American History Illustrated
October 1982
Pete Seeger's introduction to the banjo came in 1935,
when his father took him to a square dance festival in
North Carolina. Photo by Fred L. Schultz.
Profile: Folk Artist Pete Seeger by Fred L. Schultz
"If I Had a Hammer" is a well-known folk song, and millions of people recognize the
tune of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" But not many listeners stop to wonder where they
came from. Familiar as these timeless songs are, they and numerous other ballads and blues numbers emerged within the last forty years from the heart (and probably the banjo) of one of America's most inspiring folk artists, Pete Seeger. Through the years his integrity, sincerity, and pleasant manner have been that inspiration. "I know I'm just one more grain of sand in this world," he once said. "But I'd rather throw my weight, however small, on the side of what I think is right. ..."
Peter Seeger left Harvard University in 1938 for a firsthand look at the roots of America, determined "to help the meek inherit the Earth." Hitchhiking and hopping trains from state to state, he got a feel for the country and the people it breeds. And it was the pain and pleasure he felt through them that prompted him to write many of the songs with which he continues to enchant audiences all over the world.
In 1939 he broke away from his journey long enough to spend some time working with Alan
Lomax, an authority on American folk music, in the Archives of American Folk Music at the Library of Congress. Seeger then went back on the road and by 1940 had traveled with his five-string banjo through forty-eight states before he became part of a major event in music history. That year in New York City he met the legendary troubadour Woody Guthrie.
In 1941 Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Guthrie, and Seeger toured the country as the Almanac
Singers, playing to audiences of mostly farmers and factory workers. And Woody Guthrie became a teacher, a friend, and one of the strongest influences on Pete Seeger's musical life.
Seeger left the Almanac Singers at the outbreak of World War II to work for the Office of
War Information, making musical broadcasts overseas. After the war he again teamed with Guthrie and the Singers, but it was a brief reunion. In 1948 Seeger took Lee Hays with him, gathered together two more young musicians, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert, and organized The Weavers. Alan Lomax hailed this popular troupe as "the first of the city folk song groups and in many ways the best." A recently released, highly acclaimed film, "Wasn't That A Time," tells the story of Pete Seeger and The Weavers.
Seeger left the group in 1958 after a turbulent decade of blacklists, pickets, investigations, and court battles. But today, at age sixty-three, he continues his many crusades, singing and playing as he goes, often with another modern balladeer, Woody's son Arlo Guthrie. Seeger's latest cause, simple as it may sound, is a push for clean water.
And he, along with 4,000 concerned citizens of New York's Hudson River are succeeding. With an organization and a goodwill ship called the Clearwater, they are gradually cleaning up their river.
As Seeger speaks, his words exude as much sincerity, integrity, and "persistent hope" as his
many songs. He is interested in history. But Pete Seeger is history, living history. And he keeps on making it. — Fred L. Schultz
Since you are familiar with American History Illustrated, and you've said many times that you are
a "history nut," what would you like our readers
to hear from Pete Seeger?
It was about a hundred years ago that a cartoonist drew a picture of a man that looked a little bit like
Neptune, standing waist deep in the Hudson River. He says, "Ahoy there, don't dump your filth in my
bed, or one of these days I shall become a nuisance, too." It was only in the late 19th century that
Americans began to think that there would ever be a pollution problem. New York was one of the
cleanest cities in the world. I was told it was the cleanest city, although you could argue about that, but at a
time when Paris, and London, and Boston, and Philadelphia were stinking, New York had swift
tides that carried all the dirt out to the ocean, strong breezes that carried all the smoke away.
And a hundred years ago when the Brooklyn Bridge was being built, no one would have believed how
dirty our cities would be now. Why, they were involved in progress, progress, progress, and it was
unthinkable that the cities would ever get dirty.
How would you associate history with your concern for the environment?
Well, I'm a sailor. I love to sail, and if you're sometimes a little confused about which direction
you're sailing in, you can look back to where you came from. Abraham Lincoln once said something
along this line. He said, "If we could perceive from whence we have come as well as whither we
wish to go, then we might better know where we are right now." And so I think anybody who is
concerned about the future ought to be interested in history. It helps explain how we got where we
are, how we got so screwed up.
Have you ever considered supporting the preservation of historic sites?
