Journal News Archive| USAToday Network
Editor's note: Pete Seeger granted a rare interview in 2010 to discuss his life and career, while prepping for what had become his signature event, the annual Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson.
Seeger, who died in 2014, would have marked his 100th birthday May 3, 2019. Celebrations and events are taking place around the world to mark the milestone so we are bringing back this Journal News/lohud interview:
Not many musicians have performed for Eleanor Roosevelt and Barack Obama, butPete Seegerisn't just any singer-songwriter.
The folk icon, who turned 91 this month and has been singing for "audiences, large and small, since 1939," continues to be a force for change as a musician, environmentalist and activist. He's considered a standard-bearer by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to actress Debra Winger to President Barack Obama, whose mother played Seeger's records to him as a child.
Seeger granted a rare interview Wednesday to discuss his life and career, while prepping for what's become his signature event, the annual Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson.
And while the stages of Clearwater's annual [2010] Great Hudson River Revival will feature more than 250 performers — including Joan Osborne, Steve Earle and Shawn Colvin — on June 19 and 20, Seeger remains a main attraction.
Seeger will again strap on some of his stringed instruments to sing at the two-day festival that he launched in 1966. Storytellers, puppeteers, dance troupes, face-painters and jugglers will join the dozens musical acts to fill out the festival.
"In my own life, (music) has been able to leap barriers that words cannot leap," he says, his voice soft yet resonant. "Quite often, people talk to each other and find themselves so furious, they can't stay in the same room with each other. But music can leap over these barriers of race or religion and politics."
For Seeger, audience participation isn't just about harmonizing with him on "Amazing Grace." Throughout his career — especially in the '50s and '60s — his music and his activism fused to support civil rights movements, peace initiatives and environmental preservation.
Married to Toshi-Aline Ota since 1943, the father of three and grandfather of six, lives in both the Patterson home in which he was raised and a place in Fishkill. Seeger was given a ukulele at age 8 and played his first concert — a collection of sea shanties — a year later with a friend at school in front of about 50 people.
"A friend of ours carried a bottle and pretended to be the drunken sailor," he says with a laugh. "I don't think we charged any money at all, but we held the attention of our peers for about one hour."
As a prep-school student at Avon Old Farms in Avon, Conn., he picked up a tenor banjo to play in the jazz band. But he fell in love with the five-string banjo after his father took him to a music festival in North Carolina.
His career took off in the early '50s as a member of the Weavers, who topped the charts with "Goodnight, Irene." He's written or co-written timeless standards, including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" and "Turn, Turn, Turn!"
At the time, Seeger's messages, delivered at rallies and often in the form of protest songs, gained him notice, and not all of it good. In the McCarthy era, after refusing to to share his political beliefs and political associations with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, Seeger got a 10-year jail sentence that was overturned a year later.
"I was very aware that people who controlled the country wanted to control the music," he says. "I've often (paraphrased) Plato, who said it's very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the republic."
In the decades that followed, music fans and heads of state have embraced Seeger's contributions.
Last year, [2009]The Clearwater Concert at Madison Square Garden featured a lineup of Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Richie Havens and others, who assembled to celebrate Seeger's work, on and off the stage.
Seeger says he was humbled by the tribute, and believes his work ethic is the reason he's earned respect from fellow musicians.
"There is no substitute for persistence and perseverance," he says. "You can accomplish things you never thought you could accomplish."
Such as performing for presidents and first ladies in a 67-year span.
After performing "This Land is Your Land" at the inauguration concert for Obama, Seeger chatted and shook hands with him.
"When he got to me, he said, 'Mr. Seeger, you know, my mother played me your records when I was age 4,'" Seeger says. "I wish that I had said to him, 'President Obama, I hope you do the absolutely best job that should be done, even though you won't get reelected, but you will get reelected four years (after that), because the country will see how truly right things will bring the right results.' "
For his efforts, Seeger has been named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received Kennedy Center Honors, along with three Grammys, including one for lifetime achievement. But, for a music legend whose career has spanned eight decades, it's not about the hardware.
"Anytime an audience sings along with me," he says, "I feel like that's the biggest reward."
