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Kennedy Center Award, December 4, 1994

Garrison Keillor said of Seeger, the 75 year-old folk singer and social activist, "He makes you love your country." Seeger's songs range from "Goodnight, Irene" (popularized by Seeger and the Weavers, but written by Huddie Ledbetter) to anthems of the antiwar and civil rights movement. Arlo Guthrie sang "If I had a Hammer," while Roger McGuinn of the Byrds sang "Turn, Turn, Turn," the Ecclesiastes-inspired piece for which Seeger wrote the lyrics. And folk balladeer Joan Baez soloed on "Where Have all the Flowers Gone?" Seeger was a companion of Guthrie's father, Woody, who wrote "This Land is Your Land." Guthrie recalled that his father once turned aside a suggestion that that song should become the national anthem by saying, "The worst thing you can do is make a song official." Guthrie, looking up to the tuxedo-clad, beribboned Seeger in the presidential box, said, "I'm wondering what we're going to do now that you've become official." Guthrie also drew cheers by adding a dig at California's anti-illegal immigrants Proposition 187 to the song's lyrics. President Clinton called Seeger a social activist and war protester, "an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them." "He was attacked for his beliefs, and he was banned from television," the president noted, adding quickly "now that's a badge of honor."
(Associated Press)

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Don McLean

For Pete

he's a sailor
a bumbling, crafty, thoughtful, dreaming
chopstick drummer
a lover
a brightly colored creature
a root that knuckles through the soil
to reach you
a sculptured banjo body
shedding humane thoughts
on careless scraps of paper leaves
a voice of fiber bark
tender as an April bud
a raging, flaming, autumn fire
Tall
Strong
bending in the breeze, but growing
natural as wood
a shady place
for all these children of the son

(From Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew; North River Press, 1970)

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Janis Ian

I have been searching for a copy of Where Have All the Flowers Gone and was directed to your site this afternoon. Good on you for doing it! Pete Seeger has got to be the best thing to happen to American music since the birth of the blues. I've known his work since I can remember (sat on his lap when I was 3 or so) and treasure the couple of notes and postcards I've received over the years. His wife Toshi is the most gracious ambassador folk music could want. I am really, really glad to see a site like this up.
Best,
Janis Ian

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David Hoffman (A visitor to this Web site):

Thank you for honoring one of the great people of our time.
When I think of whom I admire most in this world,
Pete is at the top of the list.
He would deserve our undying gratitude
if he had done no more than write and play music that
inspired us and amused us
and taught us to honor our heritage of folk music.
But he has given us something even more precious --
the experience of community in the blending of our voices in song.
And not just any old songs, but songs that
challenge us to reach for what we have in common
with our sisters and brothers,
to bridge the gaps that would hold us apart.
If forging those links makes him a revolutionary,
that's what we should all aspire to be.

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Michael Cooney (in Sing Out! Magazine, 1975)

"There isn't enough space in this whole issue to list all the wonderful things Pete Seeger has done for individuals, groups, and for us in the whole world. Even the fish in the sea and the birds in the air would thank him if they knew. I think he is very probably the main reason for the folk revival in this country. He is our music teacher. All of us who were so carefully taught to hate music in school, then learned to appreciate and understand it and what it's for with Pete Seeger. Pete is one of the greatest of American patriots. I think he's one of the main reasons the Civil Rights and peace movements attained the heights they did. He inspired us, or inspired the people who inspired us. He was America's conscience in an unhopeful time. There is no way we can thank him enough."

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Mindy Schwartz (A visitor to this Web site):

"His voice has been part of my life since earliest childhood, part of my family history, as he taught all who would listen history and humanity through song. He is the quintessential teacher, one who lives his own values and instructs just by being. When Pete won the Kennedy Center Award, appearing in his father's tuxedo, he taught us that character transcends history. It was a moment I count as one of life's few victories. Pete Seeger is my kind of hero. He keeps things simple and honest. I love his voice, his whistle, his banjo picking, his reticence and his refusal to surrender to cynicism."