Oh, I've done a lot of that. I'm always signing petitions about saving this or that building. And my
wife and I are always receiving mail saying, "please help us save this, please help us save that." And we
send off a few dollars occasionally. We've saved private homes that were going to be torn down,
bridges or libraries, post offices, sometimes railroad stations. Some of the handsomest structures
in this country are railroad stations, and it is ridiculous the way people let them fall down.
Let's talk about music. Do you feel that popular musicians of today, who take
stands on certain issues, realize how much influence they have on the lives of other people?
Nobody knows. Everybody does what they can in this world. You can fool yourself into thinking
that you have more influence than you really do. I don't have the faintest idea of what good it does,
for example, to write a song such as "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" But I've had people tell
me that it's changed their lives.
In other words, you don't compose songs with an audience in mind. You compose for your own
satisfaction.
Well, I'm trying to think of how to tell a story that will say something that needs to be said. And I'm
not a good songwriter. I envy very much people like Bob Dylan who can write song after song after
song. I'm lucky if I can write a worthwhile new song once every two or three years. But I guess I'm
thinking of the people I want to communicate to. I'm not just singing to myself. I am trying to say
something to my family or my friends, all the people that come to hear me sing.
Folk music appeals to just about everyone I know, and you have contributed to that appeal. Why do
you think folk music touches at least a part of everybody's life?
I don't know exactly. My guess is that we are all searching for roots in a period of great change.
And the reason some songs are still around is they have a kind of patina on them from being handled
by millions of people. It is hard to create something that beautiful overnight. And even a new
song is really only partly new. Take "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" I swiped the melody from
an old Irish folk tune. I swiped the words from an old Ukrainian folk tune. I just rearranged them.
And it is not just folk music but folk art. One of the reasons I love history is that when I see an old
building for example, I think of the people that
put their lives into that building. One of the greatest folk arts is that of field stone masonry,
putting stones on top of each other. A modern brick building is not half as handsome as an old
stone house. Those stones remind me of a community. The big stones, the small stones, they all have
a job to do, and when fitted together in an artistic way, it is a great art. When I see an old stone house
being torn down I feel like just going up and saying, "What are you doing? This house can never
be built again, now."
What one person influenced you and your relationship with music?
Woody Guthrie, who wrote "This land is your land, this land is my land." He was my mentor
back forty years ago. But I learned an awful lot from my parents, too. My mother was a violin
teacher; my father was a professor of musicology. Woody Guthrie was a political radical, but he was
also an extraordinarily sophisticated man who knew the music of Indonesia and Europe as well as
the music of this country. I learned also from blues musicians like Leadbelly, the man who taught us
all "The Rock Island Line is a mighty good road." Leadbelly died in 1949-a long time ago. It will
soon be thirty-five years since he died. His songs keep on going. After he died I tried to learn a
12-string guitar, a double string guitar. At that time he was the only person I knew who played
one. So when Arlo Guthrie and I go around singing now, I bring a 12-stringer. Some songs I can't do
unless I have it. But actually, there is no one person I learned from. I just learned a little bit here
and little bit there.
You said earlier that from the time you were a child you revered nature. Did an appreciation of
music come hand in hand?
Well, as a kid I was kind of shy. I liked to make music, and I'd get off by myself and bang on a
piano or plunk on the ukulele. I used to like to go hiking in the woods when I was a kid, too-five
miles, ten miles. There was a period when I was twelve or thirteen years old and trying to prove
something to myself, I guess. I went twenty miles, then thirty miles. There was a girl thirteen and I
was thirteen. We decided we were going to prove that we could go forty miles in one day. We started
off at 6:00. Well, we fell short of our goal; we had to hitchhike back the last few miles. We did go
thirty-eight miles that day. When you are out hiking you are in close touch with God. Blue sky
above you or rain, whichever it is, it's nature. And as an adult I keep going back to that in my
memory and thinking it's convenient to walk on pavement, it's convenient to roll on wheels or fly in a
plane, but really if you want to get in touch with the truth of the universe, you've got to be a little
closer to nature. I think Americans are lucky that so many were so close to nature, having to go out
and swing an axe, clear land. Nature is a very important part of American history. Thoreau and
people like him still teach us a lot today. But music is not unrelated. Music also gives you a feeling
that you're in touch with the universe; it's vibrations. Vibrations are what the universe is about. I
know the Bible says that in the beginning was the word. Frankly, I think that's wrong. I know
somebody is going to say, "You say the Bible is wrong?" Well, I say in the beginning was the beat-the pulse.
