Pete Seeger, a Folk Revivalist Who Used His Voice to Bring Out a Nation’s

(VV note: Without Pete Seeger, would we have had Bob Dylan? Peter, Paul & Mary? Phil Ochs? Tim Hardin? Even the Beatles? The list goes on… and on… and on…)

The singer and champion of progressive causes died on Monday at 94. via Reuters

By JON PARELES, NYT
JAN. 28, 2014

Pete Seeger sang until his voice wore out, and then he kept on singing, decade upon decade. Mr. Seeger, who died on Monday at 94, sang for children, folk-music devotees, union members, civil-rights marchers, antiwar protesters, environmentalists and everyone else drawn to a repertoire that extended from ancient ballads to brand-new songs about every cause that moved him. But it wasn’t his own voice he wanted to hear. He wanted everyone to sing along.

Although Mr. Seeger summed up Vietnam-era frustration when he wrote “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” and created a lasting antiwar parable with “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” he wasn’t simply a protest singer or propagandist. Like his father, the musicologist Charles Seeger, and his colleague the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger was devoted to songs that had been passed on through generations of people singing and playing together. He was determined — in an era when recording was rarer and broadcasting limited — to get those songs heard and sung anew, lest they disappear.

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