first victims of the
decline of a subsistence economy. The worst consequences were avoided, by the rise of a part rural, part urban
phenomenon - hand loom weaving. The number of weavers rose from around 8,500 in 1792 to 50,000 in 1800 and
84,000 in 1838 - a sizeable proportion of the Scottish population.
Stonehouse weavers mainly produced silk scarves, handkerchiefs and other items, mainly for export to India. The
patterns that could be produced were previously beyond conception. The 1830's were the growth years for the village,
and the weavers became renowned for their workmanship, establishing a reputation as masters of their craft. In 1831
there were around a peak number of 600 working in the village (many of them Sorbies). The little encirclement around
Stonehouse Cross spread out, creating a large community of household weavers, putting the village as a name on the
national map, rather than a dot.
A weaver's hand loom - now resident in Hamilton Museum.
The Hand Loom Weavers however suffered from frequent bouts of unemployment which caused great hardship. A
personal face to this suffering can be seen in the minutes of evidence taken before the Parliamentary Select
Committee on HLWs, in 1834. James McEwan, a weaver from Perth, assesses the necessary weekly wage for the
support of a husband, wife and 2 children at 9 shillings and 3 pence. This was to cover the purchase of 2 and a half
pecks of oatmeal, 3 and a half pounds of barley, 3 and a half pounds of beef, as well as vegetables, potatoes, milk and
house rent. This often meant that little or no money remained for clothing or even medicine.
The 'hungry forties' were not far ahead and it's only a decade or two beyond this that people started to look back at the
good times. The Power loom began to cast it's shadow and as the end of the century approached the weaving industry
was in full decline. No longer did sons automatically join their father at the 'lim', they had to find openings in mining,
railway, farm and other trades. Thus the hand-loom craftsmen, assembling at the agents office in the 1895-1905
decade were in effect the last of a long line.
After the march of industrialisation had taken it's full toll, the last two weavers in Lanarkshire were the Hamilton
Brothers, Robert and James of Camnethan Street. At this time they were operating their loom purely as a pastime.
They completed their last "wab" in 1939 and James Hamilton died at the age of 84 in 1954. The silk loom belonging to
the brothers now resides in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. Today shuttles and bobbins can still be found in
the attics of weaving cottages as a reminder of a once thriving industry.
THE WEAVING PROCESS
The picture below is taken from an old colour postcard which is postmarked Strathaven 1906. Printed on the back is:
"Avondale Series. Published by A.Morton, Stationer, Strathaven." The sender has written on the front side (under the
picture), "Straven Silk Weavers." There is also a little tongue-twister printed on the front, which goes as follows:
A Strathaven weaver pictured at his loom.
When a twister, a-twisting, will twist him a twist,
For the twisting his twist he three twines doth intwist;
But if one of the twist doth untwist,
The twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist.
The Weavers
The Weavers had the most extraordinary musical pedigree and pre-history of any performing group in the history of
folk or popular music. More than 50 years after their heyday, however, their origins, the level of their success, the
forces that cut the group's future off in its prime, and the allure that keeps their music selling are all difficult to explain -as, indeed, none of this was all that easy to explain at the time. How could a song as pleasant and tuneful as "Kisses
Sweeter Than Wine" be subversive?
The quartet went from being embraced by the public, and selling four-million-records, to being reviled and rejected
over the political backgrounds of its members, and disbanding after only four years together. Yet, despite the
controversy that surrounded them, and the fact that their work was interrupted at its peak, the Weavers managed to
alter popular culture in about as profound a manner as any artist this side of Bob Dylan -- indeed, they set the stage for
the 1950s folk revival, indirectly fostering the careers of the Kingston Trio, among others, and bridging the gap
between folk and popular music, and folk and the topical song, they helped set the stage for Dylan's eventual
emergence. And the songs that they wrote or popularized, including "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Wimoweh,"
"Goodnight Irene," "Wreck of the John B," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," and "On Top of Old Smoky," continued to get
recorded (and occasionally to chart) 50 years after the group's own time.
The Weavers bear a striking resemblance to an earlier group called the Almanac Singers. Pete Seeger (born May 3,
1919) and Lee Hays (born 1914) had worked together for the first time in 1940 as part of the Almanac Singers, who
had enjoyed brief but notable success on radio, and as a recording outfit doing topical songs in a folk idiom, until their
leftist political views became an issue; the group members had been caught in the uncomfortable position, as
dedicated Communists, of having pushed pacifism and American neutrality during 1940 and early 1941, and then
reversing themselves after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In the intervening years, during and after World
War II, Seeger and Hays had both been involved in various causes involving international peace, civil rights, and
workers' rights, and late in 1948, Hays had suggested trying to form an ensemble similar to, but better organized than
the Almanac Singers. The notion went through some evolution, including the idea -- later abandoned -- of a multiracial
sextet, before it settled on Seeger, Hays, Fred Hellerman (born May 13, 1927), and Ronnie Gilbert (born September 7,
1926). The Brooklyn-born Hellerman and New York-born Gilbert had first met Seeger and Hays through People's
Songs, a loosely knit assembly of songwriters and musicians formed in the basement of Seeger's house in Greenwich
Village in 1946, which was intended to bolster the postwar union and social activism. People's Songs started with a
great deal of promise but faltered two-and-a-half years later, along with the left in general, after the election of 1948, in
which the leftist presidential ticket of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor ran last in a four-way race. It was just after the
election that Hays had suggested a new singing group, and he, Seeger, Hellerman, and Gilbert, along with a fifth
member named Jackie Gibson, who dropped out soon after, had initially performed that Thanksgiving. The surviving
group, known informally as "the No-Name Quartet," performed at various venues around New York and once on radio,
courtesy of folk singer Oscar Brand, before settling on the name the Weavers, derived from a play of the same title by
Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann.
The Weavers' first year was spent avoiding starvation. Their intention had been to help support union-sponsored
events and other progressive causes, but the members discovered that, in the wake of the collapse of the Wallace
campaign, there were hardly any events at which they were welcome, or which could pay them anything. If 1948 had
been a disastrous year for the left, 1949 was nothing short of catastrophic, as the forces of reaction, emboldened by
Wallace's defeat and with an angry, obstructionist Republican minority in Congress to give them a national platform,
went on the attack. In some instances, the attacks were literal -- during the late summer of 1949, rioting broke out at a
concert in Peekskill, NY, in which hundreds were injured by members of veterans groups infuriated by the presence of
singer and leftist political activist Paul Robeson, who was also the target of an aborted assassination attempt.
Challenges became commonplace, to the loyalties of any visible folk singers with a topical edge to their music, or to
that of the people who would hire or record them.
Pete Seeger, the most well-known member of the Weavers, was able to eke out fees of as much as $15 at some
venues -- there were still schools that would book him to sing for children -- but that was as good as the money got,
and it couldn't be increased for the quartet. The Weavers did make a handful of recordings in the late summer and
early fall of 1949 for Charter Records, a tiny label run by former People's Songs supporter Mario Casetta, but most of
them were never released, and the undercapitalized label closed in 1950.
Fate took a hand when the group, as a last-ditch effort to keep going, auditioned for a spot performing for the
Christmas week of 1949 at the Village Vanguard, a New York club owned by Max Gordon, which was most closely
associated with jazz. They went over so well that the gig was extended through the winter and then the entire spring,
for $250.00 a week split four ways. Their six months at the Vanguard changed the group's fate. Though the club was
virtually empty on the four weeknights, on weekends it filled up, and audiences loved the simple, unaffected
enthusiasm that the quartet brought to their music. Folk singing by then had become something of an "art," an elitist,
academic activity attuned to scholars, but the Weavers came off completely the opposite of this -- guileless and
honest, literally four hay seeds without any experience of playing in clubs. Their presentation and popularity, coupled
with the visibility of the Vanguard, soon led to reviews in newspapers and trade journals, and these were almost all
positive.
It was from the Village Vanguard shows that the group first hooked up with Harold Leventhal, a young music publishing
executive. He loved their work but was also honest enough to admit that, at that point in his career, he didn't know
enough about business to represent them adequately, so he recommended someone who did, a manager name Pete
Kameron. In the meantime, they'd also attracted the attention of Gordon Jenkins, who was then one of the top
arrangers and bandleaders in the music business. Jenkins brought them to Decca Records, where he was under
contract, and had the group perform for label chief Dave Kapp -- by the time the audition was over, the entire
production staff was listening and singing along, but at first no one knew what to do with four white singers, whose
repertory ranged from traditional gospel, work songs and children's songs, so Decca passed. It was only when Mitch
Miller at Columbia Records offered the quartet a contract that Jenkins got adamant; he had a contract written and a
session booked, and the group was signed to Decca.
