Pete Seeger, Where Have All The Flowers Gone ...

[BGIF]

R.I.P.

Folk singer, activist Pete Seeger dies at 94 | Fox News


My siblings and I learned to sing driving in the car with the mom and dad listening to The Weavers harmonize, "Irene, Goodnight Irene".

I didn't care for much of the man's politics but his music will echo in my mind as long as I breathe.

His passion for music from around the world was unparalleled.

His name is on thousand tunes. If he didn't write it, he made it famous. Blacklisted as an avowed communist, which he was, the man toured college campuses and coffee houses when he couldn't get on TV or radio. WBAI in NYC was one of the few places that played his stuff. Lots of other artists may big bucks recording his tunes

Somewhere down in my basement is a box full of reel to reel tapes of his recordings. I knew the words to Waist Deep in the Big Muddy long before the Smothers Brother Show. It timeless ... "the big fool said to push on"

 

[GoIrish41]

Pete Seeger was a musical giant and a cultural force. He will be missed.

 

[Cackalacky]

Amen. Watched the Foolish Frog with my son this morning. Its one of his favorite things and always brightens up the day. Between him and Shel Silverstein, I hope to pass on some of the great things from my childhood.

 

[dshans]

R.I.P.

... I knew the words to Waist Deep in the Big Muddy long before the Smothers Brother Show. It timeless ... "the big fool said to push on"

I was aware of Pete as a youngster, though I wasn't aware of all the political kerfuffle until the debacle that was the censorship imposed upon His performance of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on The Smothers Brothers show.

I wrote a paper in defense of Hippies in 9th grade (1965) based on The Byrds recording of "Turn, Turn, Turn." There were many songs he penned that had a profound effect on my life and mode of thinking.

Godspeed, my friend ... it was sure good to know yuh.

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[Irish YJ]

Stroking the jo at 94

 

[alaskandomer]

R.I.P.

Folk singer, activist Pete Seeger dies at 94 | Fox News


My siblings and I learned to sing driving in the car with the mom and dad listening to The Weavers harmonize, "Irene, Goodnight Irene".

I didn't care for much of the man's politics but his music will echo in my mind as long as I breathe.

His passion for music from around the world was unparalleled.

His name is on thousand tunes. If he didn't write it, he made it famous. Blacklisted as an avowed communist, which he was, the man toured college campuses and coffee houses when he couldn't get on TV or radio. WBAI in NYC was one of the few places that played his stuff. Lots of other artists may big bucks recording his tunes

Somewhere down in my basement is a box full of reel to reel tapes of his recordings. I knew the words to Waist Deep in the Big Muddy long before the Smothers Brother Show. It timeless ... "the big fool said to push on"

I, too, disagreed with Pete's politics, but grew up loving his music. One of my favorites was "Old Devil Time." I'd say he will be missed, but, thanks to his songs, he'll never really leave us. RIP

 

[BGIF]

So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home,
And I got to be driftin' along.

(the words and music are Woody's)



So long Pete, thanks for the memories.

 

[Redbar]

R.I.P.

 

[BGIF]

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[gkIrish]

Pete Seeger lived in the town next to mine (Digger Phelp's hometown). I'd frequently see him hold up political signs on the side of the road. He would also frequent a lot of the coffee shops in town. RIP

 

[dshans]

There is much that is misunderstood about the economic politics of socialism and the structural politics of communism as evinced by Stalin and too many who followed in his footsteps. What Seeger and many others embraced was not the totalitarian, iron-fisted politics but the hope for a more equitable dispersion of resources and reward for effort.

Much as we see today with the inequity between the 1% and the 99%. Silly slogans to highlight ugly realities.

Enough. Enough of this nonsense.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I have no problems with anything about Pete Seeger. His politics and world view were tempered by compassion. It isn't that he was a great performer, it is that a great performer was so honest. Was he a bit naïve? Who cares?

Here is a guy that came from a privileged background that had a true love and feel for the people. And that was through some crazy times, when the people needed someone, a beacon light, like him. The Great Depression, WWII, the communist witch hunt of the fifties, and the social unrest of the sixties, war, race, environmental, and women's issues.

Throughout all, his successes and his self admitted failures, he remained honest, a truly remarkable thing. He recorded over 100 albums! And he inspired generation(s) of performers and artists to follow him. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen :

At a Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Seeger's 90th birthday, Springsteen introduced him as "a living archive of America's music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along," The Times said.

