Seeger, Pete, 1919–, American folksinger and composer, b. New York City. Seeger, the son of a musicologist and a musician, left Harvard in 1938 and made a journey through the United States, collecting songs and meeting Woody Guthrie Arlo Guthrie, 1947–, b. New York City, is also a folk singer and composer. He is best known for "Alice's Restaurant," a rambling, witty song that was the basis of a motion picture in which he starred (1969).
..... Click the link for more information. and Leadbelly Leadbelly, nickname of Huddie William Ledbetter, 1885–1949, American singer, b. Mooringsport, La. While wandering through Louisiana and Texas, he earned a living by playing the guitar for dances.
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1940, Seeger organized the Almanac Singers, and in 1948 he formed the Weavers. A major influence in reviving national interest in folk music, Seeger is intimate and casual as a performer, often inviting the audience to sing along. Among the many songs he has composed are "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Turn, Turn, Turn," and "If I Had a Hammer." A leftist activist who was blacklisted and charged with contempt of Congress, he has supported civil-rights, antiwar, environmental (with a late-life emphasis on the Hudson River), and other causes.

Bibliography

See biography by D. Dunaway (1981).

Seeger, Pete(r)

Pete Seeger, 1971.

(credit: David Gahr)

(born May 3, 1919, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. folk singer and songwriter. He was the son of the pioneering ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger (1886–1979) and stepson of the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. Leaving Harvard after two years in 1938, he hitchhiked and rode freight trains around the country, gathering folk songs and developing a virtuosity on the banjo. In 1940 he organized the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and performed widely at union halls and farm meetings. In 1948, with Lee Hays (1926–95), Ronnie Gilbert (b. 1927?), and Fred Hellerman (b. 1927), he formed the Weavers. Shortly after the group became successful, it was blacklisted because of Seeger's previous activities in left-wing and labour politics. He fostered the growth of the hootenanny (a gathering of performers playing and singing for each other, with audience participation), and he wrote folk standards such as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “If I Had a Hammer.” He is also known as a prominent supporter of antiwar, civil rights, and environmental causes.

Seeger, (R. Peter) Pete (1919– ) folksinger, songwriter; born in New York City. As a son of Charles Seeger, the musicologist, and stepson of Ruth Crawford-Seeger, the composer, he was raised in a home devoted to American folk music. He studied sociology at Harvard (1936–38) but left to pursue his interest in singing and painting. Influenced by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, he formed (with Guthrie) the Almanac Singers in 1941, one of the first such groups to give voice to social issues. In 1949 he joined the Weavers, the first commercially successful folk music group; although it had formally separated by about 1960, it occasionally regrouped for special concerts. Seeger performed for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1950s and 1960s (and at one point fell afoul of the U.S. government for his antiwar actions). His best-known original is "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (1961). By the 1980s he was lending his voice and reputation to the environmental movement. In addition to performing he wrote scholarly articles on folk music.