The first result of their Decca contract was a collection of Christmas songs issued on a 10" LP, which didn't attract
much attention. But their second session yielded a pair of songs, "Tzena Tzena Tzena," which got to number two, and
"Goodnight Irene," which hit number one and stayed there for 13 weeks, and ended up selling two million copies as a
double-sided hit single. Cut just before the group left the Vanguard in June of 1950, the two songs caught everyone by
surprise with their sudden success. Ronnie Gilbert had just gotten married and was planning on an extended
honeymoon out west. As the newly married couple drove across the country, however, they were astonished to find
"Tzena Tzena Tzena" being played on jukeboxes at the eateries where they stopped, and also turning up on the radio.
Gilbert received a telegram urging her to cut short her honeymoon and return to the group to help fulfill the bookings
that were pouring in, and for the next year the world seemed to be at their feet. There were as many bookings as
Kameron could accept, all for top dollar, and offers of television appearances as well, and Decca Records was eager
to record anything by the group in order to keep the success of the first single going. In later years, purists would
criticize Jenkins' use of string arrangements and a big band brass sound to accompany the group on the original
recordings of "Goodnight Irene," "Midnight Special," and "Wimoweh," but the public never objected and the members
themselves all felt that Jenkins had done his best to keep their sound intact while putting them into the commercial
context of the time. Certainly, they had no objection to the idea of selling several million copies of a song like
"Goodnight Irene," written and taught to them by their friend Leadbelly, who had struggled for decades for success and
recognition and, alas, had died the year before. The label tried their sound in different formats and combinations, even
teaming the Weavers with Terry Gilkyson, a beautiful baritone-voiced folk singer, on "On Top of Old Smoky."
It was all too good to last; they knew, and it didn't. Ever since the breakout of the first single as a hit, the members had
expected that somewhere down the line their past political affiliations would be thrown back in their faces. Their
manager did his best to downplay any political associations by the group -- they were never booked into potentially
controversial events, such as union meetings or political rallies, and avoided doing songs that were overly
controversial. From the very start, the group's repertory had been put together on the fly; at the Vanguard, when they
realized that the handful of songs that they'd prepared weren't enough to cover the lengths of the sets that the
audience wanted from them, they would propose and spontaneously do songs right there on-stage, all material that
they knew well from their own respective pasts and all of it considered "safe" and appropriate for a club audience,
rather than a political meeting -- Hays' background as the son of a Methodist minister gave him a rich trove of religious
songs to draw on, and the others, with Seeger as the dominant figure after Hays, chose what they thought were the
best and safest songs they knew.
The irony was that their concerts -- usually at clubs, or in hotel venues where big bands were the norm -- were so
innocuous politically, that the Weavers were derided by the leftist press, even by their former colleague Irwin Silber in
the pages of Sing Out!, a journal then known for its strong editorial positions. They were sneered at as sellouts. And
then, in the summer of 1950, just as they were being offered a 15-minute weekly television show of their own, the antiCommunist journal Red Channels denounced the Weavers. The offer of the program disappeared -- though the group
did do a series of spots for Snader Television, an early syndicator in the new medium -- and soon bookings began
drying up, though not immediately and not completely. The records kept selling, with another two million copies of their
music purchased in America in 1951, spearheaded by "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," their adaptation of an old Irish folk
song that they'd learned from Leadbelly. By that time, however, they were under FBI surveillance and the pressure
was on -- it's impossible for someone born after the 1950s to appreciate the stigma, coupled with the threat, attached
in those days to the very notion of being seen doing business with someone under FBI surveillance, or being called to
testify before a Congressional committee; it could end, or at least severely compromise careers, and split up friends
and families; in those days, teachers were being fired from their jobs and students were being threatened with
expulsion from colleges for refusing to sign loyalty oaths.
For two years, from the middle of 1950, when the first accusations of the group's alleged disloyalty surfaced, until the
summer of 1952, Kameron had been able to keep securing the group some work, in smaller, more out of the way
venues and from promoters, especially in the northeast, who were willing to risk the protests, hate mail, and threats
that inevitably followed the announcement of a Weavers concert. Part of the problem was the group's sheer visibility -with "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," as innocuous a song politically as one could imagine, getting a huge amount of
airplay, they were a constant source of offense, like a red flag (literally) being waved in the face of rabid antiCommunists. The fact that the Republicans had retaken control of Congress in the 1950 elections, transforming the
most rabid anti-Communists from an angry minority into a nasty majority, caused the behavior of their allies around the
country to become only more virulent as the military stalemate in the Korean War dragged on through 1951 and 1952.
On some subconscious level, it was as though, helpless to defeat the North Koreans (or the Soviets backing them) on
the battlefield, the political right transformed any alleged domestic Communists into valid targets, and the Weavers
were out there singing, selling lots of records, and making lots of noise. The fact that the group was making money by
getting Americans to buy their records, and that a company like Decca Records was earning hundreds of thousands of
dollars in profits from their work, only meant that the Weavers were a corrupting force. The very fact that they'd
sneaked into their success so suddenly, virtually "under the radar" of the political right, was an offense. And the fact
that no member of the group had ever uttered a word in public (or, for all anyone knew, in private) about the Korean
War was, curiously, irrelevant amid all of the controversy.
By the end of 1952, the group had called it quits. Decca no longer wanted to record them because it was difficult, if not
impossible, to get their records into the stores, and it was no longer possible to get their music played on the radio.
The label kept paying them for the duration of their contract until it ended in 1953, and by then each of the members
had moved on to other activities. Another key factor, even if the political and business climate had been more
favorable, was Pete Seeger, who was never wholly comfortable working in a group context due to the limitations it
placed on his repertory, and who liked even less the compromises that the Weavers had made in pursuing their work.
The group was seemingly forgotten by the public over the next three years, their music banished from the airwaves
and their records withdrawn -- Ronnie Gilbert and her husband moved to California, Fred Hellerman became a music
teacher, Seeger performed as a solo act at whatever schools would book him, and Lee Hays wrote radio commercials.
In 1955, however, Harold Leventhal proposed a reunion concert for the four. They tried to book Town Hall in New York
but weren't allowed to rent it, so controversial were they still. Instead, in a move that anticipated Brian Epstein's
boldness in booking the hall for the Beatles nine years later, Leventhal rented Carnegie Hall -- the irony was that
Carnegie Hall's management, involved in the relatively rarefied world of classical music, was totally unaware of any
controversy surrounding the Weavers and had no objections. (Similarly, when Brian Epstein called to book the Beatles
years later, on the eve of their breakthrough in America, the Carnegie Hall management had no inkling of who they
were and assumed that a "quartet" meant four string players and not a rock & roll group, who would not have been
allowed to book the hall.) The Weavers reunion event proved to be a sellout and then some, with hundreds turned
away; equally important, it was captured on tape, and the tape was then sold to Vanguard Records.
Vanguard at that time was a small but enterprising label specializing in classical music, run by two brothers, Maynard
Solomon and Seymour Solomon, a pair of music lovers and scholars. They had no shareholders to answer to and no
corporate structure, and even in the world of classical record distribution were fiercely independent. Vanguard released
the reunion concert and did very well with it, they followed it up with a second volume, and suddenly Vanguard and the
Weavers had a new recording contract. It was through the Vanguard releases, the reunion concerts, and the
recordings that followed, that most of the Weavers' baby-boom audience, and virtually any enthusiasts acquired during
the folk revival of the late '50s and early '60s, and at any time after, discovered the group and its music.
Their Vanguard recordings were stripped down, very basic productions, just the group members playing with no
dubbed-on accompaniment; these recordings are usually regarded more highly than the Decca material which, in any
case, wasn't available for many years in any comprehensive form. Seeger left the re-formed group in 1958, preferring
to pursue a solo career on his own. By that time, ironically enough, the stage had been set for just such an opportunity
by the Weavers themselves. They may not have survived the blacklist intact, but the interest in folk songs that they'd
fostered, along with the proof, in the form of millions of copies of "Goodnight Irene" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine"
that had been sold, wasn't lost on the public or the music business -- by 1956, groups like the Easy Riders (led by
Terry Gilkyson and featuring a pair of lesser-known People's Songs alumni, Frank Miller and Richard Dehr), had
charted a few huge national hits in a distinctly folk-like idiom with "Marianne"; big record labels were looking at folk
music, and smaller ones were recording it, and when the Kingston Trio broke out with the two-million-selling "Tom
Dooley" in 1958, the dam burst. Collegiate folk groups were in, and even controversial "old" Pete Seeger was able to
get a contract with Columbia Records. By the end of the '50s, the anti-Communists were also in retreat, having been
discredited by their woefully flawed national icon, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his fall from power -- nobody
especially wanted to take them on if they could help it, but they weren't winning any new battles or new friends, either.
Even the Tokens' 1962 hit single, another version of the Weavers' hit "Wimoweh," entitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight,"
only helped sustain the Weavers' reputation.