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Fred Pate (A visitor to this Web site):

"Thanks for honoring a musician of incredible talent. His voice and charm draws you in to his music. Although I am a "radical right wing Republican Christian" who disagrees sharply with Seeger on many political views, I could never doubt his genuine love for his fellow man or his country. I think in some ways, his music reflects one of the basic platforms of the true Christian message. Love thy neighbor. Politics aside, how could you not love that voice and that overstretched banjo neck. I'd give anything to just sit by him and strum along for a long while."

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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1996):

It was Harry Belafonte who stole the show, paying tribute to folk legend and political activist Pete Seeger with one of the most moving and eloquent introductions in the 11-year history of the ceremonies. Belafonte praised the 76-year-old Seeger for his dedication to peace and justice, crediting him with being one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of peace and civil rights. Seeger, who was inducted as an early influence on rock-n-roll, dedicated his career, both as a solo performer and member of groups such as the Almanac Singers and the Weavers, to "the great task of overthrowing injustice," Belafonte said. "If they ever decide to put a fifth face on Mount Rushmore, I would nominate Pete Seeger. He is one of the great sons of this country." Then, many of the inductees and other stars joined Arlo Guthrie as he led the crowd in a ragged, sing-along version of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene," a big hit for Seeger's group the Weavers in the 1950s.

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Bill Nickles (A visitor to this Web site):

Thank you, Pete, for sharing your insight and observations. Without you and Arlo (and his dad, of course), I would not have as nearly as much to share with my family and kids about people and human nature. You guys have a unique gift. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say this. I just wish I could tell you how much you and your music has meant to me. We love you!!

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Peter Blood and Annie Patterson (Visitors to this Web site):

Pete strikes us as the purest of treasures - an individual who is absolutely without selfishness. He has offered himself to the world - the causes he believes in passionately, the millions of people he's touched with his music - completely unselfconsciously and without the thirst for personal glory and financial greed.

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Larry Ortega (A visitor to this Web site):

When I was 15 years old, my dad, who worked at Emory University in Atlanta, gave my friend Cynthia and me two tickets to see this guy named Pete Seeger, a folk singer who I had never heard of. (I think that my dad thought that folk singers were wholesome!). Cynthia and I piled into a small auditorium on campus, and sat on the floor. As we sat there, a college student came to the microphone and told us that earlier that day, the National Guard had shot and killed four students at a little college in Ohio called Kent State, during a protest against the war in Vietnam. Then, Pete Seeger came out and sang his heart out, and we all sang with him. That night my life changed, and I have never been the same. I have been to his concerts since then, but I don't think that anything will ever match the power, and the sadness, and the awe that we all felt that night. Pete Seeger and I share this stupid belief that children should be nurtured, and not shot down by their own government. The last couple of times that I have seen Mr. Seeger on television, he has mentioned that he was losing his voice in his advanced age. He isn't losing his "voice," at all. It's right here.

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Rabbi Dr. Marc Ben-Meir (A visitor to this Web site):

I knew Pete and Toshi when I was a teen-ager and high school drop out who was lost back in the turbulent 60s. I don't have the words to communicate what his friendship and advice meant to me. He once asked me to help tune his 12 string guitar. This was a great honor. I started to play a song, he joined in on the banjo, and we lost ourselves in our world of music. (This was at a David Frost political campaign in New Jersey circa 1966). I lived overseas in Israel after Viet-Nam and traveled around the world since then. Pete's friendship significantly contributed to my becoming a productive, contributing member of society. God bless Pete Seeger.

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Art Thieme

Pete Seeger has been THE bright beacon that set a lofty and incandescent standard for me to follow. He led me and so many others onto that hot dusty road of folk music where I have spent the last 4 decades. He gave me so many songs I can't even count 'em. He precipitated my social conscience and showed the way to humane thought and ways of seeing right and wrong that are now, and always will be, a part of my being. And when my own health took a nosedive, it was Pete and many others who did benefits for us that Carol and I will never forget.

Pete, I'll take the risk of embarrassing you with this terribly public THANK YOU note!! You'll probably never let yourself grasp how much you've meant to me personally, musically and socially, but right now I'm striving mightily to let you know just that.

