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Pete Seeger

American folk singer (1919-2014)

Peter Seeger (3 May 1919 – 27 January 2014) was a U.S. musician, political activist, and author; usually known as Pete Seeger.

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.

Quotes

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We'll walk hand in hand some day...
The whole wide world around some day.
 
To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season...
  • This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.
    • Inscription on his banjo, inspired by the inscription on Woody Guthrie's guitar : "This machine kills fascists"
  • We'll walk hand in hand
    We'll walk hand in hand
    We'll walk hand in hand some day...
    The whole wide world around some day.
    • Lyrics added to "We Shall Overcome" by Seeger in the late 1940s, whose musical arrangement and renditions helped popularize the song among civil-rights activists in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He also changed the primary lines from from "We Will Overcome" to "We Shall Overcome".
  • To everything (turn, turn, turn)
    There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
    And a time for every purpose under heaven.
  • A time to gain, a time to lose
    A time to rend, a time to sew
    A time of love, a time of hate
    A time of peace... I swear it's not too late.
    • "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (1954)
 
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
 
A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung.
  • Where have all the soldiers gone?
    Gone to graveyards, everyone.
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    • "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (1955)
 
And because I love you
I'll give it one more try
To show my rainbow race
It's too soon to die.
  • I have been singing folksongs of America and other lands to people everywhere. I am proud that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn’t like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for.
    • Statement to the court (1961) prior to his sentencing on contempt of Congress charges for his refusal to reveal names of communist or socialist acquaintances before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955.
  • A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung. I hope to be able to continue singing these songs for all who want to listen, Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
    • Statement to the court prior to his sentencing for contempt of Congress (1961); also quoted on NPR: Weekend Edition (2 July 2005)
  • If I've got a talent, it's for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always seem to get people to sing with me.
    • "A Minstrel with a Mission", Life magazine, 1964.
  • Every time I read the paper those old feelings come on.
    We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.
  • One blue sky above us
    One ocean lapping all our shore
    One earth so green and round
    Who could ask for more
    And because I love you
    I'll give it one more try
    To show my rainbow race
    It's too soon to die.
    • "My Rainbow Race" (1967)
  • All songwriters are links in a chain.
 
I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
  • I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
    • "The Old Left", New York Times Magazine, 22 January 1995, sect. 6 p. 13
  • 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. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail.
    • "The Old Left", New York Times Magazine, 22 January 1995, sect. 6 p. 13
  • When I meet people who say, "Oh, there's no hope, Peter, look at the things that are going wrong, and those stupid people in Bosnia, there are going to be things like that all around the world, power-hungry people says I know how to handle this, just give me the bomb. There's no hope." But I say to them, I said, "Did you ever think that our great Watergate president would leave office the way he did?" "No, I guess I didn't think that." I said, "Did you think that the Berlin Wall would come down so peacefully?" "No, I didn't think that would happen, yeah." I said, "Did you think Mandela would be president of South Africa?" "No, I didn't predict that." "Well, if you couldn't predict those three things, then don't be so confident that there's no hope." And I give them a bumper sticker. It says, "There's No Hope, But I May Be Wrong."
  • I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears.
    • 1994 interview, quoted in Filene Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music (2000), p. 197
  • The world would never amount to a hill of beans if people didn't use their imaginations to think of the impossible.
    • Pete Seeger's Storytelling Book, 2001, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 0156013118, p. 220
  • There's no hope, but I may be wrong.
    • NPR: Weekend Edition (2 July 2005)
  • The world will be saved by people fighting for their homes.
    • NPR: Weekend Edition (2 July 2005)
  • I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God.
  • The key to the future of the world, is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.
    • "Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94" New York Times (28 January 2014)

How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981)

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Quotations from How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981) by David King Dunaway ISBN 0070181500
  • Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.
  • A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision; (2) acknowledged as a mistake; (3) learned from; (4) considered valuable; (5) shared for the benefit of all.
    • p. 90
  • The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.
    • p. 95
  • "So, are you going to practice today?" asks my inner mom.
    "Well, sure. But I've got one more phone call to make. The dishes are dirty. I have to feed the cat."
    I don't hate practicing. I resist it. The goddess of procrastination can seduce me by lifting one eyebrow. After decades of practicing or avoiding the same, walking over to the piano remains the hardest part.
    • p. 117
  • At the audition, your assignment is to find something new in the song. Something you've never noticed before. A breath carried over, a thought that ties the whole thing together. Then take the risk and do it.
    • p. 119
  • If singing were all that serious, frowning would make you sound better.
    • p. 122


Misattributed

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Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
  • If I had a hammer,
    I'd hammer in the morning
    I'd hammer in the evening,
    All over this land.
    I'd hammer out danger,
    I'd hammer out a warning,
    I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
    All over this land...
    Well I got a hammer,
    And I got a bell,
    And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
    It's the hammer of Justice,
    It's the bell of Freedom,
    It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
    All over this land.
    • "If I Had A Hammer" (1949) Though Seeger composed the music of this song the lyrics were actually written by fellow member of The Weavers, Lee Hays.

Quotes about Pete Seeger

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  • my first experience with Pete Seeger was weaning me from rhythm and blues, which — as my parents badly wanted to do. They were horrified. They thought all rhythm and blues singers were dope addicts, even though they didn’t know what dope addicts were. So my auntie — they spirited me away with my auntie to a Pete Seeger show. And it was like a vaccine. Either it was going to take or not. And it took. And I loved the music, and I discovered that this man did what my family, in a sense, had done for many years, which was, having become Quakers when I was eight years old, fused everything with their politics. And this was music and politics in a way that I had never known. But it was so natural to me, his music and what he did with his life. And I understood that very quickly. And when I found out at an early age — I don’t know if this is myth or not, but when the press went to his house for an interview at one point, that he was on the roof tacking a few of the last shingles on, and he wouldn’t come down, and he was ready. I knew this was a man I wanted to follow for his political and musical events that he did. And so, I did. There was Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Pete. And I listened to Pete’s music endlessly and heard the stories about him and learned his songs and followed him.
  • the first time I heard Pete Seeger was on TV with the Weavers doing the Hootenanny. But I didn’t know him as Pete Seeger...I met him as a human being because of the Albany, Georgia civil rights movement in the 1960s. And he actually thought the singing in Southwest Georgia was so powerful that they should organize a singing group. And he talked about the Almanac Singers and the Weavers and said to Jim Forman of SNCC, “If you organized a group, you would have a group that could travel all over the country singing songs about the movement, and they might also bring financial support to the movement”...The other thing that Seeger taught me was the idea of a working singer, that you did not have to be a star. You had to know you were a singer. You had to know what your music was. And you had to be willing to do it for the rest of your life, as long as you had voice. And people would keep up with you. They would catch up with you if you did not go away. And it was a very important model for a young singer. And as a Freedom Singer, we made $10 a week. It was the perfect way to start my career as a musician, but it was looking at Pete Seeger and his years and years of doing music as a part of struggle that really inspired me. He was a very important model. And what’s incredible is that he has not — he has not broken stride in any way.
  • There was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols. A middle-aged woman on the West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist thinking and her libertarian spirit, as well as her critique of the modern commercial culture.
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