Seeger's first replacement in the Weavers was Erik Darling (born September 25, 1933), a former member of the
Tarriers who lasted with the group until 1961 when he left to pursue a solo career and, eventually, to form the Rooftop
Singers; he was succeeded by Frank Hamilton (born August 3, 1934), who stayed until 1963 and was succeeded by
an acquaintance of Lee Hays', Bernie Krause, who worked with the group during their final year together, including the
1964 Carnegie Hall concert which featured a composite of all the group members working together. The group
members went their separate ways, each of them remaining in music to varying degrees, although Ronnie Gilbert also
pursued a degree in psychology; Pete Seeger helped introduce Bob Dylan to the established folk audience, and later
showed that he had lost none of his flair for controversy, challenging the popular media with new songs such as "Waist
Deep in the Big Muddy," dealing with Vietnam; Lee Hays saw a song that he had co-written with Carl Sandburg as
"Wreck of the John B," retitled "Sloop John B," turned into a huge rock & roll hit by the Beach Boys, and he later
became a mentor to Don McLean (who also performed with Pete Seeger). In November of 1980, a pair of reunion
concerts at Carnegie Hall became the final appearance of the original quartet and the focal point of the film Wasn't
That a Time, a documentary that chronicled the Weavers' history. Hays passed away the following summer, thus
ending the active history of the group. Since then, two box-set collections of the group's work -- Wasn't That a Time on
Vanguard, covering their history from 1950 through 1964, and Goodnight Irene: The Weavers 1949-1953 on Bear
Family, devoted exclusively to their first four years together -- have appeared on CD; and Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,
a double-CD of previously unreleased live performances from the years 1950-1953 on Omega Records, the successor
label to the Solomon brothers' Vanguard Records. Additionally, most of their Vanguard albums have reappeared on
compact disc, and a pair of compilations of their Decca work have been issued in England and America. Listening to
their material today, the great irony is the sense of timelessness in the performances. The avoidance of controversy,
which made the group such pariahs to their compatriots on the left and utterly infuriating to their opponents on the
right, gave the Weavers' music a universality that topical songs of the era would have sorely lacked ten or 20 years
later. At the same time, the group's unaffected style, partly a result of their sheer inexperience, gave the recordings an
honesty and directness that was lacking in the more scholarly approach to folk music that was more typical of the era.
The result is a body of songs several hundred strong that have stood the test of time for a half-century or more. ~
Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Ronnie Gilbert
Ronnie Gilbert (born September 7, 1926) is an American folk-singer, one of the members of The Weavers with Pete
Seeger, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman.
The Weavers were an influential folk-singing group that was blacklisted in the early 1950s, during a period of
widespread anti-communist feeling, because of the group's left-wing sympathies.
Following the dissolution of The Weavers in 1963 due to the blacklist, Gilbert continued her activism on a personal
level, traveling to Cuba in 1961 on a trip that brought her back to the United States on the same day that country
announced a ban on travel to Cuba. She also participated in the Parisian protests of 1968 after traveling to that country
to work with British theatrical director Peter Brook. In the 1970s, Gilbert earned an M.A. in clinical psychology and
worked as a therapist for a few years.
Various well-known younger singers honor Ms. Gilbert for the example she set for them, and the influence she had on
their careers, particularly Holly Near, with whom Gilbert has released three duet albums: 1983's Lifelines, 1989's
Singing With You, and 1997's The Train Still Runs. Near and Gilbert also joined Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger for the
1984 quartet album HARP (an acronym for "Holly, Arlo, Ronnie and Pete"). During that same period, Gilbert wrote and
appeared in a one-woman show about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, the American labor organizer, and in a second
work based on author Studs Terkel's book Coming Of Age. In 1992 she accompanied the Vancouver Men's Chorus on
the song Music in My Mother's House from their album Signature.
In 1991, Gilbert recorded "Lincoln and Liberty" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for the compilation album,
Songs of the Civil War, joining artists such as Kathy Mattea, Judy Collins, John Hartford, Hoyt Axton, and the United
States Military Academy Band of West Point.
“Songs are dangerous, songs are subversive and can change your life.”
Although now in her 80s, Gilbert continues to tour and appears in plays, folk festivals, and Jewish music festivals. She
also continues her protest work, participating in groups such as Women in Black to protest "Israeli occupation of
Palestinian territories."In 2006, the Weavers received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. Gilbert and
Hellerman accepted the award alone, as Seeger was unable to attend the ceremony and Hays had died in 1981.
[edit] Personal life
Gilbert was born in New York City, daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her mother, Sarah, was a
dressmaker and trade unionist, and her father, Charles Gilbert, was a factory worker.
Gilbert is bisexual.She was married to Martin Weg from 1950 until 1959, and the couple have one daughter, Lisa, who
was born in 1952. In 2004, Gilbert married her partner of 19 years, Donna Korones, when Gavin Newsom temporarily
legalized gay marriage in San Francisco.
http://www.ronniegilbert.com/
THE ALMANAC SINGERS, 1941: WOODY GUTHRIE, LEE HAYS, MILLARD LAMPELL, PETE SEEGER
(left to right)
Lee Hays (folk singer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Lee Hays)
Lee Hays (March 14, 1914–August 26, 1981), was an American folk-singer and songwriter, best known for singing
bass with The Weavers. Throughout his life, he was concerned with overcoming racism, inequality, and violence in
society.
Childhood
Hays was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to William Benjamin Hays and Ellen Reinhardt Hays. His father, William Hays,
was a Methodist minister who moved from parish to parish, so Lee lived in several towns in Arkansas and Georgia
during his childhood and learned to sing sacred harp music in his father's church. Hays' childhood ended abruptly in
1927 when he was thirteen: his father was killed in an automobile accident and soon afterward his mother had to be
hospitalized for a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.
Hays came naturally by his interest in folk music since his uncle was the eminent Arkansas folklorist Vance Randolph,
author of the bestselling Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales and Who Blewed Up the Church House?,
among other works. Hays' social conscience was ignited when at age five he witnessed public lynchings of AfricanAmericans.
Commonwealth College
Hays attended Commonwealth College, a labor organizing school in Mena, Arkansas which was run as a commune
and to which his folklorist uncle, Vance Randolph, a liberal, had ties.. There Hays fell under the influence of
Commonwealth's charismatic director, the firebrand white Presbyterian minister Claude C. Williams, who had lost his
church when he tried to organize a union of coal miners and who was now involved in efforts to organize black and
white tenant farmers into the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, one of the first racially integrated labor unions in the
United States. While at the college Hays was briefly head of an ambitious "agit prop" theater group program, and he
also compiled a 20-page songbook of union organizing songs based on religious hymns and spirituals. Playwright and
fellow student Eli Jaffe[3], said that Hays "was deeply religious and extremely creative and imaginative and firmly
believed in the Brotherhood of Man."
The embattled college, however, long subject to the virulent hostility of its neighbors and in dire financial straits, was
riven by internecine struggles between its more radical members and the more moderate socialists on its board. In
1940 the board expelled Claude Williams (an avowed Marxist) for allegedly allowing Communist infiltration and for
being excessively preoccupied with the issue of racial discrimination, and soon after, the institution was disbanded.
Labor Movement
Orval [Faubus] was a grass-roots populist in his early days, and worked at the Highlander school. He was in charge of
the sanitary facilities, and he kept it beautiful; he even put curtains up in the windows of the two-holer we had. But what
he was best at was shoveling it out, a function which had to be performed periodically. He really put his back into it.
Now he's in the Arkansas State House, performing the same function.
—Lee Hays to Steve Courtney
As the clouds gathered around Commonwealth College, Hays transferred to the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle,
Tennessee, where he briefly taught music with fellow Arkansas native, Zilphia Horton. Taking with him his book of
labor songs, he then sought work in theater in New York City, where, together with his new roommate Millard Lampell
and with Pete Seeger, he founded the Almanac Singers (who later included fellow Commonwealth College alumna Sis
Cunningham). The Almanac's first album, issued in May 1941, was the soon-to-be notorious Songs for John Doe,
comprising six pacifist songs, (two of them co-written by Hays and four by Lampell). The album attacked the peacetime
draft and the big U.S. corporations which were then receiving lucrative defense contracts from the federal government
while practicing racial segregation in hiring. Since at that time isolationism was associated with right-wing
conservatives and business interests, the pro-business [6] but interventionist Time Magazine lost no time in accusing
the left-wing Almanacs of "scrupulously echoing" what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin
Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war" (Time, June 16, 1941). Concurrently, in the Atlantic
Monthly Carl Joachim Friedrich, a German-born but anti-Nazi professor of political science at Harvard, deemed the
Almanacs treasonous and their album "a matter for the Attorney General" because subversive of military recruitment
and morale. On June 22, Hitler unexpectedly broke the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact and attacked Russia. Three
days later, Franklin Roosevelt, threatened by black labor leaders with a huge march on Washington protesting
segregation in defense hiring and the army, issued Executive Order 8802 banning racial and religious discrimination in
hiring by recipients of federal defense contracts. The army, however, refused to desegregate. Somewhat mollified
nevertheless, labor leaders canceled the march and ordered union members to get behind the war and to refrain from
strikes; copies of the isolationist Songs for John Doe were destroyed (a month after being issued). Asked by an
interviewer in 1979 about his support of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Hays said: “I do remember that the signing of the HitlerStalin pact was a very hard pill to swallow. .. To this day I don’t quite follow the line of reasoning behind that one,
except to give Stalin more time.”[8] According to Hays's biographer, Doris Willens:
That the pact gave Stalin more time was the story then put out; millions around the world didn’t buy it [in part
because of Stalin’s 1939 attack on Finland] and at that point lost faith in the Soviet Union . . . (Many others had lost
faith earlier, during the Moscow purge trials.) But as a disciple of Claude [Williams], Lee in 1940 held firm with those
who continued to believe that America and Britain were maneuvering not to defeat Nazi Germany, or rather, not just
yet, but first to turn Hitler to their desired end of destroying the Soviet Union. ....