Love to both you and Toshi!!!

Art Thieme
Peru, Illinois

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Happy Traum

I don't know where I'd be today if it wasn't for Pete Seeger. I can't say for sure, but I probably wouldn't have started singing folk songs or playing the guitar and banjo. There would not have been the books, the records, the years of performing, the festivals, or even Homespun Tapes. I might have become an English teacher (one of the vague career options I had been considering as I struggled through college), but I certainly wouldn't have made music my life's work. I would not have had the rich experiences, the life-long friendships, the world travel and all the other twists and turns my life has taken during the forty years since I first heard Pete play. That's a strange thought indeed.
Back in 1954, some friends at the High School of Music and Art dragged me off to a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and from that day my life was changed. There was Pete, on stage before hundreds of other young people, playing his long-neck banjo and singing for and with the crowd. He sang about all manner of things that I had never heard addressed before, and his energy and engagement with the audience captivated me totally. I suddenly saw music in a whole new light, realized that it could address social issues and relate to the joys and sorrows, the history and universality, of the people. As I sang "Wimoweh," "Wasn't That a Time," "If I Had A Hammer," and "Irene Goodnight" at the top of my lungs, I felt the thrill of being part of something vast and important, a movement that was in the vanguard, an in-group that was going to change the world.
The next day, I went out and bought a guitar. I found out about Washington Square, went to "hoots" and folk concerts, learned hundreds of songs. I sang with the image of Pete peering over my shoulder. I sang the songs he sang, tried to approximate his stance, his instrumental style, and his cheer-leader's approach to group singing. I sang only songs I thought Pete would approve of, and wore his records thin -- "Darlin' Cory," "The Goofing Off Suite," "Sodbuster Ballads," and of course, anything I could get my hands on by the Weavers. I sang of solidarity with unions, even though I wasn't a worker; peasant chants, and I certainly wasn't a peasant (never even met one); sang songs in bad Korean, unintelligible Swahili, broken Hebrew, and other languages that Pete sang in. I was one with the miners, the farm hands, the pioneers, the whalers (still politically correct in those days), the "masses."
From the perspective of 1998, this all seems naive and hopelessly out-dated, but somewhere deep inside my soul the eternal optimism of Pete's songs still rings true. I think of those old days as sunny and warm, filled with camaraderie, friendship and idealism, with Pete's warm voice and thrilling banjo leading our way to a better world. And even if that new world doesn't materialize in our lifetime, I know that one sixteen-year-old's life was irrevocably changed by the revelation of a lone man on a wide stage, singing his songs and becoming one with his audience. Thanks Pete. I'll always be grateful.

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Ed Renehan

I am delighted with what you've done in creating the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page, and I congratulate you on an outstanding contribution. As you know, I recorded with Pete for Folkways (now Smithsonian/Folkways) in the mid-1970s, and have been a friend of both Pete and Toshi since 1973. Their influence has made a profound difference in my life, just as in the lives of so many others. It is appropriate that they live in Beacon, NY, for they themselves are beacons for so many of us to steer by. And your Pete Seeger Appreciation Page helps us see the light of their example a bit more clearly than we could otherwise. Thanks.

(Ed Renehan is an acclaimed writer and historian, whose book on the World Wide Web, "Great American WebSites," has been published by McGraw-Hill. He has written a highly acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt.)

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These words are personal remembrances of an inspiration that lasted from my father to me, all thanks to Pete Seeger.
My father, Bob Thomas, was a 1930's hobo, political rally singer who played Jimmy Rodgers tunes and many of those of Woody Guthrie. He played the fiddle and sang the mountain songs and the country songs of his era. He lived out his life as a hill farmer here in Kentucky.
Sometime in the 1960's he heard Pete Seeger's recording of Freight Train. He was taken with that guitar piece more than any other and played it every day, praising each time that no one man ever got such sounds out of one guitar. He died in 1990 without ever seeing me play even a simple children's song.
But I never forgot Pete Seeger or my father and Pete Seeger's gift to make believers of us all. Finally, at the age of 52, many approximations at courage and skill, I played Freight Train at a small coffeehouse here in my hometown, one I had opened to call attention to Pete Seeger and a handful of his contemporaries. I sincerely mean it when I say that I have now lived a fulfilled life because I was able to "keep on keeping on" at my own level in the way of Pete Seeger.
May he and his music live forever. I speak for my father and I here in the cradle of traditional music — Kentucky.