 

[palinurus]

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I wasn't going to post a dissenting note, because you all were being polite and RIP and all, and I like a nice folk song as much as the next guy. But when folks, even folks I like, start to defend Seeger's his ridiculous political philosophy, I have to speak up. Pete wants both ways; he wants the "peace and love" of the sappy socialist movement, but not the gulags. But that's where they lead and he knew this. And he was singing this crap AFTER we AND HE knew where L'Internationale would take, and was taking, "the workers." He opposed WWII (fighting Germany) while the Nazis and Soviets were allied, until the Nazis attacked the Soviets then became a rabid "anti-Nazi," and, to my knowledge, he never criticized the Soviets, the gulags, the repression of communism, and where his "socialism" always led and leads. It is just wrong and naive to say, "Well, that's just ol' Pete, just trying to help the working man." No, sorry, no warm fuzzies for me over his world view and no free passes for the front he laid down for evil people.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

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I wasn't going to post a dissenting note, because you all were being polite and RIP and all, and I like a nice folk song as much as the next guy. But when folks, even folks I like, start to defend Seeger's his ridiculous political philosophy, I have to speak up. Pete wants both ways; he wants the "peace and love" of the sappy socialist movement, but not the gulags. But that's where they lead and he knew this. And he was singing this crap AFTER we AND HE knew where L'Internationale would take, and was taking, "the workers." He opposed WWII (fighting Germany) while the Nazis and Soviets were allied, until the Nazis attacked the Soviets then became a rabid "anti-Nazi," and, to my knowledge, he never criticized the Soviets, the gulags, the repression of communism, and where his "socialism" always led and leads. It is just wrong and naive to say, "Well, that's just ol' Pete, just trying to help the working man." No, sorry, no warm fuzzies for me over his world view and no free passes for the front he laid down for evil people.

Thank you for helping me focus my sadness at hearing that Pete Seeger passed.

The problem is, the world needs the purest of moral influence. Even if naïve.

Now you know how much I love you Eastern Ohio, by God, but with all due respect, we need both sides, as long as they are not trained to eat each other. That is a lesson lost on today's youth, I am afraid.

My father who was part of the greatest generation, served with distinction from 3Jul41 to 27Dec45, and spent time in most every shit hole in the Pacific, had an abiding love for Pete Seeger, among others. He always respected those who stood all the way behind what they believed.

As far as pacifism in the US, within the last couple years of his life, Dad told me stories I never heard. My parents were both of their fathers WWI exemptions, (third child was all the selective service needed for an exemption. So when my dad was young and in his short pants my Mimi used to drag him around to the parlors of other women friends for their "teas." There was often a ritual then that memories of the husbands, sons, and fathers lost in the first war, the Kaiser's war, the family dispute in Europe, would come up. The wailing and crying was so etched upon my father, that late in life he found it's memories as disturbing as his own war memories. There was a huge movement that American youth would never again be sacrificed for something so meaningless. But it only is found in the history books as a footnote, and mislabeled as isolationism.

So I guess the thing I miss is the way the world worked, where you had a "kook" on this side and a "nut" on that, and fair play in the middle. And with his passing I also miss the warm loving protection of those that went before me in my family.

 

[palinurus]

Bogs, I respect you, even where I disagree with you. I realize there are patriots across the spectrum.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Bogs, I respect you, even where I disagree with you. I realize there are patriots across the spectrum.

Yes there are. It is not about that. It is about this. Ironic and great that it happened it the Pete Seeger thread. Yes, it is about this, this kind of understanding! My best to you across the great frozen tundra. (I would be laughing about my last line, but my ass is still too cold!)

 

[Irish YJ]

Screw the politics, enjoy the music.
RIP Artist

 

[Catholics_Rule]

I was never a fan of his music or his politics. It's important to remember that Pete Seeger, once an avowed Stalinist, was a political singer devoted to a sinister political system; a position he held long after the Soviet experiment drenched itself in blood and collapsed in ignominy. So while we wistfully recall the foot-stomping versions of This Land is Your Land, let us not forget Seeger’s musical assaults on the supposedly warmongering Theodore Roosevelt.

 

[Irish YJ]

 

[Irish YJ]

 

[Irish YJ]

 

[Irish YJ]

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I was never a fan of his music or his politics. It's important to remember that Pete Seeger, once an avowed Stalinist, was a political singer devoted to a sinister political system; a position he held long after the Soviet experiment drenched itself in blood and collapsed in ignominy. So while we wistfully recall the foot-stomping versions of This Land is Your Land, let us not forget Seeger’s musical assaults on the supposedly warmongering Theodore Roosevelt.

Thank you for bringing your own brand of political stupidity to a memorial thread. It doubly pisses me off because of both your lack of couth and your lies and ignorance.

You lie when you call Seeger an avowed Stalinist. Seeger was anti-authoritarian. He didn't even want anyone with the power of an FDR. His anti-authoritarian background was solid in his Yankee Republican upbringing. So why would he even have any interest in such a totalitarian? He didn't. And there are a myriad of quotes and examples that what he had in mind had nothing to do with what the Soviets were doing.

Beside the negative rep I am about to give you, I copied your quote in this post as it stood, so you can be embarrassed by your own stupidity or ignorance. It takes some kind of special 20th Century commentator to confuse Teddy Roosevelt, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Teddy was pro-intervention, but all his illusions of war crashed about him with the aerial death of his son in 1918, approximately a year before Seeger was born! In his last few years he was remarkably anti war. The Roosevelt you speak of was the Democratic Franklin Delano, who became President in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, and remained President until near the end of WWII, in early 1945.