In short, 1940 was a bad time to say a good word for “peace.” Worse, the only other voices opposing the war
emanated from the extreme right, particularly America Firsters, a group suspected of harboring the hope that Hitler
would eventually triumph…. Whatever uneasiness the Hitler-Stalin pact churned up, Lee hoped to submerge by
throwing his vast energies into the service of the dynamic Congress of Industrial Organizations [(CIO)]—the challenger
to the fat and lazy and bureaucratic old American Federation of Labor. A singing labor movement, that was the goal. If
you got the unions singing, peace and brotherhood had to follow. It seemed so clear and simple.[9]
The Almanacs, who now included Sis Cunningham, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, and Bess Lomax Hawes, among
others, continued to perform at union halls and at hootenanies and put out several additional albums, including one,
Dear Mr. President, (recorded c. January 1942, issued in May) supporting the war. Bad publicity, however, clung to
them because of their reputation as former isolationists who had become pro-war "prematurely" (i.e., six months before
Pearl Harbor). As key members, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, and Woodie Guthrie joined the war effort (Seeger in the
army and Guthrie and Houston in the Merchant Marine) the group disbanded.
[edit] The Weavers and the Red Scare
If it wasn't for the honor, I'd just as soon not have been blacklisted.
—Lee Hays
In 1948, Hays formed the Weavers with Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Hays wrote, co-wrote, or
arranged some of their hits, including "Kisses Sweeter than Wine," and "If I Had a Hammer." Because of their
associations with progressive and left-wing circles and causes however, during the post World War II Red Scare, Hays
and the other Weavers were accused of having Communist affiliations.
Hays was present at the Paul Robeson performance in Peekskill, NY, that sparked the Peekskill Riots on September
4, 1949. He escaped in a car with Guthrie and Seeger after a mob claiming to be anti-communist patriots stormed the
theatre, attacking the audience and performers.
In 1950, Pete Seeger was listed as a probable subversive in the anti-communist pamphlet Red Channels and was
placed on the entertainment industry blacklist along with other members of the Weavers. Lee Hays was denounced as
a member of the Communist Party during testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities by Harvey
Matusow, a former Communist Party member (he later recanted). Subpoenaed by the Committee, Hays declined to
testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment.
Their records dropped from radio broadcasts and unable to perform live on television, radio, or in most music venues,
the Weavers broke up in 1952. Hays liked to maintain that another entertainer, Lee Hayes, was also banned from
entertaining because of the similarity of his name. "Hayes couldn't get a job the whole time I was blacklisted," Hays
claimed.
Later life
If [Benedict] Arnold was successful, we would have had a set of horse-faced rulers, but that might be preferable to
what we have now.
—Lee Hays, after the election of Ronald Reagan, at the Hudson River Revival in Croton Point Park, Croton, N.Y., June
1981.
In 1958 Hays began recording children's albums with the The Baby Sitters, a group that included a young Alan Arkin.
After the great success of "If I Had a Hammer" by Peter, Paul and Mary in the mid-19960s, however, Hays, whose
physical and mental health had been shaky for years, lived mostly on income from royalties. In 1967, he moved to to
Croton-on-Hudson, New York where he devoted himself to tending his organic vegetable garden, cooking, writing, and
socializing. He did appear, playing himself as a preacher at a 1960 evangelical meeting, in the film Alice's Restaurant
(1969), starring his old friend Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie.
As he grew older, Hays, who had always been overweight, developed from diabetes and a heart condition, and
eventually both his legs had to be amputated and he was fitted with a pacemaker. Younger friends, among them
Lawrence Lazare and Jimmy Callo, helped take care of him.
Hays performed in several Weavers reunion concerts, the last of which was in November 1980 at New York City's
Carnegie Hall. His last public performance was with the Weavers on June 1981, at the Hudson River Revival in Croton
Point Park. The documentary film The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time! was released in 1982.
Near the end of his life Hays, wrote a farewell poem, "In Dead Earnest", inspired perhaps by Wobbly organizer Joe
Hill's lyrical "Last Testament".but with an earthy Ozark frankness:
In Dead Earnest
If I should die before I wake
All my bone and sinew take
Put them in the compost pile
To decompose a little while
Sun, rain and worms will have their way
Reducing me to common clay
All that I am will feed the trees
And little fishes in the seas
When corn and radishes you munch
You may be having me for lunch
The excrete me with a grin
Chortling, There goes Lee again
Twill be my happiest destiny
To die and live eternally.
He died on August 26, 1981 from diabetic cardiovascular disease at home in Croton, and, in accordance with his
wishes, his ashes were mixed with his compost pile.
Fred Hellerman
Biography
Fred Hellerman was best known as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter with the folk group the Weavers from the late
'40s to the mid-'60s. During and after the group's existence, however, he also maintained a varied career behind the
scenes in the music industry that included working as an arranger, session musician, and producer. In addition to
writing songs for other performers, he also contributed music to motion pictures and the theater.
Born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on May 13, 1927, Hellerman was the youngest of three children. His
father, a Latvian immigrant, worked in the rag business. While serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, he
taught himself to play guitar, and he continued to play after the war, performing in a group called American Folksay. At
the same time, he was attending Brooklyn College as an English major. His musical activities brought him to the
attention of People's Songs, an organization devoted to using topical folk music to support union organizing and other
liberal causes, and its secretary, Lee Hays, sent him a postcard inviting him to visit the office. He did so and developed
a friendship with Hays, which in turn led to his meeting Pete Seeger, another principal in People's Songs. He already
knew the fourth future member of the Weavers, Ronnie Gilbert, whom he had met while working as a counselor at a
summer camp in 1944.
Hellerman made his first recording in 1948, performing "The Little Cowboy" with Will Geer and Ernie Lieberman for
Young People's Records. On Thanksgiving weekend of that year, he, Hays, Seeger, and Gilbert got together to
provide a musical accompaniment to a group of folk dancers at a hootenanny. They worked up a medley of folk songs
from several countries and called it "Around the World." Favorable audience reaction led them to begin weekly
rehearsals and make further appearances. After performing as the No Name Quartet, they accepted Hellerman's
suggestion that they adopt the title of an 1892 German play by Gerhart Hauptmann that he'd been reading in college,
and called themselves the Weavers, a name they announced on Oscar Brand's WNYC radio program Folk Song
Festival on January 2, 1949. That summer, Hellerman took a job as a singer at a resort in the Catskills Mountains;
Gilbert worked there, too, as a secretary. Both attended an open-air benefit concert held in Peekskill, NY, on
September 4, 1949, headlined by Paul Robeson and also featuring Seeger, but neither was caught up in the riot that
followed the event, when vigilantes set upon many of the concertgoers as they attempted to leave, in an early example
of the anti-Communist fervor that swept the U.S. in the late '40s and early '50s.
The Weavers, as a singing group and individually in spoken word accounts of the event, made their first recording later
that month, "The Peekskill Story, Pts. 1-2," on either side of a single released by tiny Charter Records, with Hellerman
introducing himself as "Freddy Hellerman of People's Artists," the organization that staged the concert. Later that fall,
the Weavers recorded their first purely musical single for Charter, pairing Hays' song "Wasn't That a Time" with a
Bahamian folk hymn, "Dig My Grave," following shortly after with a single cut for another small label, Hootenanny
Records, of Hays and Seeger's "The Hammer Song" (aka "If I Had a Hammer"), backed with Les Rice's "Banks of
Marble." All this recording activity, however, did not indicate that the group was making much progress in its career. In
fact, the Weavers were on the verge of disbanding, with Hellerman, having obtained his B.A., planning to take up
graduate studies at the University of Chicago.