Ron Thomas
Flemingsburg, KY

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Pete,
You've been a part of my life for 44 years -- your songs, and your devotion to what's true what's fair and what's necessary. In my (very brief!) career as a folk performer you were a kind of model for me. (You've surely forgotten an 1962 post-concert interview you graciously gave me in Marty Bochner's Toronto house, for a radio series I was doing at the time.) Though mercifully I haven't performed for 35 years you've continued to inspire me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Peter Brawley

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Somewhere along the line, Pete Seeger entered my world. As a teacher, I noticed that I seemed to have accumulated just about every Seeger children's album (that's a record, folks, not a CD) that ever was, and his songs and arrangements were an everyday happening in my classes. The older I grew, and the more the perplexities and incongruities of humankind began to intrude on my secure worlds of education, parenthood, community and environment, the more I found this man sang for me. His soaring energy, soul, and musicianship expressed all the tears, the fears, the yearnings for what was right and fair, and just plain sensible thinking that my heart held. Nowadays when I need a jolt of idealism, sometimes desperately, nothing, but nothing, does the trick like an evening of Pete Seeger (on CD this time).
Thanks to the concert section of this webpage, Jim, I finally had the chance to see Pete, and to join a singalong song. There he was in Toronto's Massey Hall, for real (All the way through the evening I worried that he might not have come, until somebody finally mentioned they'd chatted with him backstage!). My husband and I sang our hearts out in the rousing choruses of Amen along with all the other new, old, and converted folkies in the place-- I just wish I'd been able to see him better. We had front row, second balcony seats-- but it was so darn hard to see him with all that mist in my eyes.

Sheila Clarke

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Dear Pete,
My dad, Bill Jones, died in 1988 aged 88. He had spent his entire life fighting for his class, the working class. Right to the end he organised and spoke and campaigned for better working conditions and wages, peace and equality. When he died he was vice president of a nationwide pensioners organisation. He had been the leader of the London Busmen for 50 years, was vice president of England’s biggest union, the T&GWU. Was on the council of the Trades Union Congress, was chairman of both the Institute of Workers Control and of the British Peace Committee. To the end of his life he lived in a small semi-detached house in the London suburbs. Unlike many union leaders he never forgot or left his roots.
Like you, he never wavered in his beliefs for a moment. When he died the number of tributes to him we received from all over the country was amazing. He would have never have believed it... So having got the preamble over may I say how delighted I am that I can pay tribute today, now, on the internet, to another champion for civil rights and peace. Many years ago I got your New York address from your sister, Peggy and never got around to writing to you, thanking you on behalf of my family and friends for the amazing work you have done, and the amount of pleasure and hope you have given caring and progressive people everywhere. People like Paul Robeson, Woody, Arlo, yourself and many others have kept alive the flame of decency and tolerance in America . I just hope that there will be many to follow you and I look forward to the day ‘This land is your land’ will be America’s National Anthem. Best wishes to you Pete and all that is good in America.

