Farewell to a Great American

Peter's tribute to Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger was my first hero. I cannot remember a time when I did not know who he was. I first listened to him on my parents 78s of the Almanac Singers singing Talking Union and I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister, and then on a Folkways record of work songs, singing The Young Man Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn. I begged my dad for more, and my first LP on Folkways was The Rainbow Quest and then American Ballads. And of course there were Weavers albums. Eventually I got all of them.

I was a little too young to know about the blacklist. Somewhere around the time I was eight or nine, Seeger was supposed to play a concert at Temple University in Philadelphia. We arrived at the show to find out it was cancelled. Maybe a year later, I finally saw him at Town Hall in Philly. The great Texas blues singer Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins was his special guest. In 1961, when I was nine, Seeger was convicted of Contempt of Congress for refusing to name names before the House Un-American Activities Commit…