In a last-ditch effort to make them a going concern, Seeger got the group a two-week engagement at the Village
Vanguard club in New York's Greenwich Village in late December 1949. It was extended week after week as they
slowly caught on; eventually their residency lasted until June 1950. Among those who came to see them was orchestra
leader Gordon Jenkins, who was musical director of Decca Records, one of the major labels. Jenkins got them signed
to Decca, and their first recordings for the label, made in May, included a version of the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena,
Tzena" and one of Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter's "Goodnight Irene," which were released together as a single.
"Tzena, Tzena, Tzena" peaked at number two in the Billboard chart in July; "Goodnight Irene" hit number one for the
first of 13 consecutive weeks in August; and the record reportedly sold two million copies. The Weavers were launched
as a major pop act, but at the same time their left -wing backgrounds started to become fodder for the red-baiting
tactics of the emerging McCarthy era: Seeger was cited in the publication Red Channels: Communist Influence on
Radio and Television, and a contract that would have put the group on a network television series was quickly
canceled. Nevertheless, they embarked on a lengthy national tour of nightclubs and theaters.
Just before that tour started, however, Hellerman recorded a solo single for Jubilee Records, pairing the anti-nuclear
novelty song "Old Man Atom" with the satiric "Pity the Downtrodden Landlord," although the record was issued under a
pseudonym, Bob Hill. Soon after, he began using another assumed name. The Weavers' creative process often
consisted of taking existing folk songs and adapting and arranging them to their quartet sound, with substantial
changes in melody and lyrics frequent. When those songs were ones that had never been copyrighted, with no known
authors, the group began claiming them for purposes of songwriting royalties, adopting the pseudonym "Paul
Campbell" created by their manager, Pete Kameron, and song publisher, Howie Richmond. Thus, Paul Campbell was
given the songwriting credit for "Suliram" and for arranging the medley "Hush Little Baby/I Know Where I'm Going,"
recorded November 6, 1950. The credit had become pervasive by May 4, 1951, when Paul Campbell was listed as
songwriter or arranger for four of the five songs the Weavers recorded at a New York session: "Follow the Drinking
Gourd," "Darling Corey," "Greensleeves," and "Easy Rider Blues." "Campbell" scored his first big hit in the summer of
1951 with "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." The tune had begun as an Irish folk song called "Drimmer's Cow" that
Leadbelly heard and made his own. Seeger and Hays wrote a new set of lyrics, and the resulting song was credited to
Campbell and Joel Newman, the latter a pseudonym for Leadbelly. The Weavers' single peaked at number 19 in
September 1951. In 1957, the pop singer Jimmie Rodgers revived it for a Top Five hit. Paul Campbell also earned a
songwriting credit for "Wimoweh," actually a South African folk song called "Mbube" collected by Solomon Linda, which
the Weavers recorded in October 1951 and which reached number 14 in April 1952. ("The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a
number one hit for the Tokens in 1961 also based on "Mbube," did not credit Paul Campbell, even though the credited
songwriters doubtless first became familiar with the song through the Weavers' recording.)
By then, the Weavers' career was suffering greatly from the anti-Communist blacklist. In February 1952, an FBI
informant had testified before the House of Representatives' Committee on UnAmerican Activities that three of them
were members of the Communist Party and the fourth a former member. The testimony was false, as the informant
later admitted, and he served five years in prison for perjury. But in the meantime, it became more and more difficult
for the group to book shows, and their record sales plummeted. They continued to perform through the end of the year,
giving a final concert at Town Hall in New York on December 27, 1952. And they made a final recording session for
Decca on February 26, 1953. Then they disbanded.
After the breakup of the Weavers, Hellerman embarked on what would be the major activities of his career from then
on. He began teaching guitar; arranging music for singers; and trying to place his original songs with recording artists.
Harry Belafonte, not yet established as a star, became an early client. On January 4, 1954, Belafonte recorded "I'm
Just a Country Boy," a song credited to Marshall Barer and Fred Brooks, the latter another Hellerman pseudonym, as
a single for RCA Victor Records. Over the years, "I'm Just a Country Boy" became one of Hellerman's more valuable
copyrights. Don Williams revived it in a recording that hit number one on the country charts in 1977, and it has also
been covered by the Band, Sam Cooke, Ronnie Lane, and Bobby Vinton. Also in 1954, Belafonte recorded another
Fred Brooks song (co-written by Lester Judson) for single release, "Pretty as a Rainbow (After the Rain)." And
Belafonte kept alive the Paul Campbell name. No less than seven selections on his 1954 LP Mark Twain and Other
Folk Favorites were credited to Campbell as songwriter, along with "Delia," by Brooks and Judson. Meanwhile, Gordon
Jenkins had not forgotten the Weavers. Finding a song similar to "Goodnight Irene" called "Goodnight, Sweet Dreams,"
he summoned Hays and Hellerman into a New York recording studio, along with Sally Kaminsky, one of Hellerman's
music students (Gilbert, married and living in California, was unavailable), and the resulting single was released in
1955 under Hays and Hellerman's names on RCA Victor's "X" subsidiary label.
The record did not chart, but that a major label was willing to issue it was some indication that the red scare might be
easing somewhat in the music business. Further indication of this came later in the year, when the Weavers
successfully reunited for a Christmas Eve show at Carnegie Hall, their first live performance in three years. The show
was so well received that it revived their career as a concert act, although the individual members' existing personal
and professional commitments kept them from doing more than weekend shows; Hellerman claimed that the only ones
who really profited from their reunion were the airlines, and he continued to make most of his income from his other
activities. Also, they remained banned from television and radio, where the blacklist held. But they did sign a contract
with the small independent label Vanguard Records, previously known only for classical releases, beginning the
association with a live recording of the reunion show, The Weavers at Carnegie Hall, released in April 1957. Hellerman
took a solo turn on the recording, singing his version of the recent hit "Sixteen Tons." Shows performed in Lenox, MA,
in August and September 1957 provided the material for their second Vanguard album, 1958's The Weavers on Tour,
after which they began recording a studio LP.
At this point Seeger, who had continued to perform and record as a solo act, announced his departure from the group.
The Weavers at Home, released in August 1958, showed the original foursome on the front cover, but "Eric Darling,
guest tenor and banjo player, fills in for Pete Seeger" on five of 17 tracks, a note on the back cover revealed, and
Darling replaced Seeger in the group. By now, Paul Campbell had disappeared from the songwriting credits, although
the Weavers continued to offer -- and claim -- their versions of traditional folk songs. "Every Night" was written by
Hellerman; "Come Little Donkey" was credited to Fred Brooks. Brooks was also the credited author of "The Way I
Feel" and "Fare Thee Well" on Belafonte Sings the Blues and of "I Never Will Marry," "Green Grow the Lilacs," and
"Walkin' on the Green Grass" on Love Is a Gentle Thing, two LPs Belafonte released in 1958. And Hellerman worked
as a conductor on two albums by Theodore Bikel released by Elektra Records in this period, Theodore Bikel Sings
Jewish Folk Songs (1958) and Theodore Bikel Sings More Jewish Folk Songs (1959).
The front cover of Traveling on with the Weavers, released in 1959, was a drawing in which the face of the banjo
player was artfully obscured. Again, the performing credits were spelled out on the back; this time, Seeger played on
five tracks, Darling on the remaining 11. The group members took songwriting credits on most of the songs, an
exception being "I Never Will Marry," credited solely to Hellerman, as it had been on Love Is a Gentle Thing. On April
1, 1960, the Weavers returned to Carnegie Hall, where they recorded another live album appropriately titled The
Weavers at Carnegie Hall, Vol. 2. It became their first album to reach the Billboard chart. Hellerman had two sole
songwriting credits on the album, "There Once Was a Young Man Who Went to the City" and "Tapuach Hineni."
Belafonte, who had appeared at Carnegie Hall in April 1959 and recorded a live album there that included a version of
"Darlin' Cora" credited to Fred Brooks as well as a couple of Paul Campbell tunes, returned there in May 1960, singing
"Chickens," written by Hellerman, Robert DeCormier, and C.C. Carter, which was included on Belafonte Returns to
Carnegie Hall.
It was not common to credit session musicians on albums in the early '60s, so it is notable that Joan Baez chose to cite
the presence of Hellerman as a guitarist on her debut Vanguard album, Joan Baez, released in 1960. Judy Collins did
the same thing when she released her debut album, Maid of Constant Sorrow, on Elektra in 1961, as did the Chad
Mitchell Trio when they issued At the Bitter End the following year. Also in 1962, Belafonte released The Many Moods
of Belafonte, containing "Who's Gonna Be Your Man," credited to Fred Brooks, and "Long About Now," by Hellerman
and Fran Minkoff. (Tony Bennett quickly recorded "Long About Now" for his 1963 album I Wanna Be Around...) And
that April, the Weavers released a new studio album, The Weavers' Almanac. Hays, Hellerman, Gilbert, and Darling
were credited as the group members, although Darling was leaving to be replaced by Frank Hamilton. Hamilton lasted
a year, but by 1963, the Weavers were prepared to introduce Seeger's third replacement, Bernie Krause. They did so
at two concerts in May back at Carnegie Hall that featured all four of their banjo players, and the shows produced two
LPs, Reunion at Carnegie Hall, 1963, released in December 1963, and Reunion at Carnegie Hall, 1963, Pt. 2, released
in August 1965. Included on Reunion at Carnegie Hall, 1963 was the Hellerman/Minkoff composition "Come Away,
Melinda," a haunting antiwar ballad that quickly became a standard, recorded by Judy Collins, the Big 3, Kenny
Rankin, Tim Rose, Bobbie Gentry, Uriah Heep, and UFO. Belafonte put it on his 1963 album Streets I Have Walked,
along with another Hellerman/Minkoff song, "The Borning Day," and "My Old Paint," credited to Hellerman, DeCormier,
and Milt Okun. Belafonte also found room for the Hellerman/Minkoff song "Sailor Man" on his live album Belafonte at
the Greek Theatre, released the same year.
