A Final Q&A with Pete Seeger - Mike Elk I found myself crying when I heard the news of Pete Seeger’s death today. When I was a child, my mother would wake me up in the morning by singing “If I Had A Hammer,”the progressive anthem that Seeger wrote for Peter, Paul and Mary. His music played a central role in teaching me the values of solidarity and love, and continues to do so. So when I learned last September that Seeger would be giving what might be one of his last public performances, at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, I decided to make the journey up. Afterward, Seeger conducted a Q&A with the audience. The singer didn’t always answer the questions directly, but he told a number of stories that gave new insight into his long career: We got to Oklahoma City…. I knew a man was trying to organize oil workers to build a big derrick to pump the oil out of it. And this was a small meeting, about 60 people. And there were women and children there; nobody had money for babysitters. So [some union busters] had come to see what this union business was all about, and the organizers said, “Pete, see if you can get the crowd singing. There’s six men against the wall in the back, standing up, and they haven’t taken their overcoats off. They might have clubs under their overcoats and they might be intending to break up the meeting.” Well we got them all singing. And sure enough at the end of the meeting, the six of them came toward us and said, “This meeting was a little different than we were told it was gonna be We were holding baseball bats under our overcoats. We were gonna break it up.” Then the wife of the organizer said, “Pete, all these union songs are about men this and brother that. This union would have been broken up if it hadn’t been for all the women here and the children here. Can’t you make up a song about the union women?” Next morning in the union office, Woody was there with his guitar and he’d sing a verse, sit down, type it out. I can’t remember but two of the verses, but he had a great chorus.“Oh you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union…” It’s a good old tune, I don’t know where it came from and he had a great chorus there. And a year later I was recording an album of union songs, with some other people, and one of the songs didn’t turn out any good so they said, “Can you do another union song.” And I said, “What about this one? But I can only remember two of the verses.” …. And when we got to the West Coast … we sang it for the Labor Day parade. By gosh, it sped up, and we had to sing it over and over again. The whole parade was singing that song, at least the chorus of it. popularresistance.org/a-final-qa-with-pete-seeger/
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:22:28 +0000
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