Whether it was the pulse of the universe, or the pulse of the planets, day and night, or the tides, or
the heart beat; whatever it was, this was music. When I was a kid I always used to make music. I
never intended to make a living at it. I wanted to be a journalist or a writer, but I failed at getting a
job on a newspaper back in the "dirty 30s." I had
some relatives who taught school, and they said, "Come around sing some songs. We'll pay $5." I
said, "$5! And all I have to do is sing a few songs?" I felt like I was stealing money. But I took it and
haven't looked for an honest job since.
How did you meet Mr. Guthrie — Woody, that is?
He came east in 1940 to see what the Big Apple looked like, and they had a fund-raising concert at
midnight in a theater near Broadway to raise money for the migratory workers in the California lettuce
fields. Those were the days when Steinbeck wrote the book, Grapes of Wrath, and Woody was like a
living member of the Tom Joad family with his songs. Well, I'd come up to contribute a few songs
that evening, too. I was much younger and completely inexperienced. I sang one song about an
outlaw. [Seeger suddenly sings out]: "John Hardy was a desperate little man, he carried two guns
every day. He shot down a man on the West Virginia line, you ought to seen John Hardy
gettin' away, poor boy. Seen John Hardy gettin' away. . ."It got a smattering of polite applause, and I
retired in confusion. But I looked up at this fellow on stage, spinning out stories as well as songs. He
said, "You know I come from Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a rich state, did you know that? We got oil
in Oklahoma. You want some oil just go down a hole, get you some oil. We got lead in Oklahoma.
You want some lead just go down a hole, get you some lead. We got coal in Oklahoma. You want
some coal just go down a hole, get you some coal. You want clothes, or groceries, or anything, just
go in a hole . . . and stay there."
Tell me about the sloop, the Clearwater, and what it represents.
The Clearwater is just a sailboat, but I think it is one of the most beautiful sailboats in the
world — maybe the most beautiful. She's a symphony of curves, and thousands of people sail on her. She is
not a private yacht, she's not a school training ship, she's a way of bringing together people along
the Hudson River to clean up the water. She's a look into the past, but she's also a look into the
future. And thanks to the Clearwater the Hudson is starting to get cleaner. We are now swimming in
the middle Hudson where we couldn't swim a few years ago. Now we have a petition drive on to
finish the job. It is not going to happen this year or
even next year, but sometime within the next ten years or so the big sewage plants around New York
City are going to be finished and the beaches are going to be opening up again along the Palisades,
Staten Island, the Bronx, and so on. When people say, "You mean to say these beaches were once so
dirty we couldn't swim in them," we'll say, "Back, way back there in the 1980s there was a sailboat
called the Clearwater, and the people on it said if everyone didn't clean up the waters they were
damn fools." Americans have a long tradition of getting together in organizations. In 1831 Alexis
De Tocqueville remarked he never knew a people that could form organizations so quickly. Plunk a
few hundred down on the plains and six months later they have religious organizations, political
organizations, social organizations, sports organizations, fraternal organizations, business
organizations, insurance organizations. And today we are carrying on what Alexis pointed out a hundred
and fifty years ago. The Clear-waters an organization of some 4,000 people. We love history, and
we fight for it. We fight for the preservation of the beauties of the Hudson. We're also concerned
about its future.
Incidentally, our headquarters is a lovely old frame house in the center of the town of
Poughkeepsie, New York. It's a 160-year-old building that was going to be torn down, but the
Clearwater members said, "Hold on! Don't tear it down, we'll fix it up." There is a big highrise in
back of it, but we wouldn't let them tear down this old building.
The history of these beautiful sailboats is fascinating-how they built the country. They had
500 of them on the river in 1860. They carried bricks, stone, plaster, hay for New York's horses,
blue stone slate for the sidewalks of the city. They were cargo boats, with three deck hands, a
captain, a cabin boy, and a cook. They would raise the huge sail — one of the biggest sails in the world
— and would tack and jibe down these narrow channels and try and stay off the mud
banks. In the summertime they might have gone two miles an hour. When "the wind blew and the tide was
right they might make all of twelve miles an hour, but that was faster than a horse and wagon could
go in those days. They were finally put out of business in the 20th century, but Clearwater started
with a love of history, and then we went on to say, "Hey, if we're concerned about good times in the
past, what about the good times in the future?" We try to tie together the past and the future,
which is what a folk song does, too.