The Weavers disbanded in the winter of 1964 at the conclusion of a farewell tour, leaving Hellerman free to pursue his
individual musical efforts. "Poverty Hill," a Hellerman/Minkoff composition, was featured on the Kingston Trio album
The Kingston Trio (Nick-Bob-John), released in late 1964. The song also appeared on the Brothers Four's The Honey
Wind Blows, released several months later, and the title song of that album was another Hellerman/Minkoff copyright,
later covered by Glenn Yarbrough. Also in the spring of 1965, the Mitchell Trio put the Hellerman/Minkoff song "Which
Hat Shall I Wear" on their album Typical American Boys. In December, they issued Violets of Dawn, which included
"Business Goes on as Usual," written by Hellerman and Minkoff (and later covered by Roberta Flack), and "The Sound
of Protest (Has Begun to Pay)," by Hellerman and Carter. Former member Chad Mitchell put Hellerman and Minkoff's
"Quiet Room" on his debut solo album, Chad Mitchell, Himself, in 1966, while Belafonte named a 1966 album after the
same song, and In My Quiet Room also included a re-recording of "I'm Just a Country Boy," "The Honey Wind Blows,"
and another Hellerman/Minkoff composition, "Our Time for Loving." In 1967, Belafonte released a single, "Sunflower,"
written by Hellerman and Minkoff, and in 1968 he followed with the LP Belafonte Sings of Love, featuring two more
Hellerman/Minkoff songs, "In the Beginning" and "The First Day of Forever." Meanwhile, Hellerman had produced Arlo
Guthrie's million-selling debut album, Alice's Restaurant in 1967, and he also handled the board for the follow-up, Arlo,
in 1968, and later for Guthrie's sixth album, Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys (1973). (He was also the musical director for
the Alice's Restaurant film released in 1969.)
On May 2, 1968, Hellerman entered another realm of the entertainment business when two of his and Fran Minkoff's
songs, "A New Waltz" and "The Girl in the Mirror," were featured in the Broadway musical revue New Faces of '68.
The show ran only 52 performances, but it produced an original Broadway cast album released by Warner Bros.
Records. Hellerman moved to Weston, CT, in the early '70s and built a recording studio in his home. One of his first
projects in the new facility was his score for the 1974 film Lovin' Molly, directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the Larry
McMurtry novel Leaving Cheyenne, and starring Blythe Danner, Anthony Perkins, and Beau Bridges. Hellerman was
not much heard from in the second half of the '70s, but in 1979 Pete Seeger called on him to produce his album
Circles and Seasons, and he and Ronnie Gilbert sang backup vocals on its final song, "Allelulia/Joy Upon This Earth."
That inspired Seeger to think of having the former Weavers sing together at his next Carnegie Hall concert, and the
next idea was to see if Lee Hays, retired and in poor health, might be able to join them. They began rehearsing and
managed to perform two Weavers reunion concerts on November 28 and 29, 1980. The rehearsals and the shows
were filmed for a documentary, The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time!, released in 1982, while Hellerman produced a
concert album, Together Again, released on Loom Records in 1981. The Weavers made one final appearance, at the
Croton Festival near Hays' home in Croton-on Hudson, NY, in June 1981, before Hays died on August 26, 1981.
In 1982, Hellerman composed the score for a TV movie remake of The Rainmaker. In 1994, after Vanguard Records
was sold to The Welk Group, early live tapes of the Weavers were unearthed and issued as a two-CD set by Omega
Records, run by former Vanguard executive Seymour Solomon. Hellerman produced the album. In 1995, he sang
again, joining Peter, Paul & Mary on their LifeLines album, and he was featured on the subsequent video, LifeLines
Live, taped in January 1996 and also released as an album. The same year, he performed at a tribute concert to
Woody Guthrie at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that was recorded for the 2000 album 'Til We Outnumber 'Em,
released on Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe label. In November 2003, he participated in a tribute concert to Weavers
manager Harold Leventhal filmed for a documentary called Isn't This a Time!, and when the film premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival in September 2004, he rejoined Seeger and Gilbert, along with Erik Darling and Eric
Weissberg (who handled Lee Hays' parts) for a Weavers performance. In 2005, he released his first solo album,
Caught in the Act, a collection of vaudeville songs of the 1910s and '20s, on his own Honeywind label. ~ William
Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Worked With:
Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, Judy Collins, Erik Darling
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Born: May 13, 1927, Brooklyn, NY
Active: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
Genres: Folk
Instrument: Guitar
Representative Albums: "Caught in the Act"
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th century
American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the
early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably the 1950 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene", which
topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the
1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international
disarmament, civil rights, and for environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a
Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been
recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world.
"Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962), Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and
French (1962), and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez
(1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964. Seeger was one
of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez
and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights
Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.
Family and personal life
Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. His parents were living with his grandparents in Patterson,
NY, from 1918 to 1920. His father, Charles Louis Seeger Jr., was a composer and pioneering ethnomusicologist
investigating both American folk and non-Western music. His mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, was a classical
violinist and teacher.[2] His parents divorced when Seeger was seven. His stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was
one of the most significant female composers of the 20th century. His eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio
astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught for years at the Dalton School in Manhattan. His uncle,
Alan Seeger, a noted poet, was killed during the First World War. His half-sister, Peggy Seeger, also a well-known folk
performer, was married for many years to British folk singer Ewan MacColl. Half-brother Mike Seeger went on to form
the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, was married to Pete's other half-sister, singer
Penny Seeger.
In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ota, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life
possible. Pete and Toshi have three children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika, and
Tinya—and grandchildren Tao, Cassie, Kitama, Moraya, Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right,
singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who
was associate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.
Seeger lives in the hamlet of Dutchess Junction in the Town of Fishkill, NY and as well a residence in the town he
grew up in Patterson, NY. He remains very active politically as well as maintaining an active lifestyle in the Hudson
Valley Region of New York, especially in the nearby City of Beacon, NY. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949
and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves, and eventually in a larger house. Seeger
joined the Community Church of New York (a church practicing Unitarian Universalism)[4] and often performs at
functions for the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Musical career
Early work
Pete Seeger attended the Avon Old Farms boarding school in Connecticut, during which he was selected to attend
Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Though Pete
Seeger's parents were both professional musicians, they didn't press him to play an instrument. On his own, Pete
gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it, while laying the basis for his
subsequent remarkable audience rapport. Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and
Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina in 1936, while traveling with his father (then a director of Roosevelt's Farm
Resettlement program), It changed his life forever. He spent much of the next four years trying to master the
instrument.
Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but, as he became increasingly involved with radical
politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.He dreamed
of a career in journalism and also took courses in art. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the
Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during summer stint of touring New
York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a
traveling puppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico",One of their shows
coinciced with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the
October 2, 1939 Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:
During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked
their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm
women would bring “suppers” and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair
the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.
“They fed us too well,” the girls reported. “And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the
offers to spend a week on the farm.”
In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about anti-Semitism and Unionism,
about war and peace and social security — “and always,” the puppeteers report, “the farmers wanted to know what
can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly
than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new
respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the
part of city organizations — unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups — can not only
reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for
progress.
That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at the Archive of
American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "race" and
"hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division
of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles
Seeger, was head (1938-53). Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing
as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come
From (1940-41) alongside of Josh White, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will
Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was unique
in having a racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at
the White House organized by Eleanor Roosevelt called "An Evening of Songs for American Soldiers", before an
audience that included the Secretaries of War, Treasury, and the Navy, among other bigwigs. The show was a
success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast.
During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.
Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party
marking the opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C.
Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.
Group recordings
As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor),[14] Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly
influential folk groups: The Almanac Singers and The Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in
1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a
singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement,[15] racial and religious inclusion, and other
progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Baldwin "Butch"
Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger
performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" in order to avoid compromising his father's government career.
