Seeger is the only singer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who was convicted of contempt of Congress. Proliferate in prisons.” He liked to quote Plato: “Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.” “Songs won’t save the planet,” Seeger told his biographer David Dunlap, author ofHow Can I Keep From Singing? “But, then, neither will books or speeches.Songs are sneaky things. In 1969, he helped build a sailing sloop called the Clearwater that continues to serve as a “floating classroom” and rallying point for cleaning up the Hudson. Seeger opposed McCarthyism, marched beside the Rev. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country’s illusions about itself.”
He’s gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. That night, Springsteen introduced Seeger saying, “He’s gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. All performed in 2009 at Seeger’s 90th birthday party at sold-outMadison Square Garden, a fundraiser for his favorite local cause: cleaning up New York’s Hudson River. Seeger, who dropped out of Harvard University in 1938 to ride a bicycle across the country, quoted his father, Charles Seeger, a musicologist: “My dad, the old professor, used to say, ‘Never get into an argument about what’s folk music and what isn’t.’”īut whatever you called him, Seeger influenced scores of other singers, including Springsteen, Joan Baez, Dave Matthews, Rufus Wainwright, John Mellencamp andArlo Guthrie. “It’s been defined as the ‘music of the peasants,’” Seeger told USA TODAY in a 2009 interview, “and then you get someone saying (of Seeger), ‘he’s no peasant!”’ To Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, the singer/songwriter/activist who died Monday at the age of 94, was “the father of American folk music.”īut Seeger, who popularized This Land Is Your Land and We Shall Overcome and wrote If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn, never liked the term folk music.
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