My father was my teacher. My dad was born in 1918 and served with distinction from 1941 through 1945. He was awarded a bronze star on at least a half dozen occasions. He told me he had no issue with people protesting the war. He said that in every society at every time you need them. More than you need war hawks. He said his generation went because the were told to. And they did what they did for survival. And I served, too. I think more people should. Especially those that see the military as a solution to real problems the US and the world faces . . . We talked about it; neither of us had the guts as young men to stand up for what we believed in any more that guys like Pete Seeger.

As for your musical taste, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen were. Thanks for your vote!

To moderators. Can we leave memorial thread for those that pay their respects, and can anyone that has a bone to pick just lay off?

 

[Bogtrotter07]

The fact of the matter is, here is the entire quote : "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."

YJ, The rest was added out of context by someone (obviously other than you) that is better at reflecting weak dogma than thinking and reading, and being literate. Just thought you might want to know. Bogs.

 

[palinurus]

Bogs, I am not going to argue this out here. But it wasn't Catholics Rule who pushed it out of "memorial thread" mode into a quasi-political one.

 

[woolybug25]

Bogs, I am not going to argue this out here. But it wasn't Catholics Rule who pushed it out of "memorial thread" mode into a quasi-political one.

Yeah... that was you!

 

[palinurus]

Yeah... that was you!

Haha, no, actually it was DShans and Bogs. Fact. I only objected to their political posts.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Bogs, I am not going to argue this out here. But it wasn't Catholics Rule who pushed it out of "memorial thread" mode into a quasi-political one.

You are right. It was you. But that is okay.

Actually, if you read everything I have posted you would see I am not pushing an agenda, or an ideology, or trying to convince anyone of one of anything related to one. I am simply defending the right of some to start and post about an "entertainer" or "social dissenter" who has passed, and air their grief without the kind of assault that people with a certain dogmatic agenda feel the need to promote. In this case it just happens to be someone bent on jingoistic American Anti-communism from three or five decades ago.

If you saw anything I said as more than an assault on the ill mannered, a correction of horribly mangled historically facts, or a willingness to fight to keep politics out of obituary, I am sorry.

 

[palinurus]

There is much that is misunderstood about the economic politics of socialism and the structural politics of communism as evinced by Stalin and too many who followed in his footsteps. What Seeger and many others embraced was not the totalitarian, iron-fisted politics but the hope for a more equitable dispersion of resources and reward for effort.

Much as we see today with the inequity between the 1% and the 99%. Silly slogans to highlight ugly realities.

Enough. Enough of this nonsense.

I have no problems with anything about Pete Seeger. His politics and world view were tempered by compassion. It isn't that he was a great performer, it is that a great performer was so honest. Was he a bit naïve? Who cares?

Here is a guy that came from a privileged background that had a true love and feel for the people. And that was through some crazy times, when the people needed someone, a beacon light, like him. The Great Depression, WWII, the communist witch hunt of the fifties, and the social unrest of the sixties, war, race, environmental, and women's issues.

Throughout all, his successes and his self admitted failures, he remained honest, a truly remarkable thing. He recorded over 100 albums! And he inspired generation(s) of performers and artists to follow him. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen :

You are right. It was you. But that is okay.

Actually, if you read everything I have posted you would see I am not pushing an agenda, or an ideology, or trying to convince anyone of one of anything related to one. I am simply defending the right of some to start and post about an "entertainer" or "social dissenter" who has passed, and air their grief without the kind of assault that people with a certain dogmatic agenda feel the need to promote. In this case it just happens to be someone bent on jingoistic American Anti-communism from three or five decades ago.

If you saw anything I said as more than an assault on the ill mannered, a correction of horribly mangled historically facts, or a willingness to fight to keep politics out of obituary, I am sorry.

Okay, we shouldn't rewrite history, or even ignore it, Seegar style, so here's the track.

Bogs, I read every word you wrote. "I have no problems with anything about Pete Seegar" on the heels of DShans overtly political statement seems political/philosopohical to me, and it's sure not just "RIP, Ol Pete, it's been good to know you." We need to be honest; the range of opinions on IE is just too broad to expect posts in support of a polarizing figure to go unanswered.

Catholics Rule can defend himself, but I think your post was too personal. My opinion. But I was responding to the part of your post about confining posts on these threads to simple memorials, not the rest of his post. I like discussion, but he didn't take it off track.

Anyway, the irony here is that Seegar himself probably wouldn't mind at all a political discussion in his RIP thread.

 

[dshans]

Haha, no, actually it was DShans and Bogs. Fact. I only objected to their political posts.

Again, it's dshans not DShans. I'm a proletarian, after all. As a foolish defense, I counter with "Oh, yeah, well you started it!"