In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as The Weavers, named after the title of a 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann
about a workers' strike (which contained the lines, "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). Besides Pete Seeger
(performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie
Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, and later, Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling and Bernie Krause. In the atmosphere of the 1950s
red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its
progressive message was couched in indirect language—arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers
even on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers
refused to let them perform at political venues. Because of this, the somewhat hokey string orchestra and chorus
arrangements on a few of their hit numbers, and, no doubt also because of their considerable, if temporary, financial
success, the Weavers incurred criticism from some progressives for supposedly compromising their political integrity. It
was a tricky dilemma, but Seeger and the other Weavers felt that the imperative of getting their music and their
message out to the widest possible audience amply justified these measures. The Weavers' string of major hits began
with "On top of Old Smokey" and an arrangement of Lead Belly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the
charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli
song "Tzena, Tzena". Other Weaver hits included, "So Long It's Been Good to Know You" (by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses
Sweeter Than Wine" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), the South African Zulu song, "Wimoweh" (about "the lion",
warrior chief Shaka Zulu), to name a few.
The Weavers's performing career was abruptly halted in 1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting
prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to
the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a
hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya", a Gullah black
spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959),
becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.
In the late fifties, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of
the latter's repertoire, though with a more button-down, uncontroversial and mainstream collegiate persona. The
Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits, and, in its turn spawned a legion of
imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.
In the documentary film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers
when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.
[edit] Banjo and Twelve String Guitar
In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo
players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This
instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, and slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a
minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the five-string banjo
became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of
and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway, Pete Seeger "gentrified"
the banjo, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth
string"
From the late fifties on Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that
had been associated with Lead Belly who had styled himself "the King of the Twelve String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive
custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-
key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down
with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.
Recent work
On Marc h 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family
members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the
Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where Pete Seeger had been employed by the
Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.
As of 2008 Pete Seeger is still actively performing and recording. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singeractivist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare nationwide appearance on the Late Show with David
Letterman, singing "Don't say it can't be done, the battle's just begun... take it from Dr. King you too can learn to sing
so drop the gun." In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At 89, Seeger's first studio album in 12 years.
On September 19, Pete Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, particularly notable
because the Festival does not normally feature folk artists.
[edit] Obama Inaugural Celebration
On January 18, 2009, Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, and the crowd in singing
the Woody Guthrie song "This Land Is Your Land" in the finale of Barack Obama's Inaugural concert in Washington,
D.C.The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a
"private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a Depression-era
relief office.
[edit] 90th Birthday Celebration
On May 3, 2009, at The Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to
celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer), ranging from Dave Matthews,
Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello and Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliott
and Arlo Guthrie. Consistent with Seeger's long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the
event benefited the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization created to defend and restore the
Hudson River. Seeger's 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.
A number of Pete Seeger celebrations are being organized in Australia including a revival of the musical play about his
life ONE WORD WE!, a DVD of his 1963 concert in Melbourne Town Hall, and concerts in folk clubs and folk festivals.
One Word WE! was performed at the Tom Mann Theatre in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2009. It was
written by Maurie Mulheron, who is also musical director and a performer. Frank Barnes directed.
On April 18, 2009, Pete Seeger performed in front of a small group of Earth Day celebrants at Teachers College in
New York City. Among the songs he performed were "This Land is Your Land", "Take it From Dr. King" and "She'll Be
Coming 'Round the Mountain."
Activism
Pre-1950
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity
and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party itself. He drifted away from the Party in the late
1940s and 1950s.
In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one year old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with
Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the
Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or
March and released in May, 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written
by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam
Gary. It contained lines such as, "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil", that were sharply critical of
Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September, 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the
Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was "phony" and a mere
pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia, a line of argument that Seeger has said he
believed to be true at the time and which was adhered to by many members of the Young Communist League (YCL),
of which he was a member. Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and
more moderate liberals, the YCL's members were still smarting over the memory of Roosevelt and Churchill's arms
embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake) and the alliance was fraying in the confusing welter
of events.
A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner Henry Luce had become very interventionist,
denounced the Almanacs' John Doe, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune"
that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war". Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music,
reportedly found the album "in bad taste," though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely
observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent
German-born Harvard Professor of Government, Carl Joachim Friedrich an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US
military. In a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Poison in Our System", he pronounced Songs for
John Doe "strictly subversive and illegal", "whether Communist or Nazi financed" and "a matter for the attorney
general", observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist
poison,[26] the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.
At that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was energetically re-arming. African Americans were barred
from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly angered both African Americans and white progressives. Black
union leaders A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste began planning a huge march on Washington to
protest racial discrimination in war industries and to urge desegregation of the armed forces. The march, which many
regard as the first manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was canceled after President Roosevelt issued
Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barring discrimination in hiring by companies
holding federal contracts for defense work. This Presidential act diffused black anger considerably, although the US
army still refused to desegregate, declining to participate in what it called "social engineering".
Roosevelt's order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The labor
movement now immediately directed its members to get behind the draft, and it also forbade participation in strikes for
the duration of the war (angering some leftists). Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the
remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.The Almanac Singers'
Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available.
The following year the Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The
title song, "Dear Mr. President", was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his life-long credo:
Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all important now. / What is
important is what we got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do, / Other things can wait.//
Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday, / Just give us a little time. // This
is the reason that I want to fight, / Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right. / No, it's just the opposite: I'm
fightin' because / I want a better America, and better laws, / And better homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more
Jim Crow, and no more rules like / "You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro," / "You can't live here 'cause
you're a Jew,"/ "You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."//
So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job to do / That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through, / Let no one else
ever take his place / To trample down the human race. / So what I want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry up
and get the job done.
Seeger's critics, however, have continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a year
after the John Doe album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs
were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World Telegram (Feb. 14,
1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the
Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President
of Time Magazine, had founded "to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups in the United
States). and was shown to the Almanac's employers in order to keep them off the air. Coincidentally, defamatory
reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately the
Almanacs had to disband.
Seeger served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain
the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered "I
strummed my banjo". After returning from service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a
nationwide organization with branches on both coasts that was designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of
labor and the American People"[30] With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential
campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third
party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however,
Wallace only won in New York City, and, in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had
not been) for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such as Seeger and singer Paul
Robeson.
Spanish Civil War songs
Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and
Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion on Moe Asch's Stinson
label. This included such songs as "There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama", and "Quinte brigada". In 1960, this
collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called Songs of the Lincoln and International
Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona
in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion,
made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs were: "Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by political
prisoners of German concentration camps), "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne", "Hans Beimler", "Das Lied Von Der
Einheitsfront" ("Song Of The United Front", written by Hans Eisler and Bertold Brecht), "Der Internationalen Brigaden"
("Song Of The International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals", known in English as "The
Four Insurgent Generals").
[edit] 1950s and early 1960s
In the '50s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial
equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he
continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing revelations of Stalin's
atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet
Communism. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA beginning in 1949 but remained
friends with some who did not leave it, though he argued with them about it.[32][33]
On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of
court, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and
instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this
would violate his First Amendment rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my
philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I
think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."[34]
Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957 indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to
keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He
was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of court in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served
simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.[35]
In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he
signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the
government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district,
allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. In February 2009 the San Diego School District officially extended an
apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors
Vietnam War era
A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon
Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler's children's song, "Beans in My
Ears". Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears", which, as the
lyrics imply, ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam
War the phrase implied that "Alby Jay" was a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ", and sarcastically
suggested "that must explain why he doesn't respond to the protests against his war policies".
Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain —
referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool" — who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during
World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in
keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were
"Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to
push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War as the
foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity it was
broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists,"photo Seeger's banjo was
emblazoned with the motto "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender."photo
Environment
Seeger is involved in the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he co-founded in 1966.
This organization has worked since then to highlight pollution in the Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of
that effort, the sloop Clearwater was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down from Maine to South Street Seaport
Museum in New York City, and thence to the Hudson River. Amongst the inaugural crew was Don McLean, who coedited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Seeger
wrote the foreword...[42] Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. The sloop regularly
sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs
for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held
on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by
Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for Clearwater's construction.
Seeger's album Clearwater Classics. The title alludes to his work with the Clearwater group, working to clean the
Hudson River.
Seeger wrote and performed "That Lonesome Valley" about the then-polluted Hudson River in 1969, and his band
members also wrote and performed songs commemorating the Clearwater.
Solo Career and the Folk Song Revival
To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger had gigs as a music teacher in
schools and summer camps and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year
for Moe Asch's Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson),
"Turn, Turn, Turn", adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the brilliant "Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poet Idris
Davies[43] (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger was also closely associated with the 1960s Civil Rights movement
and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall Concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as a benefit
for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event and Martin Luther King's March on Washington in August of
that year, in which Seeger and other folk singers participated, brought the Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to
wide audiences. A version of this song, submitted by Zilphia Horton of Highlander, had been published in Seeger's
People's Songs Bulletin as early as in 1947.
By this time Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime
columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the People's Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside
magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children",
alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure.
