I have a soft spot for folk music. One of the first stories I wrote as a budding journalist was for the Wenatchee World looking back at the work of Woody Guthrie during the time of the building of Grand Coulee Dam. I still love music by his son, Arlo. But the king of that genre, and a giant of the protest movement was Pete Seeger. He wrote the classic If I Had A Hammer, adapted a Negro spiritual into the protest movement anthem We Shall Overcome, and he turned a passage from Ecclesiastes into the classic hit by the Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn. He was a mentor and inspiration for Harry Chapin, who is one of my heroes. He inspired Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Bruce Springsteen -- his Seeger Sessions album is a favorite and their duet of Seegers This Land Is Your Land at the Lincoln Memorial the day before President Obama was first inaugurated was as stirring as it was memorable. Pete Seeger wasnt just a musician. He was a banjo-playing oracle who SANG truth to power and, as Springsteen called him, a living archive of classic American folk songs. He was a force of nature who carried the tune for 94 years. Pete Seeger passed away of natural causes, which is fitting because Pete Seeger was big on taking up causes -- only this time his tenor voice will be silent on the subject. But the echoes will live on, and the ring of truth he sang about will reverberate through the thousands upon thousands of musicians and listeners he inspired for ages and ages to come. Pete Seeger has passed away. But his spirit will live forever.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 17:28:00 +0000