Ivor Jones, now living in Portugal

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From: ("Tranby Croft," based in London, Ontario, Canada)
My fellow group members, Helen Jarvis, Bob Cunningham, and I (Phil Floyd) went to the Folk Alliance meeting in Toronto, this past weekend, Feb. 15. To attract attention to our showcase we went to the lobby of the (Westin Harbour Castle ) Hotel, and eventually found a quieter spot to play, by the (currently deserted) shoeshine area. We gave a rendition of "Bonnie Ship the Diamond," and were just finishing, when Mr. Pete Seeger walked by, and stopped to listen. When we finished, he smiled and said, "Why did you stop?". Helen Jarvis said it was because that was the end of the song, but offered to play it again, adding "I see you have your instrument with you, would you like to join us?". Although on his way to another assignation Mr. Seeger graciously accepted to our combined utter amazement, and got out his famous 5-string banjo. We played "Bonnie Ship the Diamond," "Henry Martin," and "The Good Ship Kangaroo." After "Henry Martin" Mr. Seeger said "If Burl Ives was still with us, he would have loved that. It was his favourite song!"
Having been involved in music (esp. folk music) since the 60's, we were all very thrilled (understatement) to have played with a "legend." We love playing music, and believe strongly that what we do is worthwhile. Our roots go back to the traditional and contemporary music which in the 50's and 60's was presented to an eager public by folks like Pete Seeger. Mr. Seeger paid us a compliment by stopping by and joining in, and I hope and like to think that he found something happily familiar in our music. Thank you, Mr. Seeger.

Phil Floyd. Feb 19, 1997.

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To everyone out there!
Great to be able to meet fellow admirers of Pete Seeger this way! His music got me hooked on folk music and the great ways it can be used to enjoy oneself and get messages across at the same time. What makes Pete so unique? I guess it is the way he sticks to himself and what he thinks is the right thing to do and not give in to commercial and other pressure. If we all pick up something of that we'll all feel better and more at ease for it without 'having to' all the time!

Agnes Koelemij, Tilburg, Netherlands.

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My daughter alerted me to your site. I love it. About a year after we were married in 1949 a friend told us that we to go with them to the Village Vanguard to hear a new folk group. We did, and we have been fans ever since. The fact that my daughter told me about the site shows how SHE was brought up. Her daughters, four and seven, were started on a Weavers diet some years back. Thanks for your efforts.

Ed Schwab

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Greetings to Seeger fans from Toronto.
It's been a great winter for folk music in this city. First Arlo Guthrie and his son Abe pulled into town for a sold out show at the old Horseshoe Tavern. Now Pete Seeger is going to be anchoring the Folk Dream Gala Concert at Massey Hall. Also on the bill are Kate and Anne McGarrigle, Moxy Fruvos, Leahy and Ani DiFranco. Should be a great show. I've seen Pete and Arlo in concert many a time but always had to travel south of the border. Finally, I get to see them in my home town. Would love to hear from other Seeger fans.

Rick Bogacz

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Pete Seeger has been an inspiration to me most of my life. He is always the example that comes to my mind when I try to think of who has kept the faith...who is a person that doesn't waiver in his decency. When I'm low and I luck upon a Pete Seeger song I am almost immediately reminded of what really matters and, in effect, put back on track again. Recently I heard an interview with Pete on NPR in which he said that if we are going to "make it" it will be as a result of millions of little actions and little groups of people doing what is right, rather than any large group or organization, and knowing that he is right, I am strong in my belief that what I do matters. Thank you Pete!

Thomas Colkett

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Dear Pete,

Ann and I have both been life-long fans of yours- Ann grew up with your music and that of the Weavers and Paul Robeson. Its in our veins and has inspired us and guided us - and our children, down the years. You inspired me to play and use music to communicate and through us, inspired our kids to play music too. And so, the tradition goes on!

In the 1970's your work with the Clearwater inspired us to greater environmental awareness in our own backyard here in Australia - you along with countless others of course. While a song alone can't change the world, it can sure do a bloody lot to start the ball of consciousness rolling along. If we learnt just one thing from you it is the power of a simple song, delivered with fierce joy and full voice!

Now, after raising our kids (they really raised us I think!) we are getting the chance to share the Clearwater experience you sung of back so long ago, for we are spending a week in August volunteering on Clearwater during a visit to USA and Canada. Even if we don't get the chance to see or hear you in person, we will be thinking of you as we sail the Hudson helping to promote Clearwater's message.

So Pete, thanks for the music and the inspiration and may your autumn years remain healthy, productive and full of music.

