"How Can I Keep From Singing?” The Ballad of Pete Seeger, by David King Dunaway
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Pete Seeger may well be the very essence of the earnest, self-serious folk singer. He seems to have built the mold. After a half-century of harassment by everyone from the local KKK in the small Hudson River Valley town where he lives to the House Un-American Activities Commission in the 50s, to J. Edgar Hoover himself, you could say Seeger has a right to be serious. He hung out and traveled with Woody Guthrie for a while, and there is a very telling photo in the book. The two of them are playing together, Pete looks all earnest and serious and Woody looks casual, relaxed, almost devil-may-care.
Seeger's contributions to American music cannot be denied. Besides gathering folk songs in his travels, he wrote songs that became American popular standards that, unlike the music of Cole Porter or the Gershwins, are simple enough to sing around the campfire. “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and so on. With the Weavers, he made Leadbelly's “Good Night Irene” a national hit, and to this day any crowd gathered almost anywhere will sing along with it. Look up the Weavers on youtube, listen to their “Wimoweh” and you’ll know where the Tokens got “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Later in the 60s the Byrds recorded “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and put Ecclesiastes on AM radio.
But Seeger's idealism was stronger than the desire to be famous. He thought that getting people singing could change the world for the better. He joined the communist party, and only went to a few meetings. But it's hounded him all his life. Still he pushed on, working for causes — unions, peace, civil rights… All the standard un-American stuff. He marched with Martin Luther King in the early days, but Stokely Carmichael didn't want him.
What I like about this new book is the parallel of his career with the doings of the fascist right, one sees there is nothing remotely new going on today. When Seeger got the cockeyed idea of building a boat and cleaning up the Hudson river, he met with opposition. The damn commie was at it again and must be stopped. And though he was often disappointed at what effect he seemed to be having, the boat got built and the river started getting cleaned up. We learn slowly that results don't come right away.
Contradictions in the man Pete Seeger are laid out, and some questions go unanswered. This is probably as it should be. Other than a trivial thing or two he gets wrong about popular music of the 50s, David Dunaway has done a very good account of fascist elements in the 20th century US and a man they tried, but failed, to destroy.
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