This urban folk revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the thirties and forties and of People's
Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the
Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies' Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill
(1879-1915). (The Little Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie's, who was known to carry it around.)
Pete Seeger made two tours of Australia, the first in 1963. At the time of this tour, his single "Little Boxes" (written by
Malvina Reynolds) was number one in the nation's Top 40's. In 1993 the Australian singer/playwright Maurie Mulheron
assembled a musical biography of Seeger's, and friends', work in a stage production One Word We. It enjoyed a long
and sold-out season at the New Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. It was reprised in 2000 and 2009,
and the company has also taken the show on tour to folk festivals at Maleny and Woodford in Queensland, and Port
Fairy in Victoria.
The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s when he hosted a regionally broadcast,
educational folk-music television show, Rainbow Quest. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend
Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy SainteMarie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Donovan, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee,
Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine
hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife
Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein.
Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out! (Summer 2005), a magazine that he helped found in 1950 and to which he still
occasionally contributes.
An early booster of Bob Dylan, Seeger, who was on the Board of Directors of the Newport Folk Festival, became upset
over the extremely loud and distorted electric sound that Dylan, instigated by his manager Albert Grossman, also a
Folk Festival Board member, brought into the 1965 Festival during his performance of "Maggie's Farm". Tensions
between Grossman and the other board members were running very high (at one point reportedly there was a scuffle
and blows were briefly exchanged between Grossman and Board member Alan Lomax). There are several versions of
what happened during Dylan's performance and some claimed that Pete Seeger tried to disconnect the
equipment.Seeger has been portrayed by Dylan's publicists as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to
Dylan's "going electric", but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:
I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound
was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He
hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at
fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf
yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely
great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.
In 1982 Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland's Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David
Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of Soviet
Communism.[47] In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an
interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take
place over a period of time."[48] In his autobiography (just reissued Nov, 2009), Where Have All the Flowers Gone,
Seeger wrote, "Today I'll apologize for being blind to Stalin's failings and for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely
cruel misleader". He added that Christians ought also to apologize for the crusades, religious wars, and the inquisition
and "white people should consider apologizing for stealing land from Native Americans and for enslaving blacks and
for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps - let's look ahead".
In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his life-long activism, he also found
himself attacked once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and '40s. On April 14, 2006, David Boaz,
who is a commentator on Voice of America and NPR, and president of the Libertarian Cato Institute , wrote an opinion
piece in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled "Stalin's Songbird" in which he excoriated the New Yorker
magazine and New York Times for lauding Seeger, whom he characterized as "someone with a longtime habit of
following the party line", who only "eventually" had left the CPUSA. In support of his case he quoted lines from the
Almanac Singers' 1941 Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr.
President, issued after the USA had entered the war in 1942, the following year.
In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student, the historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyist
Communist who now writes for the conservative National Review, Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe
Blues"[52]: "I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so
many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right
in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues.
/ Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues." The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in
which Seeger stated, "I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965]"
Folk Alley's 100 Most Essential Folk Songs
June 19, 2009 from WKSU - Folk Alley, the 24-hour online stream of Kent State University's WKSU, has never hopped
on or off any folk-music bandwagons. Which, in turn, makes it a perfect place to explore the genre's many
permutations, from bare-bones acoustic protest music to the many forms of electric roots music that followed. Folk
Alley recently spent eight weeks polling its listeners in search of a master list of "The 100 Most Essential Folk Songs."
The results — found here in the form of a printable list and a continuous music mix, streamed in no particular order —
are fodder for debate, discussion and discovery.
What are your favorite folk songs? Head over to the Folk Alley site and join the discussion.
http://www.folkalley.com/music/listen/
To get you started, here's the master list:
(The list is the following format: Song - Written OR Performed By )
The 100 Essential Folk Songs
1. "This Land Is Your Land" - Woody Guthrie
2. "Blowin' in the Wind" - Bob Dylan
3. "City of New Orleans" - Steve Goodman
4. "If I Had a Hammer" - Pete Seeger
5. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" - The Kingston Trio
6. "Early Morning Rain" - Gordon Lightfoot
7. "Suzanne" - Leonard Cohen
8. "We Shall Overcome" - Pete Seeger
9. "Four Strong Winds" - Ian and Sylvia
10. "Last Thing on My Mind" - Tom Paxton
11. "The Circle Game" - Joni Mitchell
12. "Tom Dooley" - The Kingston Trio (Trad)
13. "Both Sides Now" - Joni Mitchell
14. "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" - Sandy Denny
15. "Goodnight Irene" - The Weavers (Trad)
16. "Universal Soldier" - Buffy Sainte-Marie
17. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" - Bob Dylan
18. "Diamonds and Rust" - Joan Baez
19. "Sounds of Silence" - Simon & Garfunkel
20. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - Gordon Lightfoot
21. "Alice's Restaurant" - Arlo Guthrie
22. "Turn, Turn, Turn!" - The Byrds (Pete Seeger)
23. "Puff the Magic Dragon" - Peter, Paul and Mary
24. "Thirsty Boots" - Eric Anderson
25. "There But for Fortune" - Phil Ochs
26. "Across the Great Divide" - Kate Wolf
27. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" - The Band (Robbie Robertson)
28. "The Dutchman" - Steve Goodman
29. "Matty Groves" - Fairport Convention (Trad)
30. "Pastures of Plenty" - Woody Guthrie
31. "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" - Gordon Lightfoot
32. "Ramblin' Boy" - Tom Paxton
33. "Hello in There" - John Prine
34. "The Mary Ellen Carter" - Stan Rogers
35. "Scarborough Fair" - Martin Carthy (Trad)
36. "Freight Train" - Elizabeth Cotton
37. "Like a Rolling Stone" - Bob Dylan
38. "Paradise" - John Prine
39. "Northwest Passage" - Stan Rogers
40. "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" - Eric Bogle
41. "Changes" - Phil Ochs
42. "Streets of London" - Ralph McTell
43. "Gentle on My Mind" - John Hartford
44. "Barbara Allen" - Shirley Collins (Trad)
45. "Little Boxes" - Malvina Reynolds
46. "The Water Is Wide" - Traditional
47. "Blue Moon of Kentucky" - Bill Monroe
48. "No Regrets" - Tom Rush
49. "Amazing Grace" - Odetta (Trad)
50. "Catch the Wind" - Donovan
51. "If I Were a Carpenter" - Tim Hardin
52. "Big Yellow Taxi" - Joni Mitchell
53. "House of the Rising Sun" - Doc & Richard Watson (Trad)
54. "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" - The Weavers
55. "Tangled Up in Blue" - Bob Dylan
56. "The Boxer" - Simon and Garfunkel
57. "Someday Soon" - Ian and Sylvia
58. "Miles" - Peter, Paul and Mary
59. "Masters of War" - Bob Dylan
60. "Wildwood Flower" - Carter Family
61. "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" - Carter Family
62. "Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" - Tom Paxton
63. "Teach Your Children" - Crosby, Stills Nash & Young
64. "Deportee" - Woody Guthrie
65. "Tecumseh Valley" - Townes Van Zandt
66. "Mr. Bojangles" - Jerry Jeff Walker
67. "Cold Missouri Waters" - James Keeleghan
68. "The Crucifixion" - Phil Ochs
69. "Angel from Montgomery" - John Prine
70. "Christmas in the Trenches" - John McCutcheon
71. "John Henry" - Traditional
72. "Pack Up Your Sorrows" - Richard and Mimi Farina
73. "Dirty Old Town" - Ewan MacColl
74. "Caledonia" - Dougie MacLean
75. "Gentle Arms of Eden" - Dave Carter
76. "My Back Pages" - Bob Dylan
77. "Arrow" - Cheryl Wheeler
78. "Hallelujah" - Leonard Cohen
79. "Eve of Destruction" - Barry McGuire
80. "Man of Constant Sorrow" - Ralph Stanley (Trad)
81. "Shady Grove" - Traditional
82. "Pancho and Lefty" - Townes Van Zandt
83. "Old Man" - Neil Young
84. "Mr. Tambourine Man" - Bob Dylan
85. "American Tune" - Paul Simon
86. "At Seventeen" - Janis Ian
87. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - Simon & Garfunkel
88. "Road" - Nick Drake
89. "Tam Lin" - Fairport Convention (Trad)
90. "Ashokan Farewell" - Jay Ungar and Molly Mason
91. "Desolation Row" - Bob Dylan
92. "Love Is Our Cross to Bear" - John Gorka
93. "Hobo's Lullaby" - Woody Guthrie
94. "Urge for Going" - Tom Rush
95. "Return of the Grievous Angel" - Gram Parsons
96. "Chilly Winds" - The Kingston Trio
97. "Fountain of Sorrow" - Jackson Browne
98. "The Times They Are A-Changin'" - Bob Dylan
99. "Our Town" - Iris Dement
100. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" - John Denver