Jeff and Ann Corfield

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Dear Pete,
You have been my musical inspiration since 1967 when my late mother bought your guitar instruction record on a jumble sale. I have since learnt the 12-string guitar, banjo, from your manuals, and have gone on to becoming a professional folk-singer (I still use that term!) You are a scource of amazement to me in a world which lacks honesty and integrity, you have remained as you always were .....true to your ideals and those of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly etc. I have over one hundred of your records and some videos which I value over anything I own. I have wanted to make contact for 30 years since I was 12 years old. Wherever I go I try to play your music and inspire other people to do the same. I also love the music of Leadbelly, and I am trying to get the records of Fred Gerlach.

Jonathan Klass Johannesburg S.A

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Pete, I'd like to express my gratitude to you and Toshi, to the Lomax family, and to Bruce Jackson for the time and energy that you spent researching the Penal System in the south. The songs from the convict work gangs have become an epitaph, and the field work, the gravestone marker to a tomb that tried to swallow a culture and choked to death on its on sickness. I'm presently singing with a trio, Finn & Haddie, who's main focus is on work songs, mostly from the prisons and the sea. I love the music and passing it along, and would like to thank you for being one of the pioneers who made it accessible to the rest of us.

Barry Finn

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I am interested in recordings of most of the Columbia albums that have not been reissued. Can someone help?

Mahir Ali

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I first heard of Pete Seeger through a right-wing Lutheran publication that complained that he had been invited to sing at a Walther League convention (the youth organization of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) in 1964 or so. I remember asking my parents (I was about 11) why everyone was so upset about a "former communist" singing to the Walther Leaguers. "How could singing songs hurt anybody's faith?" I asked. The insipid answer was that we should have found a good Lutheran folk-singer.
Years later -- April 22, 1971 to be precise -- I heard Pete sing "Last Train to Nuremberg" at the big pre-May Day rally in Washington, D.C. I was electrified, and began to realize how naive my question had been: Music CAN be dangerous, especially to those whose position and influence rests on violence, coercion, lies, and fear. The right wingers were exactly right to be afraid of Pete's influence on young people. Hearing him sing Malvina Reynold's "Little Boxes" and "God Bless the Grass" was like a hyper-link to the idea that the world could be a better place if only we took responsibility for making it so. (My favorite title of his albums is the one "Dangerous Songs?")
Since then, I've learned to play the banjo (sort of) through his book, lead singing in groups large and small, and pass on the joy and power of music to many others, all small flowers from the seeds he scattered. (I've always liked that he called his column in Sing Out "Appleseeds.")
Beware of making him an icon, though. He's made a difference because he is authentic and worked hard, not because he's perfect. The rest of us should do the same.

Paul Landskroener

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I discovered your Pete Seeger site just awhile back. What was particularly exciting was the page on my play about Pete Seeger and friends called "ONE WORD ... WE!". (see Links in the Chain). I spent a couple of years researching and writing the show. Harold Leventhal was kind enough to put me in contact with Pete. Pete sent me some material which I relied upon and he also went through an early draft of my script with a red pen making some pretty useful suggestions.
Each time we performed the show the response was staggering. In each venue, we received standing ovations and many "curtain" calls. But what was particularly exciting was to see people of all ages singing the songs in full voice. It was almost impossible to feel pessimistic about the world after those kinds of experiences! People laughed, people cried and people sang! Most of us came off stage feeling fairly emotional.
The shows became a real meeting place for people who had sung together at other times or had been part of earlier political struggles: old friends renewed acquaintances, teenagers danced in the aisles, children learnt new songs and lots of people started asking record shops for CDs of Pete and other performers.
For me it was an absolute privilege to have helped shape the experience. Our only wish now is to try and take the show to a wider audience. At the moment we're searching for a producer prepared to back the show in a larger venue but we're not having much luck.
Thanks for establishing the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page. It's wonderful! If you ever get a chance to visit Australia, let me know.

Maurie Mulheron

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I do not know how or where I became aware of Pete Seeger - I am the son of a railway worker from Canada. My Dad was born in Canada in 1907 and toiled on the railways as a sectionman - in Canada, that was known as Gandhi dancing - shovel work. I was inducted into the section as a child since I wrote well in English and all the workers were either Ukrainian like my family, Portuguese, Italian or East Indian. I became the unofficial secretary of the Union. I listened to their conflicts in the union hall and to the stories of the Dirty Thirties when many were hoboes or farm workers moving from crop to crop. I sat in the corner of a bunkhouse and heard many stories. Those men were my heroes - twisted hands of steel which build the railways of Canada, shoveled the snow from the rails and toiled as labourers without rights and with fear of the company. I did not know Seeger wrote the words of I Dreamt of Joe Hill, nor the words to the lullaby of a hobo. I know the men and women who suffered the pain of the depression and the ruthlessness of the Company, whether it be Canadian or American. For me, Pete Seeger was given to children of workers of the world by God to reflect the times and the struggles of our fathers and our mothers. As I get older and the world changes, I would like to personally thank Pete Seeger for his wisdom bestowed on him.
Thank you, Jim, for your page. I have some of Pete's songs and I will try to buy more and play them on my radio program - I started a radio program (three weeks running) and I am going to seek out my Pete Seeger so others can remember the past. I do wonder if Pete Seeger knows he has fans in Northeast British Columbia!

Fire Chief Leo Sabulsky

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Pete Seeger has been in my life since age 7 (I am now 53) when I first heard him at Woodland Camp. I am thrilled to find Pete on the internet, and to read about others who know how very special he is. As a teenager I would go to all the Weavers concerts at Carnegie Hall. I would go with friends from summer camp; my peers at high school did now know about him! He is a real hero for me. He has remained clear and firm about what he believes in. I continue to go to any concert of his here in Ithaca, and much to my enormous delight he was recently here with his wonderful grandson. Probably the greatest thrill for me was a few years ago he was at a weekend workshop at Kirkridge with Dorothy Cotton. I had breakfast with him! It was incredible to be with him in a more intimate setting, and to also be with other people who appreciated him so much. Shortly after that workshop I watched the Kennedy awards. What a moment of exaltation!
I have so many of his records, the CDs with Arlo, and the many tapes. I especially love the 2 tapes with Arlo and his family and Pete with his. It is very moving to me to watch him with his grandson, and to know that he is carrying on some of the songs, such as Wimoweh.--I look forward to visiting this site and reading what others have experienced in their lives because of Pete Seeger! Thank you for doing this!

A. Halpern

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Dear Jim and all other Pete Seeger friends,
I first heard Pete on a illegal commercial radio station 'round 1965. They played the single "Little Boxes," and it was amazing. I searched for Seeger and his songs ever since. Started singing his songs, and, inspired by him, Dutch songs later on. For some years I was a professional singer of Dutch (folk) songs. Pete is my master and guru up 'till now. Not only by his singing and playing, but by his choice of material too and, last but not least, by his political and HUMAN inspiration! I met Pete twice. First time in 1983, when he visited Holland (for the second time). I interviewed him for the Dutch Folk magazine. A few years ago I met him (and Arlo) again in Tonder, Denmark. I keep enjoying his songs. And I was surprised to find the "Appreciation Page" on the internet. I am searching the WWW for a few months now, and also found other good pages about folk music and such. The organisation I work for is also on the web: http://web.inter.nl.net/users/diggelen.svn (also in English).
Very best wishes from Holland!

Peter Koene

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I loved your web site. I, too, believe that Pete Seeger is a national treasure and it is wonderful to pay tribute to such a great guy while he is still living ('cause they ain't making too many more like him). Keep up the great work and I'll keep checking in.

Carol Hansen, Seattle

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"I have many heroes, but if I had to pick one it would have to be Pete Seeger. Because he is a man of principle, because he has had the courage of his convictions, because he is an inspiringly humane, self-effacing and dedicated human being, because he has a sense of humor about himself and life, and because he loves to create art. He's a great man. Every musician activist that I know - and I just interviewed about 50 of them for a book and a documentary I did with a  friend of mine, David Bender, called Stand and Be Counted - I said, 'Where did you get this idea from?' And the first name that came out of their mouths was Pete Seeger."

David Crosby in Mojo Magazine

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